In October 2019, Nebane Abienwi, a 37-year-old Cameroonian man, died in ICE custody in San Diego. Abienwi was one of at least 10,000 Cameroonians seeking asylum in the United States. The recent increase in Africans being detained at the U.S.-Mexico border is largely a result of this exodus of people from Cameroon.

Many factors are causing heightened emigration from Cameroon, perhaps the primary one being the “Anglophone crisis.” Since 2016, there has been significant unrest and government repression in the western English-speaking (Anglophone) regions of Cameroon. Much of the media coverage has depicted protesters in the western regions as fighting to defend their “Anglo-Saxon heritage.”

Of course, Cameroon is a West African country. Its peoples’ histories date back thousands of years, the vast majority of which were lived without the exploitative presence of British colonialism. So why in 2019, nearly 60 years after Cameroon’s official independence, is British “heritage” given so much consideration in this West African nation?

Cameroon: 1884 to the present

Cameroon’s changing boundaries. Orange=German Kamerun, Red=British Cameroons, Blue=French Cameroun, Green=Republic of Cameroon. By Roke – Self-made based on public domain CIA map Image:Cameroon Map.jpg, original svg file located here., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=938868

To understand the current climate in Cameroon, one must understand its history. Germany claimed Cameroon as a colony in 1884 in the wake of the Berlin Conference, in which the major colonial powers of the time met to arbitrarily carve up the lands of Africa amongst themselves, without consideration for the desires of the incredibly diverse populations of Africa.

However, Germany’s control over Cameroon was short-lived. As capitalism entered its imperialist phase towards the turn of the 1900s, competition increased between the European powers over control of the various colonized nations, culminating in World War I. In 1919, after defeating Germany in WWI, France and England took possession of Germany’s colonies in the Global South, clearly revealing the inter-imperialist character of the war.

Cameroon — its borders already artificially constructed after the Berlin Conference — was once again arbitrarily reshaped. England took control of the smaller western regions of the country, and France claimed the eastern regions. As the 20th century progressed, like in most African nations, a national liberation movement developed in Cameroon. The movement was led by the Union of the Populations of Cameroon. The UPC led an armed struggle on the platform of national reunification and radical social proposals such as land redistribution, increased salaries for workers, and universal education.

In an attempt to undermine these growing, militant and principled movements, France strategically “granted” its many African colonies independence in 1959. In 1960, Cameroon and 12 other former French colonies were officially made independent. Far from an act of kindness, this was a strategic decision by France to install neocolonial governments in their former colonies — administrations that kept their nations’ people and resources subservient to French interests but led by native elites to present the appearance of national sovereignty.

In Cameroon, France appointed career politician Ahmadou Ahidjo as president. In a 1958 speech, Ahidjo described his allegiance to France, the nation that had exploited his own people for the past 40 years: “How can we conceive having any other partner than this country we know and love? How can we forget its accomplishment all these years that we have learned to understand and appreciate her. … ” (Takougang and Krieger, African State and Society in the 1990s, 1998) In collaboration with French military and intelligence agencies, Ahidjo’s government brutally crushed the UPC movement.

The English-controlled western regions were also granted independence in 1960. Part of the territory voted to join Nigeria, and the other part voted to join Cameroon. The French- and English-speaking regions of Cameroon designed a federated constitutional arrangement, and the English-speaking elites were folded into Ahidjo’s single-party administration. National reunification was at least partially achieved in 1961, but not in the manner the UPC and its supporters envisioned. When independence is granted and not won, it is done so on the terms of the colonizing powers.

In its 60 years of nominal independence, Cameroon has had two presidents: Ahidjo and Paul Biya, the current president. Both men were born in the French-speaking region of Cameroon, and both have maintained a subordinate position to France and the West more broadly. Major local industries are still owned and controlled by European interests.

For example, Cameroon’s largest export by far is oil. While there is a state-owned oil company in Cameroon, two of the largest and most profitable oil companies in the country, Total E&P and Perenco, are based in France (and Perenco is a Franco-British joint project). Perenco is the largest oil producer in Cameroon, while Total E&P is the largest distributor of finished petroleum products.

Additionally, after accepting an International Monetary Fund loan in 1988, Biya’s government bent to the West’s will to an even greater degree and implemented a Structural Adjustment Program, which included significant cuts to Cameroon’s national budget and the privatization of many “parastatal” companies (Takougang and Krieger, 1998). Finally, France still controls Cameroon’s currency and treasury.

Neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and the Cameroonian elite’s complicity in the continued exploitation of the Cameroonian masses have led to high inequality and low standards of living in much of the country.

Popular uprisings since the 1990s

In addition to neoliberal austerity and economic hardship, a major point of discontent in Cameroon has been the governance of the country, under both Ahidjo and Biya. Both have been criticized for altering the political structures of Cameroon to consolidate their own power, and for engaging in tribalism. Perhaps the most notable example was when Ahidjo’s government abolished the office of vice president in 1982. This angered some in the western English-speaking regions of Cameroon because as part of the country’s constitutional reunification agreement, the office of president was to be designated for a “Francophone” and vice president for an “Anglophone.”

Class society is always on uneven footing, and Cameroon erupted in the 1990s. A massive student movement broke out in 1991, and later that year, up to 2 million people participated in a tactic called “villes mortes/ghost towns” (similar to a general strike) to bring four provinces — two English-speaking and two French-speaking — to a grinding halt for months (Takougang and Krieger, 1998).

Some of the discontent was channeled into a growing “Anglophone” nationalist movement, which included organizations such as the Cameroon Anglophone Movement and the All Anglophone Conference. The government met these movements with both the carrot and the stick in an attempt to subvert their momentum: certain concessions, such as the introduction of multiparty elections in 1992, on one hand, and heavy repression, on the other. Eventually, the mass protest movements waned as the 1990s progressed.

Street of Buea (SW Region Cameroon) on a Ghost town day, 2016. Photo: DrAgach, CC-BY-SA-4.0

Since 2016, mass protests have again emerged in the two English-speaking regions that helped anchor the ghost towns movement in 1991. This time, the protests have been mostly defined by their “Anglophone” character. They were sparked when teachers and lawyers in the two English-speaking regions went on strike to protest the appointment of French-speaking judges and teachers and the use of French documents in courts, with “no understanding of the common law and educational systems that operate in these areas.”

Ghost towns have once again become a popular tactic. An armed secessionist movement has also emerged, declaring the “Anglophone” regions of Cameroon to be a nation named Ambazonia. Economic crisis, mass arrests, repression of protests, and government clashes with armed militants have caused at least 2,000 deaths and displaced thousands more. The ramifications of this situation reach as far as the U.S.-Mexico border.

Colonialism is relationship of exploitation, not heritage

The elephant in the room is that colonialism is a relationship of exploitation, not heritage. While it may be true that President Biya has consolidated state power in the hands of his “Francophone” party and has mostly stacked government positions with French-speaking administrators, it is also true that Cameroon ranks near the bottom in global quality of life measurements. Poverty afflicts millions of people in Cameroon, regardless of which colonial language they speak.

Since the French installed Ahidjo and crushed the popular anti-colonial UPC movement, political life has largely been a playground of the elite in Cameroon. Even prominent “opposition” political leaders that emerged in the unrest of the 1990s, such as Samuel Eboua and Adamou Njoya, were former administrators in President Adhidjo’s government (Takougang and Krieger, 1998).

When Western and Eastern Cameroon agreed to reunify in 1961, the “Anglophone” elites brokered a deal to be absorbed into Ahidjo’s party and government — some with leadership positions, including the guarantee that an “Anglophone” would always hold the vice president’s office. Throughout the following decades, this power-sharing agreement between elites gradually eroded, with the “Anglophone” elites largely stripped of their influence. The colonial-inspired sectarian division of “Anglophone” versus “Francophone” misdirects the justified anger of the Cameroonian masses towards a battle that ultimately benefits the elites.

Additionally, while there is certainly an element of tribalism in Cameroon, the protest movements vary ideologically. For example, The Stand Up for Cameroon movement is a coalition of political parties and organizations — each with strengths and shortcomings — that are united against tribalism and in their calls for political transition in Cameroon. To reduce the ongoing conflict in the country to “Anglophone” versus “Francophone,” as many have, is inaccurate and characteristic of the racist trope that reduces conflict in Africa to an irrational tribalism, rather than tangible contradictions.

Strong movements rooted in national unity have precedent in Cameroon and reveal the political frailty of tribalism. The UPC became a force in the 1950s with its program of national liberation, reunification, and radical economic redistribution. In Cameroon’s first multiparty presidential elections in 1992, John Fru Ndi, the Social Democratic Front party’s candidate, won major support in both “Anglophone” and “Francophone” regions with a program that spoke to peoples’ widespread concerns. Many believe that Biya only won the 1992 election due to fraud.

As President Biya approaches 90 years of age and protests continue, Cameroon’s political future is unclear. However, history shows that only a movement that speaks to the root causes of the challenges that people are facing, rather than to the manufactured issue of colonial heritage, will be able to effectively energize a critical mass of Cameroonians to liberate the country from the strings of neocolonialism and capitalism.

Source: Liberation News

Cameroon’s Parliament is divided over the so-called special status President Paul Biya ordered for the country’s English-speaking regions as a solution to the crisis that has killed more than 3,000 people.
 
Some lawmakers who convened for the extraordinary session of Parliament on Biya’s instructions suggest that only the creation of federal states, one incorporating the country’s English-speaking regions and the other made up of the French-speaking regions, can stop the crisis. 

Others said the English-speaking regions’ special status already cedes enough power and resources to the crisis-prone areas, where separatists are fighting to create an English-speaking state

Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, speaker of Cameroon’s National Assembly, told the lower house of the Parliament that Biya asked him to convene the extraordinary session  solely to examine the bill and vote it into law because Biya is determined to restore peace in the restive English-speaking regions.  

Lawmaker Njume Peter Ambang from the English-speaking South-West said the section of the bill granting a special status to the English-speaking regions could calm rising tensions for peace to return.

“It is a moment for us to leave a legacy and we should look at this particular document with a lot of seriousness and responsibility,” Ambangsaid.  “We owe Cameroonians a lot. This is the moment that I think we have to make Cameroonians to know that they elected us for their own interest.”

The bill envisages the creation of assemblies of chiefs, regional assemblies and regional councils for the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions with each of the two regions having elected presidents, vice presidents, secretaries, public affairs management controllers and three commissioners responsible for what the bill describes as economic, health, social, educational, sports and cultural development affairs. 

It also would also create the post of a public independent conciliators, responsible for solving disputes over the functioning of regional administrations. The bill also proposes more powers for elected mayors and would give them the authority to recruit hospital staff and teachers. 

But lawmaker Henry Kemende, from the English-speaking North-West region, said the special status for the English-speaking regions will not solve the crisis because most English speakers expect the creation of a federal state recognizing the people’s cultural and linguistic diversity. He said the French-speaking regions should constitute one state while the English speakers form another in a federal republic.

“We thought that will have a bill that will admit the fact that we have failed in a unitary state and that we were going to try something different from the unitary state,” he said.

George Elanga Obam, Cameroon’s minister of decentralization, said by opting for the acceleration of decentralization, Biya is respecting proposals made by people his government consulted.

Obam said after consulting Cameroonians of all walks of life and organizing a national dialogue called by Biya, it was unanimously agreed that effective decentralization is the solution to the crisis in the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions. He said the special status will make the English-speaking regions more involved in making decisions that affect their lives and contributing to their own development.

Separatist leaders invited to the national dialogue this fall refused to take part, calling it a non-event. The talks  recommended that the English-speaking regions be given special status.

Violence erupted in 2017 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

Source: VOA

Lawmakers in Cameroon are debating a bill that seeks to grant more autonomy to the troubled Anglophone regions.

The recent development comes more than two months after the Grand National Dialogue called by government which took place in the capital, Yaoundé.

Parts of the new law adopted earlier this week stipulates that court decisions can be rendered “in any of the official languages, depending on the choice of the litigant and the understanding of all present in court.”

Cameroon’s English-speaking North West and South West regions have been experiencing a civil conflict since 2016, when protesters and security forces clashed.

The demonstrations were initially over the use of French in the English majority regions, it started from teachers and lawyers marching the streets with branches of trees.

But the relating security crackdown led to a spiral in the demands as a group of activists declared a security-political push to secede from Cameroon.

People in the twin regions have long hoped for a return to peace. Hundreds of people have died in the clashes between secessionists and government forces. Thousands have also been displaced by the violence.

President Paul Biya recently brought up the issue of granting special status to the regions as part of efforts to end the crisis.

Source: Africa News

Over the last two weeks, a lot has been happening in Yaoundé. The pressure from the United Nations and the United States has triggered a flurry of activities in the nation’s capital and despite their best efforts, the ruling CPDM, popularly known as the crime syndicate that has been made of the mold as the Sicilian Mafia, has been working hard to foster its negative ideas that have put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

The immediate cause of the Southern Cameroons crisis was the use of French in Southern Cameroonian schools and courts, and for three years now, the protest that was started by lawyers and teachers has actually morphed into a full blown civil war that has already consumed more than 5,000 lives, including some 2,000 army soldiers.

In normal circumstances, the effort would be to appease the English-speaking minority with a view to restoring peace, but Cameroon’s authorities are hell-bent on seeing more blood flood the streets of Southern Cameroons.

Soldiers have been on their regular killing spree. Killing has become their stock in trade and over the last weeks, more than 100 Southern Cameroonians have been killed by trigger-happy, sex-starved and alcohol-inflamed soldiers sent by the Minister of Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo, to kill as many Southern Cameroonians as possible before Americans and the United Nations come in.

In Mankon, in the North West Region, a small family was put through excruciating pain a few days agao when two brothers were pulled out of their house and shot point blank by army soldiers. The soldiers walked away as if nothing had happened. They have become inured to killing to the point where human life has no meaning to them.

In Bamanda, the North-west regional capital, an American working for the United Nations and who has elected anonymity, has reported that a deaf man was killed in cold-blood when soldiers on their way to a killing site saw a deaf Southern Cameroonian wearing hearing aid which they mistook for espionage equipment.

They tore down the hearing aid, making it impossible for the deaf man to even understand them and, of course, they were speaking in a foreign language. When they started raining questions on him, he could not hear, so he could not answer any of their questions. The soldiers beat the living day light out of the deaf man and lodged a few bullets into his chest.

In their view, the deaf man was spying for the Southern Cameroonian fighters who have given government troops a run for their money. This has become a daily show in most of Southern Cameroons.

In Mutengene, a small vibrant town some 4 miles from the Southwestern regional capital, Buea, soldiers loyal to the country’s president, Paul Biya, pulled out four able-bodied young men from their home and sent them to an early grave.

Killing innocent civilians is now a sport in Southern Cameroons and this has only radicalized many people in the two English-speaking regions, with the Diaspora delivering much-needed financial and military assistance for the civilians to defend themselves.

This self-defense initiative has in three years sent some 2,000 army soldiers to the world beyond and this is not fazing the government which sees military violence as the only solution even after three years of fighting with no significant results.

The latest killing of soldiers occurred yesterday, December 12, 2019 in Widikum in the Northwest region where three Special Forces were ambushed and killed. Seven others had fallen a day before in the Northwest region and one would think such unfortunate situations will cause a change in the government’s strategy, especially as the international community is breathing heavily down its neck.

The Biya government seems to be intent on destroying the country before it ever leaves and each of its actions only makes secession possible. The Parliament is seriously supporting the executive branch of government by passing into law bills that will only push Southern Cameroonians further away from East Cameroon.

Today, it is possible for Francophone magistrates to try Southern Cameroonians in a language many Southern Cameroonians deem foreign. This was one of the triggers of the conflict and the government has decided to pour more gasoline into a burning house.

Southern Cameroonian lawyers are against that and they have clearly articulated their disagreement in a letter to the justice minister, Laurent Esso, himself one of the architects and enablers of the crisis that has pushed the country’s economy further into the abyss.

But one question remains. Can Francophone magistrates be that bold to sit in courts in Southern Cameroons when many armed groups are kidnapping and killing government officials in the two English-speaking regions of the country?

With insecurity attaining unprecedented levels in that part of the country, won’t it preposterous for a Francophone magistrate to accept to play such a role in an environment where there are more guns than bread?

Due to the government’s indifference to the plight of the people, Southern Cameroonians now see security forces more as enemies than friends, making it hard for them to help security forces in their search for civilian criminals, as there are also military criminals.

A source in Kumba has lamented that both the military and criminal elements who pass off as Amba boys are now threatening young girls that their entire families will be killed if they do not come to specific locations to have sex with them.

The young women who are in their early 20s actually have no options and they have been yielding to this pressure. Many have been infected with HIV and thousands have been impregnated by these criminal elements who have made life unbearable to the local population.

The people are helpless. The government’s recklessness is not helping matters. Its indifference and military violence are only making things worse. Young women are paying a huge price for a situation they have never bargained for.

The madness is spreading very fast and it will soon become a way of life if the government does not change its ways. The government might be playing games. It might think it is scoring some points, but it is the future of the country and that of its young men and women that are being ruined by a government run by a bunch of old people. The old people are simply a wet blanket over the country and until they are taken out of the system, Cameroon will never be one and indivisible.

The madness looks really serious and there are questions as to whether it can be cured. Of course, it is curable and it is up to Cameroonians, especially those in East Cameroon whose lack of courage has emboldened the government in its tragic-comedy that is keeping the international community awake all night.

By Dr Joachim Arrey