My Shareway to the World

My opinion on the Anglophone Problem: Real-false problem and false-real problem

 

The anglophone problem understood as former Cameroonian territory under British tutelage struggle, which should never have been overshadowed, has returned to the forefront of public opinion.

 

Real problem in its essence (what makes a thing what it is, what constitutes the nature of a thing), as true as any contrary opinion would be tantamount to criminal myopia and deafness.

To refuse to see, to hear or relativizing it nevertheless makes it one.

 

In my opinion, this is a false problem in the terms of its "fuel" aspect, these lyrical, hilarious flights and these justifications that inflame the most extremist demands against a background of more or less unbridled legalism.

 

What, then, is the nature of the anglophone problem, and what are its truths, its counter-truths and its contradictions?

 

The anglophone problem can be summarized in one word, MARGINALIZATION.

 

From the beginning, out of and outside Cameroon, to nowadays.

 

  The Anglophone problem and its problematics are consubstantial to the history of Cameroon. Arming on an intermediate milestone for understanding and finding solutions is synonymous to diagnosiing and treating symptoms and signs of the trunk or leave, ignoring the causes in seeds and roots of the tree.

It’s a soil/seed borne problem before being an airborne problem.

 

  Its causes are therefore distant, profound, its manifestations surface and not superficial, with chronic or insidious toxicity effects on the concerned, and acute effects on the country and all its citizens.

 

Indeed:

- if Cameroon had not been a German protectorate,

- if Germany had not lost the war as a result of which her possessions would be retroceded to other colonizers,

- if the League of Nations had not sailed the territory of the Kamerun by entrusting part to France and the other to Great Britain,

the Anglophone problem would never have existed in Cameroon.

 

Has Cameroon itself as such existed? Would one be entitled to wonder, for "manufacture" of the Germans"; but do not lose in conjecture.

It would have existed in one way or another; it was being made from its embryo called "Old Cameroon" whose colonization has justly stopped development.

 

Its history has been accelerated and complicated.

In about fifty years, Cameroon will thus add to its cultural identity (es) two Francophone (Latin) and Anglo-Saxon cultures, of which two distinct characteristics are the basis (or serve as pretext) of the social outbreak In the northwest and southwest regions, namely the judicial system with civil law on one side versus the common law on the other, and the school system on the other.

In the background, the fundamental problem of centralized (direct) and more liberal (indirect) governance characterizing each of the parties involved.

And even more, a problem of two culures.

 

 The Anglophone problem (like other Cameroonian problems) thus finds its deep and distant source in the nature of Cameroonian society, a plural society, a juxtaposition of ethnic-tribal components and references, a society already confronted with "structuring as a whole [and in addition, as a result of colonialism], the problem of the injection of cultural models and dominant ideological systems of reference ".

 

The Anglophone problem and other Cameroonian problems come to the surface because of our inability to "think the real and the social outcome", "to invent our future" on the basis of "essential values ​​of Freedom, Creativity, Reason as Normative values, from the point of view of the development of individuals as well as from the point of view of the organization of the national social totality "(Pr Pius Ondoua O).

 

Above all, we have given free rein to the "prevailing exotic values, reflections of cultural alienation", of which the "extrovert modeling or models of thinking and existing in the West, of which we are only outgrowths".

These models have transmitted to us the "démocratie du chiffre" or "démocratie à la bazooka," politics as "the art of conquering without being right", a game of deceit.

 

Between the two cultures which have imposed themselves on our parents, the preference would have gone to that which most prone to translate our aspirations and to be the vector of our development, in my humble opinion the Anglo-Saxon system to which the Francophone system refers to In many respects.

English is the language of technology; it is more spoken in the world.

 

Have our parents not condemned us to be third zone class citizens (cf cfa franc), taking with us our anglophone fellow citizens according to this "slogan, which, it is said in southern Cameroon, would circulate among Francophones: First October [sic] we will seize Southern Cameroon "?

 

The contingencies of the moment did not, perhaps, enable our parents to do otherwise. But instead of putting in place a courageous policy of bilingualism that would have reduced more than one immaterial and material boundary or at the very least choosing the most relevant values ​​in each system, the leaders of eastern Cameroon relied on the advantage of demography and geography.

They took advantage of the favorable geostrategy of the moment, the status and weaknesses of the partner, and focused on their immediate political interests to establish institutions and practices that would inevitably lead to the dilution of the Anglo-Saxon system and the marginalization of the Anglophone minority.

"Bouffer du" Southern Cameroon. The dream came true.

 

 And yet, an immersion in African tradition and history will let us know that the great did not necessarily "puff" the little ones, certain kingdoms associating with other relatives without trying to destroy them.

Thus was formed Old Cameroon, where the Ngala / Douala, the Bakoko, the Bassa, the Grassfields, the Bamun, the Beti-Bulu-Fang, etc., whose bond was a more or less far away common origin and the main link was trading in a sort of federalism that did not say its name.

A "homogeneous, territorialized global society in the making " in which governance was exercised through brotherhoods (confréries) that governed social, administrative, political and police relations.

In the northern part of the country, there was what is refered to as FOMBINA, the other proto-nation.

 

 "Cameroon", therefore, did not begin in 1884 or 1916. Neither in Berlin, nor in Versailles.

 

 A plunge into the contemporary history of Cameroon, despite our aversion to our pre-colonial past, will make us see that the relations of Cameroon's people -or those who have committed themselves in the name of all- to the Queen of England country were deeper and even affectionate.

The first agreements were signed with him (England), his subjects played a leading role in the march (front or back is according to) of the proto-nation, to the point where its language will have lent it most to the people of the coast vocabulary, whose dignitaries will proceed to the anglicization of their names or will take nicknames from.

 

Had it not been the delay of the "Too late Consul"!

 

 Why had these ancestors preferred the Anglo-Saxons among so many colonialist courtiers? The German solution was a make-over. The French was not even conceivable.

Had they been more clairvoyant than their descendants?

Besides, why cling too much to these errors or accidents in history by always referring  to the linguistic criterion that some would like to make a monopoly?

Except to be an apologist of colonialism.

 

 Cameroon did not originate in 1960, 1961, 1972 or 1984.

 

The marginalization of our compatriots, as we said earlier, began with Nigeria - which justified the desire of the majority of the Elites of the Southern Cameroons to emancipate themselves and to advocate the return to the "motherland".

This marginalization continued with Great Britain at the crucial moment of reunification, "the voluntary marginalization of London in the negotiations for reunification" as George Thomson called it.

 However, beyond the linguistic question and over the political question, it is the state of mind that poses a problem in marginalization since reunification.

 

Francophones were entitled to consider their territory as the matrix in which the territory of the Southern Camaroons would have to reintegrate, but they were wrong to take the Anglo-Saxon system as a wagon that had to come to the trail of their locomotive.

Everything is first thought and conceived French and in French before thinking to do the "favor" to the English.

Still if it worked perfectly.

 

The examples are legion, but I will content myself with evoking the most banal to show how far the venom is inoculated in blood.

In the mid-1980s, when solutions to the crisis were under scrutiny, consideration was given to switching to the so-called "one shift" system, which was more prevalent in Anglo-Saxon countries.

As usual, everything that refers to this system is always "overlooked", and a Minister will even say that if it is, "what will the taximen live from?". How many have since died? Where are we now? How much savings could we have made if we had not dragged?

 

Similarly, when anglophone teachers struggled for the creation of the GCE Board, it was an opt-out, and a quasi-unanimous condemnation of Francophones. The latter, as I recall, will be the first beneficiaries of the “Office du Bacc”, the counterpart of the GCE Board.

Never without or before us!

 

Remember the lifting of shields of francophones when the CTV had begun to diffuse the series Dallas in the original English version, to the point that it was shifted to the French?

Things had come back "normal".

 

If not consider some second-class citizens, tell me what it is.

 

Many francophones enroll their children in the English-language school system to which they find certain qualities and perspectives. Let them be told that the Anglo-Saxon system will be privileged or will become the only system or that Cameroon will follow the path of Rwanda, we will see the outcry until the reversal of the power ratio that would place Francophones in pole position. Right now, it will be good.

 

The privileged send their children, profiting and even abusing the facilities of the State, to study in Great Britain and the United States in a system they repress in the country.

 

 Tomorrow, comes federalism to 2, 4 or 10 states, when francophones would have set their minds, it will turn to a wonderful thing. An idea or issue from the Anglophones should never prevail.

 

What hypocrisy! What myopia!

 

But before pointing the index to the government that is only the reflection of our mind, let's look where the thumb points.

 

We can supplement this table by quoting Melanie Torrent according to which "For the populations of the new federated state of western Cameroon, the end of the British empire corresponds to a significant modification of the daily life of the country according to the practices of eastern Cameroon: Now vehicles are on the right-hand drive, the CFA franc replaces the British and Nigerian currencies; the state is officially bilingual but the domination of Francophones in the administrative and political life of the country makes French language indispensable to political, economic and social success; An armed police and a gendarmerie hitherto unknown maintain a security that seems very brutal”.

 

Whether right-hand driving or the adoption of  CFA franc are not such a big  issue.

 

But to force people to pass from more freedom to dictatorship, in a state that they consider not a state of right, to feel second-class citizens, I admit that it is difficult to understand if one does not lives it or if one can not make the effort to be in the place of the other.

And especially if you are not born, grown or lived in the culture of freedom and dignity. If one does not have the sense of equity (natural and spontaneous feeling of the just and the unjust), ethics (system of moral values), equality (in the legal sense of the word), equilibrium (as a state of mind more than a physical state).

 

How then can we not understand the expression of the revolt so repressed in the body and mind of fellow-countrymen who have these frustrations as an inheritance since the day they are born and which serves as their epitaph?

 

How can one fail to understand this revolt of the crushed individual who reaches the point of overflowing?

For overflows, there is, and it is in this register that we glimpse the false English problem, the one that touches the form of the state against a background of juridism and rhetoric that would justify the unjustifiable.

 

Indeed, Cameroon as a country began in 1884 as a territorial entity, not two.

He was Kamerun.

 

Only on this basis, the secessionists will have no legitimate or legal grounds to support their wishes.

If Equatorial Guinea had united with Cameroon as Macias Nguema had been lent to it, he would be entitled to legitimately claim his detachment.

 

There is no need, therefore, to dwell upon this bestial incongruity. Nor on the state of mind of those affected by the Stockholm syndrome who still consider themselves under United Nations trusteeship and are still seeking for independence.

 

One would even be justified in opposing the same argument to the federalists, in order to shake their convictions based on the recent past.

After all, is it not said that the past begets the present? And is the past an arbitrary notion for which everyone is free to set a limit?

Why then 1961 and not 1884 or 1916?

Because 1961 represents the crossroads at the junction of the deviations that had been taken by each of the concerned, before finding again a common road, two lanes at the start. So be it !

And why does the fusion in one way as in the beginning make so much problem?

Is it not in the order of the normal?

 

There is therefore a risk of deadlock against purists and "originalists", if the pandora's box is open.

 

From which objective and legal basis will it be objected to those who would demand the return to the original appellation of Kamerun which would sweep away the legal-intentional process of return to the Republic of Cameroon by Law L84-001 of 4-2-1984 which is one of the arguments of the core  anglophone justice  vigilante, foremost among which Mollah Njoh Litumbe and Gorji Dinka?

 

That was the wish I made secretly in the debate on the 1996 constitution in the National Assembly. But no doubt because of fear of making a "gift" to the UPC - is it their property and  the name of their party is it not written with C? -, our leaders come to lose the sense of symbolism.

 

From the name of the country, let's talk about it from a legal point of view under the control of jurists.

It seems to me, from common sense, that the constitution of the country is bilingual, both languages ​​being authentic. From this point of view, Cameroon is also called Republic of Cameroon, which did not exist before 1984, except by a translation which does not confer an institutional character.

 

The “République de Côte d’Ivoire” is not institutionally Republic of Ivory Coast.

 

Is it therefore fair that Paul Biya should be tried to have reinstated “La République du Cameroun” that existed before October 1961? Jurists and politicial scientists will tell us.

 

Simple and pure rhetoric for those who want to fire any wood, in my humble opinion.

If there is "La Republique", there is also "The Republic".

 

Let's move on to something else, unless English and French are our vernacular languages. Or let’s translate the name of our country into all our languages ​​and insert them in our constitution.

 

The argument is much more structured  with the trial made to Ahidjo for not having, at the end of his referendum, submitted his draft constitution to the Federal National Assembly.

Jurists and politicians will tell us the appropriateness of such a procedure and whether it could be of consequence, for obviously it should not re-examine the unitary form of the State in order to revise it, since the people had pronounced by sovereign referendum.

 

Unless the referendum itself is challenged on the pretext that the federal constitution did not explicitly mention it.

 

It is for lack of having done that that the "Ground Zero" claimers, so to qualify those who advocate the return to the situation before Foumban on the pretext that the "coup d'état” of Ahidjo brought back Cameroon" from Foumban to Zero ", are claiming that the Foumban agreement from which the constitution of " Foumban "derives has been abrogated, consequently the constitution itself.

 

The rhetoric then evolved to focus on the first paragraph of Article 47 of the 1961 Constitution allegedly violated by Ahidjo.

I wonder if all those who use this argument have read the said article, and if so, have understood that paragraph both in its spirit and its letter. Or they prefer giving it their own interpretation?

 

Let's recall the paragraph which seems ambiguous: "Any proposal to revise this Constitution which undermines the UNITY and INTEGRITY of the Federation is inadmissible".

Many wrongly apprehended the word "Federation" as being the form of the State. Not at all. Federation here stands for "COUNTRY". That is to say any proposal to revise the constitution with the view to divide the country, tantamount to the ante 1961statute was prohibited. So, no more "Républiques du Cameroun" at it was, no more "Southern Cameroon" dead from the 1961 referendum.

The bygones were bygones.

Ahidjo locked his constitution and threw the padlock in the sea.

 

Secessionist and even federalists had to dig deeper to find the legitimacy for their plight but to fall on simplifications, amalgams and many fallacious arguments which translate shortcuts and political escalation, even intellectual dishonesty. 

 

Indeed, it seems to me legally not so correct and it would be historically arch-false to place "the two States" at the same institutional level at the time of reunification.

 

To say that "in August 1961 the Republic of Cameroon entered into negotiations with South Cameroon to bring about the union of the two States" (G. Dinka), or that "according to this Constitution [1961] “both states abrogates their respective identities to become the federated states of the Union " is somehow more or less incongruous from the point of view of international law in relation to the definition of a State, .

Southern Cameroon was a territory, had a population, a "government", but was it capable of interacting with "other states"?

Other than the State of Cameroon?

It is necessary to qualify. For it seems to me that the Southern Cameroons had the status of a "quasi-state", or at least a non-sovereign state, because its capacity to enter into relations was framed and limited to the State of La République du Cameroun only. A return to square one.

 

Indeed, separate independence was not on the agenda and was denied, even "the possibility of temporary independence, which would allow Southern Cameroon to negotiate reunification with the sovereign Republic of Cameroon "sovereign state to sovereign state" was denied to the territory of Southern Cameroons.

 

However, it does not appear that this fact has unduly influenced the negotiations between the two entities, which culminated in the Foumban agreements, which will give the Southern Cameroons the status of Federated State by Law No. 61-LM-1 Of 26 October 1961, 25 days after reunification, with effect from that date of 1 October.

President Ahidjo who promulgated this Constitution of 1 September 1961 establishing the Federal State surely used and abused the position of strength that it forged in the Republic of Cameroon, backed by his French masters.

But that is also, unfortunately, politics.

Ahidjo had to "downgrade" the status of La République du Cameroun from a full sovereign state to a federated state.

Should we take this for ganted?

 

Just as after Foumban, he made the country evolve towards a unitary State by a questionable process, the aim of which was that Cameroon, having "found part of the frontiers of the German period of the great Kamerun (1884-1916)" should also regain its initial state form.

Who would be angry with him for that? If not self-absorbed (nombrilistes).

 

However, the way this was done made some say that there was an eel under rock.

Cameroon may have paid, once again, the price of the war of Algeria.

The first time with the criminal repression of the nationalists by France in order to exorcise the Algerian disappointment and to deter any other claims, and the second because of the subsequent loss of the Algerian oil which was to be compensated by the exploitation of that of Cameroon, unfortunately difficult to maneuver with the configuration of the Cameroon of the time, known and ready to exploit deposits being on the English-speaking side.

 

Many had indeed been surprised that Ahidjo made this constitutional forced passage when he had just vaunted the functioning of the Federation.

 

Is it then necessary to dwell on the hiccups of history?

Earthquakes are "good" as they tend to "stabilize" the earth's crust.

 

Thus, to claim that the Foumban agreements were abrogated by the violation of the constitution is to bring Cameroon back to the status quo ante, that is to say, a state and a quasi-state united to the first, reunification signifying not itself a form of the State, because it can take a confederal, federal or unitary form by fusion.

 

Then others will ask for compensation for this separation of 1916, then, and then ...

 

The federal form was chosen; it evolved because every human process is dynamic.

 

History is a march; it advances to often return to the starting point. The history of Cameroon is underway. The intermediate stages will be only evolutions, revolutions and convolutions which take part in all history.

 

Had our opinion been asked for in Berlin before dividing Cameroon into French and English?

 

Did the United Nations fully take our advice into account in the February 1961 referendum?

 

Should we not return to all these trials, would be tantamount of accepting  the absolution of the crimes of the Westerners and hailing for the inclemency for the errors of  Africans.

 

The nationalists had advocated a revolutionary approach to reunification that had not been approved. By Southern Cameroonians.

The heirs of the neocolonial power had taken their corridor which was imposed, while "the supporters of the reunification [Southern Cameroons side], Foncha first, put forward a Cameroonian identity almost immemorial, a Greater Cameroon that is duty of the Southern Cameroonians was to recover ".

Without calculations for the most part. But with feelings and resentments.

 

Feelings of belonging to the same country, joy of reunion of brothers once separated.

 

Resentment especially by South Cameroonians, towards Nigeria and the British.

The first, the "Nigerians, and especially the ibo populations, related in several speeches to invaders, exploiters, quasi-colonizers" (the same words used today to qualify francophones).

The latter, the "British, accused of knowingly keeping Southern Cameroon at the margin of their colonial development strategies - neglected, even more than exploited, in a certain way" (what seem to be forgotten or blotted out).

 

  So it does not date from 1961, the marginalization of the South Cameroonians! It stems not only from "La Republique".

But this would be too much, and ill come between brothers.

Especially if it turns into disillusionment, for what the English-speaking caciques do not seem to take into account in our collective memory is that this fusion desired and completed by their parents is also due to what they envy to the francophones.

 

So much so that "the criticism of the" colonial fact "in southern Cameroon sometimes leads to a valuation, implicit at least, of the French" colonial fact ".”It's been forty years," some say, "that we are with Nigeria under British administration. We do not have roads, no public secondary schools, nothing. It is time to try our luck on the other side of the border. " The French colonization east of the Mungo River is thus presented as bringing advantages which the Southern Cameroonians could benefit a posteriori, in the framework of a unification with the independent République du Cameroun ".

 

The story does not mix with a short memory.

 

And East Cameroon supported Eastern Cameroon at the time of its exit from galley, someone said backwardness.

The price is probably overpriced today.

 

The emotional side was not to be outdone, the services rendered by the nationals of the Eastern Territory hitherto called "French Cameroon Immigrants" to their brothers are not to be overuled.

A brother in need being a brother indeed.

 

Some of whom had become Anglophones, for whom stature and grandeur were admired like Dr Dibue, the "occult chief" of the Foncha, according to whom "for him and his friends, Dr. Dibue remained the soul of their action."

These shadow workers of reunification, such as Jabea Dibongue, Dr Epalle, Soppo Priso who provided logistics as a printing house to the "reunificationists" were the guarantees of a fraternity to be found.

They were also certainly deceived too by the outcome, afterwards.

 

It is fine to condemn Foncha and others, but "at every epoch his men, men and their times," said Soppo Priso.

It is very often easy to judge his parents.

 

 However, and this is why Foncha had cause for regret, no one can say that the fruits have kept the promise of the flowers. And who think otherwise than Gorji Dinka who said "instead of a government through dialogue, we have a government by terror. Instead of legislation through debate, we have legislation by ambush. Instead of law and order by persuasion, we have law and order by brigandage and piracy "?

Another spoke of "government by ambush". Are we so far away?

 

In essence, and whatever the form of demand, it is not the Anglophone / Francophone identity that is at the root of the Anglophone problem, but first and above all, a problem of governance which, since 1961, has not been ethical, fair and upright.

Who never gave dialogue a chance or who betrayed the spirit and the letter of what took place as dialogue.

 

In fine, there arises a problem of management and distribution of wealth, especially for the benefit or detriment of the privileged in power against those from where wealth is pumped.

 

Let us not veil our faces, let us not behave like the ostrich.

 

That said, dare to say anything, why not institutionalize a system of distribution of the wealth of the subsoil so that, for example, 0.2% goes directly to the development problems of the village in which these riches are exploited. , 3% in the “Canton or Groupement”, 1.5% in the “Arrondissement”, 3% in the “Department” with a ceiling, 10% in the region with a ceiling, and the rest (85%) in the whole country?

 

This would be part of the "New Social Contract", the evaluation of which after five years will determine whether or not social subsistence and "secessionist" claims will subsist.

 

My opinion is therefore that the English problem is a real-fake problem.

 

Real because it exists "in thoughts, in words, in actions, and by omission".

False because it could have been avoided, and is easily remedied.

 

The English problem is also a false-real problem.

 

False by the institutional fixing by the extremists, the nostalgia of a recent past not having to actuate a speed in "reverse", but pushing the lever of speed which could, why not, lead towards the starting point or at an earlier stage, but in the forward direction.

If federalism is to be, it must not be a return to federalism, but a step towards federalism.

 

 True because the problem of the form of the State arises, and it is necessary to respond to every problem, even by an end of not receiving.

 

It's just an opinion, mine.

 

Let those who can bring contradictions do so. Otherwise, why criticize lack of dialogue to some then be repugnant to the exchanges of opinions that could shed light to issues of controversy?

 

As for the Kamerun of which my Great-Grandfather, Looking Glass Mudumbu Edjangue signed the founding treaty,

 

This Kamerun for which my Great-Great Bel Uncle Lock Priso Kum'a Mbappe suffered the bombing for refusing that the German flag be hoisted in my mother's  township,

 

That Kamerun which can not be summarized in a French or English name, and who knew neither Francophones nor Anglophones,

 

I say:

 

Nothing, nobody can put a knife on the thingd that hold our country as "One Kamerun" so as to fall apart. Those links are so deep rooted that the tree can stand the shaking of its branches by the sea breeze. They are so mystical and mythical to be seen by wayward / apprentices' sorcerers.

 

 As for the Cameroon / Cameroon of my sacrificed generation, 2, 4, 10, 100 states will not give me back the years of tomorrows that disillusioned in the aftermath.

 

 As for the "Quidmeroun" of my children that I would like more panafricanists than I, this country will be only one state among the others of the African Confederation.

 

They'll call him whatever they want. They will assume it as their forefathers wished.