Euphoria for a "Revolution" and Truth

Saying the truth to those who need it the most often gets the wrong reception. Revolution is a science that those wanting to carry it out need to think it through, taking into account so many factors. No Western institution has a good grasp of it. The fine art of it was never developed in the West nor mastered there. Back in 1997, at a time that our SDF had more than 60% support in Cameroon and the system(Biya regime and France) was treating it with disdain, at a time that I was just back home, some of our people thought the SDF should pick up arms. Despite its popularity, the SDF lacked a national idea, a unifying ideology that all those who militated in, supported, sympathized with or led it could identify as a rallying or sobering source.

Advocates for a revolution should never dismiss the aspect of "unintended consequences" arising from an abortive revolution, especially one that is not well formulated. The SDF at the time was different things to different peoples. It was “na wya party" in different senses (tribal, linguistic, ethnic, regional, national, etc)of the phrase, hence a recipe for the worst (the unleashing of the Pandora's box) in a situation where it engaged in an armed struggle against the system. 

In a nutshell, a revolution needs more than just goal(s). Cameroon, whether as a whole or a part of it needed a unifying idea or ideal in the democratic/revolutionary phase meant to finally bring down the system. Hence the article below entitled " TERROR: POLITICAL WEAPON, SOCIAL INFECTION, DEHUMANISER:", meant as a caution, or call it a warning cry. That task of coming up with a unifying idea was close to completion before the insurrection in Anglophone Cameroon. Now, it requires a genius or a madman to reverse this descent into political lethargy and other things, which are all to the benefit of the French-imposed system that is almost comatose. In fact, the moribund system under the Biya regime is feeding off the growing anarchy and getting a lease of life from the degeneration in the regions  West of the River Mungo called the Northwest and Southwest.


And it would be a difficult task in any national and civic-nationalist endeavor to dismantle the system without considerable participation of the land and peoples of the Northwest and Southwest regions. That can only happen with the Kamerunist (union-nationalists) and federalists, who are the majority West of the Mungo, exerting themselves and extending a hand to the other forces of change in the rest of Cameroon.

March 2019

I quit the SDF in 2002 when Fru Ndi led the SDF in betraying the ideals of the Cameroonian struggle to complete its unfinished liberation by openly collaborating with the Biya regime and the French-imposed system through the Fru Ndi/Ngwasiri pact with the system  to accept the councils and 23 parliamentary (13%) seats the regime allowed the SDF to keep, even though the SDF was  the most popular political party in the country. Those seats were predominantly in the Northwest, hence Fru Ndi helped the regime/system in the game plan to tag the SDF as a regional party or a Northwest party, a capitulation by the Fru Ndi mafia in the SDF that effectively killed the party as a national party and perceived successor of the historic UPC  that the civic-nationalists who had joined the party projected  it to be.

https://viewsnewcameroon.blogspot.com/2010/09/terror-political-weapon-social.html

Janvier Tchouteu is the author of " The Mistakes To Be Avoided in Building The New Cameroon"

Cameroon: France’s Dysfunctional Puppet System in Africa

by Janvier Tchouteu,

Falling Short: Cameroon's Post-independence Intellectualism

The French-imposed system, the Biya-regime that manages it today, is severely weakened. So it boggles the mind that it is still limping along. We understand the neocolonialist aspect of the system; we understand its interest-driven nature, but on paper, Cameroonians of today are more intellectually prepared to dismantle this anachronistic French-imposed than the pre-independence generations it was imposed on.  So, why are we failing miserably in harnessing our strengths, the opportunities out there, the system’s weaknesses; and why are we failing to comprehend the threats looming in the horizon?

As a young man in the 1990s who was deeply involved with the country's No. 1 political force at the time (SDF) with virginal intentions, full of idealism, as a voracious reader and someone considered by some as having a respectable knowledge of our history, I thought I somehow understood Cameroon and Cameroonians. I was also convinced that the pre-independence generations had somehow been compromised (collaborating with the French-imposed system and surrendering after the UPC-failed resistance). So I thought we(the post-independence generations), would be able to complete the job of ending French-neocolonialism and only needed a unifying ideology that draws from the positive aspects of our past hopes, dreams and our different potentials, a unifying ideology based on Cameroonian nationalism, criticism, and self-criticism. I thought our post-independence intellectuals would be able to furnish that fuel, and so wrote extensively on that hope. Apparently, I was wrong.

A shockingly high percentage of the politically-vocal in our generation of intellectuals is more brainwashed, socially-engineered, and is haunted by a tunnel-vision more than those before us, even though we are more specialized. The old folks used to tell me back in the 1990s at a time that my generation was not actively involved in the struggle for the "New Cameroon" that "…You are ahead of your time". Now I feel like I am behind "the times" or behind my time, like an utopist, vis-a-vis my generation that is now mature and at the forefront in the Cameroonian struggle. In a world where people with differences, and where even the different nationalities, races, countries and religions are harnessing their mutually compatible values, tapping on their collective dreams and forging alliances, we have descended to our basest motives at the core of which is a "Native Mindset" with a political underlining that makes many of us nothing but "Tribalists" or "ethnofascist". In many aspects, some of us have become worse than the Cameroonian compradors---looters and mercenaries that are mismanaging Cameroon using the fascist French-imposed system in a manner that is perhaps even worse than the neocolonialists had expected from their puppets. We are making the pre-independence generations look like saints. It is as if some of the ideas developed in the accounts like the ones below were a waste of time and energy.

Cameroon's Post-Independence Intellectuals https://viewsnewcameroon.blogspot.com/2010/09/post-independence-intellectuals-and.html

The Demanding Task for the Post-Independence Generations 
https://viewsnewcameroon.blogspot.com/2010/08/the-demanding-task-for-post.html

I pray Cameroon’s post-independence intellectuals start comparing their castles in the air with reality. I hope 2019 brings forth that revelation.

Janvier Tchouteu                                                       December 17, 2018

Janvier Tchouteu is the author of Triple Agent, Double Cross

CAMEROON: The Haunted Heart of Africa

by Janvier Tchouteu,

Cameroon: France’s Dysfunctional Puppet System in Africa

by Janvier Tchouteu,

The Mistakes To Be Avoided in Building The New Cameroon

by Janvier Tchouteu, 

Flash of the Sun (Compradors Series)

Book 1 of 2: Compradors Series  | 

Anglophone Cameroonians and the Systems of Government they Advocate

Politically, there are four types of Anglophone Cameroonians (indigenous and native-born), or what are the people West of the Mungo in the regions of the Northwest and Southwest in Cameroon:

• Separatists (which some erroneously call secessionists)---those who want an independent country called Ambazonia from the lands of the former British Southern Cameroons;
• Unionists, as the French-imposed system under the Biya regime prefers to call its supporters meant as a ruse against Cameroon's genuine nationalism. Unionists are for a unitary or decentralized state;
•  Federalists (restorationists---those demanding a return to or the restoration of the two-state federation of 1961-1972, and others demanding multiple forms of a federation); 
• and finally, the Kamerunists who are the heirs of Cameroonian civic-nationalism (union-nationalism), the country's advanced patriotism, a genuine and all-inclusive nationalism which advocates the idea of a "New Cameroon" that is a federation, devoid of neocolonialist entanglements, that is pan-Africanist, that is democratic, governed by the rule of law and that is steep in progressive Cameroonian/African values. The union-nationalists adhere to the goals of reunification/independence and honor those who fought/died/voted for it---thereby making them the heirs of the historic UPC of 1948-1970, OK, the historic KNDP of 1954-1961 and the historic SDF of 1990-1997. Union-nationalists consider the foundation of the state of Cameroon to be defective, meaning even the 1961-1972 Cameroon federation, whose crafting excluded the majority ideas and political/civil forces of the land.

A salient understanding has always existed between the Federalists and union-nationalists in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon.

Janvier Tchouteu is the author of " The Mistakes To Be Avoided in Building The New Cameroon"

Cameroon: France’s Dysfunctional Puppet System in Africa

by Janvier Tchouteu,