The Privatization of the CDC
In 1947, the legislature council in Lagos Nigeria decided to create a statutory corporation to collectively manage the German estates at the foot of Mount Cameroon in the British Southern Cameroons which had been seized from German plantation owners at the end of WWII and placed under the Custodian of Enemy Properties. The statutory corporation was named Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC).
Following the creation of the CDC as a statutory corporation, the United Nations Trusteeship Council which was the highest legislative organ over the UN trust territories (including the British Cameroons which was governed as part of the Nigerian Federation) adopted a resolution in 1948 stating that the mandate of the CDC was to manage the former German plantations for the benefit of the people of the British Southern Cameroons.
This is a very important historical detail because the implication of the resolution of resolution of the UN Trusteeship Council is that the CDC is effectively the collective inheritance of the people of the Southern Cameroons.
The Bakweri Land Claims Committee (BLCC) was born in 1948 to lay claims to the lands that were expropriated from the Bakweri people by the German colonial administration following the defeat of the people of “Lower Buea” in 1895 in a battle against a German force led by Rittmeister Maximilian von Stetten and the death of Chief Kuva Likenye of Lower Buea.
For decades the CDC has been the largest agroindustrial complex that grows and processes (for export ) mainly banana, rubber, Palm oil, Palm kernel. It is the second largest employer with a workforce of around 22,000 employees.
During the 1990s the Cameroon government was required to privatise state owned enterprises as as part of the conditionality of the World Bank/IMF for receiving debt cancellation under HIPCs program.
Attempts by the Biya regime to privatise the.CDC failed because the attempt was opposed by the Bakweri Land Claims Committee which filed a case at the.African Commission for Human and People s Rights in the Gambia to reinforce its claims on the land.
But the other reason why the Biya Regime could not privatise the CDC is because the government cannot provide legal proof that the enterprise is owned by the government of LRC. Indeed it’s origins in the Legislative Council in Lagos and the 1948 resolution of the UN Trusteeship Council shows that it is owned by the people of the British Southern Cameroons.
A presidential decree made public on 20 January 2016 states that the government of LRC became the sole share holder of the CDC. This decree is an act of expropriation under international law and the expropriation was carried out in violation of the UN statutory instrument which brought it into being in 1948 and without the consultation of the people of the Southern Cameroons.
As of today the CDC needs to replant over 50% of land under its concession. It needs access to international financing and as long as it is a state corporation owned by LRC, the CDC will have great difficulties raising money.
The task of the government of the Southern Cameroons shall be to privatise the CDC in order to open its valves to international financing. If this happens the CDC shall be a major contributor to the GDP of the Republic of Ambazonia.
Dr. Nfor N Susungi
5 comments
Why are we going through all this struggle only to privatize the fruits of our struggle? Our mind should not be radical and revolutionary only in politics but also economically, financially, and otherwise.
LRC made us to be lazy and money minded as such part of our struggle is teaching ourselves the science of owning, protecting and maintaining power, resources, wealth, riches, our land …
No one is taking Southern Cameroonians down this road of irresponsibility and dependency on other, we know just too much of what that is.
We don’t care how hard it is, we are going to work as hard as its necessary to keep every inch of that which is ours, we are not selling or allowing anyone sell anything.
We are not even talking of how to transform our educational system so that it helps reduce our dependency on external capital, the modification of the structure of our society so as to empower willing Southern Cameroonian to venture in global business and through them we get the capital we need.
One false move and all this struggle was a waste of time.
At least LRC was smart to keep it under their nose instead of selling it to some mafia organization that will exploit it and destroy the land.
We Africans must stop this laziness. We have to work hard and own the treasures our creator gave us and pass it down to our children. How are we as a people globally ever going to become important and relevant when all we do is seek to be dependent on others. When we go to Europe we work like slave for them, in our own country we don’t want to.
All we want to do is sell, sell, sell, depend, depend, depend.
Sell our land, sell our resources, sell our treasures, sell ourselves, sell heaven, sell hell, sell earth, sell our riches, sell our wealth … and then sit and wonder why we are always the last and get no respect.
When our we going to teach our children to own, to build, to create, to maintain, to be proud to stand infront of the world and say, “you see that, we created it and we own it 100%”.
African don’t get respect not because we are black but because we are powerless and poor despite owning the richest continent. We must change that.
I’m so sad to see such a behavior and attitude for SCACUF, the battle is not even over and there we are already planing to privatized because we want the easy road to money.
You SCACUF guys are joking, you don’t have an idea yet of the trouble you have come to make yours.
Our people need a lot of reeducation, empowerment, training, encouraging, and SCACUF should better be doing that instead of holding privatization meetings.
Start telling our people things are not going to be easy for a while even after the restoration of statehood, another struggle must follow.
The effects of the 50+ years of oppression is not going to evaporate magically after our statehood is restored. A completely new personality has to be engineered into Southern Cameroonian else all this struggle was just a waste of time.
SCACUF don’t forget, our success is not going to be measured by weather this struggle is won or not but by weather WE create a generation of Southern Cameroonians that are so powerful that they take our success and successful produce the next successful generation of southern Cameroonians.
This is a mighty, externally difficult and scary task.
We should not make the mistake all African countries made of defeating the colonial master only to hand everything back to them by means of relaying, depending on them totally for almost everything ( IMF, NGO, NP, World Bank, charities, privatization, … ).
Malis , I concour with your trend of thought.
@Malis
I agree completely with your view regarding no to privatization. That only works in a mature democracy/government. In a young or corrupt government it only leads to more corruption/exploitation by the elites.
However, I must be missing something because I don’t understand how SCACUF came into the discussion! Is Susungi part of SCACUF or speaking for them? Did not see that in the article. I suggest that we should rightly criticize ideas/suggestions that are wrong but we should be careful about jumping to conclusions prematurely about whether this has anything to do with SCACUF.
No to privatization!
We must own the means of production with robust r&d department.
We should look at South Korean, Singaporean and the Scandinavian models.
Malis, you are on point!
malis great job. southern Cameroonians are not dogs. we can’t vomit only to turn and eat it later. no privatisation, we shall go the chines way creating the people’s banks of Southern Cameroon where every adult of southern Cameroonian will have an account. with this we can invest what ever investment.