The Anglophone problem in Cameroon is often described as the evolution of the Anglophone’s awareness from the feeling of being marginalised, exploited and homogenised politically, economically and socially by the Francophone-dominated state and even the Francophone population.

The failure to promote the rule of law and democracy creates an environment for conflict, often exacerbated by marginalisation, discrimination, inequality and inequity.

The bitterness of citizens roused to violence is usually entrenched in lack of basic services and public infrastructure, corruption, lack of personal and economic security and lack of transparency and accountability of government to its citizens. Thus, the greatest problem of African countries is their failure to protect the economic, political, social and cultural concerns of their people. This year, 2020, has been marred by a series of human rights violations from Lagos to Kumba. Africa is bleeding.

On 24 October 2020, at least eight children were killed and dozens wounded by a group of armed men at the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy Kumba, in the Southwest Region of Cameroon. There have been a lot of attacks in Cameroon since 2016. However, these attacks have intensified dramatically.

Since the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon began in 2016, hundreds of people have died, more than 70 villages have been destroyed, about 160,000 people are internally displaced while 35,000 people have sought refuge in Nigeria, Cameroon’s neighbouring country. This crisis has also led to months of general strikes, innumerable days of internet shutdown and the loss of academic years.

What began as a peaceful strike by teachers and lawyers in 2016 led to a conflict between the government and an armed separatist movement of the Anglophone region. This crisis is a serious threat to efforts to build national harmony and unification in Cameroon and has led to the re-establishment of strong contentions and conducts in support of secession and/or federalism by Anglophones. This is because at the centre of this conflict is the Anglophones’ wish to secede from Cameroon and form their own independent state called Ambazonia.

Many analysts contend that the conflict is a result of the unmanageable historical animosity between Cameroon’s Anglophones and Francophones in terms of varying language, culture and identity. Thus, if the differences in identity, language and culture are the primary drivers of the conflict as these analysts contend, it is quite surprising that Cameroon, one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Africa, has to a great extent avoided conflict until 2016.

This crisis goes way beyond language, culture or identity. It is a resurgence of an old problem known as the Anglophone problem. The Anglophone problem is often described as the evolution of the Anglophone’s awareness from the feeling of being marginalised, exploited and homogenised politically, economically and socially by the Francophone-dominated state and even the Francophone population in Cameroon.

The Anglophone problem is driven by the marginalisation and discrimination against the Anglophones in Cameroon in decision-making nationally; the dilapidation of the region’s infrastructure; the exploitation of the region’s rich economic resources by successive Francophone administrations without much beneficiation to the local communities; and marginalisation in human resource development and deployment by the inundation of Anglophone regions with Francophone employees and workers.

It is driven by the marginalisation of the Anglophones in the allocation of economic resources by the Francophones, especially by the mismanagement of the economic patrimony in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon; the common law system and the francophonisation of the English educational system; gradual erosion of Anglophone identity; the predominance of French and Francophones in official documents and public offices respectively; as well as the second-class citizenship of the Anglophones when compared with the Francophones.

The principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty may bar international actors from intervening. However, one can start from the low hanging fruit. For example, European media can call out President Biya for always spending his time and his country’s resources in Switzerland and other European countries without reasonable justification.

Atrocities and the killings of the innocents cannot continue and must stop. While President Paul Biya of Cameroon has made several commitments to end the conflict in Cameroon, there has to be a genuine commitment for the equal and equitable distribution of resources to the Anglophone regions as enshrined in the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of Cameroon 1996, which stipulates that all citizens “have equal rights and obligations” and “the state shall provide all its citizens with the conditions necessary for their development” and that the state has a positive obligation to ensure that it protects the rights of the minorities. This must be upheld by the government of Cameroon.

Even if there is a commitment on the part of the Anglophones and the government of Cameroon to end the conflict and there are resources to do so, there may be an issue with the authorising environment. This is because President Biya began his rule in Cameroon in 1982 and is serving his seventh term, making him one of the longest-serving presidents in Africa and the world.

This means that for an average Cameroonian, s/he has only known one president since birth. Since the early 1990s, it has been speculated that President Biya is aloof to the needs of his people and has made very few public appearances. He is termed an absentee president who regularly spends extended periods in Switzerland with the excuse from his government that he goes to Switzerland to work without being disturbed. This deficit in governance, as well as the economic apartheid of the Anglophones, are some of the reasons for the demand for a change in the system of government from autocratic to democratic rule.

The bilateral partners of Cameroon such as France, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and other national, regional and international organisations should put pressure on the Cameroonian government to put in place a course of action to assuage the situation, partake in a genuine national dialogue and transform the governance archetype. The government of Cameroon should allow for negotiation and mediation during the national dialogue between parties, where necessary.

The principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty may bar international actors from intervening. However, one can start from the low hanging fruit. For example, European media can call out President Biya for always spending his time and his country’s resources in Switzerland and other European countries without reasonable justification.

Last, the African Union has a huge role to play in this crisis. Just like the Confederation of African Football (CAF) deprived Cameroon the right to host the Africa Cup of Nations in 2019, the African Union can strip Cameroon of the benefits that it enjoys from the continental body and may also place economic and political sanctions on Cameroon such as travel bans and restrictions on access to services in the international arena until it resolves the Anglophone crisis.

Thus, it is imperative to acknowledge that the Anglophone crisis may continue to simmer if the Anglophones still feel marginalised. Therefore, the government of Cameroon must make a conscious effort to address the concerns of the Anglophones, particularly in the allocation and management of economic resources and representation in state institutions.

Source: Daily Maverick

The panic that is within the ranks of the ruling crime syndicate is testament to the fact that the government is under enormous pressure.

When the political opposition called for a nation-wide demonstration on September 22, 2020, to root out the country’s sit-tight, ailing and incompetent president, Paul Biya, from power, surrogates of the old and bed-ridden president swang into action to ensure the opposition’s call was not heeded by a public which is really tired of the incompetence and corruption that have become the ruling cabal’s hallmarks.

The country’s entire Amada was deployed in Douala and Yaoundé to intimidate opposition supporters who are getting bolder by the day.

But this strategy did not deter Cameroonians who are gradually figuring out that real political change in their country will never come through the ballot boxes which are usually loaded  with fake ballots by the country’s ruling party that has been in power for more than half a century with nothing to show for.

New elections are coming up in December 2020 and these regional elections are only designed to prove to the international community that the Yaoundé government is decentralizing as per its 1996 constitution that has never been respected.

The outcome of the election is already known. The tactics will be the same. A few votes will be granted to hungry political leaders like Cabral Libii and others just to legitimize the election.

The ruling CPDM is going to win big, and of course, through the foul means it has always used to win every single election for 38 years.

Intimidation and all corrupt practices will be on hand to ensure Mr. Biya’s party stays in power against the will of the Cameroonian people.

The election will be a total waste of time as the results are already known. Even if all political parties make common cause, the ruling party will steal the victory like it did in the 2018 presidential election.

The leading opposition figure, Professor Maurice Kamto, was robbed of his victory and to silence him, the military was deployed and he was illegally incarcerated for over six months.

A tactic that seems to have been lifted from a Soviet script. In Cameroon, those who vote are indeed not those who count the votes. This clearly implies that the ruling CPDM will always resort to its old antics to perpetuate itself in power.

Cameroonians should, by now, know that elections do not count and that the ruling CPDM will never yield an inch of its power if those who run that party are not arrested and hauled to jail in a people power revolution.

Southern Cameroonians have clearly understood that the Yaounde regime can never be trusted and the economic and political catastrophes generated by the Southern Cameroons crisis have weakened the government and demonstrated that greater pressure on the kleptocrats and gerontocrats who have hijacked power is the best path to walk.

And this path is spreading pain and insomnia among government officials who are completely overwhelmed by the Southern Cameroons crisis.

Initially, the government and its parasitic surrogates had declared that there was no Southern Cameroons crisis.

Opportunists like the country’s territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, a notorious ex-convict, and CPDM ideologue, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, who is scared of imprisonment because of some dirt he left at the ministry of the environment, gave the impression that all was well and that the demonstrations by the Southern Cameroonian population against marginalization in 2017 were simply a figment of the imagination of those who wanted to sow chaos in the country.

But today, the same Atanga Nji is losing sleep over an issue he said never existed. The Francophone leadership seems to have outsourced the stress to him and this invisible enemy is gradually consuming him.

He has been aging prematurely and a source close to one of his numerous girlfriends in Yaounde has indicated that the barefaced territorial administration boss is suffering from chronic erectile dysfunction due to stress.

His recent hasty trip to Kumba to demonstrate the government’s sympathy towards families whose children had been killed in a macabre slaughtering of students by undercover military men was a clear demonstration of the enormous stress that the government was taking because of the Southern Cameroons crisis that has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

Atanga Nji’s stress was all over him to the point where he was mixing up administrative units even as he is the territorial administration boss. Kumba is in Meme Division in the Southwest region, but Atanga Nji, a secondary school dropout, kept on saying that Kumba was in Fako Division despite the numerous corrections from his collaborators.

The confused territorial administration boss even wanted to use the Bible to bamboozle the crowd but was promptly stopped by a lady who claimed she was under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

The lady’s intervention was more proof that the population is no longer scared of government officials and that the people will continue to challenge the government to reveal the truth about the killings in Kumba.

The Yaounde government is used to mowing down its own people. It also has a track record in hiding the truth. A few months ago, army soldiers slaughtered some 23 people in Ngarbuh, a little town in the country’s Northwest region.

Initially, the government clearly denied having conducted any operations in that locality but when pressed by the international community that had evidence, the dishonest government reluctantly admitted to the massacres.

But Ngarbuh was not the first and everybody knew it would not be the last. Muyuka, Muyenge, Santa, Kwakwa and other Southern Cameroonian towns have been victims of the government’s diabolic and Marchiavellic schemes.

The pattern is the same. Denial first and acceptance second. The same strategy has also been used in the country’s Far North region where a woman and her baby were shot point blank by Cameroon army soldiers. Thanks to the BBC’s superior technology, the lying Yaoundé government was caught red-handed.

The truth about Kumba will soon be out. The government knows who is behind the killings. It is revealing less than it knows.

But if Cameroonians have to rob themselves of their irresponsible government, then they must step up the pressure. They must create multiple pressure points both at home and abroad to ensure the criminal syndicate really belongs to the past.

It is time to flush the corrupt and incompetent government out and this will only be achieved through pressure and unity of purpose.

Southern Cameroonians must make common cause with their counterparts in East Cameroon if they must achieve anything.

Going solo may not yield the right dividends. The Biya government has a way of reincarnating. If it must be flushed out, then the different factions involved in the Southern Cameroons crisis must make common cause with the objective of stepping up pressure on a crumbling corrupt and ineffective government.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Group Chairman/Editor-In-Chief