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Abstract
During the 2018 annual meeting of the African Studies Association, the North American Association of Scholars on Cameroon organized a roundtable on the Anglophone crisis. The question we were charged with exploring in this roundtable read as follows: “Did the ‘Anglophone’ Protest of 2016–2017 Represent a Significant Turning Point in the Struggle for Rights in Cameroon's English-Speaking Regions?” The rights of English-Speaking Cameroonians, I suggested, are inextricability linked with the rights of all Cameroonians. In this contribution, I argue that this crisis is a “regime-made disaster.” The history of the emergence of the Cameroonian State into its current configuration compels us to acknowledge the gravity of the Anglophone problem. However, the linguistic divide is only part of the problem. The political bricolage of the last six decades, through insidious practices such as the ethnic-based quota system and the artificial distinction between “autochthones/autochthonous” and “allogènes/aliens,” has created an ethnic time bomb that could explode into an ethnic conflagration at any time. I argue that resolving the linguistic divide without addressing fundamental issues posed by the ethnic divide would fail to restore Cameroonians to their full citizenship, irrespective of the legal configuration of the State.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Collectif Changer le Cameroun, Le Cameroun éclaté: une anthologie commentée des revendications ethniques, 1992. Henceforth cited as CE.
2 The territory of the old German colony of Cameroon (Kamerun) was divided between the French and the British.
3 When I was visiting Cameroon in 2018, there were reports that secessionists fighters carried out attacks in the locality of Fongo-Tongo (Menoua Division, Western Region). Some reports also indicated that the same combatants had attacked police outposts in Ngalim (Bamboutos Division, Western Region). Fongo-Tongo and Ngalim are near the border between the Western Region and Anglophone areas.
4 See Kwame Anthony Appiah’s In My Father’s House. Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford UP, 1992: 152–162.
5 I am purposefully playing on Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. Mandela and the South African people were marching to freedom; Cameroon has embarked on the road to national despair and disintegration.
6 See Cilas Kemedjio, “‘Anthropological mutilation’ and the reordering of Cameroonian literature.” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 53.1 (2016): 86–108.
7 Cilas Kemedjio, “Decolonizing the Story of Humanitarianism: The Case of the Biafra War”. CIHABlog.com (http://www.cihablog.com/decolonizing-story-humanitarianism-case-biafra-war/), May 15, 2017.
8 It is my understanding that Professor Bernard Fonlon was a close confidant of President Ahmadou Ahidjo. He was, if I rely on the testimony of Professor Isaac Celestin Tcheho, a frequent visitor to the State House during Ahidjo’s presidency.
9 Tande may have a point. However, if my memory is correct, English-speaking journalists sought to remedy this Francophone hegemony by getting more programming from the BBC and similar outlets.
10 OHADA (Organization for the Harmonization of Corporate Law in Africa), the main legal framework regulating business in Africa existed only in the French version in Cameroon courtrooms. The Ministry of Justice only made the English version of this critical document available in November 2016, after protests launched by Anglophone lawyers. See Geraldine Ovaha: “OHADA: le Cameroun a reçu la version anglaise.” Cameroon-info.net/reactions/cameroun-textes-ohada-le-cameroun-a-recu-la-version-anglaise-276165.htlm, accessed on 2/8/2019 at 8:23 p.m. http://www.ohada.org/index.php/en/news/latest-news/1874-the-permanent-secretary-officially-hands-over-the-english-version-of-ohada-laws-to-the-state-of-cameroon, accessed on 2/8/2019.
11 During roundtables and sessions organized on the Anglophone question during the annual meetings of the African Studies Association, some scholars from the Anglophone regions argued, in formal as well as informal discussions, that the Ambazonians “high jacked” the legitimate demands of lawyers and teachers to advance their secessionist agenda.
12 Patrick Mughe Mua, The Guardian Post, no. 1445, p. 3.
13 “UN publishes disturbing figures on killings, burnings in NW, SW.” The Guardian Post, no. 1445, p. 3.
14 The government responded with an “Emergency Humanitarian Plan.” I have discussed this plan in other platforms. See articles in local newspapers about the depth of the crisis and the boisterous noise about this humanitarian venture by Florentin Ndatewouo, Mathias Mouende Ngamo, Tatiana Ngombouowo, Ben Christy Moudio. Other relevant references on this Humanitarian Emergency Plan and the tragic cost of the war are to be found in endnotes 12 and 13 and in articles in local papers by reporters such as Emmanuel Kendemeh, Jacques Blaise Mvié, Colbert Gwain, Nico Halle.
15 See Achille Mbembe in La naissance du maquis, Deltombe et al, Kamerun ! Une guerre cachée aux origines de la Françafrique 1948-1971, Gibert Doho in La cicatrice, Le chien noir, Mongo Beti in Main basse sur le Cameroun and L’histoire du fou (The Story of the Madman), Jean-Marie Teno in Une feuille dans le vent.
16 I have addressed this theoretical inadequacy in La malédiction de la théorie (1999).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Cilas Kemedjio
Cilas Kemedjio is the Frederic Douglass Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Director of the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Rochester. He is a past president of the African Literature Association (2018–2019) and the author of over 60 articles, two monographs, Édouard Glissant et la malédiction de la théorie, Mongo Beti: le combattant fatigué. Une biographie intellectuelle and one edited volume, Mémoires des années de braise. La grève estudiantine de 1991 expliquée/Remember the Flame: White Papers from the 1990 Yaoundé University Strikes, a bilingual edition of the white papers of the students’ strike at the University of Yaoundé. His current project seeks to unearth the genealogies of humanitarian interventions in Africa, and their attendant uneasy connections with multilayered sites of power. The provisional title of this project is “Ota Benga and the Fictions of Humanitarianism.”