I shed a tear or two, live on TV, on October 6 when CRTV’s Press Hour presenter, Joe Chebonkeng, announced the death of Bernard Acho Muna (Ben Muna) live on set. I felt a pang of pity for the lifelong combatant for just causes whose every good deed and sacrifice were always rubbished and watered down by reference to whose son he was. He was treated like a prince who joined a gang to discomfort the high and mighty robbing the poor, but they always scorned him.
I felt sorry for Ben that he finally exitted the stage without a tangible political accomplishment for all his troubles. I wish I didn’t have to cry, and felt ashamed of myself for my emotional breakdown on a Sunday afternoon primetime. Yet, I do not blame myself for feeling Ben Muna suffered a gross injustice at the hands of political associates, all because of whose son he was. They are someone’s son too. And you reading this, what have you done for someone else and what did your father do for your village or community? (ST Muna and Us will be for another day.)
Self-made prince
Ben Muna was his own man. In both his professional and political careers, he was not a lackey boy under the patronizing wings of a successful father whom some love to scorn for his political choices in his time and their perceived outcomes in the fate of former Southern Cameroon today. Ben Muna entered politics on a high pedestal after cracking the walls of the one-party system with his public outings as Bar Council chairman, especially his speech to the Bar saying Cameroon was ripe for multiparty politics after the arrest of his predecessor, Barrister Yondo Black and nine others for pro-democracy action and in leading the Bar to defend pro-democracy crusaders, Pius Njawe of Le Messager newspaper and its columnist Celestin Monga, facing trial for articles considered injurious to the person of President Biya. Ben Muna entered politics, with a house-hold name in his own right and, excluding jealous haters or in another country or part of the world, should have been a standard-bearer for our political actors.
And this is what I said on Press Hour: Were Ben Muna daddy’s boy, he would have sought to move into his father’s shoes when, in 1988, his father, ST Muna was quitting public service by announcing he would not seek another term in office as MP from Momo and thus quitting his 16-year career as Speaker of the National Assembly. This system accommodates its children. Remember Ministers Bello Mbelle and Yves Mbelle Ndoe, Victor Anoma Ngu and John Niba Ngu, Sadou Hayatou and Alim Hayatou. Ben Muna could have moved into ST MUna’s shoes if he so desired. Having been Bar Council chairman (Batonnier) in a successful law practice, with an enviable international reputation, Ben was ripe to begin a political career within the system in his own right with or without a push from his father or his reputation. Instead – and take note of the years under review (1988-1990) – he went associating and “plotting”, fully or partially, with “bad boys” of Group 89 (embryo of the SDF) on how to demolish the system his father helped to build. Daddy’s boys do not do that, do they?
Ben Muna rushed to his doom?
At the creation of the SDF in 1990, written or unwritten, it was well known that its Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi, was only party leader; he would not be their presidential candidate. In certain quarters, it was already said that Ben Muna would be the one. Dr Samuel Tchwenko was also mentioned by some. But all that point to fact that if there was an early leader cult for charismatic party chair, aspiring to be presidential candidate would be no taboo. And that was not an SDF novelty. In the NUDP where Samuel Eboua was founding President, it was an open secret that Bello Bouba Maigari, even before he returned to the country, was the designated presidential candidate. At some time, it was also hinted that Adamu Ndam Njoya would join the SDF as their presidential candidate.
So, when in 1992, Muna stood up to be SDF presidential candidate, he should have felt betrayed by Chairman Fry Ndi’s own bid to be presidential candidate, thus cumulating functions, a taboo in the SDF at the time. Instead, it was Ben Muna (“Muna’s son”, “another Muna against another John”, “Muna again!”) who faced the wrath of the madding crowd. He was called names and made to look like he had, for real, done something wrong for aspiring to a position he bulldozed into existence and personally submitted its letters of association. That stigma followed him throughout his political career, though, matter of fact, he had always been in the trenches with comrades, fighting more ferociously than those not privileged to have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths. What with the early SDF struggles and the ongoing Anglophone/Ambazonia struggle, the public positions he took that gravely vexed the Government and his regular, quiet visits to Ambazonia leaders in prison, away from the media spotlight. Seeing his privileges, and for those who view politics as the struggle for bread and butter, and seeing his advanced age, it was clear Ben Muna was not fighting for himself. His kid brother, Akere said in his eulogy, “I know that everything you did, you did for others.” Yet, they always found a way of making him look wrong, because he was his father’s son.
The Munas: No silver spoon
The greatness, boldness and self-confidence in Ben Muna was not all about being a Muna son. ST Muna did not groom princes. He made his kids become their own man. At Ben Muna’s memorial on November 8 in Yaounde, his younger brother George narrated how Ben’s first son who bears his grandfather’s full name, Solomon Tandeng Muna, one day at age three, heard his grandfather’s name mentioned on radio as Vice President of the Federal Republic and Prime Minister of West Cameroon and told his grandfather, “I heard my name on radio.” George said ST Muna rebuked his namesake grandson, telling him to shut up. “I gave you that name.”
George Muna said old man Muna meant to teach his grandson how to become his own man and not borrow from a family name. “Imagine a three-year-old believing he was prime minister because of his family name.” He said it would get worse when the boy grew up to his teens. Likewise, the late Daniel Muna, ST Muna’s oldest son, told me in an interview I did in 2001 for Radio Reine in Yaounde and The Herald newspaper, that their father as West Cameroon PM, made his kids trek to school like other children.
Nor did Muna send his children to ENAM, ASTI, CUSS to become judges, civil administrators, finance administrators, public service medical doctors or public service translators. Neither did he position them in public service jobs. He left them to struggle in the private sector. If, as some have claimed, the Muna kids got an invisible hand pushing them up, it would have been easier to place them in public service positions. Ben who began as a public service State Counsel, soon quit for private practice. He resisted even persuasion from the dreaded pioneer president Ahidjo. Likewise, Akere, the second Muna lawyer, opted for private practice. They both could have been favoured to obtain admission into ENAM. Nor also was either of the two Muna medical doctors trained in CUSS (today the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences). Both trained abroad, Daniel remained in private practice (proprietor of Polyclinique Bonanjo) to his death. Only Wallindjom and George served complete careers as a public service medical doctor and agronomist, respectively. Humphrey, the aeronautics engineer, serving the most part of his career with the pan-African civil aviation authority (ASECNA) could hardly have been seen as a government worker. Ama Muna trained as a translator in Canada, not at the Government-owned ASTI in Buea and was never a civil servant.
Akere: Ben’s Mr Nobody?
Ben Muna, whom his older brother, Dan told me was their father’s political successor, fought many political and professional battles, his kid brother, Akere always in the “war cabinet”. Unapologetically. Describing himself in a eulogy to Ben as “your associate, your accomplice”, Akere “confesses” that he and Ben “planned and plotted together… together we discussed and thought about different solutions and tried many.” How so true! That was the secret whispered in Yaounde by those who claim to know the Muna lawyer brothers well enough. A senior colleague often tells me “When you see Ben take any remarkable action, know Akere was the strategist.” I believe that. And here are my two testimonies:
Towards or around the mid-2000s, Akere Muna was guest speaker at the launch of a book on corruption produced by the Cameroon Union of Journalists (CUJ) under the late Celestin Lingo. The event took place at the John Paul II Auditorium in Mbankolo at the premises of Rev. Father Jean Marie Bodo’s Radio Reine where I worked for a half decade. Discussing political corruption, Akere pointed out that the mandate of SDF’s National Executive Committee (NEC) had expired in 2003, but a couple of years on, NEC headed by the party Chairman Fru Ndi was still taking decisions for the party. He cited a provision in the SDF rules (which he contributed in drafting) by which, at the expiry of NEC’s mandate, the day to day running of the party becomes the business of the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed then by Professor Clement Ngwasiri.
My colleagues and former newsroom mates at The Post newspaper where I worked from its inception in 1997, had somehow missed Akere’s emphasis. I brought it to their attention, and they submitted a story published in the subsequent edition of their paper which Anembom Monju, then one of SDF’s communication secretaries, reacted to, and Akere riposted, thus triggering the political roar that culminated in the bloody rival Muna-led SDF convention of May 26,2006 in Yaounde.
Apparently picking on Akere’s hint (or in accordance with their plan made public by Akere for legitimacy), Ben who had been nominated by the Yaounde II Electoral District to run for party Chairman in the SDF convention in gestation but disqualified by NEC, resorted to the Akere option and had Ngwasiri summon a NAC meeting in a hotel at Nkoleton in Yaounde, where NAC announced the holding of an SDF convention in Yaounde on May 26, 2006. NEC later met in Bamenda and also convened an SDF convention on the same day in Bamenda. That is how two SDF conventions held that day in Bamenda and Yaounde. That is how Ben Muna found legal grounds to hold an SDF convention in Yaounde, thanks to Akere’s plotting. If Ben Muna was somebody, Akere is Mr Nobody in every Ben Muna “mischief”. The famous rhyme goes:
“I know a funny little man as quiet as a mouse
Who does the mischief that is done in everybody’s house
There’s no one ever seen his face and yet we all agree
That every plate we break was cracked by Mr Nobody.”
Akere is certainly not a little man, though he was Ben’s little brother, 22 years his junior. I do not know whether he is funny. What I know is, he has been such a political feline, long in the shadows that few could tell his political colour until he outed with his run for president in 2018.
Another anecdote: I had a conversation with the late Barrister Innocent Bonu who was representing Ben Muna’s Alliance of Progressive Forces (APF) in the Vote-counting Commission for the 2007 twin Parliamentary and Municipal elections at the Supreme Court. Ben Muna had been candidate for Parliament from Momo. I told Bonu craving to see Ben win even just his single seat and find an institutional platform upon which to express himself in the country. Bonu told me Ben winning a seat in Parliament or not was of little concern to him. He said they in APF looked at Ben as a kind of John the Baptist preparing the way for the “smarter politician” (Bonu’s words), Akere. Now, you may understand why Akere says in his eulogy to Ben, “I maintain my engagement to continue your fight against social injustice, inequality and poverty and to always strive for peace. As a lawyer, you always insisted that we must be the voice of the voiceless and the guard dogs of democracy and human rights.”
Could Ben Muna COPE?
Ahead of the 2011 presidential election, my newspaper, This is News, produced an edition that brought the spotlight on Ben Muna’s new political career. The caption was “Can Ben Muna COPE?”By COPE, I was playing a pun and drawing a parallel from the name of Congress of the People, a South African political party founded in by ANC dissidents who pulled out in solidarity with former president Thabo Mbeki, following his tribulations at the hands of supporters of his rival, Jacob Zuma. In its first electoral outing in 2009, COPE did not make the electoral impact it has envisioned
After the election, I visited Ben Muna at his chambers and during our conversation, he remarked that there were too many newspapers on the newsstands. I replied that our plethoric media landscape was in the image of our plethoric political landscape with too many political parties. He said I was right.
These are the commonalities I establish between our media and political landscapes: the numbers belie the quality, the best are not the most recognized, the most thriving are not the best quality, those with the means do not produce the best, those with the knowhow are not the top seeds in the enterprise, most of those that stay the course are not playing their legitimate role, as Ekani Anicet of MANIDEM says, some big parties have small leaders and some small parties have big leaders and most of them (political parties and newspapers) have to be sponsored by those they ought to challenge or expose in order to stay afloat, hence the compromised results.