SOUTHERN CAMEROONS: THE BEST OPTION

The Cameroon’s minister of communication has declared in essence that the Government of Cameroon will not have dialogue with SCNC/SCAPO not just because the two organizations “want to divide the country” but because they have not been transformed into political parties as a condition precedent following the 2009 ruling of the African Commission on Human and the People Rights. The minister’s outing, far from lowering the SCNC case, has only greatly helped to expose the characteristic lawlessness of the government he ever paints as infallible. The reality is starkly staring everyone in the face.

By AYAH Paul ABINE

As charity begins at home, the domestic front should naturally be our
starting point. Several are judgments of the Supreme Court that are
not worth the paper on which they are written. The minister is
certainly not unaware that his counterpart in charge of culture is
sitting on one of such judgments. Nor has he no knowledge that the
Prime Minister’s Office is sitting on a judgment given in favour of
some civil servants of the Ministry of Finance since 2003. And that is
the court having
final jurisdiction in the land. Also are several ministerial
circulars precluding the enforcement of judgments against bodies in
which the State has interest.

The minister has stopped short of telling the world whether the
interested parties in those judgments too need to be transformed into
political parties. He may also have judged it superfluous to include
in his verbal crusade that the interested parties here too “want to
divide the country”.

Let the minister organize a press conference to brief the national and international communities on the ruling given several years ago by the very Commission he is banking on today in the matter between the Bakweri Lands Committee and the Government of Cameroon. Mr. Minister would avail himself of the occasion to cleanse the image of Cameroon with an explanation that the government has refused, failed or neglected to comply with the ruling because the Bakweri Lands Committee has not been transformed into a political party, and/or that the said committee too wants to “divide the country”.

With his first class knowledge of the business of government as the
spokesman, the minister is certainly in the know that our government
has not as much as reacted to the ruling of the Commission in favour
of some individuals whose rights were violated during the state of
emergency in Bamenda. Is he waiting for each of those individuals too
to be transformed into a political party? Do those individuals too
“want to divide the country”?

And knowing at all material time that dialogue with SCNC/SCAPO was
impossible, why did the government apply for an additional period of
six months in order to comply with the Commission’s
time-frame for dialogue? Was the additional time needed in order to
legalize the two organizations and to talk them out of their wanting
“to divide the country”? Was the government in that event applying as
of counsel for the two organizations?
We strongly hold that patriotism requires that we learn from history
in order to maintain social cohesion today and tomorrow. Arrogance in
the treatment of Anglophones will not augur well for future peace.
President Ahidjo had such a posture in the past and that has resulted
in the present ripples between the two peoples. Were Mr. Minister a patriot, he would refrain from exposing similar arrogance today. He would in the event have been guided by foreign histories.
The white minority rule declared that majority rule in Southern
Rhodesia was impossible in a thousand years. But majority rule was
attained within three years. Hostilities against innocent white
farmers are ongoing decades since the advent of majority rule.
Preventive diplomacy in humility even in illegality would have kept in
check the growth of hatred.

Nigeria only next door had Ken Sera Wiwa executed when he argued the
case for the survival of the Ogoni People. Mighty Nigeria dismissed
lightly the might of a tribal uprising. Mighty Nigeria is
today leaning over backwards to appease the weaklings with offers of
amnesty. Right back home have we fresh memory of how the fathers of
independence obtained independence fighting with crude weapons as
against sophisticated European weaponry. In similar haughtiness did
European generals underestimate the determination of the people to be free!
The praiseworthy plank of SCNC/SCAPO as per the slogan “the force of
argument and not the argument of force” is peace-building moderation.
That God-fearing spirit is not in juxtaposition with Cameroon’s
approach to the “Green Tree Accord” over Bakassi: it is equally
preventive of human sufferings, and is therefore in line with the UN
contemporary policy of conflict prevention. Every patriot should
encourage it with humble and submissive dedication. If standing by
strict legal status is liable to disrupt social cohesion with
unforeseeable consequences, insistence on it is dangerous
irresponsibility.

One’s compassion for the Mr. Minister is that he may not have fully
grasped the import of the Commission holding that the people of
British Southern Cameroons are “a people”. The meaning is that
Southern Cameroonians, as “a people”, have internationally recognized
inalienable rights. The fulcrum of those rights is the right to
self-determination. That right is inviolate. Only the people enjoying
such right may surrender part of it to some other people by
association or integration. Any relative constitutional fashioning by
alien imposition cannot produce lasting peaceable effects.

The indefeasible argument of SCNC/SWAPO is that there is no document
anywhere attesting that the people of Southern Cameroons have ever
been part of the Republic of Cameroon by integration or association.
This was confirmed a year ago by the very minister and later by the
President of the Republic in public statements. That they did because
they were conscious that the so-called “Federal Constitution” was a
law adopted by the assembly of the Republic of Cameroon which had no
sovereignty over Southern Cameroons.

It would be held in favour of association or integration if the
assembly of Southern Cameroons ratified the said law. Whoever
therefore holds that any such ratification took place has the light
burden of simply brandishing it before the national and international
communities.

In the absence of such documentary evidence, de facto “reunification”
is of no legal consequence. In the circumstance, the best option is to
organize constitutional arrangement with Southern Cameroonian leaders.
It is immaterial that the African Commission recommended the
transformation of SCNC/SCAPO into politic parties. No reasonable man
would expect “a people” who are not legally citizens of some country
to form political parties in that country to which they do not belong?
Rational reasoning should then prompt everyone, even laymen, to impugn
the Commission on this point.

Aside from the foregoing, one is at a complete loss that the
Commission sought to dissuade SCNC/SCAPO from “secessionism”.
Secession presupposes that there has been or there is a whole. In the
absence of documentary evidence that Southern Cameroons has ever
legally been or is part of the Republic of Cameroon, any application
of the term “secession” flows from unsound reasoning; or is it the
absence of intellectual integrity?

Most Cameroonians in authority today do seem to fall short of the
virtue of patriotism. Cameroon was there before them and will so be
after them. They have no right to toy with the future of the country;
no right to hold that they are final! They are under a duty to invite
the State of Southern Cameroons to constitutional talks for an
association or integration. That should be now and not tomorrow!
Nothing after all stops any Anglophone radicals from departing from the force of argument tomorrow!