Dispatches from home read like material for a great historical fiction manuscript. You easily imagine the Whatsapp voice-notes with either news of military abuse of power, chilling threats from frenzied ‘Amba’ fanatics, or worse, news of yet another kidnapping or murder as something fictional characters in the 1970s would have listened to huddled over the lone radio in the house. Because this can’t be happening in now; in the day of intelligence readily manufactured as AI. It can’t be happening in the age of everything smart; smartphones, smartwatches, smart kitchen utensils, yet senseless humans? How can that be? But your inbox proves that it is, that anomaly is possible and real. Four weeks ago, you were informed that the military presence in your hometown has moved your old schoolmate (at the ripe old age of 30) to learn French, the language of the men in uniforms. So she now accompanies her 8-year-old daughter to the house of a teacher who now teaches kids on her veranda because schools are a no-go zone. Your cousin laughs as she tells you “Mo imagine o! If we had known, we would have paid attention to Monsieur Flobeh!” You reply to her statement with laughing Emoji but you think “If we had known, we should have made sure a lot more people paid attention to history lessons. A week later you receive a message from one of your friends-turned-sister as you arrive at your church for Sunday service. It reads: “Sis, I hope you’re well. Please pray for me oo! I received a call from a guy threatening me. He says I should support the movement or else they’ll harm my family” You stand at the doors of the church, immobile but for your fingers readily typing up questions; when, how, why you? She says the call was brief but followed by an SMS of how she should make a deposit to ‘support the struggle’ and she was probably targeted as any other civil servant who people believe have money on the regular. You warn her not to even thinking of making any deposit, lest she is caught and the police arrest her for ‘sponsoring terrorism’. Your mom’s friend is in prison in Yaoundé at the moment on those charges. He had paid ‘Amba boys’ a large sum of money upon receiving threats of kidnapping. Your friend agrees that paying would be dangerous, she can only run away with her kids. You sigh as you read that, and head to a seat for a sermon you will not remember because you were crying silently through the preaching. To think this is what we have come to. When you return home later you check on your friend. She tells you that she’d had the idea to reach out to an acquaintance you both know, a young slightly over-zealous Christian ‘brother’ who is known to have participated in some ‘Amba’ activities. She felt he could help verify if the threats were genuine or just a scam from thieves. And if genuine, she thought he could help her get off their targets lists or at the very least, he would see the error in the company he keeps. No expected outcome came to pass. She tells you that upon narrating her experience, our brother-in-Christ told her that he could introduce her to the guys collecting the ‘support funds’ and explain to them that she doesn’t have much so whatever she can give will be okay. “Just give small money for bullets, sis,” he said. You are shocked. But not for long. You will soon hear that no one can be trusted to be rational now. That irrationality is a norm. You are told that a colleague you didn’t particularly like at your alma mater was attacked recently by ‘Amba boys’, their crime was being from the wrong tribe- Bamileke. Your tribe based on patrilineal traditions which won’t consider other factors of your identity. Suddenly, you feel bad for having disliked this person who is now a victim. You hear that some other colleagues, the educated, the elders at church, the fathers of young children had shrugged at the attack, they saw it as well deserved. After all, Bamilekes are neither here nor there so surely spies. At that moment you determine that Cameroon and its Cameroonians do not warrant your shock. The nation is simply living up to being considered a ‘shit-hole country’. In the days that follow, your inboxes belch out more: Black young men are now an at-risk species in the Anglophone regions, just like in the United States. Are you black, of average to tall stature, possibly aged 17- 30? Then you could possibly be an ‘Amba boy’ and the police (with no questions asked- and even if asked, not in English) would profile you, arrest or possibly execute you at the least provocation. Your neighbor films her daughter, a toddler practicing her hiding technique. Like the fire drills in western schools. Except this is a four-year-old who now recognizes the sound of gunshots and how to hide under the leather sofa even as she has yet to enter a nursery school classroom. You’re told that one of your former neighbors is now fundraising. Asking all and sundry for help as her husband has been kidnapped. The boys asked for 10 million FCFA and the family negotiated the ransom down to half that price. You picture the bargaining over the phone and shake your head. How does one bargain on the life of one’s spouse? By last week, the frequency of the messages had increased, but not their content is different. “Mo I’m in Yaoundé now, I’m safe.” Or “Mo pray for us oo! I am hoping to leave to Douala tomorrow”. Their WhatsApp statuses show they’re okay, the proof is in their taking photos on the sides of the road with and there being no sign of military trucks. These ones had made it safely to the ‘other Cameroon’ despite the risk
The Extravagance of Black Forgiveness
A friend of mine recently asked me why I haven’t written about the situation back home. He said he “wished I was still back home because I’d feel more acutely the pain of the situation and write some good pieces”. I tell him that I, like many others, am tired. Fed up with the stupidity and arrogance which drives this situation. Yet, if conversations could run for pages long, I would have simply shared the following piece which I wrote at the end of November 2017 but never shared- till now. *** A week after Zimbabwe offered the world what may be the most civil coup ever, you are still reading articles, think-pieces overanalyzed op-ed pieces on the ‘rise and fall of Uncle Bob’. You are still interested despite the repetition, despite the dread the writers generally project of what next. You are still interested because in reading those pieces you are encouraged that someday (hopefully soon) your own Mugabe shall fall, or be toppled… whichever way would do. But a week later you come across new information, details of the largess which characterizes Mugabe’s pension upon forced retirement. His presidential salary will continue as is, he receives a lump sum of 10 million USD, maintains all properties acquired as president, health coverage, and several other benefits. An obviously generous pension considering whatever his family had already looted. The generosity baffles you; this cannot possibly be the sanction for dictatorship, this cannot be the sanction for forcing millions of your people into exile and holding the growth of a whole nation hostage. This cannot possibly be what people marched for. You are not Zimbabwean, so you read the comments. Most say they’re fine with it, that it is better than having him in power. That Zimbabwe must move on. That they do not need to fight with the tyrant. One particular comment stands out: “Zimbabwean’s should forgive the bastard not for him but to free themselves”. The comment tugs at your memory, you have heard that before. You have heard it on several occasions. You heard it when Gambia’s Jammeh lost “Don’t mention prosecuting him, just let him go so you can move on…” You heard similar last year and dozens of times before when a Cameroonian immigrant woman you know was told to forgive her abusive husband for the sake of her kids “Don’t put those children through the court process in this country ooo. These people will ask them all sort of questions. We are not white people. Settle this in your family so you can move on with dignity.” You have heard this so many times, linked to scripture like whole countries are of one faith. Like forgiveness can be demanded. A commodity one can order. Yet this time, perhaps because you are reading the articles expectantly looking to Zimbabwe as a beacon of hope for the potential toppling of your own dictator, you are upset by the extravagance of black forgiveness. You recall the first comment you made upon learning of black petting zoos, and how black children were caged to be observed like animals. You said: We have forgiven too much. We have. And we have forgiven on behalf of too many, who never did and never may get closure. You also recall the Charlottesville shooting and the quickly offered, widely publicised forgiveness of Dylan Roof. You had wondered then as you wonder now, who gave them the authority to forgive. Yes, they were related to the victims, just like those who now forgive are Zimbabwean, but the evil was done to us all, has marked us all, has built anger in us all… who and what quenches the fire of injustices when one forgives for the whole. And why are we the ones always forgiving? We Blacks, we Africans, we Women. Why does the victim get told “to forgive is divine”, like victimisation made one saintly, propelled them into the realm of divinity. And if we must forgive, which is just fine by the way, do we not deserve to get an apology first? No repentance? No justice? Do we just bury the pain like a secret hidden in a chest for another generation to dig and discover? Does the dictator get a scholarship named after him like Rhodes so three generations pass and our children know him as a benefactor rather than an abuser? Above all, as you contemplate this exceedingly gracious treatment of a fallen dictator you wonder what it means for you and yours. As you look at Zimbabwe as an example, if no longer a beacon, you wonder why one should bother decrying the exploitation, mismanagement and abuse of Cameroonian government officials who would be so readily forgiven. If on one hand, African leaders who leave power ‘with good will” receive a boon by way of the Mo Ibrahim Prize effectively congratulating them for doing what the constitutions they swore to uphold said they ought to do…and those who don’t leave get generous retirement packages like Mugabe, promises to be left alone and not tried for crimes like Jammeh, or promises of lifelong Party leadership positions like dos Santos… if those are the options why denounce your Mugabe. If those are the options they have to choose from, they never really fall. And justice is never really served, definitely not implemented by us. For we forgive. Our forgiveness is expected, extravagantly gracious, shortsighted and shallow. Doing an even greater injustice to the memory of the injustice done to us. It is our forgiveness that has descendants of abusers, still enjoying historical privilege yet forming trade unions and denying that apartheid was an injustice. It is our forgiveness that has Kanye West saying slavery was a choice. It is our forgiveness that leaves our Cameroonian children unable to name the revolutionaries which fought for our independence. It is as a result of our profligate forgiveness that fifty years on, we have more statues and schools named after colonial figures than we do
Musings on 17th January
The 17th of January will forever hold meaning for me. For one, it’s the birthday of a close friend and founding member of Better Breed Cameroon- the youth development organization I coordinate. Sama Randy, passed away three years ago this month and has since been remembered by the Youth Essay Contest we have since renamed in his honor (please click here to learn more about the Sama Randy Youth Write Contest). Last year, another memorable event took place on the 17th of January. On the evening of this day last year, our government decided to take stifling of opposing voices to another level. It was a Tuesday, around 6pm. We heard rumors- turned fact- of the arrest of leaders of the Consortium who were at the time heading protests against the government over Anglophone marginalization. These arrests were followed by an internet shut-down in the two Anglophone regions where protests were situated. Looking back, I can say that day marked the greatest mistake our government has made in years. With the decision made on that day, our government not only validated our protests but equally gave the opportunity to fanatics to spread and grow leading to the impasse we now experience. See, that day marked a turning point for people of my generation. We of the “android generation” (as they call our 90’ Babies forward) have known our government to be corrupt, our officials to be power-drunk thieves, selfish brownnosers to their core. Yet, we had until this past year only known of our governments’ brutality only through the lens of history, through exaggerated quartier tales we grew up hearing; like “did you know the first lady’s former lover was killed when our president took interest in her or did you know our former first lady died mysteriously?” All rumors we could not confirm but which ensured we looked at our officials with the right tinge of fear. Similar to the way our parents and those generally older and more aware bowed lower in the face of gendarmes and generally feared to talk about politics in certain places. Yes, up until last year we knew our government was bad, but we hadn’t known the fear of those who had witnessed it firsthand. As a Nigerian proverb goes; a child who crosses the river carried on the mother’s back would say the water was not deep. We had read of Ahidjo’s governments’ complicity with the French in crushing the Maquisards and assassinating Cameroon’s early patriots. We had listened as our parents discussed the infamous disappearance of the Bepanda 9 incident following the opposition to our current president’s changing of the constitution. But still, we had been sheltered and had yet to witness our government shutdown a part of the country, arbitrarily arrest hundreds on flimsy excuses and cart them off to Yaoundé as though they were Jews to Hitler’s concentration camps. We had not lived the fear of militarized towns, nor imagined government officials could lie so blatantly about the regions we inhabited. We had not experienced government imposed curfews and ‘states of emergency’ nor had we known that the police we scorned as thieves could also be heartlessly brutal batterers. January 17th 2017 set off a chain of events which brought an end to our relative naivety and unleashed possibilities- possibilities of the worst kind- into our minds. After experiencing months of internet shutdown, closure of free press, brutal repression of protesters (peaceful or otherwise), refusal to dialogue, arrests of those who so much as expressed opinions of the issue online or in public… and even when the internet access was restored, even when some of those arbitrarily arrested were released, even then we saw that our administrators lacked basic managerial skills as they continuously chose force over dialogue, and denial over addressing of the problem. A year later, as I ponder on how things have developed, Langston Hughes’ most popular poem comes to mind. In Harlem, Hughes’ ponders on what happens to a dream deferred. Harlem BY LANGSTON HUGHES What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Today I consider the state of my country, the effects of ignoring and then suppressing justifiable protests. I ponder on the consequences of whitewashing our history, denying the existence of two Cameroon’s and of having a government which- like the ill-famed ostrich- have buried their heads in the sand insisting there is no problem… and as I do this, I think of the above poem and I feel I can answer Hughes. A dream deferred shall fester and run. Like the dream of Ndeh Ntumazah’s One Kamerunn party now crusting over as ‘Ambazonia’. A dream deferred stinks rotten like the death of Bate Besong still an open sore in our history as with every other revolutionary who spoke up and was cut down. And by all indications, if the Anglophone dream continues to be deferred…it shall explode. Perhaps we should stop postponing and address the dreams this country was built on before they become nightmares.
So… What did 2017 teach you?
Earlier this year, I wrote on the development of the now year-long crisis which has plagued the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. I outlined the emergence of the struggle and build-up due to utter mishandling from the government and the frustration of a minority, all in hope of our collective learning as a nation. As the year comes to an end and the crisis still rages- with more violence than ever in some parts of these regions- I have wondered if we actually did learn anything. For me the end of year period is meant for reflection; a time for assessing the year about to pass by and preparing for the one about to begin. I have thus considered the lessons 2017 has taught me personally, lessons like: i. Some things/people will never be yours no matter how hard you work, how hard you pray and how much you may deserve it/them. We do not always get what we deserve. That is both a good and bad thing. ii. You matter. Someone impressionable is watching you, looking up to you, believing in you. So act like you matter. iii. Your work matters. Invest in it. Hone your craft. iv. Pain too can bloom things. It’s not the best fertilizer but it works. v. Not everyone you admire is right for you and you are not for everyone. And now I consider the lessons 2017 and the experiences of this year should have taught us all as Cameroonians. In case you’ve been dozing throughout the year, here are some takeaways in point form: 1- Before you start a protest have a plan. Advocacy is targeted, and meaningful. You can be an online activist, your voice is a powerful tool and your social media page is no doubt a useful platform BUT for you to be an advocate, you need to be targeting those in power able to change things or actively following procedure in changing them. Otherwise you’re not doing much. Anger at this government is justified, however misdirected anger and lack of strategy is deadly. We’ve been under this regime for 35+ years… anyone trying to save us from it should have used this time to come up with a good plan. It doesn’t have to be foolproof, but it should be logical. As a friend of mine put it a while back: Before you demand my allegiance to a new order, convince me that what you offer me is better than the last. 2- Hold your heroes to higher standards, this is not a game. A popular adage goes: An unchecked virtue is a vice; meaning what/who is good can easily go bad because of too much praise and too little criticism. I think this is the strongest lesson of the year. In our desire for change we, as Cameroonians have come to crown any loud voice as messiah. However this, the future of our nation and our collective well-being, is not a scenario where we can make do with “a one-eyed man in the land of the blind”. Perhaps because we’re not all that blind, most of us are just suffering from nearsightedness. So please check and double-check your heroes, does your hero/leader of choice make sexist remarks? Is he/or she knowledgeable of the laws/constitution they criticize? Is he or she transparent? Does he or she have lingering scandals? Is he or she a trusted source of verified information? Can he or she handle power without becoming power-drunk? We should have learned that he who cannot handle criticism now will be no better than Biya when it comes his turn to rule. He who would sacrifice others and ignore their real needs at this time, will not suddenly change with power. And not everyone who speaks up for us is meant to be our mouthpiece. Someone can appreciate the general problem, but due to their background and context, be out of touch with the other intersecting oppressions people in different classes, with different levels of education, and so forth experience. 3- Do your research, verify information. Fake news is real; spreading it is not a joke. We may all scoff at the government’s annoying message with veiled threats regarding the spread of fake news- particularly considering how much fake news they spread by lies of omission. Yet, it is an undeniable fact, that unverified information “forwarded as received” caused a lot of destruction of property and loss this year. Unverified information readily shared because it sounds sensational, appeals to our desired outcome or because we’re too damn lazy to cross check sources and possibility, caused a great deal of damage this year. Fake news damaged the credibility of a revolution and led to loss of property and life every time a rumor went around inciting young people to the streets where they were met with certain police brutality. Pray we have learned that not everything is worth sharing. In fact, let me make it clear in our most common language: *holds ear* make this thing sey forwarded as received end this 2017. If you don’t know the source and are not certain the info is true, keep it to yourself.4- In the words of MJ ‘They don’t really care about us”. It is hoped that we’ve learned that no one is coming to save us. That no one owes us more than we owe ourselves. That no one can do for us what we have yet to do for ourselves. This is for those who marched before embassies of France, the United Kingdom, Canada etc. but failed to hold their own ambassadors accountable. This is for those who readily spread rumors about UNESCO canceling a school year only to see some (middle class) children progress to higher institutions with the release of results while theirs were at home. If nothing else, may 2017 have taught us that we must organize to save ourselves. The international community has never been an impartial judge. If we don’t care about ourselves,
So This is How it Starts?
When you watch Hotel Rwanda, one of your first thoughts is: this story is incomplete. How did they get there, that early scene? How do a people get to a point where it is ok to order machetes for killing other human beings they had lived with, worked beside, bought from, and sold to? In years to come, you will read of other countries – or courtesy of Half of a Yellow Sun- of countries that were. You will listen to other people, through documentaries and interviews. Like the weathered father on that Al-Jazeera documentary narrating how he now searches for his son, fearing the young man has returned to Somalia to join the Al Shabaab. You wonder how that man could stand by and allow his child be radicalized. Your own parents would have slapped sense into you. With each story, you read or listen to, you questioned how whole groups of people reach that point. You know your people have never known true peace but you still wonder how it becomes normal for people to carry such a heavy load of hate such that they consider and commit murder, such that one can blow up themselves for questionable beliefs? How? Unfortunately, fate decides to help you answer these questions through experience, and gives you the recipe for war you didn’t ask for. *** Mix ¾ silent majority propagating stereotypes and fending only for self 2/3 biased media, journalists reporting for sensationalism, the next brown envelope, or to encourage their own faction ½ inadequate education, teach young people dependency but not proactivity, teach youth the parts of a grasshopper but neither the hard truths of their history nor the laws of their country. Leave them grossly uninformed and depending on which region their school is based, leave them to be further socialized with stereotypes. Add a full measure of fear and distrust of the armed forces, be they police, army or everything in between. Let that fear seep so deep into their hearts and do nothing to erase it. Add tribalism, corruption, religious dogma, and let these mature under an oppressive government with power-drunk, short-sighted stooges of neo-colonialists who would rather repress than dialogue Sprinkle a dash of social media power to inflate everything, and spread incomplete news faster… And there you have it, the perfect conditions for war. *** You were not wrong when you thought Hotel Rwanda was incomplete. No film could capture it all. Wars are like wine; they mature over time but pop out as spontaneously as harmattan rain. The screenwriters had to leave the rest to the imagination or to experience. You are discovering now that it begins slowly, with years of grumbling and anger accumulating, hoarded like an abscess left to fester till it bursts open with an accidental scratch. War began when your aunty was mocked for marrying “Les Bamenda la”. It began when going to French areas became synonymous with going to the metropolis and returning to Anglophone areas was synonymous with rural living. War grew in our hearts when we would go on long holidays to French areas and count how often the power went off, noting that it was less frequent than the times it went off back ‘home’. The seeds of war were sown unwittingly when you soaked in your grandparent’s disdain for all things French such that boycotting French lessons didn’t faze you. You were allowed to fail that subject. No one would question it. War spread as we grew, grew older, and grew tired, as our government didn’t even bother to pretend any longer. As our president would patronize with statements like “apprenti sorcier” referring to protesters, or “better late than never” as an excuse for and tardy celebration of independence and presumed unity. And this is how war began; like a belch after you’ve eaten too much. Taken too much nonsense. Nonsense like regional balance which somehow is always unbalanced. Nonsense like regular news broadcasts which omit the hard truths, twist the soft ones and butcher the language of the minority- news that is ironically old no matter the presenter. Nonsense like government appointments comparable to a game of musical chairs. We all have a chance to sit and eat, then shuffle dance to get another chance. Nonsense like tens of millions disappearing, stolen, they say, from ministers’ homes as though they were national bank vaults. Too much nonsense like fifty thousand people registering to write entrance exams where only two hundred and fifty are needed. A veritable lottery. The battleground was slowly built but the war has been quickly called. As swiftly as the arbitrary arrests of January 17th, 2017. When all of a sudden those who would answer bullets with sit-in protests were replaced with those who could actually wield machetes if given. Now you can tell that war is not a fire, but a bar of soap, able to hold still when dry, but ready to slip out of grasp when lathered. And governments like yours would lather, throw water saying “It is nothing. They will return to court when they are hungry”, “There is no Anglophone problem”…“Those people protesting are terrorists”… and so the foam will build and you will see war tumbling towards you like the unwieldy soapsuds. Yet not everyone will see it. It is funny like that. Soap lathers silently, so it is that war encroached silently, with people accepting the bubbles as the norm. War grows unto people. They begin to take cases of vengeful arson in stride, they make excuses for journalist calling for massacres, they defend all the wrong means using the desired end, even it the desire is hazy. War foams slowly with adaptation to over-militarisation, with alternatives found to ‘inconveniences” like opening up shops on Sundays and sending your kids to other towns for schools. Like securing visas to travel; let those who are poor and unable to leave remain to die. You see now that this is how it starts, the wars you read about, watched
No-Internet Cameroon: Two months on
On the evening of 17th January 2017, two regions in Cameroon- one of which is my permanent domicile- were indefinitely cut off from internet access. Today marks two months. The government claims it “had to take drastic measures to curb the spread of false information and extremist messages”. This could be debated. However collectively punishing over 4 million people by limiting their freedom of speech, hindering their business operations and so much more just because our government cannot stand bad things being said about them? That is not debatable. It is just wrong, short-sighted and dictatorial. I have no doubts that if Cameroon were a lot more united. If my people had a stronger sense of social justice, this would not be happening. The other eight regions would not have taken it in stride that two were being silenced. Both Anglophones and Francophones make up the other eight regions. If we had even a tenth of self-respecting government administrators, this would not be happening… again, I find myself concluding that we are all to blame. No one person can successfully mess up a country with tens of millions. Yet here we are. I wrote about my experience living under the internet ban and my thoughts on #BringBackourInternet for ThisIsAfrica.me Find an excerpt with a link to the full piece below: Life in No- Internet Cameroon It used to be difficult to explain that there were two Cameroons. At conferences, international round tables where Africans and Afro-inquisitive Westerners would swap stories, as well as questions and assumptions about each other’s countries, you would often have to debunk the myth that you were fluent in French by virtue of being Cameroonian and being called Monique. It would take too long to explain the invisible divide of that Picot Line. This problem, which has since either been ignored or normalised, would be too broad to broach. So you limit your comments on your country to corruption, the president’s everlasting reign, conveniently patriarchal cultural ‘values’ – issues all Africans understand and face, unfortunately, irrespective of their country of origin. But recently your government has made it easier to explain that there are two Cameroons. They somehow found that dividing line that no one would acknowledge existed and now it is clear: There is Internet Cameroon and No-Internet Cameroon, that is, La Republic du Cameroun, which gained independence from French rule on 1 January 1960, and former British Southern Cameroons, which gained independence by merging with ‘long lost brothers’ on 1 October 1961. Now when your colleagues from other countries ask you about Cameroon, it is easier to explain the problem that has long been ignored and subdued. Easier, not easy. The issues of who and what you identify as remains as complex as ever. Now your colleagues ask you, how are you coping? What is it like living under an Internet ban? You attempt to help them envisage it. Imagine this, you say: So, what is it like? It is 7pm. Just two hours earlier news had broken of the government banning the associations at the forefront of the longest and largest strikes in recent national history. Now you are reading reports online, stating that some of the leaders of the strike (and one of the now banned associations) have been arrested. Upon reading this you feel alarmed. You attempt calling those you know to check on their well-being. Your call doesn’t go through. You try reaching out to mutual friends and family online to discuss your fears and ascertain their safety, but your messages keep loading. You can’t see the tick next to your WhatsApp messages, the one that would confirm that they had been delivered. You assume it is the network; that the lines are probably crammed as the news of arrests sends everyone scurrying to call their loved ones. Things will surely escalate. And they do. You see cars held up on the road just outside your window – bikers have taken to blocking the roads with burning tires and abandoned cars to show their displeasure. You hear shots being fired into the air, the police descending with tear gas. People try to park their cars on the pavements to hide in the safety of neighboring buildings like the one you live in. Others use the opportunity to loot and steal – you see them running with gas bottles stolen from the local gas station. You have dismantled your phone and reassembled it twice, removing and replacing your SIM card, restarting it, feeling confident that the network will return so you can check in with your loved ones or follow updates on the situation. An hour later you receive a call from a friend who is stuck a mile from your place due to the road blocks. Could he come spend the night? he asks. The roads are blocked and the police are arresting whoever they can. When he arrives at your place, he tells you of the fear on fellow passengers’ faces when they saw tires burning on the road and bikers with bottles – ‘kerosene bombs’ – only for the gendarmes to follow with batons and tear gas. He tells of running for his life and feeling ashamed for not stopping to help a female passenger who fell into the gutter as they both tried to escape. He says all this while reassembling his phone. You both still think it is a network problem. Hours later, you can’t sleep. You receive an SMS from a friend in Douala: Has your Internet been cut off too? she asks. It dawns on you that this may actually be it; the government may actually have cut off Internet access. You two laugh. Crazy people! you remark. How long can this last? Douala, the economic capital, needs Internet access or else businesses will crash. Heck, everyone needs Internet access. You two discuss the government’s lack of foresight until you fall
The Silent Majority
August of this year shall make five years of my blogging here on Musings. It was in August of 2012 during a trip to Nigeria for Chimamanda’s Farafina workshop that a friend of a friend, Martin Takha first introduced me to the world of blogging. Helping me with everything from the Gmail account to deciding the first template I used for a couple of years. As Cameroon’s ‘blogosphere’ has become crowded with a plethora of people aspiring to be Cameroon’s Linda Ikeji, I am proud to say I’ve stayed true to myself and the purpose of this blog. A dual purpose actually; to ensure I write regularly and to create platform through which I could share my views, defend my opinions and if possible tell a side of our story which may be otherwise missed as popular mediums echo a single often incomplete story. I have promoted blogging through my youth advocacy as a means for young people to get their voices heard. Through BetterBreed Cameroon I have preached to young people on the necessity in telling their own story, sharing their thoughts on issues they are affected by or care passionately for through Medium, LinkedIn, as Commonwealth Youth Correspondents, via World Pulse and of course through their own blogs. I suppose I should have considered the possibility of an internet ban imposed to hush us. In fact I did consider it, for about 5 mins during two different conversations. First being about six months ago when a friend told me of her experience in Ethiopia under the internet ban and then when we laughed about Turkey’s president need to abate anxiety over the attempted Coup d’état via Face-time? after recently banning social media. My friends and I discussed these incidents shook our heads, shrugged, laughed and let it go. Then it was my turn. Today makes a week since two regions in Cameroon have been denied internet access as the government attempts to quench protests against Anglophone marginalization in these regions via brute force. The protest leaders were arrested that night and smuggled out of the regions, simultaneously internet access was shut down so as to hamper the spread of news. During the last week I’ve had lot of time to think (the absence of social media distractions will do that for you lol), and two quotes came to mind: These two quotes spoke to me as I lamented on how the internet ban affects budding tech-entrepreneurs in Buea’s “Silicon Mountain”, how banks (which pay Cameroon’s exorbitant taxes) are closed for lack of internet access, how those who work predominantly online either for webzines, as researchers or just communicating with clients/business partners are now grounded along with scholars (like myself) who have online classes to follow and participate in. I wondered how backwards our leaders must be to punish over 4 million people in two regions because they didn’t like criticisms of them being spread via social media and couldn’t find another way to solve a problem they let grow out of proportion. But above all I thought of HOW this could be happening. It’s 2017 for God’s sake! Then the above two quotes reminded me that this happened in 2016 and I said nothing. It happened in two countries I know of (three counting Gambia during elections) and I barely tweeted my disapproval. Evil prevails because good men failed to act. A lot of people didn’t stand up in those circumstances, so it happened then, and now it is happening to me. Yet not enough people are reacting. Within my own country, a great deal of Cameroonians in the French speaking regions are either unaware or could care less about the ban. Three days into the ban I ‘crossed the border’ into the Francophone section of the country and when I checked online only a handful of people were talking about it. Some acquaintances online even attempted to justify the government’s actions saying “social media was spurring terrorism and the government had a right to take it away”. When I told one of them he was stupid for that I was told “you shouldn’t bring in insults when we are having a peaceful debate”. How can one be peaceful when they are justifying (and therefore an accomplice in) your suppression? How? Today I’m a bit calmer, I crossed the border this morning to find that voices- online at least- have grown against the internet ban using the hashtag #BringBackOurInternet. Yet there are not enough in my honest opinion, and there is a noticeable lack in Francophone voices. Yesterday it was Ethiopia, Turkey and Gambia, today it is my Northwest and Southwest regions, tomorrow it will likely be the whole of Cameroon as we face the 2018 elections… Please join us to speak up now. Speak now that tomorrow you still have your voice. Tweet to the Cameroonian government, our telecommunication agencies and all those you can using #BringBackOurInternet. Remember: If you are silent, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it- Zora Neale Hurston.
Imagining My President’s New Year Message- A Christmas Wish
I have been unable to do any real writing for weeks now. Between losing several friends and experiencing a peaceful strike turn into a brutal scary revolution, 2016 is leaving me drained. As I assess the year in these last days, I can only compare it to Sour Cream and Vinegar flavored Pringles. It has fed me but left a bad taste in my mouth. My musings this month have ranged from existential questions (Is this life so fleeting, so unpredictable? What’s my Life Purpose again and what’s in it for me?) to political debates (How to best explain to outsiders and the fellow Cameroonians who don’t understand what the Anglophone problem is, Is this revolution on the right course etc.). Several pieces could be written from the thoughts this month has brought. But as I said, I am drained and I just want to think happy, hopeful thoughts. Every year, on the 31stof December Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon for 34 years now, makes a New Year’s speech. In fact the first ‘Musings’ post of 2016 was a review of his speech heralding in this year (read that post HERE). As this year closes and we await another speech. I’ve decided to be hopeful and muse on what I wish my president would say in that speech. I wish he would, as he did last year, look for words to describe the year our nation has experienced. I imagine the suitable words for this year would be ‘fed-up’. It seems his praise of our resilience at the beginning of the year marked our reaching the limits of tolerance. I wish he would express regrets at driving a truly resilient people to this breaking point. In this ideal speech, I imagine my president acknowledging how those he put in power, and the foreigners who he has all but sold us to, contributed to poor maintenance of the Yaounde-Douala road and eventually the loss of lives in the Eseka train crash. I imagine my president apologizing for the laissez-faire nature of his leadership and cabinet which led to legitimate complaints of Common Law Lawyers being ignored and the strikes and protest which followed. I expect him to condemn the violence, arbitrary hoisting of flags and looting done by protesters, but I wish he would avoid branding protesters “terrorists” and acknowledge that had his administration adequately addressed early complaints and the initially peaceful sit-in strike, nipping this in the bud, things would never have gotten this bad. In this ideal speech my president would for once address the nation in English attempting to prove that we are indeed bilingual and equal. Whilst speaking the language of the minority he would equally condemn the spirit of secession and express understanding of its origins. While I expect him to criticize those spreading hate between the Francophones and Anglophones, I pray and wish he is gutsy (or just tired enough) to acknowledge the problem rather than shy from it. I expect him to know that this is not an issue of who gets what ministerial post, nor an issue of what regions are more developed (quite frankly the South region from which the president hails is just as much- if not more- undeveloped). I pray that as president he is informed and conscious enough to know that this goes way beyond Francophones taking opportunities in Anglophone regions though these are the reasons you’ll hear brandied about. I imagine that in his often long-winded speech he takes the time to acknowledge that while people of all regions have problems, the Anglophone problem is unique because it has institutionalized one group as superior to the other. It has made bilingualism an option for one group, while for the other bilingualism is necessary for survival irrespective of which part of the Mungo they reside. After all you could get arrested in Limbe, never knowing your crime because the person arresting you does so while speaking French. I pray my president acknowledges that over the years since 1972’s “unification” there has been a systematic disregard for the minority (English speaking) thus creating a bias in favor of the majority (French speaking). I would be okay with him sharing the blame for this; he could blame his predecessor – Ahidjo- and the setup which was the 1972 referendum, he could blame the bevy of present day Anglophone politicians who remain mute on the problem for fear of losing their positions, he could even blame the citizens who pretend like he’s the perfect president when they meet him, and the numerous traditional rulers of Anglophone regions who have made him “Fon of Fons” and continuously convince him they love his reign with their ‘motions of support’. He need not take all the blame, there’s enough to go around. Heck I wrote an Open Letter to Cameroonians calling them out on this same thing almost three years ago. I shall be lenient as to just how much blame ought to be shelled out to him, but I expect my president to ‘man up” for once. I pray he truly dearly loves his country somewhere deep down beneath those double-breasted suits. That he loves the country enough to condemn the violence his armed forces used on students and other protesters. That he censures ‘forces of law and order’ who have done the opposite of their duty to protect and serve just as much as he does violent protesters who use a peaceful strike to cause chaos. I pray he recognizes that when the people fear the police rather than call on them for help, there is a problem. A grave problem. Make Cameroon Hopeful Again! Finally, I would be most ecstatic if my president would crown his speech with acknowledging that his aged self cannot see us into that ‘land of Canaan’ the government has painted Vision 2035 to be, and declare like Angola’s presidentthat he, Paul Biya, will not be running for future elections. Such a declaration would give Cameroonians