Weak, Hesitant:

SWELA Barks but cannot Bite as SW is Ravaged by War

-Elites and Chiefs of the SW region have said they will not continue to sit and watch as the “land of their common ancestry” is desecrated, destroyed and easily transformed into a battle ground for a “dubious, diabolic and mischievous war”. But can SWELA ever pick the pieces?

By Ojong Steven Ayukogem in Yaounde

Rt. Hon. Mafany Musonge

Can SWELA ever pick the pieces and become the “original SWELA” of the early and mid 1990s? This is the question prying reporters as well as other commentators were asking each other, as they sat outside the hall on Saturday 11 August 2018, at the Yaounde Conference Center, as some SW elite and Chiefs were having a restricted Joint South West Chiefs Conference (SWECC) and South West Elite Association (SWELA) Concertation Meeting with South West Elite in Yaounde.

            It however emerged that the SW elite and Chiefs could only bark without being able to bite, despite the insecurity and wanton destruction that is rocking their region. The insecurity has literally grounded the socio-politico-economic life of the region. 

            Reviewing the very ‘alarming and troubling’ situation in the SW region, the Rt. Hon. Peter Mafany Musonge, who is the political God-Father of latter day SW region, cried aloud in his scripted opening remarks at the joint SWECC/SWELA conclave that: “as you are all aware and have noted bitterly, the socio-political situation in the NW and SW regions is quite alarming, and the socio-economic consequences are even more troubling especially in the SW region, region of our common ancestry and birth….. As the statistics indicate, the Anglophone crisis has transformed the SW region into a battle ground…. The SW has become a place where nothing good or positive can be expected….. Our region has become the place where traditional rulers and elites can be kidnapped, tortured and murdered as if the people were not human beings with the right to existence…. Our region has been turned into the experimental ground for mischievous and dubious people to carry out their diabolic plans against the culture and development of the region, and as a staging ground for rebellion against the state.”

            Mafany Musonge noted with dismay and indignation, that: “…. given the ugly and alarming acts of violence, destruction and murders in the SW region in the last four months, we, as a region, are being presented as a people without a soul, a culture, courage to defend our identity and that of the state of which we say we are an integral part.”

            He said it is high time sons and daughters of the SW rise up like one man and say enough is enough.

            “The statistics are telling for everyone to judge and we have to decide at one point or the other as to what we do to meet the challenges and be part of the solution rather be seen to be part of the problem,” Mola Musonge ordered, inviting participants at the closed door meeting to suggest ideas on how the SW can surmount the challenges that she is squarely faced with.

            However, nothing really good emerged from the over 4-hour concertation. The final communiqué issued after the meeting contained only the same déjà vu and déjà entendu that has been said after previous meetings of SWECC and SWELA.

It thus turned out that once again SWELA/SWECC could only bark but could not bite.

            The traditional rulers and elite of SW requested an audience with the head of state, at his convenience and also announced the convening of a more enlarged All SW Forum, in Buea, on 25 August 2018.

The elite also empowered the SWELA executive financially to enable them to fully assume their responsibility and rise to the occasion and make SWELA more active and vibrant once again. How and whether Moki Jacob and his team will do this, remains a matter of wait and see.

            But the question begs to be asked: Can a problem be solved with the same mentality that created it? If SWELA and SWECC have become moribund and are not the veritable pressure groups that they should be, it is no gainsaying that it is because of the politicization and especially the forceful infiltration of CPDM politicians into their leadership. These CPDM bigwigs have over the years been using the two institutions to seek selfish ends and to do Yaounde’s bidding. And SWELA and SWECC have since stopped fighting to uphold and protect the general interest of the people of the SW region.

            It should be recalled that one of SWELA’s landmark achievements soon after its creation in 1992/93 was the powerful, energetic and sustained lobby for the appointment of a South West son as PM of Cameroon. If Peter Mafany Musonge was appointed as PM in 1996, in replacement of Achidi Achu from the NW, there is no gainsaying that it was thanks to SWELA.

            Musonge thus became the first South Westerner to occupy a position of real power in Cameroon almost 40 years after Dr. EML Endeley lost the PM’s Office to J.N. Foncha in Southern Cameroons in 1959, and exactly 35 years after the reunification of the two Cameroons in October 1961. For all throughout this period (1959 to 1996) NW sons (Foncha, Jua, Muna, Achidi) held in succession all the highest and most powerful position(s) that were reserved for Anglophones in a Reunified Cameroon.

            Unfortunately, SWELA that fought for Musonge’s appointment easily became fragmented, weak, hesitant and gradually slumbered into oblivion during Musonge’s tenure as PM. It has remained comatose until today.

            Informed observers say if this has been so, it is because some persons who considered themselves as the front-runners and the only cocks who should crow in SWELA at the time, and who thought they deserved the PM’s job better than Musonge, did everything to use the association to destabilize the new PM. The ugly power-play and personality conflicts that ensued within the ranks of SWELA only drove the once vibrant and powerful pressure group into a coma. SWELA did not come out of that coma, until today.

            Commentators say it is a happy coincidence that Mafany Musonge is the person who has today seen the utmost need and has taken the challenge to champion the cause for the revamping of SWELA. The commentators contend that it behooves the very venerable and venerated Musonge and his boys, to work as to be seen to be handing SWELA back to the non-politicized population of the South West, and not continue using the association for self-glorification, and/or to satisfy the whims of what some consider as a capricious CPDM regime in almighty Yaounde.