Ntumazah: Why The Upc Never Won Power (4)

Prof. T. Asonganyi

Yaounde

Ntumazah tells us that: "Ouandié advised Mandela and he changed tactics". This means he advised him to wage the type of liberation war the UPC had waged in

Cameroon

. Mandela followed the advice, waged the war, and won power.Indeed, as Ntumazah himself declares "All the political parties that came into being in 1948 (or before?) in

Africa

have become rulers, except the UPC.

This is because we remained a populist movement". Was it just because the UPC remained a populist movement? ANC members were perceived as fanatic communist ideologues; so were UPCists.

The UPC was a populist movement; so was the ANC. The French/Ahidjo regime was ruthless with the UPC; so was the apartheid regime against the ANC.  So, why did the ANC come to power and the UPC did not?

We will assume that it is the advice of Ouandié that caused Mandela and his colleagues to quickly form the ANC army, the Spear of the Nation (Umkhonto we Sizwe or "MK"). Since apartheid regime's strongest institution was the army, the casualty rate of MK guerrillas was very high. But persistence in MK attacks in

South Africa

, which were mostly minor and never threatened the authority of the state, tended to regenerate inspiration, pride and the will to fight that the white man had long drained from black people.

It was mainly a propaganda war that provided moral inspiration to black people because it left the perception that there was someone out there who could face what represented the true symbol of apartheid: the police officer, the army officer... This confidence in MK's armed resistance led to the motivation of political forces in the country. So, without aiming to overthrow apartheid militarily, MK had a key inspirational impact.

Once the people got this psychological motivation and gained back the will to fight, what has been described as "a thousand flower heads of resistance", which could not all be crushed by the apartheid regime emerged. These resistance groups created and animated mainly by members and sympathisers of the ANC were soon assembled in the United Democratic Front, UDF.

The UDF became the legal front for the banned ANC in

South Africa

. Its guiding principle was to enlarge the grand battle against apartheid by refusing to pay rents on government houses, staying away from school, destroying school property, engaging political work stoppages, boycotting white-owned businesses, refusing to pay electricity charges... These hundreds of groups united by local grievances and by a generalised hatred for apartheid, were community organisations, civic associations, youth groups, women's gatherings and all types of black common interest groups.

Under the UDF, they set out to render the black townships ungovernable.

Added to MK and UDF was a third powerful force: what has come to be known as the "negotiating paradigm". Collective bargaining between black labour and white businesses had provided the black people the model for peaceful resolution of conflict in the political arena as well.

Through this, young black labour union leaders had learned that it is sometimes better to talk to the enemy than to take on him head-on. They had learned that you could seduce, charm, deceive and subtly outmanoeuvre your opponents. To do so, the weaknesses of the opponent needed to be identified and worked on, to turn them into advantages. The masters of the art of negotiation were Mandela, Mbeki, Ramaphosa, Maharaj... The brain behind the idea was none other than Oliver Thambo.

The ANC had firebrand guerrilla leaders who were intent on using violence, while there were other leaders who, in addition, decided to charm whites by convincing them that surrender would not mean the mass murder of whites. Therefore, the charm involved removing fear from the whites and persuading them that they should not see change as threatening to their survival. And so MK, UDF and the negotiating paradigm combined to bring down the apartheid regime.

So within this backdrop of how the ANC won its struggle, what can we deduce from Ntumazah's book to be the reasons for the failure of the UPC to come to power? Was it because it "remained a populist movement" as Ntumazah puts it himself? First, if one considers the guerrilla war waged in

Cameroon

by the UPC, by the time Ouandié gave up himself, it had been reduced to something like the "coupeurs de routes" phenomenon we live through today.

Secondly, the UPC leadership failed to heed Willy Brandt's saying that "nothing happens on its own, and very little will last". The UPC waited for much to happen on its own. No group was ever formed to act like the public face of the underground UPC, like the UDF was for the ANC. Thirdly, the third powerful force - the negotiating paradigm - was virtually missing.

Although Ntumazah boasts that the UPC had a spy planted in President Ahidjo's bedroom who fed them with all security secrets, they never sought to use such contacts to seduce Ahidjo and his regime.

The masters of the art of negotiation in the ANC moved their white interlocutors to recognise their common patriotism, their common values, their shared dedication to God, land and family, and their common humanity. None of this seduction existed in the UPC.

If the seduction existed, maybe Ahidjo would have understood what his successor, Biya later understood and stated in his book, "Communal Liberalism", thus: "the independence of our country was hard won by many worthy children of the land, whose names, unfortunately have remained taboo for the last quarter of the century... Their common denominator was the Cameroonian nationality....".

Surprisingly, Ntumazah knows and states in his biography that: "You may chain a man, but you will not chain his mind; you may enslave him, but you will not conquer his spirit; you may maintain the people in bondage by force, but sooner or later, their anger and frustration becomes so great that force cannot contain it.

Then the edifice cracks, the mortar crumble." However, they did not induce this to happen. They never sought to create networks in the country, which could channel the anger and frustrations of the people into positive struggle. Therefore, no will to fight was generated in the people. So the edifice never cracked, and the neo-colonial regime never crumbled.

Comments

[Fonjong]

Good article but..........

Its a good article. If one reads it carefully, he/she will understand where the Prof is trying to take us to. And he is trying to tell us that efforts have been relented by those who started fighting hard as opposition members.

But 1 question to Mr Prof: Why all this knowledge and stuff now? You were the SG of the biggest opposition party. you had the power, possibility to do what you have narrated others did but you did very little to follow the example of Mandela and the advice of Wandji to Mandela.

Now yopu are outside preaching sermons. When you were inside, you were secretly dinning with our enemy.

I am sure you are regretting that you did very little to force Biya seat on a hot iron. And i also believe you now see that Biya will be foreced out of Etoudi by the common Cameroonians (without your direct contribution/participation). This is disturbing you now.

Biya will leave. The pressure has just begun. They are fanning the flame gradually. You did not do it. Others are doing it in your absence and they shall fan the flame more and forcefully after the SDF Convention.

I think guys have learnt much from you and from others. THey now know what they want. THe party now knows what the people want. And they know the time has come to direct the people to where the people want to go.

There is corruption, names and surnames of thieves. This is going to be the foundation for our demontration that will oust Biya. We need these guys condemned. And we need these monies. Cameroon will witness 8MILLION Githongo in a different form.

Githingo did the investigation courageously. We have done our own investigation and we shall go to the streets and stay at Etoudi until we see that our monies are returened to us.

[Vally]

Good article,your timely withdrawal after advising dictator Fru Ndi to step down to no heal.Spend your precious time doing something different,cameroon will stay same until you joined the struggle back by that time dictator Fru Ndi must have gone.
You remained a highly respected cameroonian amongs many my type.You practice what you preach.Good luck.

Vally
England.

[Smith Elie]

Thank you Sir for reviewing the book of Mr Ntumazah. However,you seem to have forgotten to mention that Bishop Ndongmo was the one who betrayed Ouandie Ernest. It must be pointed out.
Source of my information:Ndeh Ntumazah a conversational bigraphy pages 556.

[Smith Elie]

With due respect to Mr Ntumazah, I take his claims that, the UPC made suggestions to the ANC to be at best a mere grandstanding and at worse preposterous. Look at things, the ANC was created in 1912 and no where is Cameroon mentioned in the mythical book, longway to freedom of Nelson Mandela.
Hence, I did appreciate the way you took it and made mention of it in your review. Mr Ntumazah is a hero no doubt and has shown it his book through the revelations he makes. But the point of the ANC sounded a little presumptuous.

[Akoson]

The UPC is dead and gone. It's got the worse leadership a political party can ever have. Power mongers; that's all. A party that openly dines with the CPDM.

Let's forget about them and concentrate on the most formidable SDF. Let's heal it's wounds and start anew.

Keep thinking. Last man Ako.

[texam]

Prof,
Thanks but I think you are just confused and struggling to keep your name in the political arena. You made the greatest mistake of your life. Change is coming. Live long and you will see for your selve. As for the other clawns who think that leadership comes with blasphemy, be ready for SDF convention come may. Ni John Fru Ndi will again bit you hands down through free and fair elections. Some clawns including you said Ni John took money to get his wife for treatment abroad, would you allow your wife to die when you have an alternative? If yes? Then maybe the love for your wife ends in bed or with the srvices she provides. Why do you think Ni John didn't run for Parliament or accumulate posts like Ndam Njoya? Or join government like those idiots called Kodock and Bello Bouba?. Remember that cameroon would have already experienced change from the first parliamentary elections, but unfortunately the selfish and wicket Kodock formed an alliance with the CPDM giving the an absolute majority. So please, stop intoxicating us with your UPC thing. we are a different generation and will change that country. You guys need to pack your bags and retire to you villages. i hope Kodock is arrested also for his management of SOTUC, Nonsense.

[Reader1]

Commentators,
Get this right, the Professor is doing just his good job as an educator and not playing any politics here. He is educating not campaigning.

[Dan Dagan]

Jesus Christ, Mohamed and the others are long gone and the world still onay the as if the had secret police hovering around. How can a man be so myopid in thinking to say someone should be silent because he is of a different generation. Who is the spokeperson for that generation then. Difining intergrity at its simplest is to be strong and couragous enough to stand up for what you are convinced is correct no matter how difficult or/and unpopular that the circumstances might be, with an in dependent mind I see that in PROF.AND TO YOU PROF. KNOW YOUR WORK IS NOT IN VAIN ATLEAST ONE PERSON HAS UNDERSTOOD YOU, ALSO DO NOT FORGET "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world IN WHICH WE ARE LIVING AND WHETHER IT IS CLEAR TO US OR NOT THE UNIVERS IS UNFOLDING AS IT SHOLUD. LETS TEACH BY EXAMPLE BY ACCEPTING EVERY ONE FOR WHAT HE IS EVEN THOSE WHO DISTURB. DO NOT GIVE UP