Dear Wilfred,
I am the one who should be asking: “Do you really hate me this much”? My comfort in reading your hate-laden, widely distributed diatribe against me captioned “Do You Hate Us this Much?” is that you seem to believe in the same God that I worship. That God, the Creator, is Omniscient as you remind us that you were taught in Sunday School. In His Omniscience, He sees and knows that, contrary to what you state in your hateful ranting against me:
1) The Government of Cameroon and the Biya regime never contributed AT ALL to the evolution of my career at the United Nations (UN), that I owe entirely to my God (who is also your God), from the humble beginnings of a UN Volunteer through the progressive rise from Professional grades 4 and 5, to Director 1 to Director 2 to Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) to retirement upon attainment of the mandatory retirement age.
2) Since resigning from the University of Yaounde II and the Cameroon civil service effective September 1994 on political and ideological grounds, I have never demanded anything from the Biya regime and the Biya regime has never offered me anything. I owe this regime NOTHING and expect NO FAVOUR from it. It is deeply regrettable that in Cameroon people like you have been moulded into believing that a person cannot advocate a cause or take a position on an issue without doing so because he or she is “paying back or looking for fresh favours “.
3) In presenting the keynote address at the AAC in Buea in 1993 and reading the Bamenda Proclamation at the AAC II in 1994, I brought many in the hall on both occasions to tears; they were emotional moments; like others in my audience, I shed emotional tears. Today, I learn from you that I was the only one who “wept uncontrollably” in Bamenda and did so because of the “possibility of never seeing” my “masters again”, because I was “violating a sealed agreement with the enemy” and so that the ‘enemy’ may see that I had been ‘forced to read’ the Bamenda Proclamation. I applaud you for the fertility of your slanderous imagination. But I find solace and strength in knowing that what you imagine is not what my (and your) Omniscient God sees and knows. So, why should I care about what you maliciously imagine?
4) Your hatred for me, which you describe yourself as ‘ferocious’, as the pouring out of your bile to me, even leads you to assign me ridiculous roles such as being “the one Etoudi used to mobilise Southern Cameroonians to welcome Pharaoh Biya in Washington DC, at the Obama-African Heads of State Summit”. Again, I marvel at the degree to which your hatred for me is driving your iniquitous imaginings and fabrications about me. Apart from the fact that I have NEVER had any dealings with ‘Etoudi’, why would Etoudi pick on me to mobilize Southern Cameroonians to welcome President Biya in Washington DC? For the entire duration of President Obama’s Administration, from 2008 to 2016, I was serving with the United Nations in Africa with no particular outreach to, or influence over, the Southern Cameroonians community in the US. On what basis, then, would Etoudi select me to mobilise that community on its behalf from Africa?
5) Yes, Wilfred, I happen to believe staunchly that “this failed union can work” and that we can sit down in a national dialogue and determine how to make it work. The trouble with your stance on the matter is that it shows that you and the Etoudi regime, which you present as ‘the enemy’, have two things in common: first, you are both afraid of dialogue; second, you both presume to know what the people want without ever organising a forum for discussion in which the people freely say what they want. The history of decolonisation is replete with examples of the coloniser dialoguing with the colonised to lift the colonial yoke on the latter. All that the ADF is advocating is that a national dialogue on the Anglophone problem or crisis should be held, without prescribing the outcome of the dialogue. What is wrong with that? Why are you so afraid to dialogue? While you are exploiting the plight of our compatriots who are in the jails of ”LRC” which you, by divine providence, avoided, you should know that as ‘federalists’, as opposed to the ‘separatist’ that you are, both Felix Nkongho Agbor Balla and Neba Fontem firmly support the national dialogue initiative. You would probably daub them ‘traitors’ for doing so.
6) Again, yes Wilfred, I am conversant with the misleading literature that you and other separatists have concocted over the years to deceive our people that the restoration of our independence under the auspices of the United Nations is possible. No, it is not. The independence of Southern Cameroons, if it is to be restored, will only be restored by war. You should be decent and honest enough to put this option squarely before our people and see if that is what they want, instead of heaping invective and insult on people like me who do not share your separatist position.
7. It is a pity that, having been informed that I would be attending the All Anglophone Convention on 21 and 22 July in Atlanta where all options would be discussed, you personally did not seize the opportunity of this face-to-face encounter with me. Yet, in your venomous and injurious piece against me, in which you say that you wanted your message to get to me “as most passionately and most violently as possible” you dishonestly state that you haven’t had the ‘privilege’, as you put it (tongue in cheek, of course), to confront me face to face. I am thrilled that, unlike you, other eminence grise of SCACUF – my friends Prof Carlson Anyangwe, SCACUF Spokesperson Larry Eyongechaw and Barr Harmony Bobga – accepted the invitation and will be sharing the platform with me at the Convention in Atlanta today and tomorrow. I look forward to a civilized exchange with them on the federalist and separatist options under the general theme of ‘Unity and Resolve in tackling the Anglophone problem’. On 19 July, the day on which I flew out from Douala for Atlanta, I had a civilized and substantive discussion via Whatsapp with Sisuku Julius Tabeayuk.
8) I am a man of dialogue, Mr Tassang. I have always been, and intend so to remain. If that earns me hatred from you, then so be it. My God who is your God will be your judge. You seem to predicate your mission of salvation for the Southern Cameroons on Anglophone hatred of Francophones. I find any political agenda that rests on hatred and xenophobia totally indefensible. If Southern Cameroons must separate from LRC because of Anglophone hatred of Francophones, in the Republic of Southern Cameroons that you are promising us, hatred-driven activists will demand the separation of the northern zone from the southern zone. And within each zone, hatred-driven zealots will demand the separation of ethnic groups. And so on and so on until we separate ad infinitum. Call me what you will, demonise me as you want, this is not the recipe that I would want for my country.
May our Good Lord, in whose fear we both live, enter into your heart and continue to guide and direct you.
Dr Simon Munzu