By Sam Nuvala Fonkem
Shortly after his installation as General Manager of a major State Corporation in Douala last week, the newly installed General Manager held a press conference during which he categorically refused to make any pronouncement in English.
He had been pressed by a reporter to make a statement in English for the benefit of the English-speaking audience, but he bluntly replied; "Je vais parler en francais!"Not long ago, another top official, a Minister of State again at a press conference, made it clear that he was not going to take any questions in English. Period.
It cannot be said that these gentlemen, like many other Anglophones who hold high office in Cameroon, were in breach of any law. The constitution provides for the use of two official languages i.e. French and English, but does not make it compulsory for any official to use the two languages interchangeably. That would be a tall order indeed.
It could, however, be said that while the constitution allows the use of any of the two languages in the conduct of public affairs, the hostile attitude of the Francophone hegemony towards the English language, which up till the 1996 revision of the constitution was considered subordinate to French, is tantamount to a breach of the spirit of the constitution.
What realistically obtains in Cameroon is what linguists define as diagolosia wherein two different language groups operate in their language of origin with the hope of achieving a reasonable measure of intelligibility. The one speaks in English and the other in French and the experiment goes on.
The use of language is a cognitive, not intuitive, process and to think that we have had bilingualism as a cardinal policy of national unity since 1961, one cannot help questioning why the present generation of Francophone public officials and managers should prefer to exhibit a negative and unfriendly attitude towards the English language.
If one bothers to find out, he would discover that the negativity of those who publicly display this phobia do actually understand and speak English. These are usually the very hypocrites who have overcrowded Anglophone colleges with their wards to the extent that Anglophone children do not have it easy gaining admission because, unlike Francophones who have unlimited access to the state coffers, not many Anglophone parents can promptly fulfil the requirements for their children's admission into these schools.
It is an open secret that while Anglophone parents can barely manage to installmentally settle the exorbitant tuition and boarding fees in especially the Anglophone mission colleges, which have no doubt, established high academic and moral standards over the years, the affluent Francophone parents are not only prepared to pay the annual fee at a go, but are in the dubious habit of making fabulous and unsolicited 'donations' to the school authorities presumably as an inducement or compensation for 'taking good care' of their off springs.
The corruptive nature of this practice could readily lead to discriminatory treatment of students and compromise the ethics of equal opportunity and merit.When Francophones hasten to enrol their wards in Anglo-Saxon educational establishments, one is bound to suspect a hidden agenda behind their motives.
Cameroon has been operating an unwritten principle of regional and linguistic balance, even though, in reality, attempts to achieve that balance have been severely flawed by bias, dishonesty and majority complex in favour of Francophones. Attempts to achieve regional balance have been plagued by the inequitable sharing of the national wealth and the excessive exploitation of the Anglophone minority natural resources for the benefit of the Francophone hegemony.
Call anywhere in the US for 1.9� per minute & no connection fees atApart from natural resources, the distribution of power and authority has put the Anglophones at the beggarly end of the equation and even the little they hold in terms of public office would eventually be taken away from them and given to the now generation of Francophones who would quickly brandish their Anglo-Saxon qualifications as a justification for monopolising power and authority.
Language is a cultural and scientific asset, which has yet to be valorised in Cameroon. One would expect that by now the government should have devised a formula for rewarding public officials who practice bilingualism rather then condone those who merely pay lip service to that policy.
Granted that the inability to demonstrate mastery of the two official languages does not constitute a breach of the law, would it not be desirable to draw up a code of conduct that should call to order or sanction public officials who exhibit outright contempt for any of these languages?
Last week was celebrated as the Week of Bilingualism under the them; "Bilingualism for Progress and Unity." These yearly celebrations should be backed by rules and regulations to guide the effective application of the language policy. Official decrees, decisions and announcements generally conceived and published in French are hardly translated into English and when that is done, the quality of such translations has always left much to be desired.
The failure of publish all official literature in English is a discriminatory practice calculated to put Anglophones in a disadvantageous position when it comes to matters of employment, tenders for public contracts, in short, all socio-economic opportunities. You only need to flip through every single copy of the state-owned daily newspaper, Cameroon Tribune, to understand how this unwritten policy of discrimination is being implemented.
Despite its reluctance to implement a genuine policy of bilingualism, the government is fond of making cosmetic applications of it for public relations purposes especially when it comes to the naming of state-owned enterprises such as Cameroon Tribune, Cameroon Shipping Lines and Cameroon Airlines. We only realise the ugly side of bilingualism when the lipstick wears off leaving the public with ghost enterprises that are merely a tragic reflection of a degenerate system.
The government has misused its bilingual status to canvass for positions in international organisation yet when it comes to filling such positions, the Anglophones are treated like Cinderella.
It is high time the government re-examines its bilingual policy and ensure that enough money is invested in it. It cannot continue to rely only on an unstable asset like football to project its image at home and abroad. The persistent failure to promote bilingualism only reinforces and justifies the political stand of Anglophone nationalist groups that are clamouring for secession.

sam nuvella fonkem, you have benn a journalist for over 3 yrs in french cameroun, have you learn just one lesson?
The union between southern cameroons and the cameroun republic is dead long ago,
and what we 7m british southern cameroonians need now is the complete withdrawal of cameroun military and administration from our country, we have a
government in exile , and we are ready to take our destiny in our own hands. SOO, STOP COMPLAIN ING ABOUT BILINGUALISM, THIS OR THAT AND THINK BIG, GROWP UP, IF SOMETHING HURTS YOU FOR SOO LONG, YOU OUTTA CUT IT AWAY FROM YOU BODY. AND IF YOU CHOOSE NOT TO. YOU MUST DO SOMETHING DRASTIC ATLEAST OT STAY MUTE AND DIE IN SILENCE.
Posted by: red flag | Saturday, 16 February 2008 at 12:24 AM