SDF Youth Leader, South Africa has become frustrated with Youths from the Cameroons. He has challenged youths to shift from being internet warriors to real change agents. In his own words, he wrote to BaretaNews: Hear him
This may sound ridiculous but I think we have gone sober to being drunken without tasting the drink. We have surrendered ourselves to the heinous and stupid effects of political thinking where we become more of spectators than players. We are quick to criticize any youth who shows his head on the surface of the water. If our fellow youth joins the CPDM, he/she is regarded as a sell-out who has placed his/her hands on the most dubious and highest echelon of crimes against humanity. If another youth joins the SDF we say what is the difference between CPDM and SDF, he/she has been appointed by Fru Ndi etc.
Recently one of us wrote on Ndasi Elvis’s Facebook page questioning what on earth pushed him to join the NUDP of Bello Bouba. According to him, Ndansi Elvis’s choice is just as bad as the party he represents. The stones heaved on Ndansi by the subsequent commentators on that post rightly pointed to the fact that as a Youth leader with burning ideas, talents and charisma, was he supposed to just remain on the sidelines of the political history of his country or participate in his own way to bring change ?
Youths have chosen the internet to be their public rallies where the same people keep taking turns to write. Overnight we have become geopolitical and geo-historical experts. We have crafted the best strategies but never ready to try even one of them on the ground. You will hear of qualifications as an expert in this or that. We have engineers here on the internet, election observers, political consultants and why not witch doctors ready to unseat the man at Etoudi. We have taken upon ourselves useless titles that will only maintain us as Internet warriors and nothing short of it. Hear some of our titles, Chairman of the Socialist Youths, Freethinkers, Pacesetters. You can name them.
At our comforts in foreign lands, we dish out political lessons more than even professors in universities. With all these talks and cheap talks what are you doing to change the landscape? Recently our friend Solomon Amabo fought hard for us to call our MP/Senators when the Penal code saga was hitting in both houses of law in our country. How many of us did? The answer is obvious, just one person out of the 1.6 million we have on the internet as claimed by FBI and CIA fact books came back with a screen shot of a discussion he had with Senator Mbella Moki. Kudos to him.
Dear friends while criticizing start doing something. We cannot keep saying it’s our time when we are not doing anything to show that it’s our time else we are the Zombies that Bate Besong painted in one of his works. If we look at the bigger picture, BaretaNews painted a vivid picture of the real reasoning of Cameroonians. No one wants Fru Ndi because he is too old and is eating from the system, Ndam Njoya, and Kah Wallah are not strong enough to shaken the system. Prince Ekosso is too young to lead Cameroonians, Joshua Osih is Frank Biya’s friend, Maurice Kamto was in the CPDM and even took 14 billion to draft the penal code, and Paul Biya is a dictator and must give way. Who then will rule the country? Do we go and borrow Nigerians and Ghanaians to come take the country? Are the beautiful ones not yet born in our country or have we become the land of the wretched. I don’t think so. What I think is that we need to start doing something to harness all these brains we have on the internet to translate on the ground thereby making our country a better place.
By Atanga Belmondo for BaretaNews
Atanga Belmondo is the SDF Youth Leader, South Africa.
