In 2008, I came across an American senior citizen in his early eighties (Pah ) with a razor-sharp mind who upon finding out that I was a Cameroonian, looked at me with respect in his eyes and said:
"You people are different. You were
separated and did everything possible to come back together. That is unusual in
Africa where people dwell more on their differences. And the strange thing is
that Cameroonians I spoke with, whether French-speaking or English-speaking,
thought highly of the German period than of the time they were under the French
and the British.”
As a matter of fact, Kamerun was a German
colony from 1884-1916. The French and the British partitioned it into French
Cameroun and British Cameroons (British Southern Cameroons and British Northern
Cameroons) on June 28, 1919, after they defeated the Germans in World War One,
a division that was opposed by Cameroonian civic-nationalists who pursued a
cause to reunite both territories and get their independence, resulting in the
reunification of British Southern Cameroons and the former French Cameroun in
1961.
Now, the American’s words triggered my Cameroonian cryptic nature, so that I
responded by asking him thus: "What makes you think so?"
“I worked at our embassy in Cameroon in
the 1960s and spoke with many Cameroonians," came his reply.
Conscious at this time of where he was
coming from, I added, "The Germans were hard, but they were respectful to
an extent. Perhaps they acted out of expediency because they believed in
developing the territory for a higher purpose. When it came to the British and
the French, it was interest and nothing more. We were after all, a conquered
German territory. Our parents were intuitive enough to understand that."
I still recall the old man's enigmatic
smile after I uttered those last words. When I got his last name afterwards, I
deduced he was of German ancestry. I later incorporated him into a character in
the unfinished novels entitled "Flash of the Sun" and "Of Life,
War and Peace". Sometimes I beat myself up that perhaps we wouldn't have
gotten ourselves into the current quagmire (The Ambazonia armed conflict) had
everything been laid out there for the people to read, listen to and
understand. But then I find some consolation in the words of T.H. White who
wrote that:
“We
find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves,
and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The
nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among
them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows
himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry,
mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners
of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery,
malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even
over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It
is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is
democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism,
they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be
different, except the name. The fools will still be fools, the knaves still
leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be
much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to
starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration
camp, under communism he will be liquidated.”
Even with everything spelt out over the
past two decades, people clueless about a revolution got us into this armed conflict brewing in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon, thereby
giving a lease of life to the almost comatose system and polarizing society in
the process, and as a result, knuckleheads and those with the native mindset
now seem to have a voice. That does not take from the fact that they were
baited into it by a faction in the French-imposed system and the militaries (of
France and Cameroon) who had been spoiling for a fight with forces less opposed
to the existence of this anti-Cameroonian and dysfunctional French-imposed
system, in a bid to make an example of this one-sided (Ambazonian) and confused
force, so as dissuade Cameroon’s genuinely patriotic and civic-nationalist
forces (the union-nationalists who are committed to the total, complete and
unequivocal dismantling of the anachronistic French-imposed system that has
never been accepted by the vast majority of Cameroonians, a bloody Franco-Cameroonian
mafia-system that orchestrated a genocide in the 1960s against Cameroonians
opposed to it and that is pursuing a pacification campaign in the
English-speaking part of the country against those who want separation, in a
manner that risks triggering ethnic
conflicts and a genocide in this part of the country that was called British
Southern Cameroons after the partition of German Kamerun, a territory that
evolved into West Cameroon following its independence through reunification with the former French Cameroon
(La Republique du Cameroun from 1960-1961), resulting in the 1961-1972 Cameroon
Federation of West Cameroon and East Cameroon.
The fact that those who played no role in
the cause for the independence and reunification of the territories of the
former German Kamerun and their heirs (the Ahidjo/Biya regimes made up of
people France put in power after crushing the advocates of a free and New Cameroon) made a mess of the
reunification project (which the abrogation of the Cameroon Federation
exacerbated) through oppression, dictatorship, corruption, mismanagement among
other things, misrule and deception that has left most Cameroonians who unfortunately have
no true sense of our history very confused, making us the most misled and
socially-engineered people in Africa, despite the fact that we are one of the most
enlightened in the continent when it comes to other aspects of life. That is why Cameroon is the only country
in Africa and the world where those who campaigned, fought, died, and voted for
its liberation from colonialism (independence and reunification) have never governed
Cameroon. Cameroon’s social-engineering and geo-political incomprehension also explains why those and their heirs who
opposed reunification in the 1961 plebiscite, opted to pick up arms to fight
for the separation of the former British Southern Cameroons from the rest of Cameroon. The sad thing is that these two forces who do
not love Cameroon and Cameroonians as a whole and that are disliked by
Cameroonians in all the regions of the country are fudging to come across as being for “their” people, thus giving one
another relevance and taking the focus away from the real problem of Cameroon ---
THE ANACHRONISTIC FRENCH-IMPOSED SYSTEM --- that needs to be dismantled for the
long-advocated “NEW CAMEROON” to be
born, a “NEW CAMEROON” where all Cameroonians would be able to feel at home
in and thrive.
February
13, 2020
Janvier Tchouteu, 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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