The Cameroun « gouvernement » and the art of radicalisation in the Southern Cameroons

Over the weekend there were TV reports and videos depicting a daring attack on a gubernatorial convoy heading to Menji in Lebialem for the installation of a new Senior Divisional Officer. This assault marks a radical escalation in the growing armed conflict pitching Southern Cameroons activist also known as anglophone activists or Ambazonia defence forces against security forces also known in Southern Cameroons milieu as la république terrorists.

This conflict, which some experts may want to describe as a civil war starter as demonstrations by lawyers, teachers and later university students calling for the respect and protection of anglophone minority rights and systems (educational and legal) within a two system (judicial and educational) country. The government’s responses rained an avalanche of violence and abuse including rapes and deaths on armless civilians. Successive government officials legitimised and justified these atrocities as “raison d’état”. Activists and protesters were branded terrorists and secessionists even when demands clearly articulated did not suggest this. Rather calls for political reform were phrased so as to preserve the unity of Cameroon through a federal system.

The brazen disregard for the growing frustrations and discontent of the people coupled with the growing arrogance of appointed “elites” with no legitimacy to speak for the people culminated in a divide that has become permanent both in the social and psychological manifestations of this conflict. The furtherance of this disregard is exemplified in the appointment of the least loved and least respected of anglophone (Southern Cameroons elites-Atanga Nji Paula and Nalova Lyonga) to ministries that were often cited as examples of anglophone marginalisation. Nalova Lyonga it should be recalled was the vice chancellor that invited soldiers to crush a student protest that was chanting “no violence”. The involvement of soldiers resulted in countless documented incidences of rape and brutality in the streets of Buea as well as the immersion of students in sewage water and mud in and around student hostels. Atanga Nji Paul on the other vehemently stated on national television that there was no anglophone problem and therefore no reason for the protests. He is among the first people to describe Southern Cameroons activists as terrorists on the basis that “on n’a plus besoin de prendre au maquis pour exprimer ses opinions”.

For many decades Southern Cameroonian youth activism has been shrouded by the cloud aging elites, with a legendary docility who have dominated anglophone politics since independence. The recycling of the same names and faces have narrowed access to the political space for aspiring leaders and especially leaders with alternative perspectives on the political development of Cameroon. Where youth leaders have emerged, especially within the university of Buea student union (the formative platform for many future leaders), their access to national political platforms or even within the university student leadership have been met with robust crack down. In the early days of the university of Buea student union leaders Ebenezer Akwanga and Ayaba Cho Lucas were dismissed for their stance against the introduction of PFA or Parent Faculty Allowance, then Boni Johnstone and Nti Valentine Dobgimma, Secretary General and president respectively of the student union were dismissed when they questioned the use of student union fees (then 10.000frs cfa) paid by every student. Johnstone however negotiated his return to the university to complete his degree in history from the university of Buea and for Valentine he’s been in exile ever since. There after the general Student Union was disbanded in favour of weaker faculty assemblies designed to be divided among themselves as to facilitate control and management by central office.

Cho Ayaba and Akwanga on the other hand embraced the course of the “anglophone problem”, emerging to become the face and backbone of the Southern Cameroons Youth League. Mark Bareta too emerged from the ranks of the student union when it was reconstituted in the 2000s. These three Southern Cameroons youth leaders have their formative years in student union activism and owe their radical stance to the designs of the government. The block by block movement and the growing recruitment of disenfranchised and disempowered youths into the ranks of a growing armed militia is a huge credit to the government’s efforts in brewing discontent and radicalisation. The arrest and delegitimisation of moderate leaders (like Agbor Balla, Neba and to some extent Ayah Paul, perceived by some as compromised) have eliminated the middle ground, creating a vacuum now being filled by radical and extreme rhetoric favouring full armed conflict. Isolated attacks on police and gendarmerie outposts have morphed into brazen attacks on military command posts and armed motorised convoys.

As the struggle continues every unarmed civilian killed radicalises one brother, one sister, one son or one daughter. Every child raped creates one radical parent. Every house burnt creates an angry and radical family, homeless, hungry and desperate making the dream of an independent Southern Cameroons the only hope and the only thing to either live or die for. For every military bullet fired, the government of the republic of Cameroon refines it’s art of radicalisation in the Southern Cameroons.

Innocent Mancho