The head of the African Union Commission has called for a renewed effort to try to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Cameroon.

Moussa Faki Mahamat’s call for an inclusive dialogue comes after dozens of school children were reunited with their parents after being kidnapped.

They were reportedly held by Anglophone separatists. The principal and one of her teachers are still in captivity. Mr Mahamat called on the perpetrators to be identified and brought to justice.

A peace conference, organised by religious leaders, is due to take place later this month however it is not clear whether the Cameroonian government or the separatist rebels will attend. Activists claim the country’s French-speaking majority is marginalising the English-speaking minority.

BBC

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The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

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Cameroonian authorities have arrested 20 people who were protesting an election they allege was stolen by long-serving President Paul Biya.

The protesters claim Maurice Kamto, the flag bearer of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement party, won the Oct. 7 presidential election.

Biya, who has led the country since 1982, is to be sworn into office Tuesday for a seventh term. Kamto’s supporters say they plan to disrupt the event.

Away Fonka Augustine, governor of the west region of Cameroon, confirmed Sunday’s arrests and said he deployed the police to keep the peace.

Ndoki Michel, a lawyer for the opposition party, said its members “shall fight until our victory is reinstated.”

The United States has said the October vote was marked by irregularities.

AP

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The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

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Cameroon faces a poignant irony. It has just held a presidential election, yet the process has been largely overshadowed both by the lack of suspense in its outcome and the growing unrest gripping the country’s Anglophone Northwest and Southwest provinces.

Since 2016, these two provinces, representing roughly 20 percent of Cameroon’s 25 million citizens, have been shaken by a campaign against the discriminatory treatment of Anglophones. The protests began in October 2016 when peaceful demonstrations were organized by lawyers and teachers unions who demanded the right to teach in English, have access to Cameroonian legal texts in English, and interact with English-speaking state representatives. In the process, some participants chanted independence slogans, and the Cameroonian flag was burned.

Feeling threatened, the Cameroonian government responded repressively to this movement, repelling demonstrators with tear gas and live ammunition. More than 80 journalists, lawyers, and ordinary protesters have been detained. And the government suspended the Internet in the two Anglophone provinces from January to April 2017, fueling more protests and raising concern within the international community.

The government also labeled all protesters as radical separatists and mobilized elements of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), the elite unit of the Cameroonian army known for its aggressive methods. Cameroonian soldiers have responded to attacks from separatists with brutal retaliation, burning down entire villages and indiscriminately killing, arresting, and torturing dozens of people within the Anglophone regions, as well as in Nigeria. On October 1, 2018, the anniversary of Cameroon’s unification as a single state, the government imposed a number of restrictive measures aimed at preventing further demonstrations in the Anglophone provinces: suspending public transportation, closing businesses and public places, and banning gatherings of over four people, among other measures.

At least 420 civilians have already lost their lives in the ensuing conflict, while nearly 200,000 people have fled their homes to the bush or Francophone areas. Another 40,000 have found refuge in Nigeria. The exodus has accelerated with the increase of violence. The instability has also affected food security in the Anglophone areas, with nearly a half million people facing a food crisis.

In response, some elements of the protest movement have radicalized, turning to armed struggle and calling for secession. Further expanding their movement, they have called on residents in Anglophone areas to avoid urban centers on designated “ville morte” days, threatening violence against any who disobeyed. Several dozen schools, buildings, and administrative vehicles were burned. On October 1, 2017, leaders of the protest proclaimed the independence of the “Republic of Ambazonia” for the Northwest and Southwest provinces, marking a point of no return in the nascent conflict. While traditionally marked with festivities throughout the country, the 46th National Day of Cameroon, May 20, 2018, was boycotted in the English-speaking provinces.

The government labeled all protesters as radical separatists

Armed groups claiming to be part of the new Anglophone state have emerged, such as the Ambazonian Defense Forces, the Southern Cameroon Defense Forces, the Ambazonia Restoration Army, and several other smaller groups. Altogether the armed separatists are estimated to comprise a few hundred combatants. Since the summer of 2017, at least 170 members of the security forces have been killed, and numerous Cameroonian state officials have been abducted. In September 2018, a group of armed men attacked a school near Buea in the southwest, injuring more than 20 people, including children. Threats by separatists to prevent voting in the presidential election in the Anglophones provinces further suppressed turnout to an estimated 5 percent of eligible voters. The armed separatists have also threatened to attack the country’s most populated urban areas, such as Douala and Yaoundé, in the Francophone regions.

In a report released in July 2018, Human Rights Watch accused both Cameroonian security forces and separatist fighters of serious human rights violations on civilians in both provinces. Despite repeated requests, the United Nations has not been allowed to visit the area. In July 2018, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al-Hussein expressed concern, citing reports of “kidnappings, targeted killings of police and local authorities, the destruction of schools by armed elements,” and “killings, excessive use of force, burning down of houses, arbitrary detentions and torture” by government forces. But the government has not yet acted upon his appeal to launch independent investigations into human rights violations.

In an attempt to maintain the illusion of normality, Cameroonian authorities have tried to stem the outflow of residents from the English-speaking provinces by demanding a “reason” why citizens are trying to flee into the French-speaking regions. However, the displacement speaks for itself. Violence in the Anglophone provinces continues to escalate with an ever-increasing number of civilian victims. Today, the country faces a serious risk of conflagration.

A Crisis That Has Been Building for Some Time

Cameroon is an example of a conflict that could have been avoided. As Dr. Christopher Fomunyoh has observed, this is an entirely “man-made crisis.” English-speaking Cameroonians have long expressed their frustrations toward the discrimination their community faces and the perception of institutional marginalization. It is the failure to take these concerns seriously that has brought the country to the current juncture.

The roots of the crisis also trace back to the country’s origins. The territory that is now Cameroon became a German colony in 1884. Following World War I, Germany lost all of its overseas colonies, leaving most of the territory to be administrated by the French and the western provinces overseen by the United Kingdom. In 1960, a year before Cameroon gained its independence, the two Anglophone provinces voted to join their French-speaking counterparts in what became “the federal Republic of Cameroon.” This federal arrangement was intended to establish a framework where Anglophones and Francophones had the same rights and where their differences would be respected and represented within Cameroonian institutions.

But things soon took a different turn. In May 1972, a referendum was held that led to the approval of the new name of the “United Republic of Cameroon.” Subsequent constitutional reforms started to blur the bilingual and bicultural features of the country. This trend continued with Paul Biya’s accession to the presidency in 1982. He systematically pursued measures that promoted the centralization of the country. The following year, the English-speaking region was divided into two provinces, Northwest and Southwest. In 1984, Biya abandoned the term “united,” the country became the “Republic of Cameroon,” and the second star on the flag, representing the English-speaking region, was removed.

Over the years, centralization has been progressively reinforced, along with the inexorable shrinking of democratic space and individual freedoms. Despite the emergence of Anglophone political movements, the predominance of French and Francophone cultural references became widespread, contributing to the growing sense among Anglophones of a steady loss of culture and a dilution of their identity. They have repeatedly tried to protest against this drift, but the government has generally been resistant to their claims. For many years, Anglophones held out hope for change—until it became clear that the Biya government had no intention of altering the status quo. In 2017, out of 36 ministers, only one was Anglophone. In 2018, the president of the Senate, the president of the National Assembly, the first president of the Supreme Court, and the president of the Constitutional Council were all French-speaking. This has fueled a growing resentment among the youth in the English-speaking regions, who have become increasingly sensitized to the issue and found global resonance for their grievances through social media. It is the combination of this lack of representation along with the exasperation of the Anglophone youth in the face of government indifference that eventually provoked the protests of 2016.

Fear that Autonomy for Anglophones May Lead to Demands for Democracy Nationally

Even though Biya has said repeatedly that he is “ready for dialogue,” the government has failed to offer a sincere and concrete path out of the crisis. Calling the separatists “terrorists” and violently repressing peaceful demonstrations has contributed to the escalation and strengthened the hand of the most radical separatist actors. Moreover, with the support of a highly engaged and resourced Cameroonian diaspora, armed separatists have firmly established themselves. Despite the many casualties within the separatists’ ranks, the harsh and indiscriminate tactics of the Cameroonian security forces have strengthened the fighters’ determination.

Cameroonian authorities, meanwhile, have sought to enforce the status quo at all costs. This strategy is based on the fear that giving more autonomy to Anglophones would in turn galvanize demands for greater democratic openness and respect for human rights among the general population. But this calculation has led to a political and military impasse, placing the future of Cameroon as a unitary nation under threat. The country now faces the risk of a prolonged civil war whose consequences may go far beyond what Cameroonian officials have imagined.

The Rise of the Hardliners

It is becoming increasingly clear that Biya is no longer the only captain steering the Cameroonian ship of state. Aged 85, he travels abroad so frequently that he has been nicknamed “the absent president” by some critics. His prolonged absences and his faltering health have resulted in the transfer of the management of most important portfolios to senior aides. These ministers and members of the administration, all French-speaking, have adopted particularly uncompromising positions in the face of the separatist challenge. Accordingly, Foumane Akame, head of the judiciary in Cameroon for almost 20 years and legal adviser to the head of state; Laurent Esso, Minister of Justice and friend of the president; Edgard Alain Mebe Ngo’o, Minister of Transportation and former Director of Cabinet; and the Minister of Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo, have played increasingly leading roles in Cameroonian politics.

Toward a Resolution to the Conflict

Ordinarily, neighboring countries could be expected to be actively involved in finding a mediated solution to such a political crisis. However, in the case of Cameroon, regional bodies and neighboring countries have remained remarkably discreet. Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) leaders have largely refrained from commenting on the situation, in part, due to other crises in the region. Nigeria shares a common border with the English-speaking provinces and is therefore the neighboring country most directly affected by the crisis. However, Nigerian officials apparently want to avoid any suggestion that they are aiding the Cameroonian separatists. Indeed, to prove its good faith, Abuja not only arrested Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, an English-speaking separatist leader, and 46 of his executives in January 2018, but also extradited them to Yaoundé. Nigeria has also allowed Cameroonian troops to conduct operations on Nigerian territory in order to repel the separatists.

The need for an inclusive dialogue, initiated by a neutral third party, remains crucial, however. From this perspective, the silence of African regional organizations is problematic. ECCAS, the African Union, and the United Nations Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) all have key roles to play. ECCAS could propose a high-level mediator—for example, a former African head of state or an African personality known for a commitment to peace—who would be seen as an honest broker by both parties and capable of negotiating a cessation of hostilities. At the same time, civilian access to humanitarian aid and safe areas should be guaranteed.

Ultimately, it is up to the Cameroonian actors to work out a resolution to this conflict. Events have clearly shown that the recourse to violence by both sides has only empowered the hardliners in each camp and made the process of finding solutions more difficult. In this regard, the strategy adopted by some of the separatists toward their fellow citizens—forcing families to stop sending their children to school and threatening reprisals against those who vote—is as damaging to peace and restoring trust among citizens as the government’s heavy-handed tactics.

Governance deficiencies have also fueled the resentment of the larger Cameroonian population, beyond the English-speaking regions.

In the end, it will be necessary for all conflict stakeholders to sit down at the negotiating table to address the grievances of Anglophones in the broadest possible way. This dialogue should include the major political actors but also representatives of civil society. As important as any particular prescription will be that mediators take the necessary steps to demonstrate to Anglophones that their grievances are understood and that there is a commitment to ending the discrimination they face. This dialogue could ultimately redefine the principles of a unitary and peaceful Cameroon, where the rights of all citizens are effectively respected and taken into account.

Beyond the question of the treatment of Anglophones, the nature of the regime must be examined. Inequitable access to government services, widespread corruption, and discrimination have created a fertile ground for the emergence and violent radicalization of those with grievances. These governance deficiencies have also fueled the resentment of the larger Cameroonian population, beyond the English-speaking regions. This majority is demanding a profound change in the way the country is run. Despite Biya’s impressive longevity, the country will sooner or later have to choose a new leader. In order to deal with this scenario when it arrives, it would be useful to launch a sincere and in-depth examination of the reforms needed to move the country forward. While those around Biya may believe they can continue the same governance style after him, they underestimate the depth of the desire for change in the country, especially among youth. Rather, Cameroonian leaders will best protect their interests by initiating an ambitious reform process proactively. Time is of the essence. Experience elsewhere in Africa shows that once the dynamics of a conflict take hold, politics becomes increasingly difficult, and the consequences heavier and longer lasting.

Source: Africa Center For Strategic Studies

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The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

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Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has, once again, won re-election. The win makes him the second-longest serving leader on the African continent. It also comes amidst growing violence in the country’s English-speaking region.

The second- and third-place candidates claimed they were the winners shortly after the election took place. Both have since contested the official results, accusing the ruling party of massive fraud by way of voter intimidation and ballot stuffing.

The contentious election as a whole was marred by low turnout — less than half of the registered voters turned out during the October 7 vote.  Part of that was because of growing separatist violence in the country’s northwest and southwest regions.

Unlike the rest of the nation, which predominantly speaks French, the majority of people in this part of Cameroon speak English. It’s a linguistic difference that’s contributed to unrest and a growing secessionist movement fighting for the creation of an independent “Ambazonia” state.

The crisis seems to be reaching a boiling point — more than 20,000 Cameroonians have fled to neighboring Nigeria to escape the violence and just recently an American missionary was shot and killed while traveling in the Anglophone region.

The fighting has prompted a harsh response from President Biya, who went as far as cutting off internet access to the region last year. His re-election will not help ease the problem.

That’s not the only insurgent problem facing Cameroon, either. Boko Haram is still active in the country’s north and while the group has weakened, it still poses a threat to communities far removed from the nation’s capital.

Adding a contested election on top of two insurgencies isn’t likely to help stabilize the nation. If something isn’t done soon, some warn that Cameroon could break into Africa’s next civil war.

Source: 10news.com

Now that you are here

The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

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Ethiopia has appointed a woman to the largely ceremonial position of president for the first time, further increasing female representation in the government of Africa’s second most populous nation.

In a unanimous vote on Thursday, Ethiopian lawmakers picked career diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde, 68, to replace Mulatu Teshome, who resigned in unclear circumstances.

Ethiopia’s reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last week appointed a slimline 20-person cabinet in which half the posts are held by women.

They include defense minister Aisha Mohammed and Muferiat Kamil who leads the newly-created Ministry of Peace, responsible for police and domestic intelligence agencies.

“If the current change in Ethiopia is headed equally by both men and women, it can sustain its momentum and realize a prosperous Ethiopia free of religious, ethnic and gender discrimination,” Sahle-Work said Thursday.

Sahle-Work, who was born in the capital Addis Ababa and attended university in France, has been Ethiopia’s ambassador to France, Djibouti, Senegal and the regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).

Just prior to her appointment as president, she was the UN’s top official at the African Union. She is fluent in English and French as well as Amharic, Ethiopia’s main language.

As president, she is expected to serve two six-year terms.

The European Union hailed Sahle-Work as “a highly accomplished diplomat,” calling her appointment “another sign of Ethiopia’s path towards reform and internal cohesion,” the spokesperson for the EU’s external action service said in a statement.

“Mulatu has shown us the way for change and hope; he has shown life continues before and after leaving power. I call on others to heed his example and be ready for change,” said Sahle-Work in a speech to parliament.

Political power in Ethiopia is wielded by the prime minister, with the president’s role restricted to attending ceremonies and functions.

Nevertheless, Sahle-Work’s position carries important symbolic weight and social influence.

“Government and opposition parties have to understand we are living in a common house and focus on things that unite us, not what divides us, to create a country and generation that will make all of us proud,” she said.

“The absence of peace victimizes firstly women, so during my tenure I will emphasize women’s roles in ensuring peace and the dividends of peace for women,” she added.

Sahle-Work becomes Africa’s only serving female head of state, albeit in a ceremonial role.

A handful of African countries have in the recent past been led by female presidents with executive powers, including Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia (2006-18) and Joyce Banda in Malawi (2012-14).

(Source: AFP)

Now that you are here

The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

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On 5 January this year, Nigerian security operatives abducted 12 men from a hotel in Abuja, the federal capital. All were members of the self-styled government of the Republic of Ambazonia, Africa’s latest secessionist movement in neighbouring Cameroon, and all were refugees in Nigeria, some of long standing, among them Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, the would-be president of the aspiring Ambazonia: population, were it ever to happen, roughly five million. At first the Nigerian press made much of the abductions but for the past eight months it has remained silent. A senior executive on a leading Nigerian daily paper told me he wasn’t wary of covering the story: it simply hadn’t occurred to him to do so.

Overshadowing the secession is the inevitable question: are African states that owe their boundaries to the colonial era still viable as the entities that European imperialism created? The idea that maps in Africa can be redrawn has been deplored by African heads of state, the African Union and its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity. The old colonial boundaries, however unsatisfactory, should remain as they are, it’s argued. Reconfiguring modern states along the lines of the pre-colonial arrangements between religious groups and nations (or ‘tribes’, as we were known) would be still more chaotic. The disastrous creation of South Sudan in 2011 seems to prove the case. Resources are also a factor: the putative new state of Ambazonia would have the benefit of almost all of the oil and gas reserves lying off the Cameroonian coast, as well as valuable timber forests inland.

The emergence of a secessionist movement in Cameroon reminds me, a Nigerian, that the continent’s boundary problems have more to do with limits to government in vast territories than with border disputes over contested land. As it happens, Cameroon and Nigeria have had a long and costly border dispute, but much more significant now is the fact that they have both joined the list of African states – which includes Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Sudan and Somalia – in which the sway of regimes falls well short of their peripheries. Boko Haram took advantage of this situation in Nigeria and compounded it; in Cameroon the wish for an independent English-speaking Ambazonia took root far from the Francophone capital, Yaoundé, after years of neglect by central government, punctuated by intermittent campaigns of repression.

The conflict pits marginalised English-speaking Cameroonians whose parents lived under British rule against a Francophone regime that looks after a population of roughly twenty million whose official language is French, even if many don’t speak it. The conflict is escalating rapidly, with several ‘Ambazonian’ secessionist insurgencies and tens of thousands of displaced people, many seeking refuge in Nigeria. If Africa’s leaders have anything to do with it, Ambazonia – named after the English Baptist Missionary Society’s colony for freed slaves in Ambas Bay – will never see the light of day. To them it would be an ominous signal that the sovereign boundaries of states in West and Central Africa were up for negotiation. Nigeria’s ruling elite, whose predecessors lived through a failed Igbo secession in the 1960s and a terrible civil war, have no enthusiasm for an independence movement on their doorstep. The kidnappings in January couldn’t have made that more clear. But neutralising the ‘Ambazonian government in exile’ won’t put an end to the turbulence in Cameroon.

I looked on with concern from Lagos as the authorities in Abuja refused to confirm or deny the kidnappings, or to tell us which of our many security forces were responsible. It took nearly three weeks for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to be allowed to see the prisoners. The Commission had earlier warned the government that forcibly returning them to Cameroon would violate ‘international refugee law’. Two days later, they were put on a plane to Cameroon. Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, wanted to be sure that Nigeria’s ‘territory is not used as a staging area to destabilise another friendly sovereign country’. The Cameroonian authorities were instructed to go easy on the detainees. Across the border, the Cameroonian minister of communications denounced them as ‘terrorists’ and made it clear that they would have to ‘face Cameroonian justice for their crimes’. The courts can impose the death penalty under the 2014 anti-terrorism law.

Not much love is lost between Nigerians and Cameroonians. At the height of the Boko Haram threat, between 2009 and 2015, Nigerians who fled across the border were ill-treated by Cameroonian security forces. There’s also a simmering grievance over Bakassi, a network of low-lying islands in an oil-rich peninsula about 500 km off our common coastline. The archipelago was originally considered part of Nigeria but, from 1981, Cameroon regularly invaded its fishing communities to extort ‘tax’, killing many Nigerian citizens in the process. The dispute was finally settled in Cameroon’s favour in 2002 at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. The court’s ruling was based on agreements signed between the European powers in their scramble for African real estate from 1884 onwards, although this wasn’t the way the inhabitants – between 150,000 and 300,000 people – saw it. Before the European invasion, the area had been under the suzerainty of the obong or king of Calabar, nowadays part of Cross River State in southern Nigeria, and so Bakassians were surprised to discover that they were ‘Cameroonian’.

With the exception of Ethiopia, all African states are plagued by the colonial legacy, but the difficulties of Cameroon are among the most byzantine. It began life as a German colony. After Germany’s defeat in 1918, it was partitioned between France and Britain. Britain’s mandate consisted of two thin slivers along the western border with Nigeria, the ‘Northern Cameroons’ and the ‘Southern Cameroons’ – roughly 20 per cent of the territory. In due course the British would administer it from Nigeria. France took trusteeship of the lion’s share, with borders adjoining five of its other possessions. The French ran their League of Nations mandate in much the same way as they ran their imperial acquisitions, and when the stirrings of independence were felt after the Second World War, Paris took the view that postcolonial Africa should resemble colonial Africa as closely as possible. Cameroon’s destiny would be tied to the metropole as part of the ‘Communauté française’ in Africa. It would subscribe to a common currency whose value was pegged to the French franc (business as usual), and sign secretive military pacts in case French hegemony was called into question. This would be the template for 14 other French possessions in Africa. But in 1958 Ahmed Sékou Touré, the rising anticolonial star in Guinea, advocated outright independence with no binding ties to France (‘we have one prime and essential need: our dignity’). De Gaulle warned Guineans that a strike of this kind against French influence would be a Pyrrhic victory and when Sékou Touré’s cause prevailed, France was as good as its word. On the eve of independence, as an estimated three thousand French nationals prepared to leave, the administrative files were trashed, the phone lines and other communication links cut and the power sockets ripped out of the walls. Independent Guinea had to start from scratch.

A well-organised independence movement already existed in French Cameroon. Its leader, Ruben Um Nyobé, shared Sékou Touré’s view that a postcolonial future dominated by Paris would be no better than colonialism itself. ‘La colonisation,’ Um Nyobé argued, ‘c’est l’esclavage.’ The inhabitants of the British Cameroons looked on as Um Nyobé’s movement gained ground among their Francophone neighbours. Um Nyobé, born in 1913, is sometimes called the ‘forgotten founding father’ of the modern Republic of Cameroon. In 1948, he became secretary general of the Union des Populations du Cameroun. In 1952 and again in 1954, he spelled out the UPC’s goals at the UN: ‘1. The suppression of the boundaries created in 1916 between the two Cameroons; 2. abandonment by France of the policy of assimilation; 3. fixing of a time limit for trusteeship, after which Cameroon would achieve independence.’ In 1955, when the UPC embellished its demands in a Common Proclamation, the French authorities interpreted it as a unilateral declaration of independence by communists and bore down on the leadership. Um Nyobé and his colleagues retrenched and formed an armed wing, the Kamerunian National Liberation Army (he was now called ‘the black Ho Chi Minh’). A veteran of Indochina was drafted in to restore order.

Um Nyobé was captured and killed by a French reconnaissance team in 1958. It is said that his body was tied to a vehicle, dragged to his village and put on display. Photographs of Um Nyobé were destroyed, along with his writings and audio recordings of his speeches; his family, friends and sympathisers were persecuted; people were forbidden to mention his name. With the rebellion apparently subdued, it was time to end France’s trusteeship and reward the ‘moderates’. Cameroon gained its French-style independence, with many strings attached, on 1 January 1960. As Pierre Messmer, the former French high commissioner, explained, independence was given ‘to those who claimed the least’, after the elimination, ‘politically and militarily, of those who demanded it with the most intransigence’. Ahmadou Ahidjo, the first president, was an altogether more conciliatory figure than Um Nyobé. ‘The past is what it is,’ Ahidjo proclaimed. France was the future, and ‘we are for our part determined to look towards the future … Let’s refrain from throwing an armful of wood into a fire which is about to go out … We have forgotten.’

Um Nyobé’s followers still controlled most of the country, and De Gaulle despatched three hundred French officers and five battalions of mostly African troops, some of whom had seen action in the ongoing war in Algeria, to bolster Ahidjo and guarantee the country’s independence on French terms. Cameroon now became a dark sequel to the war in Indochina with an under-reported version of the Algerian conflict raging in the north: aerial bombardment, villagisation (compulsory resettlement), new pro-French militias; harsh interrogations, disappeared prisoners, public executions; and the hounding of exile enemies, one of whom – Félix Moumié, a follower of Um Nyobé – was poisoned in Geneva by the French secret services. The French general in charge of the operations estimated that in 1960 alone there were more than 21,000 dead. Almost nothing of what was going on reached the outside world. Journalists were mollycoddled by their French hosts, who took them on aerial reconnaissance trips to observe burning villages, a result, they were assured, of long-standing ‘tribal wars’ between the myriad ethnicities – about 250 – that make Cameroon a ‘mini-Africa’.

The insurgency dragged on until 1971 when the last of the leaders, Ernest Ouandié, was publicly executed. It seems that Ouandié had been on the run for days, hiding in banana plantations and under bridges. Exhausted and disoriented, he asked a passerby for help. The man recognised him and led him towards a nearby gendarmerie. The final picture taken of Ouandié shows him smiling on the way to the execution ground, where he refused the blindfold. The following year, a book by the Cameroonian novelist Mongo Beti, Main basse sur le Cameroun, which detailed what became known as ‘the hidden war’, was banned in France. In 2015 François Hollande acknowledged the repression that had followed independence and agreed to open the archives.

As violence raged among their Francophone neighbours, the UN decided that the fate of the British Cameroons should be settled by plebiscite: the inhabitants would say whether they wished to be part of the new Republic of Cameroon, or the new Nigeria. In early 1961, the Northern Cameroons opted to go with Nigeria and the Southern Cameroons voted to join the Republic of Cameroon under a two-state structure, each with its own parliament, courts and security forces, along with the right to elect the vice president. According to an American diplomat, the result ‘astounded the French Cameroonians’.

The Anglophones may have feared being ‘swamped’ by the Francophones, but they were also wary of the Igbo ethnic group across the border in the Eastern Region of Nigeria. This mistrust may well have swung the vote. Then, as now, the Igbos were more numerous than the entire population of Cameroon; then, as now, they were everywhere in Anglophone Cameroon. In the early 1950s, pro-independence groups from the Cameroons had briefly been allowed representation in the Eastern Region of Nigeria, in a kind of parliament of the colonised known as the Regional House of Assembly. The Cameroonian delegates were dismayed by the overbearing nature of Igbo political culture – many neighbouring minorities in Nigeria felt the same – and left after two years. One of their disagreements with the Igbos, ironically enough, was over the merits of secession. The British had ruled this out for their subjects in Cameroon, and so did the Igbo leader, Nnamdi Azikiwe, who later became Nigeria’s only non-executive president.

It didn’t take long for the Southern Cameroons to discover what they had voted for in the referendum. In 1966, Ahidjo outlawed all parties but his own; six years later, he called another referendum on whether or not to move from the federal arrangement to a unitary state. Given the numbers, a referendum could only favour the Francophones and the country was promptly renamed the United Republic of Cameroon. Francophone dominance was underscored in 1984, when Ahidjo’s successor, Paul Biya, dropped the word ‘United’ by decree (no need for a referendum). Ten years earlier, in a hugely symbolic gesture, Ahidjo had removed one of the two stars on the national flag. The following year, a distinguished Anglophone lawyer, Fon Gorji-Dinka, called for the former Southern Cameroons to secede, as a separate ‘Republic of Ambazonia’. He argued that the unification agreement had never been ratified by the Anglophone parliament: the Southern Cameroons were still a UN trust territory, a view recently endorsed by a former US under-secretary of state for African affairs, Herman Cohen, who used the controversial status of Bakassi to bolster his argument: the 1961 plebiscite ‘would certainly have been invalidated’ by the International Court of Justice, had it been consulted at the time, for the simple reason that Bakassi should have taken part in the vote but could not, because it was then part of Nigeria. You begin to see my point about the complexities which colonialism left us to sort out.

As Biya consolidated his power, demands to ‘restore the stolen independence of the British Southern Cameroons by La République du Cameroun’ were met with lengthy prison sentences. Anglophones were excluded from all senior appointments, even in their own territory, where most of the administrators were and are Francophones. The latest – and most serious – call for secession was spearheaded by the two institutions most affected: courts and schools. The trigger was the appointment in early 2016 of judges with no English and no knowledge of common law. Lawyers went on strike demanding they be removed. A few months later, teachers came out against the appointment of French-language staff who didn’t speak English, the government having earlier tweaked the General Certificate of Education to resemble the French Baccalauréat. University students and other activists quickly became involved and the security forces killed four protesters in December. The following month, an umbrella group, the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC), was banned and two of its leaders arrested. Tensions rose as courts and schools remained closed and the internet was shut down. CACSC called for a one-day-a-week strike, which was extended to three days in August.

With the approach of the new school year, the government released the protest leaders in the hope that the teachers would call off their strike. They continued, although not entirely by choice. Eight more protesters were reportedly killed in street demonstrations. Then, in October 2017, a united front of separatists came out with a unilateral declaration of independence. Mass demonstrations were met with force: Amnesty International reckoned at least 17 deaths. A group calling itself the Ambazonia Defence Force emerged from the bush and claimed responsibility for eight separate attacks against the security forces, which had killed ten. A second group, the Tigers of Ambazonia, claimed responsibility for further attacks. By the end of the year, 17 security personnel had been killed. The number of civilian deaths is unknown but generally put ‘in the dozens’. In his New Year speech, Biya – now in his mid-eighties – appointed several new Anglophone ministers to his cabinet, but that was all. By the end of January, with the Ambazonian government-in-exile detained by the Nigerian authorities, two more armed separatist groups announced themselves. Violence continued; the security forces burned down villages and drove people into the bush. Inexorably, the number of displaced people began to rise. By the time I travelled to the region a few months ago, the UN estimated that about 160,000 people had been displaced within Cameroon itself, and another 20,000 to 50,000 (nobody is sure) had fled to Nigeria.

I was headed for Buea (pronounced ‘Boya’), 280 km from the Nigerian border and once the capital of the short-lived Anglophone entity that federated with Cameroon after the plebiscite. What should have been a five-hour journey took eight because of the checkpoints along the way, mostly manned by Francophone soldiers, some of whom affected not to speak English. At each checkpoint, we got out and showed our IDs. Not having any ID is a criminal offence and a pretext for detaining young men suspected of being terrorists. I was singled out at every checkpoint because of my Nigerian passport, which attracted a non-negotiable fee each time. I tried refusing once and was told to stand in the sun until I became ‘humble’.

When I tried to return by the same route two weeks later, I was stopped by soldiers at the first town along the way and held for eight hours at their headquarters. So what did you say you had come to do? So who did you say you contacted while you were here? I spent the time between our Q&A sessions strolling around the military compound until I was told I would have to sleep there.

Back on the road, I discovered that there had been an offensive by the security forces a few days earlier. I should have guessed from the truckloads of soldiers I’d seen heading in that direction while I’d chatted with Anglophone ‘terrorists’ – lawyers, journalists, human rights activists – in the forecourt of my hotel in Buea. As we spoke, I began to see that in a perfect world they would like a secession, but the price – exacted by Biya’s soldiers, on the one hand and armed secessionists, on the other – is high. They were clinging by their fingertips to hopes of a peaceful resolution, with or without an ‘Ambazonia’. Biya’s crackdown on strikes in the schools and the courts had opened up the game for the armed factions. The teachers’ strike, for instance, was only meant to last a few days, but the armed groups decided to use it as leverage against Biya and ordered the indefinite closure of all schools. Those that reopened were attacked by the armed groups and at least three head teachers were abducted – two of them while I was in the country – although all were eventually released. One rebel grouping, the Ambazonia Freedom Fighters, even posted photos on Facebook of five clearly identifiable children at their desks and urged its online followers to ‘stone them’. If this is the social media profile of Ambazonia in the making, citizens will be queuing for their exit visas before the new flag is hoisted.

Anything between five and twenty secessionist groups now operate in the region. Some are undoubtedly criminal enterprises, but crime is common, too, in Biya’s army. The Ambazonia Defence Force, which is the largest with around two thousand bearing arms, has a code of conduct which states that ‘no fighter … shall engage in rape, extortion, theft of property, torture, or killing of innocent civilians.’ No doubt Biya’s army subscribes to the same principles. Emmanuel Freudenthal, a French journalist who spent a week embedded in an ADF camp, found that the fighters were mostly farmers ‘pushed out of their villages’ by the army. They’re equipped with primitive, single-shot hunting rifles made in Nigeria. Biya’s army is supplied by the French with modern assault rifles (firing roughly 600 rounds a minute). To the extent that the ADF have held their ground – ‘a surprising amount’, according to Freudenthal – it’s largely because ‘the state hasn’t developed roads or means of access to many of the areas.’ This lack of interest in building infrastructure is one of the causes of the uprising. Cho Ayaba, the ADF figurehead in what seems to be a classic top-down structure, left the country in 1998. He communicates with his followers via YouTube. In August he called for ‘outright war’. It was a response to an earlier announcement by Biya – the longest-serving African head of state after Equatorial Guinea’s Teodora Nguemo Mbasogo – that he would run for another seven-year term in October. Anyone found near a polling booth, the ADF warned, would be killed.

Buea was considered safe when I visited. By 7 October, when the country went to the polls, there were reports of gunfire. Only a handful of voters cast ballots in Buea itself, and one analyst put the turnout in the Anglophone region at just 5 per cent. An entire district didn’t vote at all because, according to a police spokesperson, ‘the area is dangerous’, despite the heavily armoured convoy that attempted to deliver ballot papers. Biya and his wife, Chantal, voted in Yaoundé surrounded by soldiers. Biya himself was satisfied that the ‘election campaign was conducted peacefully’. The next day, Maurice Kamto of the opposition Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon claimed victory and invited Biya to ‘organise a peaceful way to transfer power’. The government, which had said it would ‘not tolerate any disorder before, during or after the presidential vote’, quickly warned that ‘only the Constitutional Council would be allowed to announce results’ and that any form of challenge to the verdict would ‘not be tolerated’.

Kamto’s possible victory points to problems within Francophone Cameroon itself. During my trip through the country I met many Francophones sympathetic to the Anglophone plight. In the port city of Douala, ordinary French-speakers had marched in solidarity with their Anglophone compatriots during the strikes, but this shouldn’t have been surprising. I’ve been using the word ‘Francophone’ as though it were an existential condition, and a sign of allegiance to the former colonial power, but this is really only the case for the elites that took over in the wake of colonialism. As in Nigeria (and elsewhere in Africa), the challenge is to wrest power from two generations of colonial appointees and to share the remains of ‘the fruits of independence’.

Increasingly this challenge is expressed in separatist terms, with old fissures reopening and new ones becoming visible. Events in Cameroon coincide with calls among the Igbos of south-east Nigeria to revisit the Biafran secession. As in Cameroon, the government’s response has been harsh. Muhammadu Buhari has promised to ‘kill more Igbos’ if there is ‘a repeat of the civil war’: in 2016 he sent in the military to disrupt a Biafra Remembrance Day rally, resulting in an estimated 150 deaths; during the operation, Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, the most vocal of these separatist groups, was abducted (whereabouts still unknown). Another group, the Biafra Nations Youth League, now has its headquarters in Bakassi peninsula, where it has teamed up with the Bakassi Movement for Self-Determination, whose interim head has declared a democratic republic.

For the inhabitants of Bakassi, nothing has changed since it switched hands. The Nigerian government barely acknowledged their existence in the old days, unless the Cameroonian authorities were on a tax-gathering spree, and today it has no jurisdiction in the territory. Bakassians who left for other parts of Nigeria at the time of the handover were promised resettlement, but 16 years later many are still living in camps. Those who remain in the peninsula – almost all Nigerians – are still subject to punitive taxes imposed by marauding Cameroonian gendarmes, most recently in early 2017 when almost one hundred were killed, as we learned from those who managed to escape, and who have now added to the growing refugee population as Cameroonians, too, continue fleeing into Nigeria. In practical terms the border means little.

About to head back to Nigeria, not knowing that Biya would shortly announce a date for the presidential election, I took advice from the staff at my hotel and went by sea. They escorted me to the waterfront, two hours’ drive from Buea, where I boarded a ‘flying boat’ – a large canoe with an outboard motor – in the company of a Nigerian and an English-speaking Cameroonian, smuggling forty bags of rice. Two and a half hours later, we eased into one of the creeks that used to provide cover for militants in the Niger Delta (here, too, the wish to secede from Nigeria is strong). Waiting for us were men on motorbikes to convey the contraband rice to the market in town. ‘At least you didn’t have to cope with immigration,’ one of my companions remarked as we shared a beer later. He was a university student who regularly made this run to help with his fees, although his chances of employment, with or without a degree, are slim.

The arbitrary colonial frontiers and the ineptitude of our postcolonial regimes, barely able to administer the lands they govern, have not stood us in good stead. But a future of violent change, presaged by the spread of separatisms, is frightening. ‘No back, no front’, as we say. We have to reimagine ourselves and our societies all over again, but the fact that this process ends so often in the secessionist ideal simply confirms what we know already: that our states have been hollowed out. There are two precedents for secession in postcolonial Africa: South Sudan, which required decades of war to achieve, and Eritrea, which was annexed by Ethiopia in the 1960s and fought for thirty years to break free. Ambazonia too has a fight on its hands, not only against the government in Yaoundé but against Europe’s lingering hold, which determined its territorial status and now frames the violence as a contest between two rival legacies. (Sadly none of our own West African languages can serve as a lingua franca now; many are quaint relics, only dimly celebrated.)

The abducted members of the Ambazonian government are still in detention in Cameroon, having been joined by 35 others, also abducted by the Nigerian authorities and forcibly returned to their country. It took six months for the Cameroonian government to admit that they were in detention in Yaoundé and that criminal proceedings had been opened against them. We also heard that they had been allowed to see their lawyers and representatives from the Red Cross. No charges have yet been preferred although they are expected quite soon. The men will be tried by a military court and once the death sentence is handed down – the likeliest outcome – President Biya will have to weigh the situation carefully, heeding the advice of the French – that is, if he’s still president, which is also a matter for the French to decide.

Culled from London Review of Books

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