Up Station Mountain Club

Democracy Now: Huge Land Sales to Foreign Corporations by African Countries

Democracy Now anchor, Amy Goodman interviews award-winning Indian journalist and activist, Devinda Sharma about the new phenomenon of companies buying up or leasing vast tracts of land in African countries. He believes it will cause starvation and loss of food independence in those countries. There are 8,000 companies vying for land in Ethiopia alone and the government is cooperating. What is the situation in Cameroon with regards to this global trend? Disclosure is in order. Give Your Kids What they Need, a Strong Education
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How Did Biya Manage to Make a Devastating Defeat in Banjul Look Like a Stunning Success

By Moy Manyi Eyong

For two weeks I have watched in total amazement how the Cameroon regime succeeded to use a single paragraph from the 42 page verdict of the African Commission on Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) on the case between Cameroon and SCNC&SCAPO to temporarily shut the SCNC&SCAPO up.

I am sure in the future, this will be a great case study in the use of political psychology as a tactical weapon.

In the 42-page verdict the Commission got Cameroon to accept a guilty verdict for committing some of the most outrageous crimes of the 21st century--using  torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and treatment. The Commission found it offensive that the Cameroon regime attempted to justify these crimes on the grounds of fighting alleged terrorism.

It seemed a grave mistake in more ways than one for the Cameroon government to call attention to a document any concerned citizen could read online and see how the Commission hammered her; until the SCNC & SCAPO actually bought Cameroon's interpretation of the verdict (after having made the earlier mistake of not publishing that verdict themselves sooner). And when the African Development Bank announced their grant approval for Cameroon (reported by reuters in this October 5 article) a few days after the start of Cameroon's media blitz following their publishing of the one paragraph from the ACHPR verdict, it became clear that something calculated was going on.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’s Rights (ACHPR) Delivers a deadly Blow to the French Neo-Colonial Regime in Cameroon

By Moy Manyi Eyong

For a regime built on violence and the threat of violence, the May 13-27, 2009 decision of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’s Rights (ACHPR) can be compared only to driving an aspen, ash or white thorn stake through the heart of a vampire with a single blow.

LIES:

First the Commission took exception to the lies from the Cameroon government in relations to mails sent to them and did spare a second to point out what a dubious bunch they were before getting down to the case proper:

On page 6 paragraphs 28, 30 & 32 the Commission wrote:

“

…28. On 3 October 2003, the Respondent State [Cameroon] informed the Secretariat that it had not received a copy of the communication forwarded to it by DHL on 9th June 2003...

30. On 27 October 2003, the Secretariat transmitted a copy of the Complainant’s submissions on admissibility to the Respondent State and informed the latter that the Secretariat would give the accompanying documents to the delegation of Cameroon attending the 34th Ordinary Session. The Secretariat also informed the Respondent State that the DHL office in Cameroon had confirmed delivery of the communication.”

In other words you lied that you did not receive the mail.

“…32. At its 34th Ordinary Session held from 6th to 20th November 2003 in Banjul, The Gambia, the African Commission examined the matter and decided to defer consideration on admissibility of the matter to the 35th Ordinary Session because the Respondent State claimed that they were unaware of the communication.”

In other words you [Cameroon] lied to the Secretariat and to the full Commission. But that is not all either.

Why the U.S. Needs Africa

By Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda (Originally published in the Washington Post)

Africa and the United States may be on the verge of a new partnership, not one of dependency and aid but one of shared ideas, vision and investments that increase our mutual prosperities. To begin this improved relationship, both must accept urgent and substantial changes in the nature of our bond.

Africa needs to acknowledge a key tenet of President Obama's July address to Ghana's parliament: that a vibrant private sector is critical for capable, reliable and transparent societies. Without a dynamic private sector, no society can prosper. The African continent has been slow to foster conditions that build active private enterprise.

Remembering Dr. Bernard Fonlon

By Paul Verdzekov - Archbishop Emeritus of Bamenda (Originally published in 2006 on the 20th anniversary of Dr. Fonlon's passing)

  1. Twenty years ago, on 26th August 1986, Bernard Nsokika Fonlon died in Canada. He had gone there in the month of May of that year in order to receive a doctorate degree in Literature (D. Litt.) from the University of Guelph, and it was his intention to spend the 1986/1987 academic year in the United States of America, within the framework of a Fulbright programme. But the Lord, the Giver of Life, decided otherwise. Bernard died in Canada at the age of sixty-one years, and nine months and six days. He would have been sixty-two years of age on 19th November 1986.

By Paul Verdzekov - Archbishop Emeritus of Bamenda (Originally published in 2006 on the 20th anniversary of Dr. Fonlon's passing)

  1. Twenty years ago, on 26th August 1986, Bernard Nsokika Fonlon died in Canada. He had gone there in the month of May of that year in order to receive a doctorate degree in Literature (D. Litt.) from the University of Guelph, and it was his intention to spend the 1986/1987 academic year in the United States of America, within the framework of a Fulbright programme. But the Lord, the Giver of Life, decided otherwise. Bernard died in Canada at the age of sixty-one years, and nine months and six days. He would have been sixty-two years of age on 19th November 1986.

Why African Presidents Need Blackberries

Aidan Eyakuze (Originally published in the Sunday Monitor - Uganda)

He apparently stepped off the plane in a foul mood and, right there on the tarmac, delivered a white-hot tongue-lashing to the awaiting chiefs of the army, police and other branches of the security services.

While travelling abroad, Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete had apparently surfed the internet, visited a Swahili-language blog and stumbled across a digitally-manipulated photo which seriously insulted both his person and his office. How, he asked, had they not seen this and dealt with it immediately?

A Report on the bloody crackdown by the Cameroon Government

Best to download and print.

CameroonMassacre.pdf

Letter to the People of Cameroon

By Raymond Akoson

My dearest Cameroonian people,

With this letter before us, our surest bet is that we begin to think the source of it. It is from me, a Cameroonian like you. I write with a broken heart and I know with a broken heart also, you read it. I write this letter with the mindset that no one is more Cameroonian than the other. But today, I take upon myself, as concerned as you, to address all of us so that together we can diagnose the cause of why we still live centuries behind the other world. And what we can do collectively to reclaim our destiny and begin charting a new course that will change the path of History of our beloved country.

ECONOMIC CRIMES AND INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE: Elevating Corruption to the Status of a Crime in Positive International Law

A Keynote Address by Ndiva Kofele KALE, Esq.

Symposium on Corruption and its Implications for Human Rights
Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa
Alliance Franco-Camerounaise Center
Buea, 25 June, 2009

I. INTRODUCTION

In 2002 the Assembly of the African Union adopted the African Union Convention for Preventing and Combating Corruption; two years later in 2004 the first global anti-corruption instrument was adopted, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. Six years separate this spate of international legislation and the adoption of the first comprehensive regional convention against official corruption in March 1996 by the Organization of American States (OAS). What, one may ask, explains this heightened global interest in combating official corruption and the push for the adoption of these key  multilateral instruments to assist in the war against corruption?

I will in my time before you (1) situate the problem of corruption, more precisely, indigenous spoliation, in both its African  and global contexts; (2) briefly discuss its effects on societies; (3) take a stab at making the case why it should be treated as an international economic crime in positive international law, more precisely, that is, a crime that shocks the conscience of humankind, and (4) propose a way forward.

Walk into the Forest of Death (Why it has been difficult to unseat African Dictators)

By  FR TATAH HUMPHREY MBUY

Introduction
A few weeks ago, the US Ambassador in Cameroon, called on Cameroonians to gain control over their fatherland and property. The G8 meeting in the Italian earthquake-striken town of Aquila (Wed 8-Fri 10 July 2009) made a similar call when they came to discuss the dreadful situation in most of Africa, given their Millennium goal which they stressed so much in the 2007 Summit in Germany. While on his maiden visit to Accra, Ghana, the American President, Barack Obama was even more explicit in this call on Africans to gain control over their fatherland. He particularly called on YOUNG Africans to stand up to the challenge. Indeed,every common sense observer would make the same call to Africans who have already written the new COMPLAINT Psalm of the New new Testament Bible.

U.S. Ambassador Janet E. Garvey: Cameroonians Should Take Ownership of their Country

"For the last several years, the Cameroonian Government has spent less than 75% of the money it has budgeted for investment.  The money is there, the needs exist, so why are these funds not being spent...?"

"The World Bank’s Doing Business report has shown that the business climate in Cameroon has gotten worse over each of the last few years, at the same time that Cameroon’s peers were making tremendous improvements.  This trend cannot be blamed on the economic crisis!"...

"...the biggest obstacle to Cameroon’s development, the biggest obstacle that prevents Cameroon from achieving its full potential, is Cameroonians’ lack of ownership for their own nation, their own government, their own communities."

"I am troubled by the spirit of resignation, almost of despair, that seems to prevail among many of my Cameroonian friends these days."

Click here to read the complete remarks of U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon H.E. Janet E. Garvey To the American Chamber of Commerce - Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Albert Bernard Bongo, France and the Biafra War

Excerpted from the Book, Ethnic Politics in Kenya and Nigeria 

by Godfrey Mwakikagile

Led by the 32-year-old President Albert Bernard Bongo who had been in effective control since November 1966 during President Leon M'ba's long illness and took over when the President died on November 27, 1967, Gabon became the second country after Tanzania to recognize Biafra. Throughout her history since independence, Gabon has been subservient to France like most of the Francophone countries on the continent. And her recognition of Biafra was attributed in some quarters to the French government's influence on her. However, the official position of the Gabonese Government was that it could not maintain "unpardonable indifference towards the pogrom organized against 14 million Africans."¹¹⁶

Gabon recognized Biafra on May 8, 1968, about a month after Tanzania did on April 13, the first country to do so. Although President Bongo cited moral reasons for recognizing Biafra because of what he described as organized massacres directed against an entire people, he gave other reasons as well for taking such action. The Gabonese took an anti-federalist stand to further explain its policy towards Biafra:

How Omar Bongo rescued Ian Smith

By James Makuwire (Originally published in The Zimbabwe Times)

If there is one African president who helped Ian Smith and his racist regime to stay in power as long as he did, that person was Albert-Bernard Bongo, later to be known as Omar Bongo Ondimba or, more popularly just as Omar Bongo.

When the noose tightened around the Smith regime’s neck and the international community, including the British and the Americans, decided that economic sanctions were the weapon of choice, Ian Smith sent his hounds to scour for anyone who could keep his regime remain afloat.

Cameroon: Our Future is Anglophone

By Patrice Nganang (Translated from French by Dibussi Tande)

Confronted with such a flurry of Cameroonian talent in English, how can we not breathe a sigh of relief? If our country's macabre present has become an unending one, we can at least proclaim today that Cameroon has a future, and it is Anglophone.

Our future is Anglophone. This should be obvious to anyone who is closely observing the evolution of Cameroonian intellectual output in the last few years. The reasons for this are not even linked to the fact that apart from their language of expression, Cameroonian writers in English have, without doubt, pulled the last chestnuts out of the fire that was colonization, with the language of Shakespeare giving them right away a global platform, with all the benefit that this has with regards to the dissemination of knowledge. No, there are other reasons, and here are five of them. 

The Birth of the Unitary State in Cameroon

(An excerpt from The Raod to the Unitary State of Cameroon 1959-1972 by Bongfen Chem-Langhëë) 

Towards the Unitary System

As soon as the Federal Constitution came into force in October 1961, the federation began moving rapidly towards a unitary system. In 1962, the pound sterling was squeezed out of West Cameroon and the East Cameroon Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) franc adopted for the whole country.
 
Plaque on the re-unification monument in Mamfe

Similarly, in 1964, the Imperial system of weights and measures was abandoned in favour of the metric system. By 1965, some of the residual powers which the West Cameroon government had arrogated to itself had been taken over by the federal government.

Parlez-vous Baloney?

 An interesting take on Canada's bilingualism challenge...

By Kelly Egan, The Ottawa Citizen, May 19, 2009 10:53 AM
 
OTTAWA — Hello and bonjour. Imagine my pride some weeks ago when, during an interview, I was able to draw upon my vast knowledge of French to faithfully record the following pithy remark.

"Ma petite fille," said the grandmother, retelling the story of the first time, as a wide-eyed child, she had seen an airplane in 1920, "le fin du monde approche." And so it ran in the newspaper. Did you spot the whopper? As many alert readers pointed out, it's "la fin du monde," not le.