It was already known or at least hinted that the Ambazonia and Kamto revolutions were coordinated somehow. It came in the open in the Kondengui prison mutiny last week. Though it cannot be stated with exactitude who or what triggered the prison uprising in terms of conception and planning, the way detainees of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) “spontaneously” joined the protest by Anglophones detained in relation to the Ambazonia revolution and militants of the one hailed leaders of the other might have said it all.
Initial reports from Kondengui said it was an uprising by Ambazonia detainees but at the end of the day, it was MRC’s first vice president, MamoudouMokta, who became the face of casualties of the prison uprising. A photo was widely shared on social media showing him in the cargo carriage of a military pickup reportedly carted away to an unknown destination. His offences were to have been airlifted triumphantly by protesting Ambazonia detainees and to have played an active role in escalating the prison protest. He might, perhaps, have been at the instigation stage too.
How far theAmba and Kamto revolutions are coordinated remains unclear but they are obviously united in purpose, if only that purpose is to discomfort long-serving President Paul Biya and combine forces to dislodge him. How two nearly diametrically opposed movements blend (one separatist, the other republican “rebels” professing opposition to separation) could take a complex explanation to understand but it can be made easy by use of the Ethiopia-Eritrea “model”.
From the 1970s and 1980s, MelesZenawi who eventually became executive Prime Minister, led a rebel movement fighting to overthrow both Emperor Haile Selassie and his successor, Menghistu Haile Mariam in league with the Eritrean separatist movement led by Isaias Aferwerki. Their deal was to topple the regime and take each a piece: Meles to rule Ethiopia and andAferwerki to obtain independence for Eritrea. Both came to pass.
Perhaps Kondengui was the Amba/MRC society wedding party at home though “knock-door”, traditional marriage and civil wedding had long taken place elsewhere? Where? Who knows? But it had been obvious. They have been opening doors for each other; holding the door open for each other to enter where each held the key. They have been givingeach other access to their address books, linking each other to who each other knows.
They collaborate on many fronts and in many ways. On the party political front, seeing the SDF is dragging its feet and hesitating to take a front in the Anglophone/Ambazoniastruggle, and perhaps calculating that that may mean the teeming Anglophone electorate may not follow SDF, but also somehow also rebuffed by bitter rivalry, MRC has been associating with PAP of Paul Ayah Abine, hoping PAP may make gains in the Anglophone regions where SDF may lose ground.
When PAP installed new leadership recently following Ayah’s resignation, MRC was officially represented at the ceremony. When Kamto claimed victory of the 2018 presidential election, Akoson Raymond, in his capacity then as PAP Secretary General, issued a message of congratulation to Kamto from exile, though it was later disclaimed by Ayah. Not many were left in doubt, though. Those conversant with political surrogacy understand how and why juniors take certain actions which seniors may eventually disclaim if they yield the wrong outcomes.
Based on this reasoning, some found a way to associate everything Ayah to this seeming political marriage. When Kamto called for crowd-sourced fundraising to support the Ayah Foundation run by Ayah AyahAbine, son of the other, in its noble mission of alleviating the plight of persons displaced by the Ambazonia armed conflict, Ayah detractors said it was indirect MRC sponsorship of PAP. The Foundation’s staff came under some of the kind of political persecutions suffered by MRC and PAP members.
This all makes it look like MRC is staking its future in the Anglophone regions on PAP serving as its bridge in some kind of alliance in future elections. Perhaps reason why Paul Ayah who is still pleading the case of Ambazonia, decided to step aside from his post months back to avoid a posture of contradiction.
Difficult to tell whether MRC is using one stone to hit two birds, whether it is leaving its options open in case of any of the eventualities or whether it has a clear-cut deal with the Ambazonia movement under the Ethiopia-Eritrea model.
Sextape, “GayPose”: Sexist coming out?
Two curious images have been drawing varied reactions from social media users since last weekend. A sextape of Indomitable Lions forward, Clinton Njie and photos of a journalist on assignment with another from another continent. Both images are arguably curious. One more than the other, though. One is explicit, the other implicit. One is demonstrative, the other is simply suggestive. None of them was leaked.
The football player’s video of a sex scene between him and an unidentifiable woman was evidently filmed and posted on social media by himself. His motive is not known but he has been quoted as saying he simply clicked the wrong button.
Among the journalist’s photos, also shared by himself, one is pretty curious. While there is nothing unusual about an ambitious and budding journalist posing with a professional icon (most people do that using the testimonial photos to show they have arrived or that they mingle with the high and mighty, though mingling does not necessarily imply equating), what most commentators point out in the photo considered nearly too curious is the unusually close body contact and even more curious, the not unintended position of one journalist’shand on the other’s in a suggestive way. The photo is not accompanied with any words, so the conclusions are only guessed.
But if both the football player’s deliberate scandal and the journalist’s decision to publish curious pose photos are deliberate as they really seem (not an accidental click by the footballer and not an innocent pose and publish by the journalist), they both should simply be understood as COMING OUT or OUTING as they say in the gay culture parlance.
It is hard to tell what statement Clinton Njie, who has no known sexual orientation issues, might have intended to make by showing the world that he makes love to women. (Did he want to flaunt his size?) A commentator on Facebook said, at least Njie has shown us he is a man (not sure whether the commentator meant man-boy) and not gay.
Also hard to tell whether the journalist means to say, yes I am, and so what? Or maybe it was just an innocent, naïve pose and more stardom than coming out public by the journalist who has not, until now, been associated with sexual orientation issues. Perhaps all those weekend whispers (there were more whispers, less open comments about the journalist) were just much ado about nothing, especially in relation to the journalist.
outside africa
Teen’s climate change coming out
Sixteen-year-old Swede, Greta Thunberg has become the international star in the fight for climate change since her lone-ranger protest outside the Swedish Parliament in August last year ignited the international school climate strike movement. And, oh!,is the poor little girl scorned for it by the very ones who ought to understand it better than her and draft policies and implement them! About the same fate suffered by former policy-maker and implementer, Al Gore, former US Vice President.
Invited to address the French Parliament the other week with her message of doom should policy-makers ignore climate change, she was boycotted by right-wing/conservative politicians who also made a mockery of her for being alarmist. Some called her “Prophetess in Shorts” because she habitually dresses above the knees. She was also called “Nobel Prize for Fear” or “Prix Nobel de la Peure” in French, partly because of the resemblance of the sound of “peure” and “paix”, the real appellation of the Prix Nobel de la Paix or Nobel Peace Prize.
Unmoved, Miss Thunberg told French parliamentarians how sad it was that they, children, were being viewed as the “bad guys” for telling politicians “uncomfortable things” about climate change. She said, “You don’t have to believe us, but you do have to listen to science.”
Where are kids with vision and courage like Greta Thunberg when Youth Parliamentarians gather annually in Yaounde and leave without jolting decision-makers in Yaounde to address the problems affecting them and others in their communities?
Hello! Any Greta Thungergs here? Age must not be an obstacle. The innocence of youthfulness and the curiosity of the courage from such youth may be both disarming of the cruellest monster and unusually seize their attention, hoping that the Soweto Massacre is a thing of the past.
BoJo: Trump-cat coming out
The coming to power of Boris Johnson as UK PM means in more ways than less that the UK now has its version of Donald Trump (or Trump-cat, from copy-cat). It goes beyond their looks – their blond hair, even if Trump’s is dyed.
Though different in their socio-economic background (Trump an establishment outsider), Johnson (brought up within the establishment and attended Oxford where most of UK top politicians studied and was former Mayor of London before entering parliament), their visions, driven by their fears, converge. They are both easily White Supremacists.
Trump seeks to preserve as much as he would, a white America by securing US borders from “invading aliens”. Johnson, a champion of Brexit is moved by fear of Europe-flooded immigration and racism. What he called his dream “Golden Age” in his inaugural speech as PM, is Britain with the least possible aliens and no “interference” from foreign friends (what he calls a country proud of its independence). Well, that is, perhaps if the alternative relative dependency on the US after quitting EU (already being negotiated) would be considered less of dependency.