Authority truly forgets a dying king. See who comes into focus at this hour of reckoning for what was once Kamerun: it is Geneva, not Paris, not London, the colonial metropoles. All roads now lead to Geneva. As former Kamerun boils, vapour emits in Geneva and, the battleground gets transposed there, disturbing the quiet of the peaceful, aloof, neutral city.
Poor Geneva! Though in no way responsible for the mess in Kamerun, neither in the colonial – mandate and trusteeship – negligence of London nor the neo-colonial intrusions of Paris, Geneva now has to mop the vomit London and Paris puked. “Tiko drink, Kumba drunk!”
Geneva may not be all so innocent, though. Being the international banking haven, it has “conspired” with or condoned thieving dictators and kleptocratic bureaucrats to keep their stolen money “safe” from the prying eyes of lamenting citizens. So, didn’t Geneva dig its grave? Didn’t it bring this upon itself?
Yet, the prospect of good news from Geneva as it offers its good offices is not the first flow of good news from Switzerland to Kamerun. Some of the earliest messengers of the Good News to the shores of Kamerun were Basel Mission (Swiss) missionaries in 1886, less than a year after 1884-85 official German acquisition of Kamerun. Maybe Switzerland will bring ultimate good news again.
Geneva is where the deconstruction of Kamerun and prospects of its reconstruction (fixing or sharing) are taking place these days. True as “republican loyalists” say, an attack on le president de la republique du Cameroun is an attack on Cameroon because the president “incarnates” the institutions of the state. But who says the anti-Biya militants or Brigard anti-sardinard even care? That is exactly what they mean to do. Without apologies! They, like Ambazania combatants, are on a deconstruction mission.
After all, in the beginning, Kamerun was an inexistent entity constructed (from unrelated, disconnected kingdoms, empires and tribes) for the convenience of colonial Germany, deconstructed (separated into British and French entities) for the convenience of colonial Britain and France, reconstructed by Foncha and Ahidjo for their political convenience and perhaps the general good of all Kamerunians.
In its wake, institutions were created to give the Kamerun state the required authority to keep the construct intact. Today, no thanks to perceived failures of the state (successive governments) to weave a nation of peoples all feeling a sense of belonging, a deconstruction process is in motion both from within (MRC/BAS radical political opposition) and from the fringes (Ambazonia separatist movement).
The other weekend in Geneva, Biya saw red when BAS stormed him at the Intercontinental Hotel like a blitzkrieg. They unapologetically rock the president to rock the boat of state and torpedo it. They are out to deconstruct the ruined edifice which they hope to reconstruct.
Similarly, when Ambazonian “self-defence” combatants take up arms against the republican army, they do so to deconstruct the “empire” that “annexed” them in the hope (for some – the federalists) to possibly reconstruct it on new, just, and equitable terms or (for unwavering “restorationists”) to take each a piece in a return to the Cameroons or simply Ambazonia for them.
Geneva is now the centre of the universe of the deconstruction, the potential reconstruction or the permanent demolition. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs is mothering “talks about talks”, laying the ground for possible imminent dialogue to address both the Ambazonia and Kamto revolutions.
May Geneva feel enough of the hurt of Kamerunians to be pushed hard enough to strive diligently (sans erreur) towards a dream or doom Cameroon(s).
Amba and school resumption
There are mixed reactions to calls for schools to resume in the Anglophone regions heavily hit by armed conflict launched by Mancho Bibixy, his co-detainee Ngalim Felix and Felix Agbor “Balla” Felix Nkongho and supported by fellow former detainee Justice Ayah Paul Abine.
Schools began shutting down in the Northwest and Southwest regions at the end of 2016 as the socio-political climate degenerated amidst the crisis triggered by the teachers’ and lawyers’ strike. It began as a teachers’ downing of tools, which meant teachers stayed away from school while pupils and students went to school.
It metamorphosed into parents withdrawing their children from schools both in protest of the Government’s non-compliance with teachers’ demands and fear of reprisals by marauding youths enforcing the “dead schools” edict even after some teachers’ unions called off their strike. Calls for schools to remain shut down were made by the Consortium of Anglophone Civil Society Organizations which was the drum-major of the movement at the time.
Proponents of the continued school shutdown pre-conditioned its reopening on the release of Anglophone activists detained in Yaounde and elsewhere. By the time three of the drum-majors Agbor Balla, Neba Fontem and Ayah Paul were released, momentum of command of the Anglophone/Southern Cameroonian movement had swung to the new leadership that emerged in Nigeria – the Interim Government. Even the release of the trio at the verge of school resumption in August 2017 did not do the magic. The expected swoop to school did not happen. The stalemate has loomed these past three years.
Now, some are wondering, if the release of Agbor Balla, Neba Fontem and Ayah Paul was the precondition for school resumption, why should there be a call for schools to resume when the present leadership Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, Wilfred Tassang, Nfor Ngalla Nfor, Elias Ebai Eyambe et al are still behind bars?
Nevertheless, frowning at the school shutdown, which I thought penalized our kids and could jeopardize their future, and which I judged was an “unholy” war tactic, I expressed my views (as usual) in a series of Facebook posts. I here share a couple of them from October 2017 and August 2018.
You know what has or has not changed. Judge for yourself.
ANGLOPHONE FREEDOM FIGHTERS AND SCHOOLING
My Facebook post of October 24, 2017
1.) Fight and not go to school like Jacob Zuma
2.) Fight and go to school like Thabo Mbeki and Namibia’s 1970s-80s education migrants
1.) those fighting our cause with their HEARTS only and obstructing, promoting or supporting the school freeze are working to produce future citizens in the mold of a whole lot of psychologically defeated black South Africans, especially the men who shunned school, and the incompetent, corrupt but often hyper-popular South Africa president JACOB ZUMA (great fighter with empty skull, lacking even the finesse to steal state money). He was on the streets enjoyably and heroically miming nkosi sikeleli Africa (god bless Africa, the Africa freedom song). See what a wreck he has led great South Africa into, no thanks to his greed, blatant, senseless corruption, catastrophic management of its economy and the moral dent on the reputation of Mandela’s country.
2.) Those fighting our cause with their HEADS and taking the risk to encourage full resumption of schools are fighting to produce future citizens in the mold of THABO MBEKI (no less committed to the anti-apartheid struggle, head of ANC’s armed wing – UMKOMTO WE SIZWE – and ANC secretary general, his dad GOVAN MBEKI in jail with MANDELA) who was abroad attending the best schools to prepare for post-apartheid Azania, to make the fight worth the cost by preparing competent, safe hands to pilot the ship of state as he did masterly after NELSON MANDELA. This also follows the reasoning of leaders of Namibia’s liberation movement (SWAPO) who, in the peak of their independence guerrilla war, shipped their future young cadres abroad for studies. As a nursery and primary school boy in the 1970s and early 1980s, we had neighbours in Clerks Quarters, Victoria who hosted some of the Namibians ahead of their independence in 1990. They attended Saker, Sasse, Okoyong, etc. They were not sellouts. They had their eyes on the bigger picture, their hands at the same time on the trowel and on the sword like biblical Israelites building the wall of Jerusalem, yet staying alert to fight for their homeland(Nehemiah 4:17).
BACK TO SCHOOL REALITY
My Facebook post of August 29, 2018
1.) No school will open next week in MANYEMEN and other rural and hinterland locations. There is hardly any school going child there to be arrested and forced to school or lured and escorted even in an armoured car and guarded even to toilet for just one day;
2.) At least one school, probably many, possibly all, will open next week in Buea, Limbe, Bamenda and other cosmopolitan centres. It is regrettable that children cannot go to school. But that’s as much as we can do – regret!
3.) There was a stage this school blockage headache could have been treated with paracetamol. You don’t treat a cancer with paracetamol. Chemotherapy may threaten to kill a cancer patient but could well be the panacea. Normalcy won’t return for schools to function normally without humble, hard measures;
4.) On the scale of responsibility for any school going child brought into harm’s way, hit by a direct or stray bullet or killed, YAOUNDE takes the first blame for creating the enabling environment for this deadlock. But should an AMBA combatant target a school going child anywhere, his commanders and comrades-in-arms must reprimand him and handle him the way they discipline deviants like looters and extortionists in the name of AMBA:
5.) Wishing away an armed struggle like this one only happens in day-dreaming;
6.) It takes lack of character and a sense of purpose and focus for a victim to be made to feel guilty for crying or a child for banging daddy’s room door to disturb his sweet sleep because he is indifferent to their pleas;
7.) How nice should a miracle cause schools to open everywhere and our children poured in, including those hiding in the bushes. I hate the meltdown and have staked my life and cheap praise fighting it, but as it stands, widespread school resumption will be impossible without a form of official ceasefire and dialogue towards resolving the crisis;
8.) Those who have the skills to bully guns away may take the contract. It should be lucrative;
9.) When I spoke up calling for an end to the school disruption, guns were not yet out, there was more psychological and moral threat than real threat to life. I’ve spent most weekends in my native Manyemen because of my traditional engagements, and travelled other hinterlands for professional reasons these past year in the heat of this crisis more than ever before, and can tell;
10.) Don’t let THEM make you feel guilty for the ruins of a war you didn’t start, which THEY could preempt.
outside cameroon
West Africa dumps FCFA!
West African governments have struck pan-Africanist gold by agreeing to put to use an indigenous African currency (Eco) beginning January 2020. That would put to rest the French neo-colonial CFA Franc.
It all came from the blues. After decades of calls by pan-Africanist for Africa to have its own money and resistance by neo-colonial and Francophile leaders like Alassane Ouatarra who challenged it only a few months ago, the Ivorian leader has suddenly become one of the most vocal supporters of the venture.
outside africa
Trump war with UK, western allies
I can now “officially” declare that US president Donald Trump is a Russian agent consciously or inadvertently playing the Russian card to break the historical bond between western countries, provoke and embolden America’s enemies to disgrace the US and open avenues for Russia to intimidate America in the short run.
I suggested in a poem I wrote a few days to the US 2016 presidential election pitting Trump with Hillary Clinton that Russia’s Trump will shatter US’s traditional alliances and leave America alone to face doom at the hands of its enemies.
IF TRUMP WINS…
Poem I posted on Facebook end of October 2016.
Should Donald Trump win
See who’s US co-president? Putin
See who to be jailed? Clinton
Who to be deported? Muslim, Hispano-Latin
O! Asian, African not Trumpy whites’ kin
Who to be barred? Mohamed, Latifa, Ahmedin
Third world-style, Trump’s opponent to jail
Says Hillary betrayed America through email
State secrets in private email, America to derail
But tax evasion, women groping may trim his tail
Should Trump becomes president
Trump-Putin entente without precedent
US-Russia become interdependent
Mighty US no longer independent
Like Reagan praised Perestroika and Glasnost
And lured Gorbachev till Soviet Union lost
Putin praises Trump Towers, grabs US at no cost
Trump laments US nuclear rust
Fears Russian nuclear robust
Nuclear codes under his finger nail?
Trump dumps bombs in a hail
His nuclear board a brail
World in turmoil, o! Sip from the Grail!
Allies abandoned can’t stay frail
Germany, Japan must balance the scale
Teheran, Pyongyang on nuclear trail
Berlin and Tokyo too must be hale
Latinos are criminals, build a wall
Lazy, sex crazy Africans, let them fall
Muslims hate us, ban them all
America alone to stand tall
Trump, White House barm?
Africa reclaims its farm
Jihadists come to harm
Europe honors no alarm
America alone with arm
If Trump into White House ram
World snubs Uncle Sam
Friends and foe will slam
Latinos break Trump dam
China grabs market, says I am
Russia great, Trump on pram
NATO no foes will jam
America becomes a sham