Politics
To be born an English speaker in a world where the language remains the lingua franca of trade and diplomacy is normally to draw first prize in the linguistic lottery of life.
But in one corner of Africa, having English as a mother tongue has proved a curse thanks to a colonial anomaly that left a seething Anglophone underclass in a slither of overwhelmingly French-speaking Cameroon.
For the past four months, the two English-speaking regions of western Cameroon have risen up against a perceived decades-long assault by the Francophone elite on their language and British traditions, staging a campaign of general strikes, demonstrations and the occasional riot.
A ruthless response by the government, characterised by the killing of protesters and a two-month internet shutdown in English-speaking regions, has hardened antagonisms, pitching the West African country into deep crisis and raising questions about its survival as a unified state.
Amid growing secessionists mutterings, Britain has become more active in recent days in attempting to defuse the confrontation. Last week Brian Olley, the British High Commissioner to Cameroon, met Paul Biya, the country’s 84-year-old president, and is understood to have called on him to end the use of force against protesters.
“We have raised our concerns with the government of Cameroon and will continue to raise these issues, including allowing access to the internet,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.
But such quiet diplomacy has also angered some Anglophone activists, who accuse Britain of abandoning its responsibilities in the former British Southern Cameroons, which united with the much larger French Cameroons in 1961.
“Britain made us what we are and now most people in Britain don’t even know we exist,” an activist involved in the demonstrations said.
Despite the anger, Anglophone Cameroonians, who make up less than a fifth of the county’s 23m people, remain stubbornly loyal to their colonial traditions. To the bewilderment and often the derision of French speakers, they insist on forming orderly queues, referring to bars as “off-licences” and dressing up their judges and lawyers in powdered wigs.
Both British common law and the GCE O-and-A-level syllabus remain deeply cherished.
It is a loyalty that has rarely been reciprocated by Britain
The British Cameroons were made famous by the writings of naturalist Gerald Durrell, who visited in the Forties to search for the elusive hairy toad. He was memorably assisted by an uproarious Anglophone king, the Fon of Bafut, a gin-and-bitters-swilling pidgin speaker with a large retinue of drum-playing, bosom-jiggling wives whom Durrell taught the Conga.
But Britain generally wanted little to do with the place. William Gladstone turned down a plea for annexation from local kings in 1884, allowing Bismark to take it for Germany.
After the First World War, Britain turned over five-sixths of the territory to France, agreeing to an arbitrary border line drawn up by Francois Georges-Picot, the French diplomat jointly responsible for the Middle East’s controversial modern boundaries.
Heartbroken local kings, like the Sultan of Bamum, protested in vain.
“I wish to follow the King of England and to be his servant, together with my country, so that we may be freshened with dew,” the sultan wrote in a letter to George V “who puts the evil men to flight and the troublesome to prison.”
After independence in 1960, the British Cameroons were wooed into union with the much larger French Cameroons by a promise that they would be equal members of a federal, bilingual state — a pledge broken when the federal constitution was abandoned in 1972.
Since then, English speakers say they have been shut out of jobs, denied fair political representation and deprived of revenues from oil, much of which is extracted from former British territory.
Matters came to a head in November when a group of lawyers staged a small protest outside the courthouse in Bamenda, Cameroon’s largest Anglophone city, to demand the withdrawal of judges who spoke no English and had no understanding of British common law. The protest was broken up with tear gas.
The authorities must have assumed that, as in the past, the protests would peter out. Instead, the movement grew, drawing in Anglophone teachers, angered by state attempts to replace them with French speakers with knowledge of neither English nor the GCE syllabus.
Students joined in too, only to see their halls of residence raided and female students beaten and sexually abused by the police, according to activists.
The government admits to six protester deaths, though activists say the true toll is much higher.
With force alone appearing to fail, Mr Biya has since January attempted to seal off Anglophone Cameroon from the outside world by cutting off internet access to the two regions.
An absolutist gerontocrat who has clung to power through a series of controversial elections, there are signs that even French-speakers are finally losing patience with a leader who spends so much time in Europe his people view him as an absentee landlord.
Last October a Cameroonian stood outside the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, where the president is said to have spent most of the Summer, and hurled insults at Mr Biya through a loud-hailer.
Since then the president has shown signs of increasing paranoia. He was mocked by even French speakers after the present Miss Cameroon was stripped of her crown in January, allegedly for calling on the government to listen to Anglophone concerns.
So far, however, there is little sign that Mr Biya will relent. Most of the leaders of the protest movement have been arrested in recent weeks and charged with “terrorism, hostility against the fatherland, secession, revolution, contempt of the president… group rebellion, civil war and dissemination of fake news.”
Facing the death penalty, their trial before a military tribunal has shown Cameroon’s problems in microcosm. Bewigged defence lawyers, seated across the room from bare-headed Francophone prosecutors, struggled to follow proceedings conducted in French. When an interpreter was eventually provided the translation was so poor that few were any the wiser.
It is a sign, Anglophone Cameroonians say, that they will never be understood or accepted by the French speaking majority.
“The Anglophones are a people,” Henry Ngale Monono, a barrister, wrote recently in a Cameroonian newsletter. “We have a common culture, a common language. The Francophones want is to think like them behave like them, act like them — which is not possible.”
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- Adrian Blomfield, British Telegraph
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A new platform to to provide peaceful and durable solutions to the ongoing crisis in the English speaking regions of the country has been born. Baptised the Anglophone Dialogue Forum in Buea, the founder Dr Simon Munzu says membership is open to all who can bring useful suggestions on how best the crisis could be resolved.
He says President Paul Biya's call for Cameroonians to "listen to each other" and "remain open to constructive ideas" should be followed by practical solutions. Dr Munzu believes it is time for the for the Anglophone problem to be resolved once and for all through frank, honest and truthful discussions.
Senators, MPs, he clergy, traditional rules, the educaton family, te media and business community have been invited to rally behind this body and bring useful suggestions that will be forwarded to Government for prompt action. The Anglophone problem goes beyond issues of bilingualism and multi culturalism, the problems of anglophone lawyers and teachers. It embraces a plethora of grievances felt by the anglophone community that have risen over several decades of institutional mismanagement and dismantling of the political, administrative, infrastructural, economic and cultural heritage that Southern Cameroon brought into the federal union.
The Anglophone Dialogue forum belives that measures taken by the Head of state to address aspects of the problem are a positive step in the right direction. However these measures cannot lead to the achievements of peace and unity.
Aware of the rising demand for the restoration of the statehood of Southern Cameroon, the body believes on the goodwill of ALL sides, and only dialogue can assure the country's unity in diversity including its diverse colonial heritages.
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- Mbi James
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Fru Jonathan last week in Santa assured the population that schools were sure to begin in Mezam II this Monday March 27 2017.
“We have been holding meetings with the Fons and all the traditional authorities; we have even been in touch with the religious authorities to explain to them what government has done. We are confident that they understand and we are confident that they are going to respect the declaration which they took. To set an example Militants of the CPDM have accepted that they will take their children to school on Monday” says Fru Jonathan.
According to the CPDM die heart, Santa people in collaboration with the police, gendarmerie and the administration have overcome fear so there is nothing to worry about as far as sending children to school is concerned.
Fru Jonathan says “Santa has a mobilized group of young men called Santa Peace Force who have decided to go out and protect the population of Santa to ensure that nobody comes from outside to burn, to destroy, kidnap or to cause any problem to anyone. The population is confident because the peace force works with the gendarmerie, police and the administration and together they have succeeded to conquer fear.
On the other hand protesters of the ongoing North West and south west strike have demands to be met before schools can reopen.
“We have two conditions before schools can reopen; we need our internet installed back in the northwest and southwest regions and we demand for the unconditional release of all those who were arrested and taken to Yaounde” says a disgruntled protester. “If these two preliminary conditions are not met then the government is wasting its time” he adds.
The big question that lingers in the minds of many now is: For how long will the government and protesters continue this tug of war?
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- Rita Akana
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Runaway SYNES Buea Chapter President Pr. James Arrey Abangma and Vice Dr. Martin Sango over the weekend resurfaced from their hide outs and suspended the Anglophone strike in a press conference.
“We have come here to suspend the strike. It is a hard and tough decision to make and that is why we are only the two of us here now. Others are still on the run” says Abangma
However they made some requests to the government calling on the highest authorities to complement their actions by granting their wishes.
Pr. Abangma continues “Releasing our members; Dr. Fontem Niba the general secretary and Barrister Agbor Nkongho our member; and also, all the students who have been arrested; installing the internet facilities; demilitarizing the academic community, readjusting the academic calendar to enable realistic course coverage. Again, that we are suspending under extraordinary circumstances, we have decided to take a step so that government can complement this action by also granting our wishes and desires”
Many protestors have distanced themselves from this decision and are waiting to see what will happen this time around.
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- Tawe Gije Nkfunji
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CRTV' ace sports analyst, Fon Echeloyi, who is also Deputy Director Coordinating new television channels the corporation still has to create, has been summoned to appear before investigators at the dreaded Secretariat of State at the Ministry of the Defense in Charge of the National Gendarmerie, code named in French- SED.
According to the summons served on Fon Echekiye, he is expected to show up on Tuesday the 28th of March at 9 am, purportedly at the behest of hierarchy. Although the accusations leading to his being summoned are not expressly mentioned on the documents served on the avid sports analyst, the sections of the Criminal Procedure Code quoted indicate that he is being called up in relation to treason. That links him to the Southern Cameroons Question which has left the country devastated, occasioning the questioning and arrest of numerous Anglophone elite.
If arrested this Tuesday, Fon Echekiye shall be the ninth Anglophone journalist being held in connection to the crisis. Fon Echekiye's summons leaves many wondering how his name could come up, since he reports sports and sports alone, while the Anglophone problem is in the domain of politics. Sources close to the case indicate that the matter has been brought to the attention of the journalism watchdog institution, the Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ.
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- Rita Akana
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Speaking at the opening of the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting at his Nkolfolou residence on the outskirts of Yaounde on Saturday March 25, Ni John Fru Ndi said Hon Wirba’s famous intervention in parliament on the Anglophone problem was the MP’s personal point of view.
“When he talked in parliament the way he did I congratulated him and told him he talked more on a personal point of view; using I not we,” the SDF chairman said about Hon ‘Joe’ Wirba.
Fru Ndi disclosed that he cautioned the SDF Member of Parliament for Jakiri Special Constituency and told him that in the future when he’s talking, he should make sure that he’s talking as an SDF member.
“But he went and organized a rally in Nso, his other colleague MPs were not there, the Mayor of Kumbo was not there, the SDF electoral district chairman for Kumbo was not there, the divisional coordinator of the party for Bui never attended that rally. And so when all this is done, you want me to make a statement, what statement?” the SDF chairman said in relation to an appeal for support by the escapee SDF MP.
It should be recalled that Hon Wirba is on the run following a warrant of arrest for him. In a message on social media page, he has vowed to continue to the fight till the Biya regime recognizes and respects the rights of Anglophones in the country.
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- Rita Akana
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Subcategories
Biya Article Count: 73
# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
Southern Cameroons Article Count: 549
.# Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia
Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
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