Deh Go Kill we Taya

You call us troublemakers and terrorists. The Southern Cameroons armed with a tradition of troublemaking, have scarcely spilt a drop of blood; LRC and their thugs have shed it in torrents. You call us terrorists; we don’t have guns and knives, like the magidas up North. And so the Southern Cameroonians are left duly locked up by Ahidjo, Biya , because, unfortunately, one grain of LRC’s logic outweighs – to their own eyes – more than a cartload of Southern Cameroons’ testimony. Evidence is not their staple.So they go to prejudice, blackmail, brute force, to win their ends. They have flung falsehoods and fallacies on us. We have lived in a system that has repeatedly told us we are fools, bad, troublemakers, we are this and that. The thing is impressed in our minds so that we think we are fools, bad, troublesome, since they tell us so. They have flung this dirt on us. The proverb is true: ‘fling dirt enough and some will stick’. Some has stuck on us and it is therefore the duty of a writer to reinvent, to remodel what we are and to point the touch of who we truly are. You see that we are not dogs or rats or goats but men and women. Good men, bad men; weak men, but still men and women. Our job is to use evidence to strip off their fables about us, because we have been victims of their slander, calumny and obloquy.

Our written culture is in our literature, in Sankie Maimo, Sanda Eba, Bate Besong, Bernard Fonlon, Albert Mukong, Bole Butake, Linus Asong. But new refined blood has been injected into the literary fray. And to this is the praise worthy dexterity and grace of Mark Bareta, Pauline Akoson, Chris Anu, Dr. Sly, Tapang Ivo, etc. With their wit and literary flair, we have taken back our mental and psychological possession and denied to be spat upon, all this with irresistible arguments. They have used not only argument but also fiction to strip off the fables of Tchiroma and his LRC media surrogates about us. But I tell LRC this: If you continue to hold us on, you will neither rest by day or sleep by night; because the ghosts of our martyrs (especially those of the recent genocide) shall keep you awake.
Their boring dull jingle is that their Cameroun is one and indivisible. They think it axiomatic. They think non but an idiot can doubt it. None but an Ambazonian can deny it. I should never shrink from any controversy, having the experience of 30 years, that the more we get close to these ‘brothers’ the more distinct it is clear that unity is a farce.

The Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) is more than a geographical location; it is a traditional entity. We have beliefs and practices which are peculiar only to us. Our culture may not be shouting but it is so mighty. Like the rapids of a river, it is silent; but when it meets the rock the river of our culture speaks. This culture is our people’s habit of opinion, of feeling. These things are unwritten, unseen but like air, they are there. Only us truly feel it, sense it and especially when interrupted brutality by a vile regime, experience it. Their truth lives in the hearts and tongues of the Ambaland people. And therefore, to tell us to surrender our land and culture and live their lie is to tell a China-man to abandon his chopsticks and take on fork. We know these people are just feeble and fallible creatures.

Father Gerald Jumbam

Kumbo Diocese