EDITORIAL

Dialogue, not demonstrations will solve Anglophone Problem

Wednesday October 1, 2014 will be the 54^th anniversary of reunification and a day Anglophones had their independence. Only the SCNC activists usually commemorate the event in various forms such as peaceful demonstration and covertly hoisting their flag on obscure places like palm trees or public buildings.

The demonstrations customarily end up in clashes with security forces who on the eve of each anniversary converge on towns like Bamenda, Kumbo, Mutengene, Limbe and Mamfe considered to be the hotbeds of SCNC militants.

The commemorations often degenerate into brutal onslaught by security operatives on the non-violent SCNC demonstrators who are arrested, detained and even tortured.

The Yaounde regime, beginning from the Ahidjo era has often been uncomfortable with celebrating the Anglophone anniversary so as not to keep reminding them about the old good days of West Cameroon. It decided not only to eclipse October 1 but January  1 which was the Independence Day of the then La Republique du Cameroun in 1960. Both entities decided to make 20 May a National Day against the traditional practice where ex-colonial nations commemorate theirs on Independence Day.

    

Francophones generally do not care about January 1 except feasting it as New Year Day. But for the Anglophone activists operating under the aegis of the SCNC, it is the most important day they use to highlight what has been recognised as “the Anglophone Problem”.

   

In a nutshell, it is a quandary of marginalisation, mistrust, neglect, insults and underdevelopment habitually put on the podium of public debate by the SCNC.

 Since the creation of the SCNC, October 1   has been a significant day to draw attention to their plight and programme of action. This year’s event is different in that the SCNC has a leadership vacuum following the passage of Chief Ayamba.

    Normally, elected first vice chairman, Nfor Nfor Ngalla along with Ayamba would have stepped into the leadership seat in an acting capacity. But he was long given a vote of no confidence for attempting to usurp the powers of the leader.  Theodore Leke who was Nfor’s vice does not instill trust in many SCNC activists and articulate analysts. He was on the government delegation to The Gambia and Senegal for a total of five missions to submit a stay of hearing on the SCNC case filled at the African Commission against the Yaounde regime when he was not a party to the matter. How then, many have asked, can Leke lay any legitimate claim to any leadership when his membership in the government delegation to the African Commission portrayed him as an agent of the regime?

    

That explains the void in the leadership but there are however other activists of unquestionable integrity and loyalty to the cause who are currently assembling delegates for a convention that will elect its leaders and draw up an action plan.

For now, the SCNC is like a flock of sheep without a shepherd. In the absence of a leader, The Guardian Post is of the view that those self-proclaimed national chairmen who have been going round begging for money in the name of the SCNC should hold their guns and wait until a new leader is elected.

The new executive should be devoid of those with doubtful motivations and double dealers. It should be guided by its motto of the “force of argument not the argument of force” and not just wait for October I to go to the streets in protest or hoist flags in the glum of darkness.

It should be a leadership capable of imposing dialogue on the Yaounde regime. The government’s refusal to dialogue has been due to the splitter egoistic interests of some charlatans who want to use the cause to get favours from Yaounde. Dialogue, The Guardian Post upholds, is what will solve the Anglophone Problem, not demonstrations.

It was dialogue that Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo put forward when he made the case for reunification. In his trumpeting voice, he said: “We do not wish to bring the weight of our population on Anglophones. We are not annexationists. In other words, if our brothers of the British zone wish to unite with an independent Cameroon, we are ready to discuss the matter with them, but we will discuss on a footing of equality”.

That was Ahidjo’s speech before the Foumban so-called constitutional conference. He emphasised on discussion, dialogue, not crackdown. Equality, not second class citizenship on the basic of majority domination.

There is no doubt that fundamental errors were committed in Foumban. William Ndep Effiom who was an observer in Foumban and retired as grand chancellor of the National Orders confessed before dying that Foumban was an illegality. Representatives of the United Kingdom and United Nations were absent in Foumban as required by the UN resolution. The decisions in Foumban which  made provision for the revision of the constitution of “La Repubilique du Cameroun” to accommodate West Cameroon in a federated state were never endorsed by the majority of members of the West Cameroon House of Assembly and that of Yaounde to give it the legal stamp of authority.

The legality of the 1972 referendum changing the name of the country to the Republic of Cameroon which had independence on January 1, 1960 when West Cameroon was not a part is also another question of abnormality being projected by critical Anglophone pundits.

 

The question is, can those wrongs be corrected 54 years after? The Guardian Post is of the opinion that they can. There are three ways as experience around the world has shown. The SCNC can go to court as Effiom recommended in an interview he once gave to a local newspaper some ten years ago. They could engage in a violent confrontation or settle the matter trough negotiation. The Third option is the most feasible and that can only be done through dialogue and with a leadership representative of Anglophone majority opinion on the forefront for justice and equity.

For now, the SCNC which by its case at the African Commission and membership of the Unrepresented Nations Peoples Organisation has proved its legitimacy as the only accredited lobby group in the struggle to find a solution to the Anglophone Problem.

The way forward is not to drift on the streets on this October 1 commemorating Independence Day but to reflect over the problems trusting that a credible leadership will emerge in the coming convention. It should be a leadership of team work capable of imposing its will on the government to “discuss” with the regime and find an amicable solution to move the country ahead in real unity not an integration veil of a discriminating union.