Wednesday 12 March 2014

Fiftieth Anniversary Celebrations: One Big Multifaceted Lie



The belated fiftieth anniversary celebrations that just ended in Buea will be remembered for the pomp and pageantry and little else. The theatrically choreographed ceremony was big on form but devoid of substance, a histrionic non-event full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The activities leading up to the ceremonies were remarkable first, in that they studiously avoided to address the political order while presenting a rosy picture of harmonious cohabitation; secondly, the emptiness was evident in the revisionist history of reunification the Cameroonian people were served, and most importantly the event was notable in failing to chart a course for the years ahead. It was not certain whether it was the 50th anniversary of the independence of la Republique du Cameroun or the 50th anniversary of the re-unification between Southern Cameroons and la Republique du Cameroun which was being commemorated; for the anniversary of re-unification should first and foremost be a moment of stock-taking, a time to examine the state of the union between the two entities that came together in 1961. But everything about the celebrations was designed to circumvent the touchy subject of the relationship between the Anglophones who came out of Southern Cameroons and their Francophone brothers of the Republique du Cameroun fifty-three years later; and proof that this regime is hell-bent on evading reform. In a way it was a fitting metaphor for this country, which has consistently refused to look itself in the mirror. If there was one image that came to mind at the end of the festivities, it was that of a painted sepulchre.

                The lie was immediately evident in the false patriotism of the principal actors. Unqualified support for an evil-prone directionless regime and inveterate sycophancy for its maximum leader are what pass for patriotism these days. The men and women who played a preeminent role in the ceremonies and enthusiastically waved the flag were for the most part high rollers in the state’s corrupt nexus of politics and graft, the very ones who have held the country ransom to the tyranny of self-interest; shady and unsavoury characters who have built fortunes from plundering the treasury. They were mostly members of government, a government which is now a holding coop for unindicted felons who are just one investigation away from a lifetime in jail. Their claims that those who were not party to the celebrations were unpatriotic was proof of their consummate cynicism. There was also the requisite presence of the church –always an integral part of the establishment, as well as the symbolic presence of the ineffectual political opposition, blissfully oblivious of the fatidic nature of the celebrations - an opposition only active around elections and only ruffled when campaign finance is delayed or votes are presumed stolen – represented by its emblematic leader, now the regime’s indispensable adversary. Against a backdrop of impending cabinet reshuffle, there was serious jockeying for position and craving for visibility from those who would be promoted, appointed or retained. Every other engagement was put aside to be by the head of state. For the true patriots – those from the outside looking in – the fiftieth anniversary celebrations were moments of conflicting impulses; when deep love for one’s country jostled with absolute disgust for the direction the country has taken and the crimes committed every day in its name. For every patriot, the jubilee was just one more occasion to cry the beloved country.
             The lie was also manifest in the false euphoria of Anglophones, especially when everything about the celebrations reiterated their inferior status in Cameroon’s socio-political order. The inaccessibility of the South West people to their president (who the vast majority had never beheld well into his fourth decade in office) coupled with the cultivated mystique of the presidency which has made its occupant something of a demi-god, would explain the curiosity factor which swelled the number of participants at the ceremonies. Today’s ‘the South-West has always been close to my heart’ chicanery may ring just as false as the erstwhile ‘Bamenda-is-my-second-home’ gambit, but was received with great jubilation, because Anglophones accustomed to expecting little of their president are now demanding even less. The president’s use of English (his first words greeted with rousing ovation) is treated like a kindness to Anglophones. Officially, the president only speaks French, and speaks his English through the voice of Peter Esoka in translation.                       Peter Eta
Thus in this country, English remains a language of circumstance, a provincial tongue spoken grudgingly as a courtesy to one’s hosts and nothing of a national language. Beyond the opening pleasantries, the core of the president’s address – fully three quarters of the speech – was in French. Fifty years of reunification for Anglophones have been fifty years of living at the fringe of the Cameroonian society. Unlike the minority Quebecois who get to re-examine the state of their union with the rest of Canada and decide on their citizenship every so often, reunification for Anglophones was tantamount to a suicide pact. There were plenty of reminders of the ‘One and Indivisible’ nature of Cameroon with its not-so-subtle undertones of threats directed at the likes of SCNC and their sympathizers, a warning buttressed by a strong and dissuasive display of the state’s military wherewithal to the benefit of those who might contemplate the argument of force. Thus between the seething discontent of Anglophones coerced into silence and those genuinely celebrating reunification, the choice of Buea along with its much bandied facelift were supposed to make Anglophones feel better about their predicament without actually altering their lot within the larger socio-political order. Fifty-something years into reunification Anglophones’ intent is still suspect because this regime knows what they want but will not concede it. When in 1993 this president was presented with the Anglophone position on constitutional reform in the form of the Buea Declaration, he told them he would study the demands, political speak for ‘shove it’. In 1996, the Owona Commission put out a mockery of a constitution which was rammed down Anglophones’ throats. Their complaints about marginalization have since been systematically ignored. The Anglophones gleefully communioning with their Francophone brothers could not ignore the fact that they were members of a community still wracked by prejudice. If it is the case that the devil is now firmly installed on the cross, then the happy Anglophones are those who have made their pact with the devil; those who have buried every conviction and sacrificed every principle to have their place at the table. This was their party. The jubilee should have been a time to chart a new course, one of greater inclusion and integration. But the regime balked at the opportunity, because the so-called Anglophone leaders never put it on the agenda. National unity however, should not be conceived as the inability for any part of the nation to break away, but the abiding desire for all to stick together as one. The real test of reunification will not be the impression of the handful of Anglophones milking the country within our deeply ingrained culture of collusion with their Francophone masters, but to allow Anglophones as a people to freely hold another plebiscite and see if they overwhelmingly vote again for union with their Francophone brothers.
                The lie was first and foremost in the timing of the celebrations which completely voided the anniversary of its historical significance. If proof was needed that Cameroon is not a republic, then one needed look no further. Everything, from the choice of venue to the actual date (after plenty of speculation and false leads during which everything was put on hold) depended on the whim of the president who has evolved from the country’s appointed-then-elected leader to its full-fledged proprietor. His disbursement of prodigious amounts of money out of his personal funds for Buea’s cosmetic makeover cast serious aspersions on the nature of our republican institutions. The dates for the celebrations were arbitrarily set for February 20th and 21st, with no historical reference whatsoever, with October 1st having since been appropriated by demonstrators protesting our lopsided reunification, demonstrations which have been systematically suppressed by armed inebriated automatons, minions of the regime. Then with baffling suddenness, the presidential couple announced they were leaving for Buea on Tuesday 18th, leading many to question whether the president was paranoid about his security in this part of the country. The feeling of venturing into dangerous territory was reinforced by the elimination of speed bumps between Tiko and Buea so the presidential motorcade could cruise the seventeen km distance at over sixty kilometres an hour, with the crowds that had come out to welcome him treated to a few glimpses of the president’s hand (if in effect the hand was his).
                The lie was obvious in the declarations that were made during the ceremonies nationwide. The slogans, laced with patriotic fervour, celebrated our diversity as if it has always been a blessing. Without any changes proposed to the uneasy status quo, the messages exhorted Cameroonians towards greater unity. But history will testify that integration cannot be achieved through slogans any more than corruption can be combated by messages posted on the walls in the Ministry of Finance. To achieve unity, this country will have to come to grips with itself. Francophones plunged into the phoneycelebrations with obvious ardour, gamely assuming the vexing Anglophone question had finally been put to sleep and naively foretelling a brilliant future in a Cameroon that will be neither Francophone nor Anglophone. But bilingualism is not the solution to the Anglophone problem. In effect the most bilingual Anglophone can still not aspire to certain positions in this country, and the effect of the acquisition of the English language by Francophones has had the unfortunate effect of seeing positions that require competence in English increasingly go to bilingual Francophones. The point must be made that the English and French languages, residues of our colonial past, are not an integral part of who we are. It is in the nature of things that our real identity, the intrinsic and immutable aspects of our being – the idiomatic spots of the leopard – are race and relations, tribe and tradition, clan and culture, village and vernacular, appellation and ancestry, kith and kin. These aspects of our identity were with us before reunification in 1961, before the British and French partition and colonization in 1916, before German annexation in 1884, and even before the Portuguese first saw the chariot of the gods and came to the rio dos cameroes. It must also be noted that reunification was first and foremost the fusion of two territories (geographically contiguous) with their implanted peoples (small nationalities or tribes) into one nation state. National integration did nothing to alter these origins. The Bamileke are from the West, the Hausa from the North, and the Bulu from the South and the Bali from the North West. A Bisong born and raised in Douala knows his ancestry and has a legitimate claim to the chieftaincy of his village. Since ethnic origin trumps everything and is the prime determinant in the subjective allocation of favours in Cameroon today, an AtanganaMballa born and raised in Kumba will still have a sense of entitlement as a privileged member of what our friend Charles AtebaEyene now of blessed memory benignly, if dangerously calls pays organisateur (host country).Even the habitually incisive Francophone press has continually been guilty of intellectual bigotry on the Anglophone question, probably because they do not consider it their fight, probably because they do not consider it a national issue or simply because they actually relish in Francophone hegemony. One Francophone commentator ventured that the federal arrangement at reunification erred in attributing equal status between West and East Cameroon, given the size differential between the two states. Such resentment is born of ignorance and explains Francophones’ perpetual phobia for federalism. Equal status does not signify equality. The state of California, just like the state of Delaware, has equal status; they are both autonomous self-governing states. But because California has over 38 million people, the state has 55 electoral votes, 53 Representatives in Congress and a GNP which ranks it the 12th largest economy in the world. Delaware with under a million people has 3 Electoral votes and just one representative. Yet for all its power, California cannot interfere with the workings of Delaware which elects its own governor, state assembly and senate, and is allocated 2 places in the US senate, just like California. Democracy will always be the rule of the majority, but must include the protection of the minority.
The untruth was noticeable in the spoken claims of reunification. When the president said ‘the South West region has always been close to my heart’ was he referring to the people or the resources? When he states that ‘I have been to Buea several times’, was that in his capacity as president? To call this country a ‘veritable democratic state’ and ‘an exceptional success’ is a dangerous and unpardonable act of self-delusion. When he declares that we have ‘an obligation to truth’, anyone waiting for some stunning revelation would be disappointed. For the lie was mostly evident in the selective amnesia, and in what was not said. When he said life expectancy had gone up from 40 years in 1961 to 52 years today, he did not tell us that it had actually gone down from 54 years in 1982; just as he fails to tell us that the ‘nearly 5200 km of tarred roads’ are woefully inadequate to serve the country’s development needs. In this respect, Cameroon is the could-do-better nation par excellence, whose state functionaries have continued to loot its treasury with impunity and whose government has failed to create the proverbial enabling environment for growth and prosperity. Thus when the president states that the state has been able to generate wealth, he forgets to mention that his close collaborators, ministers and other appointed vampires, and a vicious brood of civil serpents are the wealthiest citizens; which also explains the hollowness of the dual claims that ‘the state is the largest employer’ and that it has ‘encouraged the growth of a dynamic private sector’, claims which seem to cancel each other out because the evidence of a dynamic private sector is usually noticeable in the fact that the state is no longer the principal employer. There was untruth too in the perfunctory homage paid to the heroes of nationalism and reunification, none of whose effigy was on display or were even mentioned by name. Instead of historians, the family members of the political actors of the sixties were telling us the story of reunification, as if the fact that Hitler was a loving father and family man changes his role in history. Thus instead of biographies we were given hagiographies. Ahidjo and Foncha fell out of favour with this president, but that in no way discounts their role in achieving reunification. We know for a fact that some of the real heroes of nationalism are still held as terrorists (maquisards) in the annals of this country; that the real history of independence lies buried with the martyrs of nationalism, and that the state has no interest whatsoever in disinterring it.
                Reunification of the British Southern Cameroons and la Republique du Cameroun was a turbulent and uncertain process which very nearly failed, just like reunification with British Northern Cameroons which rejected union with Cameroun, preferring to join Nigeria instead. Ahidjo would declare three days of mourning the results. Reunification also owed a lot to tribalism because the unificationist KNDP of Foncha, Muna and Jua was considered a grassland party, while the integrationist CNPC of Endeley, Mbile, Motomby-Woleta, Charley was regarded as a coastal party. Because the Southern Cameroons House of Assembly (SCHA) was tied on the subject (when Boja joined the integrationists), the issue had to be settled by plebiscite. The KNDP and reunification won largely thanks to grassfields support when voters were asked if they liked Endeley, the Bakweri man or Foncha, the Bamenda man. The insincerity and naivety of some Southern Cameroons politicians and the duplicity of la Republique du Cameroon politicians knocked the reunification process off its berths from the get go. Ethnic tensions resulted from the disgruntled coastal party which even called on the United Nations to partition Southern Cameroons for fear of grassland domination. Ibo domination was what Southern Cameroonians feared in integration with Nigeria, but domination from Francophones was what they got from la Republique du Cameroun, to the extent that Foncha, the foremost architect of reunification, led a delegation to the United Nations in 1995 to protest against the annexation of Southern Cameroons. Any regime which means well for its people should have tried to look into the concerns of a statesman like Foncha, without whom the map of Cameroon would have been radically different. But this regime chose to ignore the problem, hoping it would somehow go away. Bilingualism can help us understand ourselves better, but will not diminish Anglophones’ quest for protection under a federal constitution. This is the story of our reunification, and there is nothing to be ashamed of. It will be a shame though, if we try to ignore this history when charting our future.

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