Celebrating 50 Years Of Reunification In Our Own Way

By Canute Tangwa (Originally published on Chronicles from the Heartland)

Should we as Anglophones celebrate in our own way fifty years of reunification come 2011? This was the question I put to Sam-Nuvala Fonkem, current Public Information Officer for ONUCI in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. He shot back: Is there cause to celebrate? No but we could showcase the best and brightest of Anglophone brains and brawn in various fields 50 years running. He retorted: But do not forget those who have brought us shame! Our collective psyche is the sum total of our good, our bad and our ugly.

Why in our own way? I have never had cause to call any newsroom in Cameroon to react to a publication. This I did when I stumbled on a copy of Les Cahiers De Mutations titled PALMARES - LES GRANDES FIGURES DU FOOTBALL CAMEROUNAIS (Février 2010). I got Emmanuel Gustave Samnick on the line and asked him whether the likes of Raymond Fobete, Mark Nibo, Peter Essoka, Zachary Nkwo, Michael Wacka and so on did not have a place in his publication. First, I was impressed with his sound knowledge of the actors in question. Then the usual you-see-we-had-to-make-do excuse because of space and…a firm promise that part two would come out soon!

On the socio-economic and political turf, Haman Mana's CES HOMMES QUI ONT MARQUE LES 50 ANS DU CAMEROUN in LE JOUR (2010) did not fare better. Amongst Anglophones, it singled out John Ngu Foncha but it was like a footnote because on the front page while Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya and a bunch of others had larger than life images, Foncha's almost blurred and sickly image is tucked in a small corner! A look at some of the persons who marked our independence would make the sincere wince!

We have to celebrate 50 years of reunification in our own way because nobody can sing our song or tell our story better than us; because we are better placed to give soul and meaning to what we believe in, went through and are going through; because in order to chart our new course we need to look back with pride and anger; because our youth has to know and inculcate the core values that made/make us a people apart; because by so doing we invariably admit our mea culpas and mea maxima culpas and thereby set the records straight; because we believed in reunification more than anyone else and since at 50 we still feel short-changed, it is our bounden duty to celebrate in our way and get back what is rightly ours.  

Image via Wikipedia

We are barely a year shy of our fiftieth anniversary. How should we go about it? We do not need an All Anglophone Conference III or a Southern Cameroons roundtable. We no longer need to string our complaints for the attention of Yaounde. We need to empower ourselves without necessarily going to Yaounde cap in hand. We are in a global village and luckily for us we stand a better chance because we are not strangers to the precepts that bind the global village.

Follow my eyes!

At the knowledge empowerment level, one of the things we need is a compendium of Anglophone movers and captains in various fields of human endeavour for the past 50 years: politics, economy, education, judiciary, advocacy, sports, journalism, music, business, agriculture, military, police, penitentiary, administration (civil service), trade unionism, organised religion (catholic, protestant and Muslim), medicine, arts, sciences, traditional authority and so on. Thus, we would be able to read and assess part of our history through our personalities. A huge project but worth a try though. Can we give it a try?

Comments

[Va Boy]

No kidding, Canute. We have to create our own reality, and forget about any kind of frog validation. That process has already begun, with surge of Southern Cameroonian literature and a vibrant internet presence. The next act would be a de factor state of our own.

[TAGRO]

When people speak of Southern Cameroonians as "anglophones" it really irks me. What has happened to intellectual rigor?

"Anglophones" did not "join" "francophones" for the "re-unification" you'll want to celebrate(?). A state, the Southern Cameroons was annexed to another, la Republique du Cameroun.

[Lokuna J.]

Anglophones - Natives from the NW and SW region of Cameroon who believe in a bilingual Cameroon republic, and are willing to maintain the 1961 "union" even with its shortcomings (federalists, unitarists, regionalists, etc.)

Southern Cameroonians: Natives of the former British Southern Cameroons who are advocating for the establishment of a Southern Cameroons state independent of "La Republique du Cameroon".

So when someone says "We are marginalized", that's an Anglophone talking. But when someone says "one day we will gain our independence" that is a Southern Cameroonian.

Canute has excercised intellectual rigor by using the right term - although the subject of his article also applies to Southern Cameroonians...

[TAGRO]

Spear of the Nation, thanks for the comic relief.

[DANGO TUMMA]

lokunja,

thats a really a pity, that you have southern cameroonians, who would want to be called anglophone, even at this internet age, when all facts and history is open out there for them to find out the truth, just as

names like region, limbe, province, reunification, bilingualism are all fake brainwashing trems used by the french-cameroun mvomeka man to confused the low moneded and decieve the world at large,
THE Just would find the truth because ,only the truth can set them free, they would not teach their own children that they are anglophones, that they are slaves to a country call cameroun, when infact, they have their own country called southern cameroons, which is ilegally occupied, they have their own landguage, their own independence date, 01/10/1961. their own culture and heroes,, seperate from camerouns, soo those who things southern cameroons is former are also brainwashed, because a country can never be former, because a stranger says soo,

W e are proud southern cameroons people
we are a people, even the AFRICAN UNION
COURT IN BANJUL, INFACT CONFIRMED THIS YERA THAT WE ARE A PEOPLE. KNOWN AS SOUTHERN CAMEROONIANS, AND NOT ANGLOPHONES.

SOO, WHO EVER AT THIS POINT KEEP SPREADING BIYA LIES AND BRAINWASHING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE ABOUT WHO WE ARE AND INDEPENDENCE IS JUST THAT, AN LIAR.. JUST LIKE BIYA HIMSELF.

[Kim]

{O Cameroon, Thou Cradle of our Fathers,
Holy Shrine where in our midst they now repose,
Their tears and blood and sweat thy soil did water,
On thy hills and valleys once their tillage rose.
Dear Fatherland, thy worth no tongue can tell!
How can we ever pay thy due?
Thy welfare we will win in toil and love and peace,
Will be to thy name ever true!}

I wonder if any of us would not attest to the truth of this poem. In fact, I need not say where its coming from. Suffice every Cameroonian can recognize at one point his compatriot becomes a hypocrite after having sang this for many year.

[Obadiah Mua]

That some bonafide Southern Cameroonian albeit Amazonian should think of singing a song of his/her heroes in a strange land is anathema.That Canute TANGWA expected 'Mutation' publishers to include foreigners or better still 'les enemies dans la maison' as football legends of 'La Republique du Cameroun' is anathema.Would Canute have applauded if it were so?On May 26,1990 I was among a bunch of enemies in the house who sang the 'O Cameroun...' at the Yaounde University for the launching of the SDF.Educated,intellectual spies of the regime who were payed to infiltrated us reported convincingly to their bosses that it was the Nigerian national anthem.Reason being that there was no version of the anthem in English just like you will not find an English version of 'Les Marselleise'.If some Southern Cameroonians still dream of the day things will get better for them in 'La Republique' then they have not learnt their lessons well and they need not complain.Americans celebrate July 4 when they got their freedom from the Brits and not when the Brits first landed and got control of their land.Review all national days around the world,even in Africa and you will see that people celebrate days they became free and not when they became slaves.Ours is unique!!!

[Va Boy]

Oh Cameroun!
Go to hell...

Southern Cameroons forever.

[Chief Ayuk Arrey]

Which Dear Fatherland, thats is a provocation.
The only Fatherland I know of is the land of "Southern Cameroon"