The idea by those in support of the Ambazonia cause of ostracizing Francophones en masse for not supporting their cause for a separate state for Anglophones and for failing to rise up against the Biya regime and French-imposed system is self-defeating. This is often done by people who admit Francophones supported Fru Ndi in the 1992 elections, the reason why he won it, and Paul Biya and his French allies resorted to stealing it. I am not talking about Francophone elites. My focus is the masses, the struggling Cameroonian people who constitute the vast majority of our population.
As a contributor in the SDF team that compiled the 1992 presidential results (they were compiled in Bamenda and Limbe) while the government did its in Yaounde, I would like to bring to your attention the fact that Mifi, Bamboutous and Menoua Divisions that are in the West province(region) voted for Fru Ndi more than Mezam, his home Division, that more people voted for him in the West province than in the Northwest, that more Dualas voted for him than for JJ Ekindi, who was a Dualaman etc etc. In a nutshell, most of the Francophone masses identified with the SDF, a fact recognized by the foreign powers and vocalized by the top Dutch diplomat in Cameroon in the 1990s. I shouldn't belittle the obvious by stating that most of the Francophone elites did not support the SDF candidate. Today, most of the Anglophone and Francophone elites do not support Fru Ndi, and the masses on both sides of the River Mungo do not trust him. Pureness in spirit rests mostly with the common man. I am not the one to tell you why the masses supported the SDF chairman and now distrust him after he betrayed the principles they all shared with him.
If you recall the quote "
“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...',
you will agree with me that most of the political elites, especially in Cameroon, belong with the class of Knaves---the dishonest or unscrupulous ones. Those to change the system are expected to be the wise ones who defy the seeming hopelessness of the situation and decide to confront the system--they are the unusual of men who would draw on the mutually compatible assets of the different groups of Cameroonians aspiring for the “New Cameroon”.
When an Anglophone Cameroonian uses a brush and paints Francophone Cameroonians, the broad section whose forefathers confronted French duplicity in the land and paid a heavy price for it by fighting for or supporting the historic UPC (in its war of liberation against France and its puppet the Ahmadou Ahidjo regime), with about half a million deaths, as a people incapable of relating to any system that is not autocratic, the Anglophone Cameroonian sounds insulting to many of these Francophones who may even aspire for freedom more than he does; and the Anglophone Cameroonian knowingly or unknowingly kills the prospects of a broad alliance with Francophone Cameroonians against the system they hate and which the Anglophone Cameroonian also claims to hate. When he exonerates Anglophone political elites, who give or gave legitimacy to the system most Francophones fought against, who are a part of the establishment today and continue to give it legitimacy, he makes himself incredible---and as some would say, he is speaking with both sides of his mouth.
Let me give you an inside info that has nothing to do with self-aggrandizement. I went to the 1999 SDF convention in Yaounde determined to see all our Southwest candidates elected, and went about ensuring that in a fervent manner, to the point where things seemed to be working because even those who did not bother to campaign got elected against candidates from other provinces who invested heavily to get into NEC (National Executive Committee of the SDF). A Southwesterner, was the acting or interim organizing secretary at the time after the sacking of the previous one and had done a good job of making sure the things required for the elections were in place. He, Late Pa Tita and I had spent the entire night before the convention preparing the ballot papers and the ballot boxes. The post of organizing secretary turned out to be a late post for contention.
So, when some campaigners from the Northwest approached me and told me that we should not vote Andrew Akonteh because Pa (Fru Ndi) does not want him elected, I said: "fine, vote my candidate". Conveyed the message to our SW team. Delegates from the West province came to me and complained that the Bamis were being discriminated upon since they were losing so many contentions. Explained to them that I was Bami, campaigning for the SW, my home province. Told them to revise their strategy and create "alliances"---had observed that certain posts found Bamis contesting from Littoral, West, and Centre.
To cut a long story short, when the delegates cast their ballots for the post of organizing secretary, I was not around, having been away for hours addressing an emergency. When I returned to the Congress ground, I was confronted by my Northwest conspirators --- "Janvier, Janvier, How could you guys not vote Shalo and voted for the guy from the West province instead."
I had every reason to be shocked. The organizing Secretary post was put forth for contestation while I was away and the interim guy whom I had worked with lost. So, I went to one of our delegates, a guy I could trust very well and asked him what happened.
"Janvier, Massa," he said, "I could not believe it. The provincial chairman asked us not to vote for Shalo, that he is Bamileke..."
"But they voted a Bamilekeman from the West," I half-screamed. "Louis Shalo was born in the Southwest, his wife is Sawa, his French is wanting..."
Now, whose fault was it? The two Anglophone candidates got betrayed by their delegates because their leadership or political elites wanted it so. Was it the fault of Francophones that two anglophone heavyweights lost?
We never ask ourselves why the Francophone masses and the majority of Anglophone masses lost faith in the SDF, we never acted in solidarity with the other provinces when over the decades, the system stole the votes of the masses in the other provinces and allowed SDF representation in the councils and parliament to be almost entirely from the Northwest.
"We fought hard to protect our victory," the political elites in the NW harangued in unison, a cry echoed by some of us in the Northwest.
Now, how did others think about that act, how did others digest the lack of solidarity when our elites in the Northwest quietly accepted the Fru Ndi/Ngwasiri pact with the government in 2002 after the SDF's NEC had voted to reject the fraudulent parliamentary and council elections that the CPDM designed to make the SDF look like a Northwest Party? Did they lose faith? Did that cause other Cameroonians in other provinces to become wary?
A revolutionary would soberly pry and honestly find the answers to those questions that would enable him to build an alliance with the other anti-system forces in the country, forces who at some point felt let down.
The approach is simple: Kamerunians (who later became British Cameroonians and French Cameroonians) were the victims of the First World War who saw their territory partitioned without their consent, disrupting burgeoning socio-economic and cultural ties under the Germans. The freshly British and French Cameroonians resented this, and the majority of the elites wished to return to the past, hence the formation of the UPC etc in French Cameroun and the K-parties---Endeley's KNC and Foncha's KNDP, and later Mukong/ Ntumazah's OK in British Cameroons---parties formed with the intention of both Cameroons to move together to independence. Some Cameroonians were not a part of this political consciousness and others objected to it. The French banned and went to war against these civic-nationalists (union-nationalists) under the UPC in French Cameroon, nurtured those who did not share the dream and were not supported by the vast majority of French Cameroonians and then handed power to them by making French Cameroun independent on January 01, 1960 under their puppet Ahmadou Ahidjo with a game plan to undermine Cameroonian civic-nationalism since it smacked of Germanism or love of Germany. The British also resented this Cameroonian love of Germany and worked with the French by also banning the UPC in British Cameroons in 1958, by limiting the choices for British Cameroonians in the 1961 plebiscite, and by ensuring the transfer of British Northern Cameroons to Nigeria.
The camp for unification with Nigeria lost in 1959 with only 25% of the vote, so imagine the degree of the fraud that took place in the 1961 plebiscite. Meanwhile the British Southern Cameroonian civic-nationalists (union-nationalists) elites good-naturedly or naively accepted to play a subordinate role working with the French puppets in Francophone Cameroon who were openly in alliance with France in fighting the UPC (Francophone civic-nationalists or union-nationalist who shared the same dream with the Foncha team on what the New Cameroon" should be."). Some would say that the Foncha team granted legitimacy to the French-imposed Ahidjo regime that was unpopular on both sides of the River Mungo, and that its refusal to accept UPC support in challenging Ahidjo in the polls smacked of their abandonment or betrayal of the original cause of Cameroonian civic-nationalism and the idea of a New Cameroon. The fact that both Endeley and Foncha acquiesced to Ahidjo's demand (instigated by France) to merge their parties with Ahidjo's UC, along with other complacent parties of the land into the CNU in 1966, even against the objection of the popular historic UPC attest to errors from the ends of our Anglophone political elites.
Can those errors be corrected? Yes---in a New Cameroon.
Can the system provide a solution?---No. It is incapable of rejuvenating Cameroon. It is moribund. The system needs to be dismantled in order to save Cameroon.
We should avoid being haunted by too many inner contradictions in our postulations. The key to the dismantling of the system (not the collapse of the state or the breakup of Cameroon, mark you) lies in that part of our history (1955-1972), I hope we start working towards connecting all the dots.
Janvier Tchouteu Oct 17, 2017
