REORGANISING COMMITTEE OF THE MANIDEM (RC). REBUILDING TOGETHER « OUR LIVING TOGETHER! »
Dear compatriots, the crisis in the Anglophone regions of Kamerun is not fast ending. There is doom for our country and for Africa in the struggle to get rid of negative foreign influences. Kamerunians are dying almost on daily basis because of this terribly unfair conflict. Peculiar by its length which was obvious, this crisis now poses a central question: two years later, what explains the ongoing violent expression of anglophone poor living condition and how to put an end to it?
Let us be clear in the very beginning: this crisis is the result of a plot. It is the plot against the kamerunian people, a conspiracy of France and Britain and their allies at the United Nations, locally enforced by AmadouAhidjo and John NguFoncha. That plot started as from 1955 by the ban on the UPC, leading party for a true Reunification. On Sptember 13, 1958, Ruben Um Nyobe, pioneer of the Reunification, was killed by the French army. His comrade and successor in the struggle for unity, Félix Moumié died of poisoning by french secret services on November 3, 1960. The Anglo-French alliance against the true Reunification could move forward in 1961 with the so-called Foumban agreement signed by men who betrayed the principle of Equality and Unity to go to independence together. The UPC and the KUNC has has established these agreements in Kumba between 1949 and 1951.
Since then, all the repressive machinery was put in place to crush down any form of patriotic protest.
1962: Ordinance against subversion of March 12, 1962.
1966: 1st September 1966, the CNU is founded. It is the straitjacket that consecrates the total and voluntary submission of the political elites of Southern Cameroon (West Kamerun) and abolishes the embryo of democracy that was born there.
1971: Assassination of Ernest Ouandie, celebrated by the state visit of the French president Georges Pompidou to Kamerun. Ahidjo thinks to have definitively annihilated the patriotic forces which like a reed « fold but hardly break ».
1972: Institutional consecration by the farce of the referendum with the approval of John NguFoncha, Solomon TandengMuna, Emmanuel Endeley, etc.
From then on, Francophonization, commissioned by De Gaulle himself in Ahidjo, the loss of democratic practices, the dictatorship developed further in the English-speaking area. But everyone knows that dictatorship promotes bad governance, keeps people in poverty and ignorance, divides society into clans of all kinds. Over the years, new generations have arrived and grown up with the idea that the anglophone is a second-class citizen. Endemic unemployment, the spread of historical lies by a large part of the English-speaking elite on the origin of the marginalization of Anglophones, the contempt and violence of the Yaoundé’s neocolonial regime, the widespread lack of social and economic facilities in the height of the needs could only favor the current development. The secessionists, took advantage of a legitimate strike, to start an illegitimate war, fed by the arms of young people easily deceived.
THE CRISIS THEREFORE HAS DEEP SOCIO-POLITICAL ROOTS.
Those responsible for today’s Anglophone crisis are therefore well identified. For failing to understand the depth of the claims of our English-speaking compatriots, and to have played with the decay of the situation, Paul Biya’s regime bears the MAJOR RESPONSIBILITY in the deterioration of the situation.. But at the same time, civil organizations and opposition parties who deny the neocolonial origin of the problem are also responsible. They are deceiving the people. They are all solidly accountable for the blood shed by innocent young people who are falling.
SECESSIONNIST SAVAGERY WILL NOT END NEOCOLONIAL BARBARIA
Many fuel the vagueness by claiming that dialogue with secessionists will bring peace. Some have even dared to put on the same plane the secessionist struggle and that of the UPC patriots. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. SECESSIONISM IS RATHER THE NEGATION AND REJECTION OF THE UPC STRUGGLE FOR THE UNITY OF THE KAMERUN NATION, EMBRYO OF THE UNITED STATES OF AFRICA.
Manidem wishes to underline the responsibility of those who play with the misery of the country by claiming that it is the lack of dialogue with secessionist extremists that makes the crisis unsolved. IT IS MORE THAN FALSE. We say it again: nothing can justify that compatriots took up arms to obtain secession. Nothing, really nothing, can justify imposing on Kamerunians who elected John FruNdi, an anglophone, to the presidency of the Republic, in 1992, to separate on the basis of a false division line Anglophones against francophones. If asking for the partition of the country on neocolonial bases is already a serious mistake, to trigger a war to achieve this is an imprescriptible crime that history will retain.
Hypocritically, some politicians and civil actors say, « Let the dialogue come so that our English brothers do not suffer anymore!”. They hasten to add that if our compatriots suffer it is therefore because of the neocolonial regime of Biya and company that refuses to discuss. We say, « No! Even if the dialogue is not organized, we must stop this unjust war. The responsibility to put an end to suffering is easier for those who kill, burn and steal to achieve secession. If attacks against citizens, soldiers, schools, businesses, travelers stop, no one can doubt that the situation will be better and the bloodshed will stop..
Those who took weapons, to claim the partition of Kamerun, lay down their arms.
Secessionist savagery (with its killings of innocents and mutilations of corpses worthy of a colonial army and contrary to the respect of the dead so dear to Africans) cannot therefore put an end to the neocolonial barbarity that the government of Cameroon has always had. On the contrary. The first will feed the second which will overcome it. We have seen it in Nigeria, Congo and elsewhere in Africa..
Of these two evils, Kamerunians choose the least. The neocolonial regime can be defeated and will be defeated without dividing the country. It is rather the division that will favor the maintenance of the neocolonial regime of Yaoundé as the History of our country and of Africa as a whole has shown.
WHAT TO DO ?
Kamerun did indeed obtain its most brilliant victories with the help of organizations that transcended the divisions of all kinds, starting with the cleavage of the colonial master (British against French). Even if they are only stage victories, it is undeniable that our battle for independence has radically advanced with the departure of the direct settlers on January 1, 1960 and October 1, 1961. Although truncated, the Reunification of the territories had place, while waiting for the real one: that of Kamerunians. Under the banner of the UPC, Kamerunians, from north to south, from both banks of the Mungo, fought to achieve these results. If there had not been such a UPC movement transcending ethnic groups and social classes, the country would never have achieved these few advances towards freedom.
Throughout this heroic history, the UPC members, have always warned and denounced the conditions that lead to the current tragedy: in 1961, when the band in Ahidjo, Foncha and Muna distorted the Reunification to organize a sharing of dividends; in 1972, when the same group destroyed the federal system, which nevertheless prevented the concentration of power in the hands of the leader of the neocolonial dictatorship. For the last ten years we have been constantly saying it again in our various alarms: the unity of Kamerun will be when citizens of all sides will freely define and build their destinies together. This is the way out!
THE SOLUTION TO THE ANGLOPHONE CRISIS REMAINS GLOBAL: FIGHTING NEOCOLONIALISM, BUILDING LIVING TOGETHER, TOGETHER!
The solution of the difficulties of all kamerunian communities, we repeat it for more than 70 years, is global. We must: put an end to the Yaounde regime, which is that of neo-colonialism, at the origin of ALL OUR PROBLEMS. This is the sine qua non condition for BUILDING TOGETHER TO LIVE TOGETHER. All the other pseudo solutions have failed with woofully and are expensive at Kamerun. Also, does the Manidem call again:
-to a ceasefire without any conditions, by secessionist armed bands or not;
-to contrast the strength of the historical and political arguments that have dedicated the rightness of the choice of unity to any argumentation tending to justify secessionist crime;
-to oppose a legitimate but measured force to any act favorable to secession;
the definitive renunciation of the recourse to arms to divide the country;
– to a solemn and sincere expression of a request for pardon of the secessionists to the Kamerun Nation that they have seriously offended;
-to a consensus of all (citizens, government, armed forces, civil society associations, traditional and religious organizations, political parties, etc.) on the inviolability of Kamerun’s unity; It is this minimal consensus that will impose on the Yaounde regime the necessary changes to the construction of Kamerun, which the true fathers of the Nation, among whom Ruben Um Nyobe dreamed of: united and free, prosperous and pacified.
« Kamerun is our only reason of being.
Let our hearts beat no more, if not for Kamerun. »
Douala, 15th May 2018
MANIDEM
