Since 2016, Cameroon has been in the midst of what has become known as “the Anglophone crisis.” The territory of present-day Cameroon was even more disrupted than many countries colonized by European states, as it was taken from the Germans after World War I and divided (according to the League of Nations Mandate system) between France and Britain for “administrative” purposes. Both colonial and post-colonial governments deployed this linguistic division for their own benefit, and the government of Paul Biya (in power since 1982), has reinforced francophone control. In October 2016, teachers and lawyers in the Anglophone region went on strike to protest, eventually sparking a secessionist movement in addition to non-secessionist demands for greater anglophone autonomy. The Biya government initially responded with violence, bombing a protest in the city of Bamenda, then in the face of widespread domestic and international condemnation, asserted its willingness to negotiate. Many people question whether negotiations are substantive, and whether they can produce any lasting and workable agreement. Over the next few weeks, we will be examining different aspects of the Cameroon “crisis” from diverse perspectives including a post by Father Lado, a Jesuit priest, earlier this week; today’s post by Dr. Cilas Kemedjio, a CIHA Blog Co-Editor and literary scholar which will be continued next week; Gerald Acho, a CIHA Blog Luce Graduate Fellow; and Tatiana Fouda and Cecelia Lynch. Please stay tuned and as always, feel free to share your comments below.
Out of the linguistic plantation complex: Africa Betrayed or the Anglophone Question in Cameroon
By: Cilas Kemedjio (University of Rochester)
I am from Cameroon, but I do not intend to tell Southern Cameroons activists how to conduct their struggles. I am thoroughly disqualified from such a role. I am a literary scholar. That is a curse and a blessing. A curse because I pay too much attention to words, to how things are said, to language and the many meanings that every word or image carries. But it also comes in the form of a blessing because from time to time, I can stumble on a creative expression, on a well-crafted commercial. I learned many creative expressions during my recent stay in Yaoundé. Despite all the problems facing the living peoples of Cameroon, I was truly overjoyed with the creativity. I don’t generally pay attention to political propaganda. However, one slogan caught my eye. It is from a party that has some connections with the Union des Populations du Cameroun (Cameroon Peoples’ Party), the historic party that led the struggle for independence. It reads: “Cameroun is my country. Africa is our future.” Beautiful because it captures what I believe in. It also captures something more powerful: Africa United is our future, as Africans.
We have no choice but to move towards more Panafricanism, the Panafricanism of the peoples, not only of the dear leaders. I am happy to see that our leaders are moving this agenda. Within the grouping of central African countries known as CEMAC, there’s a unique passport, license plates are identified as CEMAC. Ghana now offers Africans the opportunity to apply for a visa at the airport. East African countries and Southern African countries are building the institutional infrastructure of African solidarity. The African Union is becoming more active while the African Development Bank is contributing the development of Africa. We should hold our leaders accountable for their misdeeds, yet we should also celebrate them when they are moving in the right direction.
In the early 1990s, the late writer and staunched government critic Mongo Beti (1932-2001) came back to Cameroon after more than thirty years of self-imposed exile in France. Mongo Beti realized that some of his pronouncements about Cameroon were wrong. He was honest enough to admit that he was wrong. Much like Mongo Beti, I am realizing that most Cameroonians’ opinions on the current iteration of the Anglophone question are clouded by their previous stance against the pathetic, repressive, and inept government. Unlike Mongo Beti, they are convinced that they are the righteous ones; and whoever does not follow their gospel must be cast in the fires of hell. I would try very hard not to fall on this trap, because it is my contention that most Francophones who are siding with the secessionists tend to see Anglophones as leading a proxy fight to oust the Yaoundé government. I have never voted in Cameroon, has never been suspected of any sympathy for the current regime that has been ruling Cameroon since 1957. However, this crisis is too important for me to use it as a proxy for venting my frustration with the government.
War is war. People who are committed to going to war do not need excuses. They decide to go to war. They decide to inflict pain, to create a context for indiscriminate killings. They decree that the innocent or the guilty will suffer untold hardship, from starvation to death by way of painful disruption of their daily routine. South Sudan is before us. For many years, they claim to be fighting for their liberation from Sudan. When the day of liberation came, they turned their guns on each other. War is war because it is the very negation of the human. War brings misery. The blood is red, whether it’s from an innocent bystander who is kidnapped and killed, a policeman who is gunned down, or a priest sent to his savior too soon. War is ugly and unnecessary.
Even if we should view the claims made by the government about the secessionists as its usual propaganda, it is also fair to say that some kidnappings leading to murder, and some school burnings can be attributed to groups that claim to be part of the secessionist movement. School burnings and attacks on security forces can also be attributed to the forces of the secession because the school boycott was one of the first tactics that jumpstarted the current crisis. Still on this logic, security forces and all who represent the central State are part of “La République,” the declared enemy of the secessionists and those speaking for them. But I believe that war will never solve this problem and so I reject war as futile and dangerous, not because I’m staking a position for or against any party in this conflict, but on ethical and humanitarian concerns.
I do not question the legitimacy of self-proclaimed Anglophones to fight for their rights, including self-determination if that is what may lead them to their perceived promised land. However, I do not see why human beings should start killing human beings to champion a cause. Frantz Fanon once said, concerning tribalism, that it was the very practice of stupidity (la bêtise if you pardon my French). Stupidity is what this conflict is about, and it’s even more absurd because the dead and the coming dead are a very macabre offering to the gods of colonialism (French, British, or German). I therefore want to make this statement before proceeding.
Neither Francophone nor Anglophone, neither former colonized subject nor neocolonized: I proclaimed myself a student of the Pan-Africanist Nation. Following on the steps of Panafricanist author and activist Ngugi wa Thiong’o, I envision such a positioning as a way out of the “linguistic famine” that has locked me for too long in the crypt of the “European linguistic plantations.” Ngugi argues that “products of colonial educational factories may come to see the illusionary promises of the Europhone memory as the beginning of their history—a process that of course means the loss of their own history.” I claim that framing the Anglophone problem as a struggle between German, French, and British colonial legacies manages to lock the African peoples of the North and Southwest regions of Cameroon into the alien days of the European linguistic plantation. Kwame Nkrumah, proclaiming the independence of Ghana on March 6, 1957, emphatically proclaimed: “Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa.” I dare say that as a Panafricanist, the struggles of my sisters and brothers in the Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia, or the Anglophone regions will be meaningless unless they emphatically advance the total liberation of Africa.
However, I have more compelling reasons for distancing myself from the Francophone-identity-disaster. I am not a Francophone because I am an African. I am not a Francophone because assuming such an identity carries with it liabilities that are detrimental to the Pan-Africanist struggle. I emphatically advance the current proposition: Francophones and Anglophones are, through this crisis, uniting in their belief in the redeeming power of the European linguistic plantation.