Federation[Extermination] or Restoration?

We remain a people annexed and the only solution to the root causes of this malaise is sovereign independence, not any sort of federation with a neighboring state.

That Biya did not deign to sign his communique for the selective release of a few abductees should tell Ambazonians all they need to understand. That the release of our fellow citizens came after Yaoundé’s catastrophic foreign excursion demonstrates that the colonial junta, under French guidance is on the ropes.

However, what have they been thinking? Ministerial delegations to the diaspora “sur haute instructions du chef d’Etat.” Really!Recent happenings in Yaoundé beckons one to recall Frantz Fanon’s diagnosis that “colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” Of course, we have decided to challenge this French colonial enterprise with the “violence” of non-violent resistance, as a strategy that will lead to a favorable outcome while minimizing collective trauma to both peoples.

The exterminationof Ambazonia (Southern Cameroons), now codified as the “North West” and “South West” regions ofCameroun Republicas prescribed by France,has been the strategy all along. The two states (of equal status) federation that the people of the then Southern Cameroons voted for in the plebiscite, which brought the two together has never been in consideration. Now,the exterminationproject has failed, and separation and restoration of an independent Ambazonia state remains the only resolution to the current crisis with neighboring Cameroun Republic.

It’s noted that prior to the infamous Foumban Conference of 1961, French authorities, as was revealed through the pen of one Pierre Messmer(Colonial Administrator in Africa: 1952 -1956; Governor General of Cameroun, 1956,French Minister of Armies: 1960–1969, French Minister of State, Minister of Departments and Overseas Territories: 1971–1972, French Prime Minister: 1972–1974),viewed the then Southern Cameroons as a territory ripe for annexation: “The Foumban Conference, safe for appearances, was a sham, which was basically the annexation of the Southern Cameroons,” dixitMessmer in his autobiography, Les BlancsS’enVont. It is therefore only logical that as night follows day,a pro-active and intensive process of extermination of the Southern Cameroons identity had to ensue.

Confidential memoranda such as the recently published directive to the French Consul, Mr. Michel Morel, based in Buea and dated August, 1967 evinces the strategy of complete annihilation.The anticipated that within a generation, Ambazonia would have been Frenchified. They have failed spectacularly.

We are living witnesses to the violence of the brutal tactics of this French piloted strategy. In that French Consul memoranda, they envisaged the assimilation of the next generation of Ambazonians in these terms: “The Language Centers, French classes on Radio Buea, French teachers transferred into schools, the French presence which this Cultural Center will perpetuate … are among the many benefits to be made available to “West Cameroonians”

In addition, the institutions put in place, Accord de Coopération oblige; the Grandes Écoles à l’Africaine: EMIA, ENAM, IRIC etc. for the vassalization of the Camerounese bureaucratic elite and the sub-vassalization of those of Ambazonian origin, in order to mold the loyal and Frenchified administrative cadres to serve the Parisian metropole have fallen short.

Today, these manufactured elites, formatted to deceive, seduce and corrupt are void of any legitimacy in the eyes of those they sought to pacify and impress. The masses have seen them for what they were manufactured and programmed to be: privileged slaves who representan effete band of self-flagellating empty suits.

In this so-called unification palaver, if one is to take it at face value, and ignore Mr Messmer assertion of a French programmed annexation, which is at the core of this enduring crisis, the Frenchtraditional instincton behalf of their Vichy colony, Cameroun Republic, is one extermination of the other, while those of the people of theAmbazonia was one of a union with two federated states of equal status. The reasons for failure in co-habitation between these two territories, these two states, these two peoples, are due to the irreconcilable value systems, perspectives of governance andworldview, which were rooted in, and have rooted distinct traditions.Both peoples being Africans negates not this reality.

It must be reiterated that Cameroun Republic and Ambazoniahave an international boundary not being demarcated today. This boundary makes it clear that they are two separate and distinct countries; it is a matter of genetic geopolitics, which is immutable. It is a similar recognition and pragmatism that has seen the creation of newer states in the European Union in the last generation. Not all peoples are meant to co-habit within the same political and administrative space.

As this crisis persists, one is tasked with understanding and unknotting a French mindset, writ large in the Paris-run Yaoundé regime that have maintained Camerounese citizenry under the heel of colonial bondage. Ambazonians, brought into this colonial bondage in 1961, must today have a complete understanding and global perspective of what has been and will remain on offer from Paris’ best pupils.

But what exactly is this Frenchmindset? In Charles Cogan’s study and analysis of the French political tradition and worldview (French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing with La Grande Nation), he quotes Hubert Védrine, a former French Foreign Minister:

“’The ultra-liberal market economy, mistrust of the state, individualism removed from the Republican tradition, the inevitable reinforcement of the universal and ‘indispensable’ role of the United States, common law, the English Language, Anglo-Saxon norms…”

Védrine contrasted this with the French tradition: “Historically, French identity has been defined by and built upon a strong central state, first monarchial, and then republican. It was painstakingly built by jurists and based on the idea that France had a specific political, legal, and cultural role to play in the world” (Emphasis mine).

Cogan called it a “sweeping philippic on globalization.”

Védrine’s philippic reveals the entrenched Frenchmindset and worldview that is intensely and instinctively anti Anglo-Saxon and simultaneouslyadvocates for the hyper-centralization of power and state authority. It is steeped in hundreds if not thousands of years of French authoritarian tradition: “first monarchial, and then republican.”

This is the immutable mindset of the infantilized governing elite in Yaoundé, vetted and approved by the Cellule Africaine of the Élysée Palace in Paris.

This is the mindset that allows for a French-fried African to boldly proclaim to fellow Africans that they are cubes of sugar meant for dissolution, read extermination!

This is the mindset that allows for a French-fried African to tell a representative of his people, “Qu’est-ce que vous allez faire?” in response to the expression of legitimate grievances.

This is the mindset that enables the “epithet” of “Biafran” in response to the expression of legitimate grievances.

This the mindset that allows for our people to be kidnapped and transported across an international boundary for calling for federation, which in my view amounts to enabling extermination of the Ambazonian people and nation.

For those who continue to preach “federation” with Yaoundé as opposed to restoration in Buea at the footsteps of Mount Fako, they are asking Ambazonians to accept the impossible: dying a second time!

There exists no federal concept of governance in the French tradition and view of political administration. Asking for a federation with a state under the colonial control of France and its policy of monetary slavery, is, to paraphrase Richard Joseph in Gaullist Africa, to accept the principle of free intercourse between wolves and sheep.

Fellow Ambazonians, “you get from this life what you have the courage to ask for.”

Terrence B. Wakai