From the desk of
Harmony Bobga Mbuton (Esq.)
The President Southern Cameroons Bar

Gentlemen of the Southern Cameroons Bar, I write to inform you that I have just received notice of intent to call off the ongoing strike embarked upon by us since October 6, 2016. I hasten to say that call for calm amongst our members, so that reason may prevail. To assist you along this path, I like to recall as follows:-

When we initiated the sit-in strike, we immediately won the admiration of our folks across the board;
We took steps to lobby the Two Teachers’ Trade Union of the Anglo-Saxon education Sub-System to join us and eventually got the University Lecturers Syndicate to join us;

The rest of the population from all walks of life of Southern Cameroons extraction within the Southern Cameroons territorial confines vindicated us in our call and aligned for the strike;

Conscious of the fact that we had discovered a slit through which the stand up for recovery of the Southern Cameroons national Identity had been reignited and reenergized, we convened in Kumba in January 2017 to tidy our hours in readiness to continue to give Southern Cameroonians our servant-leadership. At this First Southern Cameroons Bar Conference (then referred to as Common Law Bar), our four constituent Associations effectively melted into the lone Professional Body -The Southern Cameroons Bar with the leaders of those Associations honored as the core members of the first Steering Committee of the Southern Cameroons Bar, headed by my humble self;

When we were simple working as collaborating associations it was possible to have a particular Association act outside the network, but as soon as we coalesced into the Southern Cameroons Bar the opportunity of standing alone gave way;

It follows that the only body that can take a decision to call of the strike is not one of the Socio-Professional Associations which we belonged to before but the Professional Association of Southern Cameroons Bar, which I state in clear unambiguous terms is not party to even the thought of calling off the strike;

On the basis of the foregoing recapitulation which I had dealt with in more detail sometime back, there can be no moral or constitutional validity to any act of the type being taken by FAKLA;

It is also worth noting that beyond our community of lawyers of the Southern Cameroons Bar we owe a duty to Teachers and all those other groups of persons, in short, Southern Cameroonians as a whole that we inspired and brought out from under the blanket of state terrorism fear, to abandon them without giving an account;

Remember, if we back off at this critical moment we shall be telling the world that by our reckless leadership we pulled Southern Cameroonians into harm’s way and now are engaging in a political orgy with their colonizers and murderers for the last 56plus years;

I am still reluctant to call the move to call off the strike as betrayal just as well as putting out the signs of its possibility that I witnessed right from May 9, 2015! I however cannot resist recalling similar conduct that emerged when we all stood up against the obnoxious amended Penal Code which we challenged but were doubted by one of us who declared in an interview with George Ewane in the exclusive CRTV programme –“Inside the Presidency”. All I can say now is that we as members of Southern Cameroons Bar, are not only outside the Presidency of La République du Cameroun, we are indeed out of Cameroun.

Those of us who wish to stay out there are free to relocate, after all ours is a universal profession and you can float to wherever you deem it is more politically fertile without betraying those who remain faithful to a GOD ORDAINED ARMLESS LIBERATION OF A PEOPLE.

 

New York, NY October 11, 2017