Stop the Social Injustice in Cameroon

If Paul Biya ever imagined that the Cameroon of naked social injustice and hateful political oppression which he has laboriously built over two and a half decades will last, let him think again. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the problems of Belgium help him in doing so. We sincerely plead with him to retrace his steps and save this nation the disaster that is bound to come.

Editorial
The Herald Newspaper.

Of the many developments on the international scene in the last week or so three were of special interest to Cameroon because of their significance.
The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade after more than a decade on the run.
In Brussels, the Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme resigned only after four months of taking office. His resignation was not accepted by the King, Albert 2.
At The Hague Moreno Occampo, Prosecutor of the international war crimes tribunal, announced he was issuing a warrant of arrest on Sudanese leader Omar El Bashir for war crimes.
Separate and occurring far away from one another the three events are nevertheless similar. They are all the result of mankind rejecting fellowmen to the point of eliminating whole groups of people. Tribal, racial or religious hatred and political oppression, what more?
Karadzic will answer for his role in the genocide of fellow Bosnians, who unlike himself a Serb orthodox Christian, are Muslims.
The Serbs also used the power they controlled to hate the Croats whom they also terrorised in the Bosnian war of the early-mid-90s. It was the mutual hatred and rejection among the major ethnic and religious groups that eventually led to the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Belgium is still another severe case of an almost permanent state of disagreement between the French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-speaking Flemings. To form a stable government has been impossible.
Flanders, Belgium’s Dutch-speaking northern half, has long sought more regional powers to reflect its prosperity. It also refuses subsidising the less affluent, French-speaking Wallonia region to the south.
There are continual fears for the unity of the 178-year-old kingdom. On its national day on Monday 21 July King Albert 2 appealed for «union and tolerance.»
Closer to Cameroonians is the five-year old Darfur problem in north-western Sudan. Government-funded militia, the «Janjawid» has been on a systematic campaign of genocide against Darfurians.
Terror, rape, security, mass murder, destruction of towns and mass displacement of persons are the nightmare Darfurians live daily. Because the area is over three times the size of France it is practically impossible to secure.

Old countries

What is striking about Belgium and Yugoslavia is that they are not young countries. If the social fabric of old countries can still be so fragile then young countries like Cameroon have deeply instructive lessons to learn.
But whether in old or young countries the common cause of these problems is there for everyone to see viz: tribal, racial or religious discrimination or hatred and political oppression.
For African countries the decades of civil wars, social strife, government instability are all without exception the result of policy injustices, some of them so shamefully blatant.
In Cameroon we are lucky that these evils have so far not come upon us. But the experience of much older countries warns us that if the causes persist then their consequences are only a matter of time. And while they wait the country is very much ill at ease with itself.
We take this opportunity to call upon our leaders to rethink policies and take courage to shift towards social justice which is so conspicuously absent. Are we still so naïve to believe that we are immune from the sad experiences of the others even when we generate the same causes?
How can the Yaounde regime explain, for instance, that it gives the lion’s share of public positions to only a few provinces and to the detriment of the others, and does so as an established pattern over two decades and a half?
How does Paul Biya explain that he favours some provinces in socioeconomic investment to the detriment of the others, and does so as an established pattern over two and a half decades?
Does Biya ignore the fact that in concentrating all the powers to himself he has used this power not only to disadvantage but to actually oppress the greater majority of Cameroonians?
Does Biya ever sense that the heavens are lamenting about this shameless injustice he does all the time and even gets people to applaud him for? Does the president have a conscience at all? Is he a normal human?
One of the suggestions made to him by the international community in the last decade or more is to decentralise. This means to give some of his overwhelming powers away to the provinces in order to allow participation in decision-making in local matters, but the president has refused.
The Commonwealth rejected his decentralisation project because it gives the power of control and ultimate decision to governors and prefects who are Yaounde appointees. Imagine that authorisation for opening a nurseray/primary school in Akwaya must be given by Yaounde! What a shame!

Autonomy

Just imagine how much more comfortable Cameroonians would have been if the different major cultural groups were allowed a measure of autonomy of decision to permit them develop their own societies according to their own cherished values?
Again, why would the three northern provinces that are Fulani/Hausa speaking and Muslim in religion not be allowed to develop a society that truly reflected their values? The case of Anglophones has been repeatedly cited. Isn’t that a strong enough case to allow them the free expression of their values?
Instead of building a national unity based upon the encouragement of cultural diversity and its many strengths, Ahidjo and Biya preferred to forge a national uniformity in which its different peoples, strung together, live ill at ease and in mutual suspicion. Biya further exacerbates the problem by his daylight social injustice.
How does Paul Biya believe that he could continue in this way and still prevent a social explosion sooner or later? He wants to continue in office "till death do us part." But how does he escape his legacy which is the inevitable disintegration of Cameroon if present policies continue?
One of the greatest policy blunders of Ahidjo and Biya is the Anglophone issue. Instead of drawing strength from the many values that Anglophones brought into the 1961 union Francophone power preferred to dismantle and erase them while assimilating Anglophones who have, in addition, been deliberately relegated to the backwaters of the nation.
In line with that policy Anglophone territory has been deprived of investment, including even roads that should link its towns like the Kumba-Mamfe road or the ring road in the North West province.
Anglophones now remember the 1961 union with much regret. Their forebears, they say, made an unpardonably wrong choice. Had they voted for union with Nigeria in the UN plebiscite, they say, they would have had their own state within the Nigerian federation.
The secessionist activities of the SCNC in reaction to these injustices are well-known. Without accepting the separatist solution the rest of us are deeply disappointed with the hate and discriminatory policies of the Biya regime.
These abusive policies are, happily, not irreversible. We urge Paul Biya to rethink his attitude to Cameroon and Cameroonians. The road on which he and his regime have walked over two decades and a half is unmistakably unjust and leads only to the abyss – no where else.
Once again, the experiences of the others offer the opportunity for learning and correcting oneself. But should Paul Biya continue to refuse his lessons while he still has time then he will be lucky that the coming and unavoidable disintegration arrives after he has left office. Good luck to the president