Childhood idiosyncrasies connected to school often make us smile. Mine usually make me grin unconsciously. My days at this larger than life elementary school situated next to the Catholic Church in downtown Buea, the historic mountain town in the English-speaking part of Cameroon, had fun memories too—adventuring with friends to the orchard next door of the legendary politician Dr. EML Endeley’s, knotting grass on the soccer(football) field so that pupils you entice to chase you trip over the traps and fall, and so many other fun games. Those were some of the episodes of the non-academic aspects of schooling that went a long way towards molding us all, or other positive outcomes of our lunch breaks and non-academic activities characterized by pupils running around, having fun, and expressing their joy of life---cornerstones of childhood balance outside of the family. But one memory that towers above all the others is my recollection of the “Dining Shed”, which is where outside suppliers sell cooked food for the pupils or students wanting to eat something during the major break time (for those schools that do not feed their pupils or students at all).
Not that I was ever a gourmand back then. But then, the “Dining Shed” at Catholic Buea Town sold many dishes and usually featured a larger than life Lady who sold “Kwacoco Bible”(a pudding made from cocoyam) with Njanjamoto (a species of dried fish) in it.
Imagine my anxiety sitting inattentively in the classroom, waiting for the school bell to announce “Long Break” (Lunch Break), on those days that I was given lunch money to buy the food of my choice. The first ring of the bell would spur me to my feet and send me sprinting to the door for the “Dining Shed”, to the astoundment of our teacher. There, I would buy my “Great Treat” and share it with friends or eat alone, depending on the circumstance.
We all have memories of our days at school, experiences that contributed towards the positive development of the characters that we are today. That is why my heart aches knowing that some Cameroonian school-aged children (ages 6–11 years) in Buea, Fako Division, Southwest Region or Northwest Region, and the rest of Anglophone Cameroon are being deprived of positive elementary school experiences because adults in the unscrupulous current political establishment (The French-imposed system) and those who oppose them without scruples themselves are using pupils and students as pawns to score political points.
The actors in Cameroon’s political arena should ask themselves if they are not depriving these children of an important aspect of their childhood, if they are not scarring them for life, among other things.
The six-decade-old French-imposed system in Cameroon is anachronistic; the 36-year-old regime of Paul Biya is an affront to Cameroonians, to a progressive Africa, and to humanity. The nihilist-anarchist armed groups in Anglophone Cameroon and the Biya regime/the political system/the puppet master France that they are standing up to in their demand for an independent English-speaking Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) are all haunting a country that is considered the heart of Africa, the land that was the center of the dream of a future united and prosperous Africa. The political establishment created the grounds for a confrontation with those and the heirs of those who were/are against the reunification of the former British Southern Cameroons and the former French Cameroun by failing in 2016 to address the grievances of English-speaking Cameroonians in the West of the country, thereby sparking off what is popularly called the “Anglophone Crisis” that since December 2017, became a low-level armed conflict with the potential to become as bloody as other atrocious civil wars and genocides in Africa.
When the Germans carved out a colony called Kamerun from an area that was considered the crossroads of African migrations over the millennia, it was considered a unique feat. However, three decades of German control forged a sense of identity in the land where all of Africa’s three major language groups merged. In 1910, Cameroonian nationalists emerged in the southeast of the colony with a mission to end German colonialism. The execution of their leaders in August 1914, two months after the start of World War One, left the land with no patriotic leadership to defend its interest when the British and the French defeated the Germans in 1916, and then carved up the territory into French Cameroun and British Cameroons (British Southern Cameroons and British Northern Cameroons).
Cameroonian civic-nationalism seeking the reunification and independence of the lands of the former German colony would rise again in an organized form, first in French Cameroon in 1948 under the UPC (Union of the Populations of the Cameroons), and then in 1949 in British Southern Cameroons culminating in the founding of Kamerun National Congress (KNC) in 1953. France would ban the UPC in French Cameroun in 1955, accusing it of being Marxist despite the fact that the party commanded 80% of the territory’s intellectual support and 70% of the popular support. Most of the UPC leadership would flee to British Southern Cameroons, but its leader Ruben Um Nyobe would stay behind and lead an armed resistance until his assassination on September 13, 1958. 1955 was also the year the KNC leader Dr. EML Endeley became pro-Nigerian, resulting in a rift with his deputies John Ngu Foncha and Solomon Tandeng Muna who broke off and formed the Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP). When Britain conspired with France and banned the UPC in British Cameroons in 1958 on whispered grounds that it would reunite the lands of the former German Kamerun and take it into the arms of the Soviet bloc, it failed to reckon with the fact that the KNDP, the UPC’s sister party, now dominated British Southern Cameroonian politics and that the OK (One Kamerun), an offshoot of the UPC, would become the third force in the territory.
French Cameroun became the Republic of Cameroun on January 01, 1960, when France granted independence to those who played no role in the cause for the liberation of Cameroon—the struggle for reunification and independence—whether as liberals, moderates or radicals. France did so thinking that it was safeguarding its unchecked interest in the new country and destroying Cameroonian civic-nationalism(Kamerunism) for good. The question now became:
What to do with British Cameroons with its civic-nationalism tilting towards the left?
In 1961, Britain and its Western allies bargained on a UN-sponsored plebiscite, asking the people of British Cameroons to vote either to join newly independent Nigeria or the Republic of Cameroun. No third option for independence was given, and the votes of the two British Cameroons were tallied separately.
Kamerunism (Cameroonian civic-nationalism) won in the south with the people choosing independence through reunification with French Cameroun, while the north went to Nigeria in what Kamerunists (Cameroonian civic-nationalist) decried as gross irregularities in polling on grounds that in November 1959, when British Northern Cameroonian voters were asked if they wanted to “join Nigeria when it becomes independent or decide the political status at a later date” there were 129,549 registered voters and 113,334 (87.5%) valid votes, with only 42,788 (27.75% ) voting for a union with Nigeria. However, less than two years later in the 11-12 February 1961 British Cameroons Plebiscite, the number of Registered Voters in British Northern Cameroons would increase to 292,985---a 2.26 fold increase; and the Valid Votes would be 243,955, with 146,296 (59.97%) voting to join Nigeria, representing a 348% or 3.48 fold increase from 1959. This was in contrast to British Southern Cameroons where the Registered voters increased from 205,576 during the January 1959 House of Assembly Election to 349,652 in the 1961 Plebiscite, representing a 1.7 times increase, with the proportion of pro-Nigeria voters decreasing from 37.45% to 29.50%.
November 1959 British Northern Cameroons Plebiscite
Main Points: Voters were asked if they wanted to join Nigeria when it becomes independent or decide the political status at a later date.
Main Points: Voters were asked if they wanted to unite with Nigeria or Cameroon when independence is granted to the two regions.
Northern Cameroons
Southern Cameroons
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Cameroonians would learn belatedly during the 22-year rule of Ahmadou Ahidjo and the 36-year rule of his hand-picked successor Paul Biya that Britain and France in particular envisaged taming the UPC-inspired Cameroonian civic-nationalism by dissipating the democratic and nationalist fervor of Anglophone Cameroonians in the new political system of marionettes or puppets that the French political mafia cultivated in Cameroon after defeating and suppressing Cameroon’s civic-nationalists led by the historic UPC of Ruben Um Nyobe, Felix Moumie, Ernest Ouandie, Ndeh Ntumazah, Osende Afana, and Albert Kingue, at a cost of the deaths of more than half a million Cameroonians. The process led to the poisoning of the Cameroonian soul where the system now acts as a parasite to the nation, as it drags it into the abyss and as it robs Cameroonian children of their future.
The French-imposed system of mercenaries and looters, compradors per se, and their heirs has bred a political culture and a political establishment that has no moral authority over Cameroonians, and that has no sense of direction. It has given those and the heirs of those who were against Cameroonian reunification the platform to exhort Anglophone Cameroonians to seek a state of their own, to impose the third option of independence for the people of the former British Southern Cameroons that the conniving colonial powers avoided in the plebiscite. True anti-reunificationists or separatists or secessionists who prefer to call themselves restorationists are committed to an armed-struggle and consider the boycott of schools as a part of a strategy to force the hand of the Biya regime and the French-imposed system to concede to their demands. But the inhuman Cameroonian political system is morally responsible for the plight of school children in Anglophone Cameroon since it lay the grounds for some of those who reject its evil disposition, to also act negatively by using school children as bargaining chips in their fight against the dictatorial Biya regime.
In a nutshell, both the regime and the forces engaged in acts of hooliganism vis-à-vis the disruption of schooling bear the moral responsibility for the plight of pupils and students craving an education in Anglophone Cameroon. These two forces are anti-people in their current actions as they deprive Cameroonian youths of an education, of a cultured upbringing, of their childhood, and of the real truth of the “Cameroon To Be”, of the “New Cameroon” ideal that is the cornerstone of the seven-decade-old Cameroonian struggle against colonialism and neocolonialism.
The pro-people forces led by Cameroon’s civic-nationalists, the patriotic union-nationalists who are the heirs of Martin Paul Samba, Rudolf Manga Bell, Ruben Um Nyobe, Nde Ntumazah, Albert Mukong, Felix Moumie, Ernest Ouandie, Osende Afana, Albert Kingue, John Ngu Foncha, Samuel F. Tchwenko, are losing their patience with these anti-people forces who are desecrating one of the hard-won achievements of the liberation struggles in Africa—Cameroon’s reunification—that defied colonialism, imperialism, and racism. The French-imposed system under the Biya regime that does not cherish Cameroon's reunification by weakening its foundations, and the anti-reunification forces that want to tear Cameroon apart are responsible for trying to kill what pan-Africanists consider as the nucleus of the future African Union, by failing to showcase Cameroon as an example of how Francophone and Anglophone Africa can come together.
Janvier Tchouteu is the author of “FALLEN HEROES: African Leaders Whose Assassinations Disarrayed the Continent and Benefitted Foreign Interests”
https://amazon.com/dp/1980996695/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_JX6Q26H573RSKG7HT9V6
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