“Triple Agent, Double Cross is a taut and engrossing thriller… there is authenticity in the attitudes it takes, and credibility in the characters, settings and situations it portrays…The structure of the novel is clear and comprehensible, and it is constructed with a strong sense of dramatic necessities such as timing and suspense, and the need for constant action and interaction…the author keeps up the critical tension that takes the reader through the book…The actual writing, the literary style, is first class and entirely appropriate to the genre…the reader is effortlessly transported from the opening pages, into the world of the novel, and dare not leave until the very end. The writing is strong and fluent, and therefore maximizes the potential brought to the book by an impressive, cleverly constructed plot…This is a professional and an accomplished piece of writing.”
—Angelina Anton
Editorial Director of Minerva Press
“A mind-stirring fiction that sticks long after you have read it.”
—The Post
“A story no thriller fan can afford to put away.”
—Michael Wette
A THRILLER
by
Janvier
Chouteu-Chando
TISI BOOKS
NEW YORK, RALEIGH, LONDON, AMSTERDAM
PUBLISHED BY TISI BOOKS
www.tisibooks.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
This book is dedicated to all the people out there who believe in humanity, democracy, freedom, liberty, social justice and equality.
The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he concludes that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.
H.L. Mencken
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Marcus Aurelius
In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the clear majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence
Kurt Nimmo
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.
Carl Bernstein, U.S. journalist.
A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.
Nikos Kazantzakis
What luck for rulers that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler
2012 presidential election Map
It was interesting to observe the primaries of the 2016 presidential election from the sidelines, especially during the early stages of the process, when it seemed unlikely that there could be an upset, when almost everyone thought the candidates firmly embraced by the establishment would emerge as the winners of the throng of aspirants vying for the highest office of the land through the Democratic and Republican parties. Therefore, I was expecting to see Hillary Clinton emerge as the Democratic nominee and Jeb Bush as the Republican candidate likely to take the party to the White House.
But then, as the primaries progressed, I realized that Donald Trump, the aesthetic billionaire and media celebrity, was actually the only Republican candidate that found a way to communicate with the common man in America; I also realized that 74 year old Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialist who decades earlier could have been labeled a Communist and thrown in jail owing to the hysteria spawn by McCarthyism at the time, was actually the one who could help take the United States of America out of the current quagmire and lead the country in creating a multi-polar order in the world.
So, I became interested. I observed, I listened, I researched, and I analyzed. It soon dawned on me that the entire process was full of progressions and patterns that the media was failing to realize or refusing to acknowledge. I tried to explain them to those around me or those with a curious mind. But then, in a world where most people feed off the consent built by the mainstream media, I was a mad man. However, one can take some satisfaction if there is a pattern to his or her madness. From expressions like “Bernie Sanders doesn’t stand a chance…”, some of my sceptics ended up saying things like “He could have made a better Democratic nominee.”. “From “Donald Trump is nothing but a clown”, I am being told he evolved into a formidable opponent who is going to be thrashed anyway.
No, he wouldn’t be thrashed, I tell my sceptics. Still, they don’t believe me. That is how the idea of this account arose. It is nothing but a concise analysis of how Donald Trump is going about winning the 2016 presidential election.
“The worst thing that
colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.”
Barack Obama
“The forces that unite
us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us
apart.”
Kwame Nkrumah
“When two brothers are
busy fighting, an evil man can easily attack and rob their poor mother. Mankind
should always stay united, standing shoulder to shoulder so evil can never
cheat and divide them.”
Suzy Kassem
“Those who do not
move, do not notice their chains.”
Rosa Luxemburg
“Never before in
history has such a sweeping fervor for freedom expressed itself in great mass
movements which are driving down the bastions of empire. This wind of change
blowing through Africa, as I have said before, is no ordinary wind. It is a
raging hurricane against which the old order cannot stand [...] The great
millions of Africa, and of Asia, have grown impatient of being hewers of wood
and drawers of water, and are rebelling against the false belief that
providence created some to be menials of others. Hence the twentieth century
has become the century of colonial emancipation, the century of continuing
revolution which must finally witness the total liberation of Africa from
colonial rule and imperialist exploitation.”
Kwame Nkrumah
This book is dedicated to Cameroon’s
historic civic-nationalists and union-nationalists who dedicated their lives
for the land they love, loved, and suffered deprivations and even death for the
cause to alleviate the wellbeing of the Cameroonian people.
When Britain and
France defeated the German overseas army in Kamerun, the German colony in the
central African region from 1884-1916, and then occupied the land, it was
considered a strategic decision to deprive Germany of its richest colony in
Africa, and therefore some of the raw materials it needed in its war effort
against its enemies in World War One.
Why was there no Kamerunian
resistance to this partition, or why were there no vocal voices protesting the
division of Kamerun? pundits would ask.
The answer lies in the fact that at the onset of the First World War (The
Great War), the German colonial army in Kamerun executed the leaders
(Martin-Paul Samba — born Mebenga Mebono, Rudolf Duala Manga Bell and their
collaborators Edande Mbita and Madola) of the land’s civic-nationalist movement
that was formed in 1910 with the goal to liberate it from German colonial rule.
The people of the partitioned Kamerun would rue this economic and social
disruption of their lives and ponder the high deceleration in development that
ensued under the rule of their new foreign patrons. Still, they would be sober
enough to side with Britain and France against Nazi Germany and its allies
during the Second World War; still they would serve in their thousands in the
British and French Armies that fought in Africa, Asia and Europe. In fact,
after Germany invaded France, occupied the north of the country and established
Vichy France (the successor of the Third Republic from July 1940 to August
1944) in the south of the country — a de facto client and puppet state of Nazi
Germany, French Cameroun would be the first French overseas territory to oppose
Vichy France and side with Charles De Gaulle, the French general who refused to
accept France’s surrender to Nazi Germany and who vowed to resist Germany from
abroad.
French Camerounians went on to form the bulk of General Charles De
Gaulle’s Free French Forces that was formed in Africa, and then went on to kick
Vichy rule out in French Cameroun and French Central Africa, before marching
all the way to Libya and challenging Italian forces there, a move that would
lead to the Allied liberation of North Africa from Axis (German-Italian) control.
French Camerounians would continue playing an active role in the fight that
liberated Paris and the rest of France from German control.
So, when these French Camerounian former soldiers who fought for France
returned and joined forces with other Kamerunian civic nationalists demanding
the reunification and joint independence of French Cameroun and British
Cameroons, it was a resuscitation of the cause of liberation snuffed outed by
the Germans when they executed Martin Paul Samba, Rudolf Duala Manga-Bell and
their associates. The formation of the Union of the Populations of the
Cameroons (French: Union des Populations
du Cameroun - UPC) on 11 April 1948 in French Cameroun, and the rise of UPC
offshoots and sister parties in British Cameroons attested to the seriousness
of the reunification and independence agenda. However, that agenda conflicted
with French designs on the land and Francophone Africa.
Even so, the UPC did not see it coming when the French authorities
embarked on suppressing it, starting with its ban on 13 July 1955, thereby
forcing most of the party’s leadership to flee into exile to British Southern
Cameroons, then Egypt. Guinea, Ghana and China.
That was how France’s relentless drive to thwart the “Kamerunian Dream”
(Cameroonian Dream) began. That was France’s first step that has led to the
continuous frustration of the popular drive to found “THE NEW CAMEROON”.
II
When in April 1956, Pierre Joseph Auguste Messmer, a hero of the
legendary General Charles De Gaulle’s Free French Forces during the Second
World War, replaced Roland Pré whose July 13, 1955 decree banned the UPC, many
Cameroonian civic-nationalists (Cameroonian union nationalists or Kamerunist) in particular, and French Camerounians in general,
were hopeful that the new High Commissioner or governor would ease tensions in
the French Trust Territory. But that was not the case. Pierre Mesmer
immediately went about accelerating the military clamp down on the UPC while
grooming local political forces submissive to France’s game plan for French
Cameroun, all the while, never heeding the voices of the people of the land.
…France granted limited autonomy to
French Cameroun, whereby France placed some political powers in the hands of
its protégés in the Trust Territory.
Machinations…led André-Marie Mbida to become the first indigenous Prime
Minister of French Cameroun. After trying for two years to convince the French
Trusteeship administration to uplift the ban, the UPC leadership realized
belatedly that despite its seventy percent command of the support of the
population and an even higher percentage of intellectuals, the French
authorities were still bent on preventing the UPC from influencing the
territory’s political evolution and direction.
…The UPC’s call for the reunification
of British Cameroons and French Cameroun before an eventual independence had
won overwhelming support in both territories, even though it now looked like
the party may have to watch the political development of the territories from
the sidelines. Many wondered whether the Kamerunian Dream of reunification and
independence could be realized without its propagators,
now that the puppets that France was using in French Cameroun’s
political arena hardly even knew the concepts or the components of the dream for
a New Cameroon.
…However, when in January 1958, the
two-month old right-wing government of French Prime Minister Félix Gaillard
D'Aimé promoted Pierre Messmer from the position of High Commissioner of French
Cameroun to the post of High Commissioner of French Equatorial Africa, and then
replaced him with Jean Ramadier, the son of Paul Ramadier who was the left-wing
former Prime Minister of France from 22 January 1947 – 24 November 1947, there
was an opportunity to exploit. Judging from Jean Ramadier’s tenures as the
High-Commissioner of Niger from 1956-1956 and of Guinea from 1956 to January
1958, he was the right person to deal with in resolving the ban on the UPC.
…When Jean Ramadier publicly declared
that he supported the reunification of French Cameroun and British Cameroons,
and then started the process of replacing André-Marie Mbida with his deputy
Ahmadou Ahidjo, many people did not see that coming…The UPC heads were
beginning to rejoice over the developments when news reached them that
February, reporting the transfer of Jean Ramadier to an undisclosed post barely
a month after he started working in French Cameroun. His replacement was Xavier
Antoine Torré of the Radical Party, who quickly transformed himself into
Ahmadou Ahidjo’s puppet master.
… French policy in French Cameroun,
especially France’s brutal war against the populations supporting the banned
UPC…spelled disaster for the progressive spirit of the people…a collective
dream happened to be the most effective tool to unite, mobilize and move a
people forward, even for a negative cause. Dreams were impossible to usurp…only
the dreamers of a dream can translate their dreams into worthy practical
endeavors that are devoid of haunting errors. After all, they are the ones who
carefully observed the link between their dreams and reality; they are the
ones who worked consciously to blend them into one.
… the living French legend General Charles
De Gaulle returned to power in France on June 01, 1958, created the Fifth
French Republic, pledged to restore French greatness in world affairs, and
promised to make its colonies and territories know no other independence than
the independence of France. He did so by crafting a special cooperation policy
for France to implement in its colonies and territories, making it the
framework of their relationship after granting independence to these colonies
and overseas territories. But before moving to the implementation phase, the
Fifth French Republic embarked on a mission to eliminate the head of the
political and partisan movement that was the most threatening to French control
in Sub-Saharan Africa. When on September 13, 1958, the French Army in French
Cameroun slayed Ruben Um Nyobé near Boumnyebel, the village of his birth, they
thought his killing would deal a deathblow to the UPC as a political party and
to the resistance that it was leading against
French control in the land…
…The UPC leader’s murder while on his
way to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict with his adversaries …happened
at a time that the party was still contemplating an all-out armed struggle
against French rule in the land as the only option left in pursuing the cause.
This assassination of the renowned head of the land’s most prominent political
organization became a memory that would haunt Cameroonian union-nationalism and
radicalize the party in its belated effort to pick up arms and defend itself in
its struggle for the reunification and independence of British Cameroons and
French Cameroun.
As another revelation of its game
plan, France granted French Cameroun its independence under the puppet
government of Ahmadou Ahidjo on January 01, 1960, concluding the masquerade
with another gross deception called “The Colonial Pact” — a lopsided socio-economic and political
agreement with a military component that allowed France to retain its forces in
the newly independent Republic of Cameroun, thereby maintaining its de facto
influence in the new country and its overwhelming control of Cameroon's
destiny.
III
Even though the British complied with France’s request and banned the UPC
in British Cameroons in 1958, the party’s offshoots and sister parties would
continue to champion the cause of reunification, so that British Southern
Cameroons would vote in the 1961 United Nations-sponsored plebiscite to reunite
with the former French Cameroun. This partial reunification led by sincere
Anglophone Cameroonian union-nationalists would not realize the New Cameroon
since these English-speaking union-nationalist had to work with Francophone
pseudo-nationalist puppets of France who were not only at the bidding of France
against the land’s French-speaking union-nationalists led by the UPC, but stood
as classic French puppets per se who never worked for the reunification and
independence of the lands of the former German Kamerun, and who were in power
to execute France’s agenda — the decimation of Kamerunism (Cameroonian
union-nationalism) and the subjugation of the people of the former British
Southern Cameroons. So, it is not surprising that with the defeat of the UPC in
1970, Anglophone Cameroonians too started suffocating under the brutal French-imposed
system and the Ahidjo/Biya dictatorships, which is why the English-speaking
regions of Cameroon are the most bitter with the political establishment today.
French puppet Ahmadou Ahidjo would
manage the French-imposed system until 1982, the year he handed power to his
prime minister Paul Biya as directed by the new French president Francois
Mitterrand. The regime of Paul Biya has successfully ensured the survival of
the anachronistic system and the Franco-Cameroonian political establishment, thereby
perpetuating the ruination of Cameroon and suppressing the will of the
overwhelming majority of Cameroonians who reject the French political mafia,
the system, the political establishment and Paul Biya himself.
Some say the social-engineering of
Cameroon is almost complete, and that Cameroon will become irredeemable in less
than a decade, especially since the establishment has successfully silenced the
parties that arose in 1990 claiming to be in the opposition, by coopting them into
the system, a process that is transforming them into so-called opposition
parties. I think so too. But insightful Cameroonians are not disheartened. These so-called opposition party leaders were
after all members of the Ahidjo/Biya single party system until
1990, when tapping on the worldwide wind of change generated by the last Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika, and the desire of Cameroonians
for change and multi-party democracy, they left the single party (Cameroon
People’s Democratic Movement — CPDM) and formed political parties of their own,
purporting to be against the Biya regime and the French-imposed system, a move
that saw millions of freedom-loving and democracy-seeking Cameroonians flocking
to their parties.
Today, the post-independence
generations of Cameroonians understand that the task of founding the New
Cameroon does not only involve overcoming the Biya regime, but requires the
dismantling of the dysfunctional French-imposed system in the country. That
means completing Cameroon’s (Kamerun’s) unfinished liberation.
For thousands of years, the land mass
experienced groves of migrating tribes and ethnic groups that wandered across
the African continent. However, Cameroon got its diversity and unusual mix of
ethnic groups that persist today from the migrations of the last millennium.
It is from the southern half of
Cameroon that Africa’s largest ethno-linguistic group called Bantu, otherwise
known as Niger-Congo-B, spread to eastern and southern Africa.
Northern Cameroon is the western
fringe of the withering Nilo-Saharan populations from The Sudans and Ethiopia.
It also became the base of early settled Niger-Congo-A populations.
Over the years, the Nilo-Saharan and
Niger-Congo-A ethnic groups of the North were subjected to the expanding
influence of Afro-Asiatic speaking Shua Arabs, Tuaregs and numerous Chadic
groups from West Africa and North Africa. Doomed to perpetual distrust and
misunderstanding in a stretch of land that starts as a plain and turns into a
plateau in its southern stretch called the Adamawa, these populations of the
North have finally learned to live together.
Beyond this Adamawa plateau region is
a portion of Central Cameroon called the Western High Plateau. For centuries,
this hilly region of highland savannah was the borderland of the Northwestern
Bantus, comprising at the time scattered and sparsely populated settlements of
small Bantu villages braving the chilly climate of the mountainous terrain.
The Central Highlands that constitute
the Adamawa plateau and the Western High Plateau was in a state of turmoil in
the eighteenth century. The disastrous sweep of Sene-Gambian speaking Fulani
warriors brought about by Ousman Dan Fodio’s jihad to spread Islam in what
became Northern Nigeria and Northern Cameroon destabilized the indigenous
populations of the North by forcing the different ethnic groups there to either
resist the invaders and their religion or capitulate to their might. The
Bamileké people were one of the groups that chose to fight.
Following years of resisting the
Fulani warriors and witnessing the scorch of their homelands in the Adamawa
region, the Bamileké people buckled and moved to the South in search of a new
homeland. The Western Highlands otherwise called the Bamenda Highlands, an area
sparsely settled by Bantu tribes became the place of abode for Bamileké people
who quickly blended with the local population of the area, creating a new mix
of Bamileké culture that prevails today. Like the Bamilekés, other prominent
ethnic groups like the Bamoun, Bali, Tikar and Banso peoples also escaped from
Islamization in the North and settled in the North and East of the new Bamilekéland.
This reconfiguration of the ethnic composition of the land was still going on when
Germany claimed the territory as its colony and stabilized the situation there.
Culled from Disciples of Fortune
This peculiar geopolitical entity was
created by accident and apportioned to Germany during the 1884 Berlin
conference that carved up Africa. Thereafter, Berlin treated German Kamerun as
its treasured colony for thirty-two years until Great Britain and France
captured the land during the First World War, partitioned it into British
Cameroons and French Cameroun, and then went on to lord it over the people for
four decades. However, they too were challenged by Cameroonian civic
nationalists who campaigned for the divided territory’s reunification and self-rule.
Today, English and French are the country’s official languages, mirroring the
dominance of the two Indo-European languages in Africa.
They say the gods have a design even
in the most outrageous acts of mortals. If that is the case, then it also
applies to Cameroon. The country has defied so many odds in its history that
the people now pride themselves with the saying that “Impossible isn’t a
Cameroonian word.”
Renowned voices tend to call Cameroon “Africa
in miniature”, not only because of its fanciful shape and turbulent history, but also because of the physical and
human aspects of its geography. It is the point in Africa where the East meets
the West and where the North meets the South. It is a country that features
plains and mountains, plateaus and valleys, rivers and seas, lakes, and waterfalls and other landmarks that
mirror the rest of Africa. The south is dominated by equatorial and tropical
rainforests, the north is covered by Sahelian vegetation, and the middle
portion of the country is graced with high savannah of mixed grassland and
forest. In fact, all the different flora and fauna in Africa can be found in
this carelessly-drawn triangle called Cameroon.
The curious eye is apt to notice
varying statures, facial types and shades of complexion as it travels
throughout Cameroon—the result of the territory’s history as the crossroads of
African migrations. Anthropological linguists hold that all of Africa’s four
major language groups converge in Cameroon.
The southern portion of the country
is the base from where Bantu speakers spread to southern and eastern Africa.
The furthest spread of Afro-Asiatic peoples is in the north of this territory,
featuring groups like the Semitic-speaking Arabs, Berber-speaking Tuaregs,
Chadic-speaking Hausas and Batas, and Fula or Fulfulde-speaking Fulanis or
Peuls. Nilo-Saharan speakers dominate the north of the country in their
furthest spread to the west of the African continent. Also present in Cameroon are small ethnicities of the fourth major
subgroup called Niger-Congo-A that occupy the southwestern border regions with
Nigeria. Settled in the northwestern portion of the country that looks like the
pregnant part of mother Cameroon is the fifth and unique indigenous group that
you will find only in Cameroon. Named semi-Bantu, Graffi or southern Bantoid,
this group has characteristics of all the four major language groups or
sub-races in Africa. Legends and lore hold that semi-Bantus are originally of
Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan descent and that they assimilated all the peoples
they encountered in the course of their migration. The Bamileké people are the
dominant ethnicity in this group.
It is true that Cameroon’s human and physical
wealth has been the source of its turbulent history, its pride and the
ingredients that give its people a unique flavor. The flavor has produced
colorful Cameroonian characters that the curious eye and mind is likely to
enjoy by hating or loving them, pitying or angrily denouncing them. These
characters provide insights into the human nature and the African continent
that is haunted by leaders with the evil disposition.
While other African peoples have
picked up arms and warred among themselves to have their country split up,
Cameroon is the only geo-political entity in the continent whose inhabitants
went to war to reunite its people separated by the legacy of the Anglo-French partition of the former German
colony of Kamerun. It is the only country where those who fought for its
reunification and independence are yet to assume political power, as they
continue to languish from the defeat suffered in the hands of the French
overlords and the puppets the French political establishment installed in power
in Cameroon. It is the land where you will find Africa’s biggest political
deception and sleaziest mafia. It is the country in Africa with the lowest
number of heads of state in its history, yet it is a country that is unlikely
to engage in internecine war to get rid of the suffocating system.
In the middle of the twentieth
century, a child was born in Cameroon who by the age of ten, proved he could
become anything he wanted to be. This child prodigy happened to be the son of a
soldier of the Free French Forces that fought across the African desert in the
drive that liberated France from German occupation during the Second World War...
(Culled
from Triple Agent, Double Cross)
Part II: Afterthought on 07/04/2015:
Cameroon as a Hijacked Nation
In
power since 1982 is Africa's absentee dictator Paul Biya, who was made the
successor of his predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo by an order from former French
President Francoise Mitterrand; Ahidjo, who himself was brought to power by the
French to usurp the aspirations of Cameroonians in their liberation struggle
led by the UPC that the French banned in 1955, a party with more than 80% of
the land's intellectuals and even more national support. France had made sure
Ahidjo's power was secured by decimating its support base in a 12-year war
against the party and by killing all the UPC leaders (Ruben Um Nyobe 1958, Felix
Moumie in Geneva 1960, Oostende Afana 1966, Ernest Ouandie 1971 etc.), leaving
Cameroon a nation haunted by an "Unfinished Liberation Struggle".
Today, Cameroonians are out not only to get rid of the Dictator Biya's
autocracy, but also to get rid of the French-imposed system that its custodians
want to continue with someone else after Paul Biya departs.
Part III: Cameroon under an oppressive
system and haunted by Terrorism
Compounded
by the retrogressive system and the lunacy of the Biya regime is the specter of
Boko Haram that started haunting northern Cameroon a few years ago, a distorted
form of Islam espoused by a group that sees glory in the murder of the innocent
(women, children and other civilians), a spillover from Nigeria's religious
tension and an amalgamation of geopolitics as foreign interests extend the
exploitation of resources in the Lake Chad basin. Only a Cameroon rid of the
retrogressive French-imposed system and headed by those who put the interest of
the land above their personal interests or the interests of foreign entities
who have no genuine concern for the land, can the citizens of Cameroon be
certain that the country and government would be able to handle the insecurity
posed by anti-people and dehumanized groups like Boko-Haram. In fact,
Boko-Haram in North Cameroon and the system/Biya regime are in symbiosis as
they make each other relevant in a space where both are loathed by the vast
majority of Cameroonians.
|
Rank
|
Name
|
Country
|
Office
|
Tenure Began
|
Length of Tenure
|
|
|
1.
|
Paul Biya
|
Cameroon
|
Prime Minister, then President
|
30 June 1975
|
40 years, 129 days
|
|
|
2.
|
Mohamed Abdelaziz
|
Sahrawi Arab
Democratic Republic
|
General Secretary and President
|
30 August 1976
|
39 years, 68 days
|
|
|
3.
|
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
|
Equatorial Guinea
|
3 August 1979
|
36 years, 95 days
|
||
|
4.
|
José Eduardo dos Santos
|
Angola
|
President
|
10 September 1979
|
36 years, 57 days
|
|
|
5.
|
Robert Mugabe
|
Zimbabwe
|
Prime Minister, then President
|
18 April 1980
|
35 years, 202 days
|
|
|
6.
|
Ali Khamenei
|
Iran
|
President, then Supreme Leader
|
13 October 1981
|
34 years, 24 days
|
|
|
7.
|
Hun Sen
|
Cambodia
|
14 January 1985
|
30 years, 296 days
|
||
|
8.
|
Yoweri Museveni
|
Uganda
|
President
|
29 January 1986
|
29 years, 281 days
|
|
|
9.
|
Nursultan Nazarbayev
|
Kazakhstan
|
First Secretary, then President
|
22 June 1989
|
26 years, 137 days
|
|
|
10.
|
Islam Karimov
|
Uzbekistan
|
First Secretary, then President
|
23 June 1989
|
26 years, 136 days
|
|
|
11.
|
Omar al-Bashir
|
Sudan
|
30 June 1989
|
26 years, 129 days
|
||
|
12.
|
Idriss Déby
|
Chad
|
2 December 1990
|
24 years, 339 days
|
||
|
13.
|
Isaias Afwerki
|
Eritrea
|
27 April 1991
|
24 years, 193 days
|
||
|
14.
|
Emomali Rahmon
|
Tajikistan
|
19 November 1992
|
22 years, 352 days
|
||
|
15.
|
Alexander Lukashenko
|
Belarus
|
President
|
20 July 1994
|
21 years, 109 days
|
|
|
16.
|
Yahya Jammeh
|
The
Gambia
|
President
|
22 July 1994
|
21 years, 107 days
|
|
|
17.
|
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
|
Iceland
|
President
|
1 August 1996
|
19 years, 97 days
|
|
|
18.
|
Denis Sassou Nguesso
|
Republic
of the Congo
|
President
|
25 October 1997
|
18 years, 12 days
|
|
|
19.
|
Kim Yong-nam
|
North Korea
|
President of the Presidium of the
Supreme People's Assembly |
5 September 1998
|
17 years, 62 days
|
|
|
20.
|
Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi
|
Samoa
|
Prime Minister
|
23 November 1998
|
16 years, 348 days
|
|
|
21.
|
Abdelaziz Bouteflika
|
Algeria
|
President
|
27 April 1999
|
16 years, 193 days
|
|
|
22.
|
Ismaïl Omar Guelleh
|
Djibouti
|
President
|
8 May 1999
|
16 years, 182 days
|
|
|
23.
|
Vladimir Putin
|
Russia
|
President
|
9 August 1999
|
16 years, 89 days
|
|
|
24.
|
Paul Kagame
|
Rwanda
|
President
|
24 March 2000
|
15 years, 227 days
|
|
|
25.
|
Bashar al-Assad
|
Syria
|
President
|
17 July 2000
|
15 years, 112 days
|
|
|
26.
|
Joseph Kabila
|
Democratic Republic
of the Congo
|
President
|
17 January 2001
|
14 years, 293 days
|
|
|
27.
|
José Maria Neves
|
Cape Verde
|
Prime Minister
|
1 February 2001
|
14 years, 278 days
|
|
|
28.
|
Ralph Gonsalves
|
Saint Vincent and
the Grenadines
|
Prime Minister
|
29 March 2001
|
14 years, 222 days
|
|
|
29.
|
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
|
Turkey
|
Prime Minister, then President
|
14 March 2003
|
12 years, 237 days
|
|
|
30.
|
Filip Vujanović
|
Montenegro
|
President
|
22 May 2003
|
12 years, 168 days
|
|
|
31.
|
Anote Tong
|
Kiribati
|
President
|
10 July 2003
|
12 years, 119 days
|
|
|
32.
|
Ilham Aliyev
|
Azerbaijan
|
Prime Minister, then President
|
4 August 2003
|
12 years, 94 days
|
|
|
33.
|
Artur Rasizade
|
Azerbaijan
|
Prime Minister
|
6 August 2003
|
12 years, 92 days
|
|
|
34.
|
Abdelkader Taleb Omar
|
Sahrawi Arab
Democratic Republic
|
Prime Minister
|
29 October 2003
|
12 years, 8 days
|
|
|
35.
|
Shavkat Mirziyoyev
|
Uzbekistan
|
Prime Minister
|
11 December 2003
|
11 years, 330 days
|
|
|
36.
|
Roosevelt Skerrit
|
Dominica
|
Prime Minister
|
8 January 2004
|
11 years, 302 days
|
|
|
37.
|
James Michel
|
Seychelles
|
President
|
14 April 2004
|
11 years, 206 days
|
|
|
38.
|
Heinz Fischer
|
Austria
|
Federal President
|
8 July 2004
|
11 years, 121 days
|
|
|
39.
|
Lee Hsien Loong
|
Singapore
|
Prime Minister
|
12 August 2004
|
11 years, 86 days
|
|
|
40.
|
Mahmoud Abbas
|
Palestine
|
President
|
15 January 2005
|
10 years, 295 days
|
|
|
41.
|
Faure Gnassingbé
|
Togo
|
President
|
4 May 2005
|
10 years, 186 days
|
|
|
42.
|
Salva Kiir Mayardit
|
South Sudan
|
President
|
30 July 2005
|
10 years, 99 days
|
|
|
43.
|
Pierre Nkurunziza
|
Burundi
|
President
|
26 August 2005
|
10 years, 72 days
|
|
|
No
|
1980
|
1981
|
1982
|
1983
|
1984
|
1985
|
1986
|
1987
|
1988
|
1989
|
|
|
CENTRAL AFRICAN REGION
|
|||||||||||
|
1
|
879
|
968
|
903
|
886
|
912
|
927
|
1,176
|
1,325
|
1,307
|
1,131
|
|
|
2
|
309
|
312
|
295
|
276
|
262
|
336
|
426
|
458
|
482
|
467
|
|
|
3
|
148
|
171
|
161
|
157
|
165
|
174
|
209
|
231
|
264
|
243
|
|
|
4
|
519
|
437
|
460
|
359
|
232
|
205
|
223
|
204
|
229
|
226
|
|
|
5
|
144
|
126
|
139
|
143
|
147
|
231
|
265
|
302
|
303
|
249
|
|
|
6
|
5,722
|
5,049
|
4,630
|
4,337
|
4,081
|
4,206
|
5,386
|
3,987
|
4,302
|
4,601
|
|
|
7
|
449
|
376
|
338
|
292
|
228
|
218
|
279
|
317
|
314
|
291
|
|
|
8
|
885
|
885
|
746
|
492
|
347
|
331
|
255
|
264
|
284
|
267
|
|
|
9
|
1,304
|
1,037
|
877
|
774
|
690
|
686
|
911
|
1,073
|
1,108
|
1,101
|
|
No
|
1990
|
1991
|
1992
|
1993
|
1994
|
1995
|
1996
|
1997
|
1998
|
1999
|
|
|
CENTRAL AFRICAN REGION
|
|||||||||||
|
1
|
1,098
|
1,188
|
1,056
|
1,070
|
686
|
677
|
753
|
733
|
681
|
699
|
|
|
2
|
534
|
499
|
487
|
416
|
265
|
334
|
290
|
277
|
287
|
283
|
|
|
3
|
286
|
276
|
281
|
240
|
190
|
219
|
238
|
223
|
245
|
211
|
|
|
4
|
227
|
213
|
186
|
235
|
124
|
116
|
145
|
128
|
92
|
82
|
|
|
5
|
295
|
272
|
308
|
291
|
201
|
262
|
398
|
702
|
545
|
847
|
|
|
6
|
6,400
|
5,628
|
5,649
|
5,332
|
4,032
|
4,655
|
5,214
|
4,759
|
3,908
|
3,965
|
|
|
7
|
321
|
292
|
284
|
260
|
177
|
192
|
199
|
177
|
195
|
183
|
|
|
8
|
348
|
304
|
267
|
161
|
179
|
356
|
431
|
323
|
291
|
310
|
|
|
9
|
1,254
|
1,185
|
1,237
|
1,099
|
703
|
817
|
981
|
871
|
711
|
834
|
|
No
|
2000
|
2001
|
2002
|
2003
|
2004
|
2005
|
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
|
|
CENTRAL AFRICAN REGION
|
|||||||||||
|
1
|
655
|
603
|
663
|
807
|
909
|
930
|
979
|
1,084
|
1,224
|
1,114
|
|
|
2
|
247
|
246
|
256
|
289
|
316
|
329
|
352
|
398
|
455
|
439
|
|
|
3
|
186
|
223
|
254
|
319
|
501
|
651
|
681
|
739
|
863
|
712
|
|
|
4
|
80
|
95
|
100
|
99
|
111
|
118
|
141
|
156
|
75
|
162
|
|
|
5
|
1,321
|
1,710
|
2,055
|
2,747
|
4,739
|
7,221
|
8,201
|
10,437
|
14,861
|
9,513
|
|
|
6
|
4,204
|
3,815
|
3,894
|
4,665
|
5,395
|
6,354
|
6,829
|
8,075
|
9,994
|
7,421
|
|
|
7
|
155
|
163
|
181
|
224
|
238
|
269
|
282
|
322
|
392
|
371
|
|
|
8
|
390
|
361
|
471
|
524
|
662
|
824
|
1,039
|
1,153
|
1,401
|
1,110
|
|
|
9
|
1,109
|
935
|
982
|
1,107
|
1,430
|
1,820
|
2,245
|
2,370
|
3,264
|
2,561
|
|
No
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
|
|
CENTRAL
AFRICAN
REGION
|
||||
|
1
|
1,103
|
1,211
|
1,165
|
|
|
2
|
429
|
463
|
446
|
|
|
3
|
837
|
1,006
|
1,006
|
|
|
4
|
186
|
216
|
236
|
|
|
5
|
17,270
|
22,954
|
23,133
|
|
|
6
|
9,715
|
12,385
|
11,928
|
|
|
7
|
370
|
399
|
422
|
|
|
8
|
1,465
|
1,522
|
1,654
|
|
|
9
|
3,113
|
3,631
|
3,346
|
Using the GDP per capita
or Gross Domestic Product per capita (dividing the total output of a country by
the number of its inhabitants) based on purchasing power parity (PPP) as one of
the parameters to accentuate the standard of living of a country's
citizens, we observe with clarity that Africa's GDP per capita barely tripled
over the past three decades, while the rest of the world's more than
quintupled. And with inflation halving the value of output or wealth after
every two decades, it becomes apparent that the standard of living of most
African countries dropped over the past thirty years, while the world at large
experienced substantial increase in the quality of life of its citizens.
Cameroon in
particular emerges as the most mismanaged country in the world in a generation,
standing out as the only country that did not experience a war or civil strife,
yet impoverished its citizens through theft, corruption, mismanagement and
incomprehension. Often called the "Sick Spirit of Africa" due to the
usurper French-imposed system put in place in 1958 that acts against the
interest of the majority of the citizens (One of the most dynamic in Africa),
the regime of President Paul Biya that has been in power for thirty years
exacerbates the malady with its blatant disregard of the choice and wellbeing
of the Cameroonian people. As indicated in the years colored red, the Biya regime
is a peculiar entity that pulls off the gamble of declaring itself
the winner in elections despite putting the country into depressions and
recessions. After all, it crafted the most efficient election rigging machinery
in the world.
It has been observed with
clarity that Cameroon and Africa risk being stuck in inertia forever
if Cameroon―"The Sick Spirit of Africa”, The Democratic Republic of
Congo―"The Sick Heart of Africa", do not win a place among the
African countries with a sense of direction, and if they do not take their
merited places as pillars of economic and democratic progress for the New
Africa. These countries need to release the trapped potentials of their people,
take their places as leaders in Central Africa and the "Heart of
Africa", and foster their roles as the crossroads of inter-African
cooperation, trade, infrastructural and telecommunication connectivity, and
joint ventures. Middle Africa needs new, advanced, progressive and
democratic systems in place to facilitate not only the development of the
countries there, but also the facilitation of the realization of the economic
union and political integration of Africa( A working African Union)―the optimal
structure Africa needs in place to lift its population out of poverty. That is what
the African Economic Miracle would be all about.
Cameroon is in its last stages of
decay. There are no prospects of it getting out of its lethal malady by using
the human and material resources that the present anachronistic system can
mobilize unless the system is fundamentally changed or overthrown and a
reformed or new system put in place. The first aspect of change prescribes
radical reforms while the second aspect of change
requires a revolution. The first aspect calls for the replacement of
most of our old and unworkable structures and values with new ones, while the
second rejects all aspects of the anachronistic system and its values and calls
for their total, complete and universal replacement by new ones. The difference
in the two aspects of change lies only in the degree of replacement. However,
the reformatory and revolutionary ideals and actions are meant to solve the
socio-economic and political ills afflicting the Cameroonian state by
challenging the status quo and its formulations.
In order to challenge the status quo, exponents of change ought to be
backed up by a careful study to determine whether the six-decade-old system’s
degree of decay would require reformatory or revolutionary measures. Well,
Cameroon is rotten enough.
1) Cameroon’s decay is wrapped up in
the injustices whose resultant shortcomings now haunt our everyday lives. These
injustices are in the economic, social, ethnic and political domains.
Economically, Cameroon has been
reduced to a beggar nation; the pride of its citizens denigrated, their dreams
dashed and their hopes made to look like illusions. Yes, we are beggars despite
our fabulous human and material potentials. Though having never been really
rich, our fairly considerable economic standards that stood out during German
colonial rule, that was exemplified in the 1950s and made remarkable between
1974-1984 (despite all the past constraints from the system and its puppet
Ahidjo regime), have been greatly reduced, plunging us into abject poverty. The
poverty is so deep that the vast majority of Cameroonians have lost faith in
the system, the enthusiasm to engage in long-term projects to rise out of their
miseries, and the dignity that befits a progressive people with a sense of
purpose. The present system has made it extremely difficult for hard working
and intelligent lads to rise up to their potentials,
unless they compromise their honor by selling their souls for the favors from
the custodians of the system, an opportunity which only a decimal are
privileged to be exposed to. Government planning (both strategic and tactical)
is so unrealistic, chaotic, unfocused and devoid of follow-up mechanisms that
they tend to destroy and depress, instead of constructing and building resolve.
There is blatant discrimination by officials at the upper echelons of the system
who bog down the business and constructive efforts of the struggling masses
because they are of the opposite political thinking, undesirable ethnic group
or tribe, different religious belief, the hated social grouping or threatening
region, or stereo-typed linguistic entity; just because these custodians of the
system believe these enlightened Cameroonians threaten the status quo. Our
material resources are being irrationally and wantonly exploited without an
effectual development of the land and improvement in the lives of Cameroonians.
Despite Cameroon’s vast agricultural, mineral, energy and other natural
resources, we have failed to build the base of a processing or industrial
nation, so that primary commodities are the only things we export today. The pro-French
political and business class and their collaborators are solely responsible for
this rape of the Cameroonian nation. So far, prospects of an economic recovery
still remain nil because the anachronistic system does not want to loosen the
control put in place by its neo-colonialist French lords, corrupt bureaucrats,
unpatriotic political elite and business class who know or care little about
Cameroon’s economic reality. The only way for the Cameroonian economy to stand
on its feet again and assume the path of a progressive future is through a
buildup of business confidence. That confidence can only be built after we rid
the nation of all aspects of the economic shortcomings of the anachronistic
system. Such a revolutionary task requires a rational economic transformation
geared towards economic growth, transparency, a mitigation of the effects of
unemployment and a commitment to involve all Cameroonians in the process of
nation building.
On the social scene, our Cameroon, which we hold so dearly at heart, has
also not been spared of decay. Education, which is supposed to be the right of
every child, has been relegated to the point of abandonment by the Biya regime.
That is why today, the majority of our children are poorly educated in an
academic system that is not geared towards development and rational
professionalism. Our educational system is behind the times in infrastructure,
equipment, knowledge, skills and experience. The cost of educating a child has
risen far above the means of the average Cameroonian due to the government’s
nonchalant attitude towards the granting of subsidies to schools. Today, books
and other educational materials are either in short supply, unavailable or are
too expensive. The majority of our teachers are poorly trained and lag behind
their counterparts elsewhere in the world in knowledge and skills. The
undesirable result has been Cameroon’s continuously falling literacy rate and
the decreasing competitiveness of our graduates. Meanwhile, the children of the
oligarchy and collaborators of the system pursue their education abroad. They
often return as overlords with no work experience abroad, but with the
professionalism to steal in a smoother manner.
Today, hardly half a decade into the next millennium, the vast majority
of the Cameroonian people are still living in filth and squalor. Good housing,
available medical facilities and other social infrastructures are in short
supply, having been relegated to the government’s bottom list of priorities.
Town planning has become so chaotic. Even the basic necessity of water and
electricity are inadequately provided despite our vast potentials in those
resources. In the towns and cities especially, the once noble Cameroonian
people are compelled to live alongside untreated garbage dumps, giant rats,
cockroaches and other vermin. The country’s sanitation has fallen below
pre-independence level. Even its transportation network and other
infrastructures are a mockery to a people who are considered imaginative,
dynamic and proud. These retrogressions are testaments to the fact that the
country has fallen behind other nations since independence. In the world of
advanced services and communication, the senseless system has made the country
to lag pathetically behind time, even as other governments of the world quickly
embrace technological progress. It does not bother the Biya regime that
Cameroonians are living in misery because he has detached himself from the
general Cameroonian reality and carved out a cocoon of affluence for himself and
his mafia clique.
Leadership over the forces that
should give Cameroon its strength (The people) has been undermined by
government-instigated discrimination. Clannishness, tribalism, ethno-centrism,
regionalism and other forms of division are often set aflame on groups (as
scapegoats) in order to dispel discontent directed against the government and
the system. The regrettable outcome of such moves has been the open and latent
distrust that has caused the breakdown of cooperation between the forces that
are supposed to work together to realize our potentials. While it is true that
the Ahidjo and Biya regimes have favored certain social groupings, especially
their ethnic groups, the reproach for complicity should not be put on any
ethnic or linguistic group because collaborators of the system have been bred
from virtually every group in Cameroon.
2) The unavoidable consequences of the economic, social and ethnic
injustices are the poor management results that stand as Cameroon’s chronic
malady today. Due to the fact that the government’s economic policies basically
favor only a small minority of individuals, ethnic groups and regions; the vast
potentials of the majority and disfavored are either cruelly exploited, left
untapped and/or neglected. The regrettable result is that these majority and
disfavored produce without a corresponding development in their lives and the
environment around which they operate. This situation prevails while the
favored minority swims in splendor, abundance, arrogance and mismanagement. The
visible result is the inefficient utilization of our resources through
over-exploitation, without the necessary subsequent developments in building
and restoration. The consequence of this poorly targeted policy is the
disorientation, disillusion, despondence and despair syndrome that has eaten
deep into the ranks of the creative and progressive forces of the land. The
fact that these forces have been estranged from participating in the running of
the economic, social and political affairs of the land draws open a phase of
conflict in our development―that is, how do we restore the harmonious
cooperation between the political establishment and the majority of the
economic sector whose advanced business leadership wants to realize a developed
and progressive Cameroon? Unfortunately, for Cameroon, the majority that
constitutes the creative and progressive forces are too dazed in their inability to mount a strong opposition or
resistance to the system, while the minority that constitute the custodians of
the system are so vocal and aggressive despite their poor records of
incompetence, mismanagement, unaccountability, corruption, buffoonery,
repression, waste and misuse of our resources. Unless we get rid of the
management problem through the ideals of our union-nationalism, there will
never be a correction of the injustices persisting in our social, economic and
inter-ethnic lives. For that to be realized, we must get rid of the
anachronistic system now and fast.
3) The mismanagement in Cameroon
and the injustices that are prevailing stem from its anachronistic political
structure. Early in the twentieth century 1910), Cameroon’s first nationalists
led by Martin Paul Samba (Mebenga Mebono) and Rudolf Duala Manga Bell perceived
that while striving for Kamerun’s independence from Germany, its colonial
master at the time, so that the land could exist within the frame work of
international cooperation, they wanted the land’s human and vast material
resources to be rationally exploited and developed through the best
combinations of internal and external cooperation. We were unfortunate because
the German colonial administration opposed that new Kamerunian force. They
executed its leaders, a sad epoch in our nationalism that made it to become
dormant for decades, so that even after the defeat of the Germans, there was no
nationalist force to defend the land against partition by the British and the
French. Instead of the independence that Cameroon’s first nationalists strove
for, the land and the noble Kamerunian people became subservient subjects
instead of the British and French in 1918. However, three decades after, there
was a resurgence of Cameroonian nationalism, which garbed the extra cloths of
unification and independence. While espousing the ideals of Martin Paul Samba,
Rudolf Manga Bell and the other early nationalists as far back as 1946,
Cameroon’s union-nationalists decried the divisive, suppressive, oppressive,
retrogressive and exploitative rule of its masters, specifically France and
demanded the reunification and independence of the British Cameroons and French
Cameroun. Unfortunately, the new masters, especially France, did not heed such
a good-intentioned and authentic demand from the majority of Cameroonians. The
UPC (Union of the Populations of Cameroon) that was at the forefront of the
resurgent nationalism suddenly found itself tagged as communists and as an
enemy of France, Britain and the western world. Using wanton oppression, the
French banned the party, and then massacred, sidelined, cowed, corrupted and
banished the true union-nationalists within the UPC. In the place of the
union-nationalists and their original ideals, they put the French-puppet regime
under Ahidjo Ahmadou to lead French Cameroun through quasi independence and
reunification with British Cameroons.
It has been proven from the experiences of the past years that the
majority of Cameroonians have always rejected the system and the Ahidjo and
Biya regimes that the system created. Ahidjo and Biya failed to offer
alternative ideas or programs on how to manage our material and human resources
to eliminate the injustices that are plaguing Cameroon. Instead, they have
shown their determination to continue defending the anachronistic system because
it serves their interest to do so. The present French-backed regime relies
heavily on the nation’s stereotypical armed forces and secret service, just
like its predecessor did. It has not been less enthusiastic about using force
to quell any form of protest or drive towards genuine democracy. Being used
alongside force are the various methods of intimidation, corruption, election
rigging and blackmail that have proven to be effective in other places in
defeating exponents of change.
Completely detached from the Cameroonian people and reality, the present
French-created political structure gives the president limitless powers, while
retaining power and decision making at all levels with the president and his
close collaborators. The results from the workings of the system and its
structures are all negative, with corruption having been elevated to the form
of an art and falsity having become the modus operandi of the Biya regime. The
repercussions from those negative values are the pathetically deep fall in our
standards, and the erosion of our hope and dignity. Still, it does not bother
the Biya regime that the hopeless nature of the status quo has revealed the
unworkable nature of the system and its structures. The levers of the
oppressive machinery of this system are preventing any adoption or acceptance
of counter measures to the regime’s policies, measures that can rejuvenate the
nation. That is why Cameroon’s present political power (The system) must be
totally, completely and irrevocably overhauled if we must find a solution to
the problems of mismanagement and injustices.
4) An agonizing fall in our basic human values is the depressing outcome
of the anti-people policies and governance of the system for over half a
century now. The fall is also the consequence of poor management whose results
are the economic, social and ethnic injustices haunting the Cameroonian nation
today? Morality and its higher order of humanism, which are supposed to be the
cornerstone of any prosperous nation’s order, reputation, legality and even
virtue, have no place in the workings of the anachronistic system and its
custodian, the Biya regime. There is a breakdown in progressive family values―a
rise in the rate of prostitution, drunkenness, drug abuse, juvenile delinquency
and violent crime. Dishonesty and banditry have become a plague in our everyday
lives. Religion has lost its original worth in the eyes of Cameroonians. What
we have in place instead is the individualistic and self-centered concept of
“Everyone for his/her belly”, a concept that embodies corruption,
discrimination and dishonesty― ills that are haunting us today. For now,
preparations and practical actions should be taken to restore the honor,
dignity and progressive values of our traditions. Our new philosophy should
promote constructive dialogue, cooperation and criticism. Our literature,
history and other fields of art should reflect progressive and all-embracing
Cameroonian values like our union-nationalism,
while taking precautions to integrate only those foreign values that are
compatible with Cameroonian reality. Culture, the culture that gives a nation
its special identity is dying in Cameroon. With ties to virtually all the
different cultural groups and language families in Africa, Cameroon deserves to
be the champion of the African culture. Despite that fact, we observe today
that our education, social programs, information and culture and communication
actually discourage the development of our cultures. That is unacceptable.
The idea of how Cameroon should
evolve as it is being experimented by the French-backed system that is under
Paul Biya today has nothing progressive to offer. It has brought conformity
only in the wrong values of dishonesty, corruption, disloyalty, laziness,
discrimination and docility. It has failed to seek, harness and work on
individual and group considerations which if put together constitute the
Cameroonian view. The present outdated system constrains us to the point of despondence, and poses as a tremendous obstacle
to the development of individual and group potentials. It is almost eradicating
self-identity to be replaced by a conformity based on resignation, dishonesty,
corruption and brutality.
Only through a carefully thought out new value, one that realizes the
best of our creative and developmental potentials and one that advocates for a
fundamental change of the anachronistic system, can our potentially great
nation be saved. That new value should be capable of coming up with a new
culture that embodies the progressive Cameroonian cultures. It should be a
culture that would help in the formulation of a progressive political structure
where the powers emanating from its levers would be capable of responding to
the progressive ideas and the hopes and dreams of the Cameroonian people. It is
only through that reconstituted and optimally progressive political and power
structure that there can be an efficient management of our human and material resources, while taking into account
Cameroonian and world realities. As a consequence, the economic, political,
social and ethnic injustices that are prevailing due to the poor management
(abuse of political power, unrealistic culture and the imposed conformity)
would be properly tackled.
Today, the forces that stand as the best champion of the fundamental
change are the union-nationalists. They are found in some of the political
parties, religious bodies, social groupings, and also as individuals. However,
in order to realize the fundamental change, our union-nationalists, young and
old, would be led by the advanced representatives―the tested force.
Janvier Tchouteu April 4, 1995
Afterthought: September 06, 2010
For a nation whose citizens’
investments in other African countries more than triple the investments that
they make at home; for a country with
only about ten percent of its physicians at home ( more than 30% in France
and about 20% in the USA) and that
boasts one of the highest or perhaps the
highest percentage of graduates in
Africa vis-à-vis its population; Cameroon is a hijacked nation with no
sense of direction, Cameroon is a nation held hostage by an anachronistic
French-imposed and backed system that is completely detached from its reality
to the point where it
accuses the USA of human rights violations when the oppressive and
repressive regime and its usurper Head
of State Paul Biya that has been in power for
twenty eight years, is known for changing the constitution with
impunity. In fact, the Biya regime has created the most efficient election
rigging machinery in the world.
Politicians operate in established
systems and do the job of politicking to defend, safeguard or promote certain
interests, be they individual, group, ethnic, regional, linguistic or national,
based on empty phrases or through a clearly defined thought formulation (idea
or concept).
Revolutionaries on the other hand are
those challenging a system, expecting to
bring it down and institute a new system that would serve the interest of the
trodden majority (the suffering or struggling masses). In the cause to bring
down the system, revolutionaries do not expect to benefit or thrive from the
struggle. Instead, they are prepared to sacrifice everything for the struggle.
The sad thing is that while the
Cameroonian struggle to change the system is a revolutionary struggle, most of
the leadership in the so-called
opposition parties talk of politics and
expected rewards even though they are still engaged in the struggle to change
the system. That is why most of them compromised the ideals of the struggle
with excuses that “it is impossible to live on clean politics as a genuine
opposition in Cameroon." There are and there have been Cameroonians who
selflessly gave in their worth to the struggle and felt it was dishonorable to
use the struggle to achieve personal benefits. They were and are the
union-nationalists and revolutionaries.
During my years of involvement in the
struggle, I finally realized that the system (the Ahidjo-Biya regimes backed by
the French mafia group controlling African affairs) feared and respected these
revolutionaries and union-nationalists for their genuineness, unwavering nature
and integrity. But strangely enough, the politicians who profess to be in the
opposition conceived a hatred for these revolutionaries and union nationalists
just because these revolutionaries and union nationalists are genuine and are
not like them, and because they look with horror at the deception of the
politicians who are trying to live off politicking and in doing so, compromised
the struggle and betrayed the aspirations of the struggling masses.
Strangely enough, we failed in this
phase of the struggle (1990-2002) because politicians led the struggle to
change the system (a revolutionary demand) instead of revolutionaries and
union-nationalists who are far less likely to be compromised by the negative
values of the anachronistic French-imposed system.
Janvier Tchouteu Friday, 15
April 2005
The vast majority of the Cameroonian people are aware of the historical
revelation that change is inevitable in Cameroon. Still, this craving for change since 1910 has not brought about the
realization of the New Cameroon. We have all been victims in this difficult,
tortuous, traitorous and unsuccessful drive for change. The execution of our
first nationalist leaders (Martin Paul Samba and Rudolf Duala Manga Bell) by
the German colonial army in 1914, our indifference over that loss, our quiet
acceptance of the partition of German Kamerun by Britain and France into
British Cameroons and French Cameroun, and the methodical suppression and
brainwashing of our nationalism were all indications of the difficulties ahead
for the Cameroonian struggle.
Yes, we were in a state of lethargy
for three decades after partition, a lethargy that left us without the
enthusiasm and an organized force to repudiate the imposed partition of our
land and realize our resurgent nationalism in both British Cameroons and French
Cameroun. This nationalism assumed a union character by advocating for
reunification, independence, freedom, liberty, development of both territories.
Yet, it was a popular desire for change fraught with division, the
self-centeredness of uncommitted leaders and external maneuvers by the colonial
powers. The outcome of that second phase of the Cameroonian struggle was a
partially reunited and quasi-independent Cameroon, where its French-speaking
union-nationalist leaders got eliminated, exiled or subjugated; where its
English-speaking union-nationalists were excluded and cowed into timidity; and
where a Neo-colonialists French-imposed system was put in place managed in
Cameroon by the regimes of puppets Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya.
The first Cameroonian president, his
collaborators and French masters had little or no knowledge of and regard for
the true aspirations of the Cameroonian people. Therefore, in no way could we
have expected the Ahidjo regime and its successor the Biya regime to deliver
Cameroonians to the change that they have been craving for since 1910. It is clear that the foundation of the
quasi-independent and reunited Cameroon was defective even before the nation
was born in 1961. Cameroon’s independence was defective because it was realized
under the usurper Ahidjo regime and France without the consent of the majority
of Cameroonians who constitute the force of our union-nationalism.
If the usurper leaders could not kill
in themselves all the values, thought patterns and habits imbued by their French
overlords, then how could we have expected them to lead Cameroonians to live
the values and pattern of change that would lead to the new and desirable
society of our dreams. This land has never had its destiny in its own hands
since it became a consolidated entity. Imperialistic French designs in the
guise of the French-imposed system, the complicity of the Ahidjo and Biya
regimes, and the unpatriotic, unscrupulous and smug complacent nature of some
Cameroonians have all contributed to cloud the Cameroonian dream for an
authentic change (the creation of the desirable society) and the realization of
the New Cameroon. The demanding task of freeing ourselves from the shackles of
the Biya dictatorship, the retarding French-imposed system and the suffocation
of the people with the evil disposition is not going to be easy. That task
requires the best combination of reasoning, enthusiasm and rational desire. It
is our shortcomings in our concerted efforts at interpreting, manifesting and
applying those forces that are affecting the wind of change in Cameroon today.
May 26, 1990, marked a turning point in the history of the reunified
Cameroon. The corrupt, oppressive, discriminatory, nonchalant, unpatriotic and
incompetent rule of the Ahidjo-Biya regimes under the French-imposed oligarchic
system became opposed across the national territory. Cameroonians were
determined to become a part of the worldwide wind of change generated by
Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost and Perestroika in the Soviet Union.
“Enough is enough”, “We want democracy, freedom, and liberty”, were some of the chants that illuminated the protest marches across the
national territory.
Cameroonians were no longer prepared
to continue allowing a nepotistic, ethnocentric, oligarchic, corrupt and
neo-colonialist system under the Biya regime and its French backers to
determine the course of our destiny. We were vocal in our determination to stop
allowing the weight of decades of oppression, misinformation and misguided
policies to drain us of our dynamism and deprive us from realizing our
century-old dream of a progressive Cameroon. Our expressed desire for change
was a popular aspiration, which called on Cameroonians to discard the wrong
aspects of our past and build a new, totally and completely positive Cameroon.
Our vocal determination not to be left behind in the worldwide wind of change
that promised to realize a free society of nations was understood across Africa
and the rest of the world. Five years after we took that historic step in the
third phase of the Cameroon struggle, we are nowhere close to the change or the
power that is the lever to realize it. Our potentially great nation is being
left behind in the race to technological civilization and the trappings of
human and material progress due to the steadfastness of the anti-people
system. However, what is most worrying
is that, at this early stage of the struggle, the forces for change are more
divided than they were before 1990.
What went wrong?
Five years after, it has become clear for all to see that we have
betrayed the drive towards change. We wanted change without ensuring a
fundamental change of our mentalities, which had been badly infected during the
years of political lethargy. Yes, we wanted change when we had not humanized
our dehumanized selves. The change we wanted was only in words. We failed to
react, respond and feel to the new demands of change as a renewed and
reinvigorated people. That is why we could not detach ourselves from the more
blinding aspects of our irrational desires, in order to conform to reasoning
and enthusiasm. We have not fully braced ourselves to throw away the influences
of the past years of colonialism, political lethargy, despondence, dishonesty,
cynicism and distrust that had gripped the noble Cameroonian soul. Our desire
for change has almost been defeated by the open and hidden enemies of change
because of our empty phrases, feeble actions and divided ranks. The enemies of
the people have pervaded our midst, ebbed away our energy and actions,
denigrated our objectives and poisoned our minds. The enemies of the people
have left Cameroonians, even those who are instinctively union-nationalist, in
disarray
But then, who are these enemies of the people?
Simply, they are the criminals to the
progressive Cameroonian spirit, the obstacles to the realization of the century
old Cameroonian dream for a desirable society. Amongst the enemies of the
people are the anti-union-nationalists, the pseudo-intellectuals, the
unscrupulous politicians, the verminous businesspersons, the oblivious
functionaries, neurotic leaders and even we the struggling masses.
1) The anti-union-nationalists, also
made up of pseudo-nationalists, can be found in and out of the government of
Paul Biya. These anti-union-nationalists are against the century old
Cameroonian dream― an advanced ideal permeated by progressive Cameroonian
concepts that is aimed at:
·
Creating
a genuine bilingual character for the nation
·
Bridging
the gap in the development of both the English and French-speaking territories
·
Realizing
a new, desirable and humanized Cameroonian mentality from the different breeds
of thoughts and actions of its Anglophone and Francophone children
2) The pseudo-intellectuals are
anti-union-nationalist with the extra cloak of advanced learning. The fact that
they are detached from the Cameroonian dream subjects their high learning to
misuse. These pseudo-intellectuals defend the shortcomings of their personal,
family, clique, ethnic, linguistic and cultural attachments to the system
through unjustifiable lies that defame the cause. Found at all levels in the
Cameroonian society, they easily ally with both the internal and external
forces against the people. They dominate the present regime, and they are noted for their failure to make their high
learning compatible with the Cameroonian reality and to contribute to
Cameroon’s socio-economic progress. They have never interpreted ideas, conveyed
opinions and worked for the true aspirations of the people during the past four
decades. These pseudo-intellectuals led by Paul-Biya are the greatest junks to
the practical progress of this nation. They have distinguished themselves as those
who have been spectacular in one field, but who for the sake of publicity and
self-interest, expound beyond the limits of their talents and knowledge, and
seek to educate, convince and win over the uninformed and undecided on subjects
far beyond their scope. While engaging in this deception, these
pseudo-intellectuals are aware of the fact that some people believe and respect
them as intellectuals due to their academic achievements and ratings in their
true fields. The fact that they go ahead to expound on the fields much beyond
their scope and grasp, while knowing that they know little, and while also
knowing that the people do not know that they know little beyond their true
fields, makes them criminals to the progressive Cameroonian spirit. During the past
four decades, the anti-union-nationalists have been working with the
pseudo-intellectuals and the French powerhouse to give Cameroonians a false
concept of themselves and to derail and delay the fundamental changes that we
have been craving for.
3) Cameroonian politicians manifest
the inner contradictions that have gripped our political scene during the past
five decades. It has been observed with clarity that our politics is mostly a
juxtaposition of anti-francophone practices, anti-Anglophone tendencies,
ethnocentrism, regionalism, elitism, demagoguery and self-interest. Few of our
political leaders are union-nationalists at heart even though the Cameroonian
spirit is instinctively proud of the Cameroonian identity and upholds the dream
of a desirable Cameroonian society. The different politicians and political
groupings are very much a reflection of the extent of their embracement of
these contradictory values. All the same, few of our politicians have indicated
their true positions over the different concepts. Many insincerely identify
themselves with popular political groupings whose ideologies they do not share.
A look at these politicians can give us insights into the dilemma
union-nationalists are facing in the struggle.
·
The
Francophiles or Anglophobes are those politicians who have an excessive
fondness of French values, customs, people, institutions and/or manners. In their over-zealousness, they jealously or
regretfully defend their fondness for anything French by being Anglophobes in
rhetoric and actions. Besides being Francophiles, these politicians are openly
ethnocentric, nepotistic and self-centered. It is clear for all to see that
Francophiles have overwhelming dominated the system through the Ahidjo and Biya
regimes.
·
The
counterparts of the Francophiles are the Anglophiles or Francophobes. They also
share the ethnocentric, nepotistic and self-centeredness of the Francophiles.
They have been very much excluded from the country’s political life just as
much as the union-nationalists have. But many of them hide or have hidden their
anti-French tendencies for the benefits and opportunities offered by the
French-imposed system. The fact that
these Francophiles and Anglophiles have snuggled themselves into all the major
political groupings makes it difficult for the realization of change because
they pose as the major dividing force in the country. In the most unfortunate accident in our
history, Cameroon has been dominated by the minority regimes of Francophiles
and their Anglophone collaborators. Time has proven that this nightmarish
alliance and governance led to the ruination of our country to the pathetic
state that it is today. All true union-nationalists need to take upon
themselves the responsibilities to mitigate the effects of the bitterness and
the distrust that exists between some in our English and French-speaking
communities.
·
An
insult to the progressive minds of Cameroonians are the group of politicians
whose political parties are out to secure individual, tribal or group interest―
politicians who openly flaunt their disregard for the collective Cameroonian
interest. The MDR of Diakolle Diasalla, the renegade UPC of Augustine Kodock,
the PDC, etc. dominate this group.
·
Cameroonians
are also aware of another ambiguous group of politicians who have also snuggled
themselves into popular political groups that have a national character and are
regarded as the true guarantors of change. These so-called friends of the
people are the most heinous of Judases who have concealed their vast selfish
designs and traits of Francophilism, Anglophilism, tribalism, ethnocentrism and
regionalism behind the general phrase of working for the interest of the
people. Scratch them and you will find the enemies of the people, their true
selves, staring back at you. However, their impatience and the goodwill of
nature shall soon force them out of the mainstream of the struggle.
The people whose dreams have been
betrayed and whose enthusiasm and dignity have been undermined should know that
unless these pillars of reaction, conservatism and deceit are overthrown or
rendered impotent, we would always find ourselves held back in our genuine
efforts for change. It should be understood that these forces against change
would persist in their deceptive ways in order to maintain their selfish
interests and biased motives. Their steadfastness is making it difficult for
the struggling Cameroonian masses to overcome their oppression and trauma,
forcing them to make only desperate, unintelligent and futile protests and resistances.
The interest of Cameroonians would be guaranteed only in a situation where they
stay totally committed in their support for the authentic union-nationalists
who are the true friends of the people.
4) Another enemies of the people are
the unscrupulous businesspersons whose game plan is to prevail economically
through unlawful means. They make excessive profits through tax evasion,
extortion, defrauding, profiteering, racketeering, double-dealing and
complicity in the wanton destruction and sale of the country’s resources. These
unscrupulous businesspersons are indifferent to the fact that they are running
the country down. The fact that they are in alliance with the unscrupulous Biya
regime and that they dread any change that would require them to do clean
business makes them enemies of the cause for a New Cameroon. Most of their cash is stashed in foreign
banks because they fear the inevitable change would lead to confiscation. A
critical look at the activities of the unscrupulous businesspersons reveals
that they drain rather than contribute to the economy of Cameroon. They should
be discouraged or legally disabled if they reject doing business in a clean
manner in the New Cameroon. They are scum to the progressive business spirit, and they pose as a major obstacle to
change and modernization. It should be noted that they are setting a bad
precedence to the humanized and progressive businesspersons who would emerge
from the new system that would emerge from change, businesspersons whose
economic activities would also be out to alleviate the standards of the
Cameroonian people.
5) No less a powerful obstacle to
change is the functionary. For forty years, it has been so easy for radical
nationalists, intellectuals, honest managers and competent administrators to be
transformed into government functionaries who console themselves with the
thought that they are working for the people and doing well within the
framework of office routine in the corrupt system. They are using this
professed goodness to justify their political inertia and compliance with the
policies of the Biya-regime. The fact that these functionaries have given their
unconditional allegiance to the French-imposed system and the Biya regime makes
it difficult for them to wrestle their much-deserved interest from the
government. This self-created difficulty emanates from the simple fact that
these functionaries always believed that a holy alliance exists between them
and the regimes, an alliance where they would have to defend the system even
though it had become irredeemably bad. Even though it is obvious that the Biya
regime has unilaterally broken the alliance, these functionaries are still in
political inertia. Because they too have been enemies of the people in their
actions and opponents of change in their bygone interests, they now find it
difficult to heed the general call for change and join the people from whose
ranks they come from. This timidity and foolish pride from the functionaries
only helps to stall the wind of change, despite the fact that reality calls for
an alliance between them and the people.
6) Leadership problems have been
Cameroon’s infantile malady since reunification and independence. The fact that
its genuine leaders who had the support of its people were massacred, exiled,
sidelined and cowed into submission by the French and the puppet Ahidjo and
Biya regimes left us with the curse of false leaders. Yes, the past four
decades have indicated that. The leadership spectrum in Cameroon is a conflict
of four types of leaders:
·
We
have the bad leaders whose leaderships have done much to destroy the way of
life and the progressive values of the Cameroonian people. The usurper Paul
Biya who presides as the president of Cameroon is a bad leader in the classic
sense of the word, and rivals his
predecessor in that domain. Lesser bad
leaders are comic Cameroonian political figures like Augustine Kodock, Gustav
Esaka, Diakolle Diasala, Achidi Achu and Bello Bouba Miagari.
·
Also
dominant in Cameroon’s political scene are the brilliant leaders. These leaders
made themselves appealing to the people even despite their true intentions and
convictions. They are the demagogues and renegades to the ideals they associate
with. Towering in this group are figures like Ahidjo, Solomon Tandeng Muna,
Mayi Matip, Hogbe Nleng, Musonge Peter, Woungly Masaga and other noisy but
insignificant political figures around. Less conspicuous are the renegades of
the people’s parties who are posing as union-nationalists.
·
Not
absent in the political game are the intelligent political figures. They get
over the people and their values, and
defy their beliefs through political maneuvers that only serve their interest.
The intelligent leaders make the people to think, look and work in the
direction that is to his interest, ego and conviction, sometimes combining his
efforts with handouts and other inauthentic benevolent gestures. It is
unfortunate that many Cameroonians have been brainwashed to cherish these
handouts. Ahidjo and his disciples led by Bello Bouba Maigari are the masters
of this deception.
·
What
Cameroon has been deprived of the most are the wise leaders. These are leaders
who are realistic in their dealings with the people. They understand the
people’s plights, hopes, fears, strengths, weaknesses, and try to help them to
realize their dreams. These are the true friends of the people, the true
union-nationalists from the times of Martin Paul Samba to the generations of
the historic UPC leaders and over to our contemporary times. Unfortunately, for
the Cameroonian struggle, none of the wise leaders have ever been allowed to
harness the support of the majority of Cameroonians to lead the country. We
hold the French puppeteers and the puppet regimes of Ahidjo and Biya
responsible for that.
7) Depressing as it may sound,
another set of enemies of the people is the self-centered flag bearers. These
are the Cameroonian artists, players, writers, scientists and representatives
of the country abroad who in the quest for glory conceal the plight of the
Cameroonian people behind the façade of success. They would not stand by the
people if it means working against their interests at home and abroad.
8) To be honest with ourselves, we
the struggling masses are also posing as an obstacle to change. We have desired
for the destruction of the corrupt, degrading, oppressive and inhuman
French-imposed system without ridding ourselves of the recognized wrong habits,
values and mentalities that we picked up from the system. We have not even
begun to live, think and work in the patterns that are required of us by the
new society that we intend to build. It is possible that even if we get rid of
the present system, we may find ourselves incapable of instituting the complete
change that we need because most of us may continue to think, act and live in
the ways that the puppet regimes have deformed our minds into doing. In many
ways, our words alone have changed without a corresponding change in ourselves.
For us to realize our dreams, we are expected to match our change in words with
a change in thought patterns and actions.
Or else, we would remain our own worst enemies.
A sincere review of the political
activities in Cameroon since May 26, 1990,
reveals that the movement for change has encountered temporary setbacks in the third
phase of the Cameroonian struggle. These setbacks are due to the actions of the
anti-nationalists, the pseudo-intellectuals, the unscrupulous politicians, the
verminous businesspersons, the oblivious functionaries, the neurotic leaders
with a fair degree of intelligence, brilliancy and ruthlessness, as well as the
struggling masses suffering from incomprehension. Without clearing our ranks,
without being conscious of discipline and enforcing it all the more, without
reassessing our commitments and objectives, and without humanizing our
dehumanized selves, we may be compelled to wander a little longer in the
wilderness of aimlessness, futility and incomprehension. An even when we get to
the inevitable change, we may be surprised to find that we are incapable of
harnessing our potentials to the fullest because of our old ties to the
dehumanizing post-independence mentality and system.
NOVEMBER 24, 1994
Tchouteu Janvier
Pose this question to any Cameroonian
with a deep perception of the world: Who is Africa’s most dishonest and
illusionary head of state? The answer from the absolute majority would be obvious.
Our tenant in the unity palace is that head of state.
Cameroon’s
second president is a bad leader in the furthest sense of the word. His
governance has destroyed most of the foundations of our people’s way of life
and progressive values. Unprincipled, unscrupulous and visionless, he was
elusive enough during his early years of leadership by convincing many to
regard him as a brilliant leader. Yes, he made himself brilliant and appealing
to the people even despite his true convictions.
The
second Cameroonian president as the demagogue he is, harangued about his NEW DEAL of Rigor and
Moralization, when he never intended to work for the interest of all
Cameroonians. He came to power for the sole purpose of defending the interest of his patron(The mafia
in the French establishment over its African policy), to enhance the material
well-being and social position of his clique of unscrupulous businessmen,
politicians, functionaries and above all the ethnic group of his birth.
The
second Cameroonian president is a dishonorable man without convictions. He
began his political manifestations as a Cameroonian nationalist of socialist
orientation under the banner of the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC),
but soon unhesitatingly discarded his nationalist garment for the high
positions offered to renegades of the Cameroonian struggle by the Anglophobic
Ahidjo regime and its French masters. Having switched his loyalty to the glory
of naked power in the French-backed regime overseeing the genocide of the union-nationalist
forces in Cameroon, Paul Biya quickly won the hearts of his patron to become
prime minister in 1972 and later president in 1982. After that, he shed all
aspects of his ties to Cameroonian nationalism and became a fervent Francophile
and Anglophone manipulator. Today, it is clear for all to see that Paul Biya
stands as the leader of the renegade forces that may eventually kill
Cameroonian nationalism and lead the nation into abyss, denying it the
realization of its century old Cameroonian dream of unity, independence,
prosperity and open opportunities. He is a purposeless, faceless and paranoiac
leader whose long years of power and the emptiness of his rule have been masked
by France and his Cameroonian collaborators.
During
his early years as head of state, Paul Biya talked of rigor in the
implementation of progressive work ethics, rules, laws, freedom, Human rights
and economic reforms, when he never intended to see the slightest change in the
French imposed system he inherited from his predecessor. Biya never had any
intention to change the course of dictatorship, corruption, kleptomania and
division that was the rule of the system and the trappings of power and wealth
it offered. A decade after his pronouncement
of rigor, Cameroon which had the second fastest economic growth rate in the
world after South Korea in 1986( though
it lagged behind its true potentials even then), is today with the least
promising economy in Africa.
Biya’s
moralization rhetoric is an unacceptable abuse to humanity. Promising to make
his rule a moral one where governance would be
based on a program to enhance the right conducts in public, social, economic and political
affairs, he reneged by presiding over the worst degeneration of a non-war
ravaged nation in Africa.
Unfortunately,
for Cameroonians, Biya is one of those regrettable products of nature with
quite an exceptional strength of character that is a negation of a good
leadership. It does not bother him in the least that his practically wrong
actions and leadership has reduced Cameroonians into a poverty-stricken people,
eroded their sense of purpose, divided their ranks, rendered them into the
grips of despondence, denigrated their influence in national and international
politics, and encouraged corruption to the form of an art; and above all, it
suits his propose that he has wrapped Cameroon into the clutch and whims of
France.
After
becoming the president in 1982, Biya has ruled Cameroon more like an absentee
caretaker than even an absentee landlord. A two-month trip abroad for amusement
using the taxpayer’s money is unprecedented from any head of state.
Nevertheless, it surprises only those who have no insight into his personality.
Biya committed moral suicide years ago and now lacks the morality that is expected
from a head of state. His rule has shattered the bilateral respect that
prevailed between the different generations.
From
peasant origins, Biya has learnt, but wrongly assimilated aristocratic values.
The sad result of this is his blatant and unjustifiable contempt of the masses
from where he had his origins. As a man of high learning, it is unfortunate
that despite his long years of service in the system, he still possesses all
the traits of a pseudo-intellectual and a pedant. And it is due to his
awareness of his intellectual feebleness that he has developed a masked
inferiority complex. That is why he rejects, snubs and shies away from the good
ideas of his intellectual superiors.
Cameroon
is the only nation in Africa where its true liberation fighters and
nationalists were never permitted to the helm of power. It is the first nation
in Africa where France became deeply involved in collaboration with Ahidjo, in
the genocide of those who resisted its deception (close to a million deaths in
the 1956-1970 war against the UPC). Cameroon is the only country in Africa,
which has been the most cruelly raped in our modern times by France. Even
though Cameroonians are one of the most dynamic people in the continent, they
have never been left to their devices to harness their potentials and build
their country into the great nation that it truly deserves. Instead,
Cameroonians have been brought low by a conspiracy hatched during the years of
Jacques Foccart’s control of French policy on Africa, a conspiracy that has
effectively used Cameroonian collaborators, especially Paul Biya.
It
does not bother the second Cameroonian president in the least that the
Cameroonian people are suffocating in his bondage. He has lost touch with the
Cameroonian masses, the Cameroonian reality and life in its different forms.
However, unlike his psychopathic counterpart, the Roman emperor Nero, he has
mastered one art―the art of retaining power despite the opposition from the
masses. And as most megalomaniacs and experimentalists, he would continue to
experiment with his theory of power
retention, despite his unpopularity, not worried that the Cameroonian people
are being dragged into abyss in the process.
Biya
is performing his theory of power retention on us, an experiment that will go a
long way to destroy the best of our creative forces if left to persist.
Moreover, with that will be the destruction of the faith we have in our dream
and worst still the mother of progress, which is hope. The sad result of the
disaster of Biya’s rule would be the death of Cameroon. To the rational mind,
that is unacceptable.
Perhaps
for a little while longer, the living specter of the second Cameroonian
president will continue to haunt the people―treacherous in his ways, ruthless
in his methods and nonchalant in his views. It is our unavoidable task, if only
for the sake of our children, that we rise up ― take back our dignity, hope and
future from him and his patrons. Then following the natural course of history,
we shall confine him and his legacy to the dustbin of history.
February 28, 1995 Janvier
Tchouteu
Cameroonians were not the only ones
who disbelieved him when he made that pronouncement among other things. Many of
those who follow political developments in the world in
general, and in Africa and Cameroon in particular, marveled at his audacity.
After all, more than 80% of the Cameroonian population loathed his rule; he was
already in power for more than two decades as the head of state, after having
been the country’s prime minister (1972-1982) or the second most powerful
person in the system put in place in Cameroon by the French overlords.
But Paul Biya proved everyone wrong.
He pulled off another electoral charade and declared himself the winner in the
October 2004 presidential election, and then changed his
constitution in 2008 that would allow him to run for two more
presidential 7-year terms (despite the deaths of 150 protesting
Cameroonians caused by his armed forces), meaning that he could be president
until the year 2025 (a record 43 years in power) when he would be 92 years
of age.
That explains why by the time Paul
Biya held another masquerade called presidential elections in October
2011, he had already successfully humbled the internationally recognized
opposition heads (who are all former members of the country’s sole political
party from 1972-1990, a party Biya has been leading since 1984), promised to
give them positions in his government and made it known in plain terms that the
system string-controlled by the puppeteer (France) would never allow political
change in Cameroon that would curtail France’s unrestricted interests in the
African country.
The octogenarian Paul Biya is
variously described as the Maradona (he fakes and wins elections just like
Maradona faked and scored a goal in his “Hand of God” goal) of Cameroonian and
African politics, the master of presidential patricide (he devoured his
predecessor who passed over power to him, leading to the first Cameroonian
president Ahmadou Ahidjo’s exile, death and burial abroad—Senegal), the
absentee president, the vindictive president, the evil president, etc. etc.
As a German colony from 1884-1916,
Kamerun was often referred to by the German Colonial administration and the
imperial-minded in the Kaiser’s Germany as an “African Pearl”, owing to the
colony’s robust economy, highest literacy rate in the continent in the early
1900s, magnificent physical features, rich and varied vegetation cover, and
also owing to its diverse ethnic ethnicities that included all the major
language groups in Africa (Afro-Asia, Niger-Congo-A, Niger-Congo-B or Bantu,
and Nilo-Saharan. In fact, historians consider the German colony of Kamerun as
a major part of Adolf Hitler’s rue over the territories Germany lost after the
First World because of the peace terms imposed on it by the victories Allied
Powers during the Versailles Conference. As it happens, one of the peace terms
imposed on the post-Kaiser Germany was the loss of German Kamerun to Britain
and France. That was how Kamerun was partitioned into British Cameroons and French
Cameroun.
As a matter of fact, the French
Cameroun mandate became France’s most valuable assert in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Its value was validated even further when the territory became the Launchpad of
French General Charles De Gaulle-led Free French Forces that wrestled French
Equatorial Africa from the Nazi puppet regime of Vichy France during the Second
World War. This force would gallantly
fight alongside Allied Forces against
Italian and German forces in Libya, Tunisia and the Middle East, before
carrying on to Italy and France where their biggest achievement was the
liberation of Paris. The fact that French Camerounians played an invaluable
role in the war effort to liberate France from Nazi Germany makes the
explanation simple as to why French Camerounian soldiers returned home and
sought self-government, liberty, democracy, reunification with British
Cameroons that would culminate in the independence of the two United Nations
Trust Territories. They were merely seeking the rights that they had helped
France to regain from Nazi Germany, which is why pundits were not surprised at
all.
The formation of the UPC (Union of
the Populations of the Camerouns) in French Cameroun in 1946 and the birth of
sister union-nationalist (civic-nationalist) parties in British Cameroons
highlighted the seriousness of the former Kamerunians to work together to build
a “New Cameroon”. By 1955, the UPC
commanded more than 80% of popular support in French Cameroun.
So pundits considered it foolhardy
when the French government issued a decree banning the UPC on July 13, 1955 in French
Camerouns, a strategic act that was followed by the party’s ban in British
Cameroons three years later on the same fabricated charges of inciting violence
and for being communists. These coordinated moves by Africa’s two foremost
colonial masters at the time was supposed to spell disaster for the dream held
by Cameroon’s leaders. Many Cameroonians saw nothing but duplicity and
hypocrisy in the moves, wondering whether the freedom they had assisted the
Free French Forces to achieve for France and its citizens was a special right
or privilege meant for “White People” only.
When in 1956, the UPC resorted to a
partisan war of liberation from French rule, it was a belated move to confront
France after failing to resolve the ban in a peaceful manner. That war would
end with the defeat of the UPC in 1970, a defeat that came with the
assassinations and execution of the party’s successive heads in 1958, 1960
and 1971, i.e., the deaths of Ruben Um
Nyobe, Dr. Felix Moumie and Ernest Ouandie respectively. It would leave
Cameroon entrapped through a French-imposed system rooted in the Colonial Pact
France made its puppets sign before allowing their countries to become members
of the United Nations Organization by granting these former colonies
string-controlled independence.
Despite the period of instability
during the country’s unsuccessful war of liberation that saw the French
Trusteeship masters handing power to those who never asked for or never fought
for it (the puppets that constitute the system today), despite the eventual
peaceful reunification of British Southern Cameroons with the former French
Cameroun, despite Cameroon’s
agricultural recovery and the discovery of oil in the 1970s that saw the
country emerge as Africa’s eight largest economy and the world’s second fastest
growing in the early 1980s, Cameroon is today in a horrible shape.
The Cameroonian economy that was
expected to grow twenty times over the next thirty years, i.e., from 1982-2012,
barely doubled over that period of time. Everything changed for the worse after
Paul Biya was handed power in November 1982 by the first French-installed
puppet Cameroonian president Ahmadou Ahidjo. Since then, Cameroon has
experienced the biggest proportionate embezzlement of state funds ever recorded
in Africa. And the country holds the sad record as the country in Africa that
has experienced the worst peacetime impoverishment since 1960.
Today, president Paul Biya is
presiding over a nation where more than 80% of its physicians are abroad, where
more than 90% of its doctorate degree holders are abroad, where Cameroonians
invest abroad more than at home, where Cameroonians are voting against the
system with their feet; today, Cameroon’s neighbors who before envied its high
standards of living and saw it as a place of refuge and opportunities, now find
Cameroonians envying them as they forge ahead with a sense of direction while
Cameroon lags behind in its spiral towards total, complete and horrifying
economic, social and political decay.
People unfamiliar with the
Cameroonian situation would be wondering why such an abysmal situation
persists. Well; the answer is simple. Cameroon finds itself today in a
situation like someone in a quicksand because of the anachronistic system put
in place by Gaullist France when General Charles De Gaulle returned to power in
1958 and decided to make France's former colonies and territories members of
the United Nations Organization (UNO), while controlling them with transparent
or invisible strings this time. French Cameroun and British Southern Cameroons
achieved independence and reunification all right, only for the people to find
that the new country is quasi-independent under a broader French template of
control variously described as FrancAfrique. This French-imposed system has
traumatized, demoralized, divided and dehumanized the Cameroonian people over
the years.
The Gaullist system in place put in
place by the elites of the French political establishment has as one of its
major objectives the exclusion from Cameroon’s political power of the
union-nationalists advocating for the reunification and independence of the
divided territories of the former German Kamerun, civic nationalists who
commanded the support of more than 80% of the populations of both territories
of British Cameroons and French Cameroun in the 1950s and 1960s. The current
system in Cameroon is a partnership of French imperial interest in Africa
(economic and political) otherwise known as FrancAfrique and its Cameroonian
collaborators (the renegades and anti-union-nationalists who never opposed and
who do not object to France’s neo-colonial stranglehold of Cameroon).
The system has been effective in
infecting the minds of many Cameroonians, reducing them into a state of
hopelessness, in a process that lures them to direct their energy not against
the Biya regime and the system, but at their neighbors. The system has
successfully elevated corruption and the divide-and-rule strategy into an
art—it has promoted the notion of settlers and indigenes, it has encouraged
ethno-centrism, tribalism, clannishness, regional jingoism, sectarianism and
other forms of division. We see a total and complete absence of strategic or
even tactical planning when it comes to the economic and social development of
the nation. We see a complete absence of social solidarity.
To compound the division and
confusion among the people who reject the Biya regime and the French-imposed
system, the so-called opposition leaders these freedom-craving Cameroonians had
been looking up to have now been absorbed back into the system, leaving the
struggling Cameroonian masses distrustful of politicians in general. Today, the
down-trodden Cameroonian people are in a state of political lethargy.
When Paul Biya called for the holding
of senate elections in April 2013, eighteen years after his parliament
promulgated a law to create one, most Cameroonians thought it would be another
charade, as usual. It made no sense for the so-called opposition parties with a
semblance of representation in parliament to glorify the charade with their
participation. Most Cameroonians knew the system was sustaining these so-called
opposition leaders financially and that some of them were in the government,
but Cameroonians were not prepared for the extent to which these politicians
would go to insult their intelligence. But deals between the ruling party and
the opposition were made all right. The electoral masquerade took place and the
people saw the ruling party campaigning for the so-called main opposition party
(Social Democratic Front—SDF) in some regions of the country, while the SDF in
the words of its chairman or president John Fru Ndi “…one good turn
deserves another...”, openly backed the ruling party, thereby ensuring its
victory in other regions of the country.
How could that have happened?
Politically-shocked Cameroonians have been asking themselves ever since the
open fornication between the ruling party and the so-called opposition
political parties in April 2013.
To prevent chaos and ensure a smooth
succession, SDF spokes-persons and apologists quip.
“Paul Biya has a deal with the SDF to
hand over power to one of its members,” some anonymous voices within the SDF
echo.
If you ask me, my answer is clear.
What was supposed to be a Cameroonian revolution that began on May 26, 1990,
became a political comedy played by former members of the French-imposed system
or political establishment, a political comedy that has gone full circle. The
worldwide wind of change generated by Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost and
Perestroika that swept away authoritarian systems in Eastern Europe and Africa,
and that stirred the vast majority of Cameroonians in the 1990s to risk their
lives in the streets demanding political change, was effectively controlled by
the system. The desire for change that more than 80% of
Cameroonians have has been hijacked by the authoritarian system in
Cameroon and the so-called leaders of the opposition. The people got taken for
a ride.
The biggest mistake made by Cameroonians
was that when the clamor for change began, they followed Cameroonians who had
no democratic credentials, people who hardly a year before were in the upper
echelons of power in the system, but who at the time claimed they had left the
ruling party and now opposed it. All the so-called heads of what the world
knows today as the prominent opposition parties in Cameroon (John Fru Ndi of
the SDF, Bello Bouba Maigari of the UNDP, Ndam Njoya of the CDU etc.) were
members of the ruling party right up to the year 1990, when the system was
forced to accept multi-party politics in Cameroon. Like the Pied Piper, these
so-called opposition leaders lured freedom-starved Cameroonians into greater
despondence and political lethargy. Such a feat was achieved only because
Cameroonian liberals, union-nationalists, revolutionaries, democrats and
patriots who had always rejected the system, thought these so-called heads of
the so-called new opposition, these people who were the first to make the
moves to create political parties, shared the vision of the “New Cameroon” that
Cameroonians fought, died and voted for, a vision that achieved the land's
reunification and independence (though it has never been real because it got
usurped by the evil system that today is under the leadership of Paul Biya and
his French puppeteers.), but that is yet to realize democracy, freedom,
liberalism, progress, justice, equality and development.
False are the statements by members
of the compromised opposition that had they not openly embraced the Biya regime
and the system, chaos would have ensued in Cameroon incase Biya
exited the political scene. There is no truth in the statement because the system in Cameroon is
authoritarian, not autocratic.
Authoritarian regimes are
usually coated with a sublime idea that could be political
(Stalinism/Marxism/Communism, Fascism etc.), that could be religious (Iranian
and Taliban theocracy etc.) or that could be an interest arrangement
(FrancAfrique). In Cameroon, the system is built around preventing those who
believe in the Cameroonian struggle (the union-nationalists, otherwise called
the Kamerunists) from attaining power.
The system in Cameroon is a
collection of individual interest groups, bringing together the propagators of
French neo-colonialism and their Cameroonian collaborators. Paul Biya is the
head of the collaborationists. And in many ways, he has been acting over
the years as an absentee president. Meanwhile, the state has been
functioning zombie-like during his quasi-presence. As a matter of fact,
even though the mortifying arrangement suited the interest of the
puppeteers and the beneficiaries of the system, it exposed the system to
popular uprisings since that means the beneficiaries of the system are not
clearly or functionally organized. With the advent of social media,
globalization, the maturity of post-independence generations that
never benefited from the system; and with the soldiers of the 1990s
phase of the struggle dissociating themselves from the so-called opposition
leaders, the authoritarian system now finds itself even more vulnerable.
The authoritarian system would be
faced by a new political force that never associated itself with the system, a
new political force that embodies the spirit of the century old struggle for
the “NEW KAMERUN” or “NEW CAMEROON” that confronted German colonial control,
stood up to French duplicity in the land in a war that decimated more than half
a million of its supporters; the authoritarian system would be faced by a new
force that embraces the legacy of those who fought, died and voted for the
independence and reunification of Cameroon, a new force that rejects all the
values of the system that the French political mafia over Africa put in place
in their game plan to control the destiny of Cameroon, a six-decade old evil system that can only
lead the country to abyss.
Now, as the open and hidden
collaborators of the system openly embrace one another (the ruling party
and the so-called heads of the so-called opposition parties) starting with the
recent senatorial charade where the so-called principal opposition—the Social
Democratic Front (SDF) and the party of Paul Biya—Cameroon People’s Democratic
Movement (CPDM) supported each other’s aspirations in agreed-upon provinces
with guaranteed votes from party members, the system is encouraging the
creation of elite groups of beneficiaries who see or think that their
political and economic survival rests only in a continuation or sustenance
of the system. We are observing the evolvement of a system that is
shedding any pretense of limited political pluralism; we are observing the
entrenchment of a system that openly views the people as its number one enemy.
Such a system then becomes autocratic.
In a nutshell, Cameroon’s so-called
opposition political parties that are in symbiosis with the authoritarian
system are aiding the system in its gradual transition into an autocratic
system, thereby ensuring its survival in a morphed form.
The rapidly changing system needs a strong man to be truly
autocratic. This would be someone who has hands on the job to act as the
president, someone who the French puppeteers would like to portray as the
benevolent despot.
As Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany
said, “The concept of the benevolent dictator, just like the concepts of the
noble thief or the honest whore, is no more than a meaningless fantasy.”
It is the place of post-independence
Cameroonians to reject whatever farce the system comes up with as change
whenever power passes down to the generation after Paul Biya. By absorbing
former members of his party who for decades identified with the opposition,
Biya is trying to give Cameroonians and the rest of the world the impression
that Cameroon’s opposition is in sync with his vision for the political
evolution of Cameroon. Unfortunately, the system does not intend to let the
majority of Cameroonians participate or have a say in Cameroon’s political
development or evolution.
The New Cameroon will be founded. Not
by beneficiaries of the system (past and present) but by those who have always
rejected it as an evil system that has been leading Cameroon into abyss.
But then, in founding the New
Cameroon, patriotic, honest, democratic, unbiased and progressive minded
Cameroonians would have to reconcile a country where:
- the
system made sure that most of its historic figures who dedicated their
lives and even died for the cause for Cameroon's reunification and
independence got killed and buried like dogs at home and abroad,
- the
bodies of some of these historic figures that got buried abroad are
missing,
- a few of
the historic figures who thought they could contribute in nation-building
got sidelined, cowed and humiliated by the system,
- its
first head of state died and is buried abroad,
- and
where the people have been insulted for more than five decades by the
regimes of Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya through an imposed minority
system that sowed the seeds of division, corruption, mediocrity, fear and
despondence that are haunting Cameroon today.
The ideas and ideals of the New Cameroon hatched by
the country's historic civic-nationalists and developed over the years
by post-independence union-nationalists is Cameroon's only bargain with
the future. It is the only nucleus around which Cameroon can reconcile
with its turbulent past; it is the nucleus that all the strata of
Cameroonian society can connect to in the process of nation building; it is the
only nucleus around which a free, democratic, liberal, fair
and prosperous Cameroon can be built. The New Cameroon would lead the
country in taking its merited place in the central African region, Africa as a
whole, and the world at large. That would be possible only if we confine the
legacies of the Ahidjo/Biya regimes and the suffocating French-imposed system
to the dustbin of history.
Janvier
Tchouteu
06/04/2013
However, getting to four decades
after, we are still nowhere close to the dreams that had sustained our hopes.
Poverty, disease, illiteracy, repression, ethnic divisions, corruption,
underdevelopment and external domination still plague us, and in many aspects,
even worse than before independence. Yet, we thought that ridding ourselves of
colonialism through quasi-independence would automatically give birth to the
broom that would clear up all aspects of our underdevelopment. Our
post-independence leadership and pseudo-intellectuals fooled us because they
lacked the will and vision to utilize the potentials of the lands they were
leading. They failed us by not mastering the Archimedean point of our
underdevelopment and development potentials. The self-serving systems put in
place by colonial masters like France and the lever they conceived and hoped to
spin the different African countries to greater heights was a reflection of
their egos and delusions than of their intelligence, will and rationale.
In Cameroon today, we are faced by
the colossal task of starting from the scratch, which involves demolishing the
failed and unprogressive anti-democratic and exploitative French-imposed system
and putting in place a new, progressive and compatible system that would be the
reflection of the original goals of Cameroon’s union-nationalism and the
genuine aspirations of the people. This would be a system that would place the
country firmly among the community of progressive, democratic, representative,
enlightened and advanced nations.
Today, the history of humanity has
reached that great scale of change where the key words of technological
progress, freedom, liberty, development, solidarity and integration are making
great strides to be parts of our everyday lives. It has been observed with
clarity that the Cameroonian people are being left behind in this great
advancement of humanity because of the selfish objectives and actions of the
oligarchy that stays in power through the deceptive French-imposed system. This
autocratic, minority, pseudo-representative, corrupt and unpatriotic regime
cannot alleviate the poverty, disease, despair, illiteracy, corruption, rising
ethno-centrism, brain drain and incomprehension that against the sake of
humanity is being accepted as part of our everyday lives. The unacceptable
nature of the five-decade system can best be explained by Dmitri Ivanovich
Pisarev’s denunciation of autocracy:
On the side of the government, there are only the scoundrels bought with
money squeezed by fraud and violence from the poor. On the side of the people,
there is all that is fresh and youthful, all that can think and doing. What is
dead and rotten (the autocratic government) must of itself fall into the grave.
All we have to do is give it the final push and cover the stinking corpse with
dirt.
Comparing Dmitri Ivanovich Pisarev’s
observation with the Cameroonian reality, we would realize with clarity that getting
rid of all aspects of this French-imposed autocratic and oligarchic system is
our first task. It is only after the complete and irrevocable burial of
absolutism shall it be possible for us to set aside our despairs and harness
our hopes, strengths, determinations and potentials to realize the
all-embracing dream for a great Cameroon and Africa. It would be a hard and
merciless task, but the only path that that would lead to our salvation.
This demanding task is especially on
the shoulders of Cameroonians of the post-independence generations. It is from
their ranks that the forces, backing and attention to realize the dream of the
New Cameroon would rest. These forces would be the workers (agricultural,
industrial and service or tertiary), the intellectuals, academicians,
politicians, religious bodies, civil movements, artists, business class,
functionaries, students and even the unemployed. Cameroonians would be led by
the advanced representatives who would have mastered the selfless, humanizing,
unifying and progressive principles and goals of the country’s national idea
embodied in its Union-Nationalism and the basic tenets of its social and
democratic program. It is through its union-nationalism that Cameroonians would
realize the historic mission providence had placed on their shoulders for their
well-being and the advancement of the nation and Africa.
We shall be able to boast that we
have established the foundation of the New Cameroon, one that is capable of
marching forward along the road of the democratic tenets of its
union-nationalism that has been revised over the years and found to be
compatible with progressive world ideas only when:
·
The
advanced representatives of the various forces would have made the new and
humanized Cameroonian ideal to be widespread.
·
They
would have realized enduring organization, order, competency, discipline and
self-discipline within their ranks.
·
They
would have extended their arms beyond their confines to consolidate the
harmonious cooperation of all the development forces of the land.
It would be on this foundation that
we shall transform the present anachronistic system into a modern, progressive
and technologically oriented one; and then invest new ideas, know-how and
efforts to build a great producing nation that shall ensure accountability and
an efficient production, distribution and service network. As an indispensable
part of this advanced system would be the justifiable social
benefits—eradication of poverty, elimination of poor housing and housing
shortages, reduction of diseases to acceptable limits, good sanitation and the
provision of the necessary amenities and modern infrastructure.
Politically, this advanced, humanized
and progressive system would ensure the total, complete and universal human
rights of its citizens. It would be the upholder of their rights, pride,
freedom and equality, a commitment that shall ensure the prevalence of a
democracy that is truly compatible with the Cameroonian reality, one that shall
ensure the eternal burial of absolutism. This modern, progressive and advanced
system shall direct the Cameroonian people in cooperation with the progressive
forces of other African countries towards the realization of their fraternal
dream of harmony—the actualization of the economic union and political
integration of Africa. It is along this path of our union-nationalism that we
shall realize the all-embracing-century old Cameroonian dream and be led
towards the all-embracing junction that shall realize Africa’s unity through
the harmonious cooperation of its union forces. It would be at this stage that
Cameroon and Africa shall take their merited places in the world community, while working with other worldly
forces to make this world safe and conducive for our children. This extended
task is entirely on the shoulders of the post-independence generations.
JANVIER TCHOUTEU FERUARY 15,
1995
Most, if not all union-nationalists
have a clear notion of what to expect out of a New Cameroon that would have to
emerge from the current system. But many Cameroonians are incoherent when it
comes to:
·
The
path to take to overcome the initial obstacles of the system and the Biya
regime
·
And
the extent to go to build the New Cameroon of our dreams
In building the New Cameroon after getting rid of the legacy of the
forces of oppression and suppression against the people, Cameroonian
union-nationalists would be confronted by the all colossal task of molding a
New Cameroonian mentality devoid of docility, corruption, discrimination and
pessimism. That new mentality, which is an indispensable component of
Cameroonian union-nationalism, would then resurface the best of our creative,
dynamic and progressive potentials; and then harness and drive our strengths
for an effective utilization of our resources
and the great opportunities that abound in building the New Cameroon.
In the initial stage of ridding
ourselves of the obstacles of the
anachronistic French-imposed system under the Biya regime today,
union-nationalists risk finding themselves derailed from their original ideals
and dreams from divisions that might arise from their ranks and differences in the degree of commitment to
the cause.
The fact that the obstacles
union-nationalists would encounter in the various stages of the cause are so
colossal, some union-nationalists may be tempted to react in two negative ways:
·
Carry
out makeshift changes and console themselves that they have done the job.
·
Or
exert too great a force in their over zealousness, which even though would
destroy the obstacles to the New Cameroon, may also leave us on our knees, and
perhaps render us incapable of building the New Cameroon of our dreams.
We should avoid these partial and blind commitments in our
union-nationalism. Instead, rationalism should prevail in any action that we
are taking or are about to take for the interest of Cameroon. That way,
mistakes would be avoided.
Basically, the Cameroonian dream
embodied in the ideals of its Union-Nationalism is the best rallying force for
all Cameroonians. However, despite the genuine intentions and goodness of this
ideal, its possible pervasion by mistakes or errors in the course of its
application risks distorting the essence of the struggle, derailing the cause
and discrediting the noble intentions of the century old Cameroonian dream by
taking out the humanity from its fabrics and leaving it as any other
dry-as-dust political ideology that humanity has rejected. The thought of the
possible rejection of our Union-Nationalism because it has lost its humaneness
is something we cannot afford, since that
would mean the rejection of the Cameroonian dream and our collective hopes that
have sustained us for close to a century. In order to avoid such a rejection,
Cameroonian union-nationalists should avoid mistakes in the determining domains
of the lives of the people.
1) Firstly, the fact that we are in a pathetic level of economic
underdevelopment despite our enormous material and human resources may have
created a complex based on despondence, something that many Cameroonians would
have to overcome at the early stage of the task of building the New Cameroon by
union-nationalists. The new union-nationalist government would have to come up
with an immediate solution to erase that complex of despondence, an immediate
solution that would require using our material and human resources that despite
being in abundance are so disorganized, inefficient and disillusioned. Only
through the path of a rapid improvisation and effective utilization of this
underperforming human force for the optimal use of our material resources,
shall we obtain an initial boost and solution that would do much to overcome
the difficult initial period of fear and uncertainty. In its first step to
overcome the initial obstacle caused by fear and uncertainty emanating from
decades of division, corruption, repression, inefficiency and incompetence, the
new union-nationalists government would have to instill administrative
efficiency into the transforming system and provide competent and sufficient
managers at all or most of the strategic and potentially cumulative sectors of
the economy. This would ensure a quick initial boost to the economy and restore
confidence in its management and direction. Such a positive step would direct
the Cameroonian economy forward towards efficiency in the management and
utilization of our human and material resources, drawing strength from the
spread effects of the initial actions and direction.
2) This economic readjustment must be immediately and closely followed
by political liberalization through the establishment of a truly progressive
democratic tradition. The progressive democratic tradition should be one that
would ensure the total, complete and universal human rights of its citizens and
accept their rational freedom, liberty and equality. It should be compatible
with the complex Cameroonian reality and should be capable of ensuring the
harmonious cooperation of all the Cameroonian forces and entities in the
development of the land. Then, through the natural checks and balances of
nature, the new and rational democratic tradition shall ensure the complete and
irreversible burial of the dictatorship
that resulted to bureaucracy and incompetence, the bureaucracy and incompetence
that nurtured a culture of corruption and discrimination which we know are the
vices that eroded morality, trust and cooperation between the different forces
in Cameroon. The positive outcome of this democratic tradition would be our
break with underdevelopment. Simply, it is only after the realization of this
clean democratic atmosphere to buttress the new economic drive shall there be a
clear prospect of sustainable prosperity looming ahead.
3) The New Cameroon would also need a new culture in order to advance
into the modern age through a new economic policy and a new democratic
tradition. This new culture does not presuppose the destruction of the old ones
or the implementation of uniformity, but rather advocates a metamorphosis based
on the lessons of the past and today, to a new freedom and creativity that is
compatible with modern civilization. The new culture would set the pace for
progress by making the best out of our recent and distant pasts. It would not
imitate the past with all its constraints and irreconcilable diversity. The new
culture would create uniformity out of diversity rather than propagate
diversity to maintain differences. The propagation of differences that does not
enhance the wellbeing of the nation is static diversity or conservatism in its
worst forms. It stands as an obstacle to progress and a death-embrace with the
past. This avoidable static diversity rejects technological civilization,
something that the New Cameroon cannot afford to do without. The result of
accepting static diversity would be that the traditional concepts of a family,
a tribe, an ethnic group, a social organization, social norms, religious views,
economic life, a linguistic entity and even a race, would prevent us from
moving along with the changing times. Some of the consequences of accepting
static diversity would be:
·
We
would not manage birth rates to match our potentials.
· We would not soberly review or revise
our anachronistic traditional and religious beliefs to accommodate the demands
of our times and the challenges of the future.
·
And
finally, we would not be able to accept the advantages of technological
progress that are indispensable in our drive to attain great economic heights,
which is a major prerequisite in the realization of the Cameroonian dream.
Abraham Lincoln railed against
conservatism or static diversity when he said that:
“What is conservatism? Is it not
adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried”
The quest for the New Cameroon is a
rejection of our horrible past and an embrace of a future that would guarantee
progress, freedom, liberty, development, harmony, peace, unity, integrity and
democracy for all Cameroonians. It is our bargain to become a cherished part of
the future economically united and politically integrated Africa. And above
all, it is our manifestation to have a place among the community of civilized
nations.
Even Karl Marx rejected the dead
weight of the past in his writings when he pointed out that:
Men make their own history, but they
do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen
by themselves, but under circumstances directly
given and transmitted from the past. The traditions of all the dead generations
weigh like a nightmare on the living. And just when they seemed engaged in
revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something entirely new,
precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis, they conjure up the spirits
of the past to their services and borrow from them names, battle slogans and
costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in time honored
disguise and this borrowed language.
Yes, Cameroonian Union-Nationalism
was born from the shortcomings of the past nine decades of our past. It has
been tragic. Nevertheless, great lights were revealed, enlightening figures
that as leaders of our civic-nationalism sustained the spirit of the
Cameroonian dream. However, despite their tremendous role, Cameroonian
union-nationalists should be sober enough and avoid living and thinking behind
the times, as if they are still haunted by the defeats suffered over the
century. We should not conjure or imitate the past in our efforts to reorganize
our lives and build the New Cameroon.
Our cultures and traditions should be invoked only to help in providing
guidelines in bringing progress and in bringing forth to life individuals who
through modern technological uniformity would contribute to new cultures that
would accommodate modern demands and reality. These new cultures should be
capable of burying the inherent traits of despotism in our pasts while
promoting freedom of choice, openness and creativity.
4) Another mistake to be avoided by the New Cameroon would be blind
nationalism. This may sound intriguing since the force to lead the realization
of the New Cameroon would be led by union-nationalists. Yes, Cameroon’s
union-nationalists are modernists and unifiers in their civic-nationalism,
based on an ideal to bring diverse people together by harnessing their
compatibilities. Cameroon's union-nationalists are opposed to fundamental
nationalists, ethnic nationalists, assimilative nationalists and
ultra-nationalists with ideologies that exclude and stress on differences. The
prefix “Union” attached to our nationalism indicates that we are out to include
in the furthest extent of the word, rather than exclude, but in a manner that
recognizes the legitimate interests of the constituent peoples that make the
Cameroonian state and their rights to their freedom, prosperity and destiny in
cooperation with other forces of the world, but not in subjugation to any.
Nevertheless, this spirit of our Union-Nationalism should not be overstretched
to exceed rational bounds through exaltation because the regressive outcome of
such blinding emotions would be xenophobia and internal discrimination. The
repercussions from such an overstretched nationalism would be the loss of its
union character. Such a distortion of our Union-Nationalism would impede our
development and would give rise to a new political tradition that is not
democratic and representative. Furthermore, any retrogression into blind
nationalism from that shortfall would breed a new culture that would be out of
touch with global civilization and technological uniformity. The mistake of
transcending our Union-Nationalism is that we would be taking the humanity out
of its fabrics, thereby leaving it as barren as a desert. The outcome of such a
mistake would be the rejection of our advanced form of civic-nationalism and an
eternal doubt in the noble intentions of the ideals of Cameroonian
Union-nationalism. Such a rejection is something the forward-looking Cameroon
cannot afford because it would mean the rejection of the idea that has guided
and guarded Cameroonians in their century-old dream, a dream that sustained
their hopes through tragic and turbulent times. In a nutshell, no blind form of
nationalism should be allowed to distort the genuine and progressive purpose of
Cameroonian Union-nationalism, the only advanced ideal that can realize our
collective dreams. Union-nationalists
should accept criticism and self-criticism as measures to prevent the
derailment of the century-old ideal.
5) Should the forward-looking Cameroon look back at all? Yes, it should.
·
However,
the forward-looking Cameroon should not look back to the past to make it an
integral part of the future; but rather it should regard the past as a guide, a
lesson to learn from, but not a lesson to copy. The only aspect the
forward-looking Cameroon must always look back at is the progress of the
people. The forward moving Cameroon should always give a helping hand to those
who fall or are being left behind in the forward drive of prosperity. The
leadership of the New Cameroonian ideal would have to bear in mind all the time
that the land they are leading has been borrowed from the younger generation(s)
after them. With such a responsible mindset, the leadership would always
jealously protect the land and ensure that our children are adequately educated,
prepared, and are competitive and protected enough to take over and carry on
with the virtues of the New Cameroon to secure a better future for their own
children. That way, union-nationalists would be playing the roles of guarantors
of continuity.
·
Socially,
the New Cameroon would have to equate the drive of prosperity with a rise in
the standards of living of the struggling masses. Housing, schools, hospitals,
electricity, water, roads, and other social and public infrastructures should
never be allowed to lag behind our true progress and the changing times.
Rational provisions should be put in place to take care of the handicapped, the
old, the unfortunate and the underprivileged.
Colossal as the task may seem, it is
realizable and it is our only bargain with our future. The New Cameroon would
easily be realized after Cameroonians develop the sense of commitment and start
feeling or considering themselves a part of the process of nation-building,
development and prosperity. That would be at a time that our collective
mentality and psychology would be capable of accommodating the new demands of
the New Cameroon; that would be when union-nationalists and their advanced
representatives would have become humanized enough to put the general purpose
of our land above personal considerations. By so doing, we shall then consider
the plight of our land and the Cameroonian people as issues that also concern
us fundamentally. Then that way, Cameroonians shall have that sense of purpose,
convinced that they have an appreciable role to play in building, protecting
and sustaining the New Cameroon. With the realization of that collective
progress, we shall be able to boast with certainty that we have built a new
mentality that is collective, and that would greatly reduce or even eliminate
corruption, racism, favoritism, tribalism, ethnocentrism, absolutism,
inefficiency and bureaucracy. A sense of belonging and commitment is something
union-nationalists must build in order to sustain the New Cameroon and its
advanced ideals.
It may seem difficult if not
impossible to realize a New Cameroon without going through all or some of the
possible mistakes that might be committed as a result of inherent human
weaknesses and a possible over-commitment or over-zealousness from union-nationalists.
Nevertheless, if mistakes are likely to be made, we are expected to allow
criticism as a norm in society and be self-critical ourselves. That entails
being modest enough to ask ourselves whether we are wrong in each action we take, and if so, to admit the error(s) in our
action(s) for correction. And after correcting the error(s), we should make the
maximum effort to ensure that no more errors or mistakes are made.
Janvier Tchouteu
May 1995
African Democracy Ratings
Partition Map of Africa: 1884-1914
Cameroon on a map of the world
Cameroon over time
- German Kamerun I
(1884-1911)
- German Kamerun II
(1911-1916)
- British Cameroons & French Cameroun:
1916-1960
- British
Cameroons & La Republique du Cameroun (1960-1961)
- British Southern Cameroons & La Republique du Cameroun (1960-1961)
- Reunited/Independent Cameroon today.
|
Adamawa
|
The southernmost province that was
carved out of the former Grand North Province. It is a plateau region.
|
|
Akonolinga
|
A town in the Center Province. It
is also the capital of the Nyong and Nfomou Division.
|
|
Ashia
|
Word used by both English and
French speaking Cameroonians to express sympathy, condolence, consolation,
encouragement, compassion, harmony, understanding, agreement, thankfulness
and caution.
|
|
Bafang
|
The capital of Upper Nkam Division
and a Bamileké realm in the West Province.
|
|
Bafaw
|
The principal ethnic group in the
area that comprises the Kumba municipality. It is part of the larger Bantu
group.
|
|
Bafoussam
|
The capital of the West Province
and Mifi Division. Also a traditional Bamileké realm.
|
|
Bakweri
|
The principal ethnic group in the
Fako Division, which is located in the Southwest Province. The Bakwerians are
Bantu speaking of the Sawabantu subgroup.
|
|
Bamenda
|
Capital of the Northwest Province
and Mezam Division.
|
|
Bami (Bamileké)
|
Diminutive of Bamileké.
|
|
Bamileké (Bami)
|
The most populous semi-Bantu
ethnicity and the principal ethnic group in Cameroon. It is also their mother
tongue.
|
|
Bamilekéland
|
The western half of the West
Province, with fringes in the Northwest and Southwest Provinces. It comprises
five administrative divisions, about ninety traditional realms and eleven
dialectical groupings.
|
|
Bamoun
|
A semi-Bantu ethnicity and one of
the principal ethnic groups in Cameroon. Also their mother tongue.
|
|
Bamounland
|
The Eastern half of the Western
province.
|
|
Banganté
|
Largest Bamileké realm, capital of
Nde Division, its former name. Found in the West Province.
|
|
Bantu
|
Large group of Negroid peoples of
Central, South, and East Africa that inhabits the forests of the Southwest,
Littoral, Center, South, and East Provinces of Cameroon. Also the largest
constituent of the Negroid or Black race.
|
|
Bassa
|
Principal ethnic group in the
Littoral Province. It is Bantu speaking. Also found in the Center Province of
Cameroon.
|
|
Beti
|
Diminutive of Beti-Pahuin. It is
also a subdivision of the Beti-Pahuin group of languages, and is broken down
further into Ewondo, Eton, Bane, Mbida-Mbane and Mvog-Nyenge.
|
|
Beti-Pahuin
|
Diminuted or shortened to Beti,
this group of related peoples constitute the third principal ethnic group in
Cameroon. The ethnic homeland of the Beti-Pahuin people is in the Center and
South Provinces, with fringes and enclaves in the East Province. They are
Bantu-speaking and comprise the following:
·
Beti (Ewondo, Bane, Mbida-Mbane, Mvog-Nyenge, and Eton),
·
Fang (Fang proper, Ntumu, Mvae, and Okak)
·
Bulu (Bulu, Fong, Mvele, Zaman, Yebekanga, Yengono, Yembama, Yelinda,
Yesum, and Yekebolo.)
·
Smaller tribes or ethnic groups Pahuinised by the Beti-Pahuins such as
the Baka, Bamvele, Manguissa, Yekaba, Evuzok, Batchanga (Tsinga), Omvang,
Yetude peoples.
Beti-Pahuin people are also
indigenous in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and The Republic of Congo.
|
|
Betiland
|
The Beti-Pahuin speaking regions of
Cameroon (stretches from the southern half of the Center Province, to the
central and eastern parts of the South Province and extend as fringes into
the Eastern province), Equatorial Guinea( Rio Muni), Gabon (the northern
half), The Republic of Congo (the northwest), and São Tomé and Príncipe.
|
|
Biafra
|
The short-lived Ibo-dominated state
that seceded from Nigeria during the 1966–1970 Nigerian Civil War.
|
|
British Cameroons
|
The western third of the former
German Kamerun that fell under British control following the partition of the
German colony. It comprised British Northern Cameroons and British Southern
Cameroons.
|
|
Boumnyebel
|
A Bassa village in Nyong and Kelle
Division, Center Province.
|
|
British Northern Cameroons
|
Northern half of British Cameroons
that voted to unite with Nigeria in 1961, following the controversial United
Nations plebiscite in the territory.
|
|
British Southern Cameroons
|
Southern half of British Cameroons.
Became part of the Cameroon Federation in 1961 following a plebiscite that
resulted in its reunification with the former French Cameroun. It comprises
the Northwest and Southwest Provinces of Cameroon.
|
|
Buea
|
Capital town of the Southwest
Province and former capital of German Kamerun.
|
|
Bulu
|
One of the peoples of the Beti-Fang
ethnic group with homeland in the South Province.
|
|
Cameroonian Pidgin
|
Also called Cameroonian Creole or
Kamtok, it is the Pidgin English spoken in Cameron. It has five variants.
|
|
CENER
|
(Center National des Etudes et
de Recherché)—Acronym of Cameroon’s secret intelligence service (National
Center for Studies and Research)—that was changed in 1984 to Direction
Générale de la Recherché Extérieures (DGRE)—General Directorate for
External Research.
|
|
Center Province
|
Central province of Cameroon.
Comprises eight divisions.
|
|
CNU (Cameroon National Union)
|
Party formed in 1966 from the
merger of the political parties operating in Cameroon. It was headed by first
Cameroonian president Ahmadou Ahidjo.
|
|
CPDM (Cameroon
People’s Democratic Movement)
|
The CNU renamed in 1985.
|
|
CU (Cameroon Union)
|
Party formed by Ahmadou Ahidjo.
|
|
Douala
|
Largest city, economic capital and
capital of Wouri division and Littoral Province.
|
|
Duala
|
A Bantu-speaking people of the
Sawabantu subgroup, they are the principal ethnic group of the Wouri Division
and the Douala area.
|
|
East Cameroon
|
The French speaking federal unit of
Cameroon from 1961–72. It was formed from the former French Cameroun.
|
|
East Province
|
The Southeastern half of Cameroon.
The East Province has four divisions with Bertoua as its capital.
|
|
Eton
|
One of the peoples of the Beti-Fang
ethnic group. Found in the Center Province.
|
|
Ewondo
|
One of the peoples of the Beti-Fang
group. Found in the Center Province of Cameroon.
|
|
Extreme North
|
A province in the far North of
Cameroon. It comprises six divisions.
|
|
Free French Forces
|
These were French and Francophone
fighters who continued fighting the axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan,
even after France surrendered and signed an armistice agreement with Nazi
Germany in June 1940. It was formed by General Charles De Gaulle, who was a
member of the French cabinet on official visit to Britain at the time of the
surrender. General Charles De Gaulle strongly opposed French capitulation and
the armistice signed by the new regime led by Marshall Petain that created
the Vichy regime in the South of France, thereby allowing the North of the
country to be under German occupation. He urged resistance against German
control of France and its collaborationist Vichy puppets. The movement drew
recruits mostly from the French empire, especially from French Central
Africa, of which French Cameroun was the base at the time, under the new
governorship of Jacques Philippe LeClerc. Philippe LeClerc led the Free
French Forces’ first major victory in the war with the capture in 1941 of
Kufra, a town in the then Italian colony of Libya. It incorporated forces of
the former Vichy regime in the colonies from 1943, and saw its ranks swollen
by Frenchmen after the D-Day landing. The Free French Forces achieved their
greatest glory with the liberation of Paris in August 1944, led by the French
2nd Armored Division because it had the least number of blacks in its ranks.
By the end of the war, The Free French Movement constituted the fourth
largest military force in Europe, fighting against the Axis powers. The right
wing political parties in France have been dominated by its members and the
ideology of its founder called Gaullism.
|
|
Fulfulde (Fula, Pulaar, Pular,
Peul)
|
A Sene-Gambian language spoken by
the Fulani people.
|
|
Fulani (Fulani, Fula, Fellata or
Peul)
|
A mixed Negro-Tuareg people
inhabiting the Savannah from Sudan to Sene-Gambia, they comprise three groups
namely:
The Mbororo, Bororo, Burure or Abore who are pastoralists.
The Fulanin Gida, Ndoowi’en or Magida, who are fully
sedentary communities.
The semi-sedentary Peul people who are agriculturalist and
ultimately resume pastoralism, but often form permanent communities.
Foulanis, Fulanis or Peuls are the second most populous
ethnic group in Cameroon. Found mostly in the northern provinces of Adamawa,
North and Extreme North. Their language is the lingua franca of this part of
Cameroon.
|
|
Foumbam
|
Capital of the Noun Division and
the Bamounland. Found in the West Province.
|
|
Foumbot
|
Agricultural settlement in the Noun
Division.
|
|
French Cameroun
|
The Eastern two third of the former
German Kamerun that fell under the control of the French following the
partition of the German colony by Britain and France. It became a
Frenchmandatory territory and later trust territory from 1918–1960.
|
|
Garoua
|
Capital of the North Province and
Benue Division.
|
|
Graffi
|
Pidgin German word for grass field.
Name often applied collectively to the semi-Bantu peoples of the Northwest
and West Provinces of Cameroon.
|
|
Graffiland
|
Cameroonian word for Western High
Plateau, Western Highlands, or Bamenda Grassfields. Mountainous grassland
region of the Northwest and West Provinces of Cameroon. It comprises the
Bamilekéland and Bamounland in the south, and the Ngembaland, Chambaland and
Tikarland in the north.
|
|
Ibo
|
One of the four principal ethnic
groups of Nigeria. Found in the southeast.
|
|
Idenau
|
A town in Fako Division, Southwest
Province.
|
|
Kamveu
|
Local council of notables among the
different Bamileké realms.
|
|
Koufra (Kufra)
|
An important but isolated Oasis
settlement in the southeastern Libyan desert that was of strategic importance
for the North African campaign during the Second World War. Its capture from
the Italians by the Free French Forces marked the first major battle won by
France in the war, thereby boosting General Charles De Gaulle’s prestige and
the morale of the demoralized anti-Vichy forces.
|
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Koutaba
|
A settlement in the Bamounland,
Noun Division, West Province. Also a major military and air base in Cameroon,
|
|
Kumba
|
Largest city in the Southwest
Province and capital of Meme Division. It is located about 70 miles north of
Limbe.
|
|
KNDP (Cameroon National Democratic
Party)
|
Nationalist party in British
Cameroons. It led the campaign that realized the reunification of British
Southern Cameroons with the former French Cameroun.
|
|
Limbe
|
Former Victoria. It is the capital
of Fako Division in the Southwest Province.
|
|
Littoral
|
Coastal province of Cameroon. It
consists of four divisions.
|
|
Loum
|
An agricultural town in the Mungo
Division, in the north of the Littoral Province.
|
|
Maguida (Magida)
|
Name erroneously used for the
peoples of the Moslem North that originated from the third group of
Fulanis—the Fulanin Gida, comprising the fully sedentary Fulani communities.
|
|
Mamfe
|
Capital of Manyu Division in the
Southwest Province.
|
|
Maroua
|
Capital of the Extreme North
Province and Diamare Division.
|
|
Mayo Tsanaga
|
A division in the Extreme North
Province of Cameroon.
|
|
Mayo Tsava
|
A division in the Extreme North
Province of Cameroon.
|
|
Mbengwi
|
Capital of Momo Division in the
Northwest Province.
|
|
Mboh
|
A Bantu-speaking people of the
Mungo Division in the Littoral Province, with fringes of their homeland in
the Southwest and Western provinces.
|
|
Mokolo
|
Capital of Mayo Tsanaga Division.
|
|
Molyko
|
A suburb of Buea in the Southwest
Province.
|
|
Mora
|
Capital of Mayo Tsava Division.
|
|
Mutengene
|
A junction town to Limbe, Buea and
Tiko, in Fako Division, Southwest Province.
|
|
Nde
|
Formerly called Banganté Division.
It is found in the West Province of Cameroon.
|
|
Ngaoundéré
|
Capital of the Vina Division and
Adamawa Province.
|
|
Ngemba
|
The second most populous peoples of
the semi-Bantu group. The Ngemba peoples are found in the northern half of
the Cameroon Grassland (Western Highlands), mostly in the Mezam and Momo
Divisions of the Northwest Province. The Ngemba people related dialects.
|
|
Ngembaland
|
The southwestern part of the
Northwest Province that is composed of several traditional realms or fondoms
speaking closely related dialects.
|
|
Nkongsamba
|
Capital of the Mungo Division of
Cameroon. It is also the largest city in the area.
|
|
North Province
|
Central of the Grand North
Provinces. It comprises four divisions.
|
|
Northwest Province
|
A province from the former Federal
unit of West Cameroon and the former territory of British Southern Cameroons.
Peopled by semi-Bantu groups of Tikar, Ngemba and Chamba speakers. Their
compatriots in the Southwest Province collectively call them ‘Graffis’.
|
|
OK (One Cameroon)
|
Offshoot of the UPC after it was
also banned in British Cameroons.
|
|
Peul
|
A French term for Fulani borrowed
from the Wolof language.
|
|
Semi-Bantu
|
The unique and unrelated peoples in
Africa, comprising the Bamileké, Bamoun, Tikar, Ngemba and Chamba peoples.
|
|
Sokolo
|
A suburb in Limbe, Southwest
Province.
|
|
South Province
|
Cameroon’s southern coastal
province. It comprises the three divisions of Ntem, Ocean and Dja and Lobo.
|
|
Southwest Province
|
Southwestern coastal province of
Cameroon. It has four divisions. Formerly a part of British Southern
Cameroons and the federal unit of West Cameroon.
|
|
Tcholliré
|
Capital of Rey Bouba Division in
the North Province.
|
|
Tiko
|
A coastal town in Fako Division in
the Southwest Province.
|
|
Tonga
|
Bamileké settlement and realm in
the Nde Division, West Province.
|
|
Tuareg
|
A Berber-speaking people of the
Mazigh group inhabiting the central Sahara from Southern Algeria and
Tripolitania in Libya, to the middle Niger and the northern borders of
Nigeria. They moved to the interior of the Sahara desert to escape the Arab
invasion of North Africa in the 7th and 8th century.
|
|
UPC (Union of the Populations of
the Cameroons)
|
First national and nationalistic
party in Cameroon. The historic UPC was formed in 1948. Banned in 1955, it
resorted to armed struggle that continued well into the late 1960s.
|
|
Victoria
|
Former name of Limbe. Was founded
in 1857 by missionaries for the settlement of rescued or freed slaves.
|
|
West Province
|
The southern half of the Western
Highlands of Cameroon. It is populated by the Bamileké and Bamoun peoples. It
is also Cameroon’s cultural and agricultural heartland, and is remembered for
its historic role as the center of the country’s nationalism and liberation
struggle against the French Army in the land. It comprises the six divisions
of Bamboutous, Menoua, Mifi, Nde, Noun, and Upper Nkam.
|
|
Wum
|
Capital of Menchum Division in the
Northwest Province.
|
|
Yaoundé
|
Cameroon’s second largest city and
national capital. Also the capital of the Center Province and Nfoundi
Division.
|
The Usurper: and Other Stories
Triple Agent, Double Cross
Disciples of Fortune
The Union Moujik
Splendid Comets
Flash of the Sun
Fortune Calls
Fortune’s Master
Fortune’s Children
The Norilsk Bears
To Be In Love and To Be Wise
The Fire and Ice Legend
The Sweetest Madness
The Grandmothers
The Hunger Fire
The Shades of Fire
Father and Sons
The Doctors
Dark Shades
Fateful Ties
The Verdict of Hades
His Majesty’s Trial
Ngoko’s Folly
The Usurper
The Dowry
I am Hated
The Oaf
Non-Fiction Titles by Janvier Chouteu-Chando
THEIR LAST STAND: Donald Trump’s Upset Victory…
BROKEN ENGAGEMENT: Why a Donald Trump Win…
Ukraine: The Tug-of-war between Russia and the West
Cameroon: The Haunted Heart of Africa
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