Most of the strategies employed by the government to deconstruct Anglophone identity tended to be accompanied by ruthless repression of the Anglophone population and Anglophone activities.68 The South West Provincial Governor Oben Peter Ashu became so unpopular following his decision in 1993 to brutalise the local population with the military in a bid to forcibly recover unpaid taxes and to stop smuggling that his name was corrupted to ‘Obey Peter Shoot’. The North West Provincial Governor Bell Luc René a Francophone hailing from Douala, was nicknamed ‘Bend Look Grenade’ as a result of the security forces’ excessive use of tear-gas grenades to disperse opposition rallies and demonstrations in the North West during the 1991 ghost town campaign and the 1992 state of emergency in Bamenda following ‘Biya's theft of Fru Ndi’s victory’ in the presidential elections (Nyamnjoh 1996d: 110, footnote 129).
Major Anglophone opposition parties, like the North West-based SDF and the South West-based LDA, continued to be exposed to state intimidation and violence. As mentioned in Chapter 4, the launching of the SDF in May 1990 led to the killing by security forces of six demonstrators, the so-called Bamenda martyrs. The launching of the LDA in Buea on 19 September 1993 prompted the security forces to launch a tear-gas attack on the approximately 400 party sympathisers gathered at the premises of the party chairman, Njoh Litumbe. This act can probably be explained by the fact that the LDA executive was composed of some of the principal SCNC leaders, notably Sam Ekontang Elad, Simon Munzu, Henry Fossung and Njoh Litumbe. The government regularly prohibited the Anglophone opposition parties from holding rallies and the security forces often broke up those that did take place.
A well-publicised example occurred on Wednesday 3 November 1993 – the day set aside by the government to celebrate Liberty Week or 11 years of Biya’s presidency – and involved a confrontation between a convoy led by John Fru Ndi of the SDF and the police in Yaoundé. CRTV mentioned the incident only on the Friday, after foreign broadcasters had made much of the event. The story went thus. The Mfoundi prefect had issued an order banning all political demonstrations and forbidding John Fru Ndi’s scheduled news conference. The latter then organised a convoy from Tsinga towards his party secretariat behind the former Imperial Hotel (now the Prestige Hotel). The police attacked them with water canons. Fru Ndi was claimed to be injured and his car damaged. He escaped and took refuge in the residence of the Dutch
68 For an extensive report on the government’s violation of human rights in the
ambassador in Mvolye, and gave an ultimatum for the release of the thirty SDF militants arrested. The police were rumoured to have been intending to kill him. The notorious head of Cameroon’s internal security, Jean Fochive,69 gave a press conference claiming that all those arrested had been released but for a certain Shey Philip who had been found with ammunition and two walkie- talkies. But even he was eventually released. He then proceeded to accuse Fru Ndi of seeking cheap publicity and of always deliberately disrespecting the law of the land. He offered to give Fru Ndi a police escort to Bamenda if the latter was afraid, as he claimed, that his life was in danger.
According to Augustine Tegomoh (interviewed by Nyamnjoh shortly after the incident) who participated in the incident and was quite close to the chairman, no stones were thrown by the crowd, contrary to claims by the official media. The chairman gave a scheduled press conference in Tsinga. On his arrival, he saw the place crowded with policemen who were molesting and arresting those who had come to attend. When they saw the chairman, the crowd started chanting ‘papa ley, Yaya you’ (Papa welcome! We are pleased to see you again). Having been told that he was not allowed to hold his press conference, the chairman decided to go to his party’s (SDF) provincial head office situated behind the Imperial Hotel. The crowd that followed him continued to swell as he drove along. It was a real test of his popularity, Augustine claimed. Everyone who saw him followed him, shouting ‘you are the man we want’. Around the prime minister’s office the police, backed by lots of four- and five-star commissioners, blocked the way. The chairman told the crowd to be calm and no one threw any stones at the police. Diplomatic representatives, Vincent T’sas of Reuters and others who were there can attest to this. The police focused their water canon on the chairman’s Pajero car. The chairman stayed calm but was wounded on his arm and hip by broken glass.
Minister of Communication and Government Spokesman Augustin Kontchou made it sound as if the Dutch ambassador was Fru Ndi’s friend because Fru Ndi had taken refuge in the Dutch embassy but the latter had simply gone to pay him a visit. ‘Monsieur Fru Ndi est allé rendre visite à son ami diplomate’, and stayed there for as long as he wanted, and when he was satisfied, they shook hands and he departed. Kontchou apparently contradicted the CRTV announcement that Fru Ndi had left the Dutch embassy following the diplomatic intervention of the French ambassador. No such intervention actually occurred as there was no need for it. People are allowed to have friends among diplomats. Why the fuss?
69 For a concise description of his internal security career, see Takougang & Krieger
The Anglophone movements were also frequent victims of government repression. In 1993, the government did not allow the convenors to hold AAC I in public buildings in Buea such as at the University of Buea, which would have been the most appropriate location for the occasion. The government refusal did not have the desired effect of cancelling the AAC I, since the Catholic authorities eventually gave their agreement to the use of a hall in the Mount Mary Clinic in Buea.70 In 1994, the government attempted to obstruct the organisation of AAC II in Bamenda by claiming that ‘Anglophones had come together in Bamenda to declare secession’ as an excuse for repression.71 On that occasion, Chairman Sam Ekontang Elad had to be smuggled out of the Mondial Hotel disguised as a steward, the hotel having been surrounded by government troops.72 Demonstrations and strikes organised by the various Anglophone associations and pressure groups were quelled by government troops. For example, ‘Independence Day’ celebrations on 1 October 1993 were violently disrupted by the security forces, the government again suspecting that on that day secession and independence would be declared. Leaders of Anglophone movements were harassed by the security forces, threatened with arrest, and subjected to travel restrictions, forcing some to go into exile.73 Repression increased with mounting threats of the proclamation of an independent Southern Cameroons state after 1995. SCNC rallies and demon- strations were then officially banned in Anglophone provinces.74 Repression became even more severe in the aftermath of the SCYL attack on military and civil establishments in the North West Province in March 1997 and the actual proclamation of Southern Cameroons’ independence by Justice Ebong on 30 December 1999 (see Chapter 4). Press censorship by the administrative authorities, the seizure of newspapers, intimidation and imprisonment of Anglophone journalists have all continued unabated.
The government also intensified its crackdown on any event organised by scholars and activists to foster a feeling of community or to celebrate Anglo-
70 See ‘The Untold Story of the All Anglophone Conference’, in Cameroon Life, Vol.
2, No. 8, May 1993, pp. 11-12.
71 See Cameroon Post, 20-27 April 1994, pp. 2-3; The Herald, 28 April-1 May 1994,
pp. 1-2 and Cameroon Post, 29 June-6 July 1994, pp. 6-7.
72 See Cameroon Post, 6-12 May 1994 and 12-19 May 1994.
73 See Cameroon Post, 10-17 July 1995, pp. 1 and 3 for an example in Governor Oben
Peter Ashu’s declaration that ‘SCNC is ... an illegal pressure group which wants to turn Buea into a battle ground’ and that ‘we must chase the leaders of that group out of this province’. See also Cameroon Post, 25 June-1 July 1996, pp. 1, 7 and 11, for the article ‘Arrest of SCNC Leaders Imminent’ and for SCNC Chairman Henry Fossung’s interview on this and other issues.
74 See Cameroon Post, 24-31 July 1995, pp. 1 and 3 and The Herald, 31 July-2
phone achievements and identity. A scheduled launching of Nyamnjoh’s book
The Cameroon GCE Crisis: A Test of Anglophone Solidarity (1996a) was banned at the last minute, and the author, Asong Wara (organiser) and Christian Cardinal Tumi (chief launcher) threatened with 15 days renewable detention should they proceed despite the ban. Subsequent bans were brought to bear on the launching of a booklet by lawyer and activist Charles Taku entitled For Dame Lynda Chalker and Other Anglophone Cameroonian Notes
(1996), and of Ambassador Nsahlai’s book Up to the Mountain Top: Beyond Party Politics (1996). At the University of Buea, any academic or student even remotely sympathetic with or politically involved in the Anglophone cause has been victimised in one way or another by a vice-chancellor and collaborators who have been bought into the regime’s programme of trivialisation and demonisation of Anglophoneness in Cameroon. The University of Buea, although created as an Anglo-Saxon university to satisfy the Anglophones as a whole, has increasingly been identified first as a CPDM South West university, and then as a CPDM Bakweri university. The vice-chancellor (who is a member of the political bureau of the CDPM) and the registrar of the university are active local CPDM militants. They are both Bakweri and come from the same village in Buea. The Fako Elite Development Organisation (FEDO) frequently influences decision-making at the university, and despite complaints by other staff that neither this nor the appointment of top management from the same village and ethnic group is good for the institution, the state has allowed the situation to prevail. Dr Dorothy Njeuma, the vice-chancellor, Registrar Herbert Endeley and other Bakweri members of staff as Bakweri ‘sons and daughters’ treat the university as ‘our university’.
Conclusion
In this chapter it has been shown that the Biya government has made a deter- mined effort to deconstruct Anglophone identity and to contain the threat of Anglophone organisations. It has employed several strategies that have dealt a heavy blow to the initially powerful Anglophone opposition parties and movements. These strategies have included the trivialisation and demonisation of the Anglophone problem, the establishment of control over the state media, the punishing of any journalist and/or public intellectual who has dared to propagate Anglophone identity and solidarity, and encouragement of the ethnic-regional print media, as well as outright repression.
The most important strategy, however, has been divide and rule, capitalising on the existing contradictions between the South West and North West. Seeing themselves as having suffered greater disadvantage than North Westerners in
the distribution of state power, the South West elite were inclined to see more political capital in the promotion of regional identity and organisation than in working to consolidate an Anglophone identity and organisation. The govern- ment, therefore, found it increasingly lucrative and politically expedient to tempt the South West elite away from Anglophone solidarity with strategic appointments and the idea that their real enemy was the North West elite and not the Francophone-dominated state.
Government divide-and-rule tactics culminated in the 1996 constitution. This constitution stretched the conventional notion of autochthonous minorities to such ambiguous proportions that historical minorities like the Anglophones had themselves denied the status of minority, while ethnic-regional minority groups like the South West ethnic groups and the SAWA (Douala), which appeared to distance themselves from the opposition, have met with govern- ment support. The constitution fuelled existing tensions between South Westerners and North Westerners in the Anglophone territory. The pro-CPDM South West elite increasingly tended to accuse the large-scale northwestern settler population of domination and exploitation, land grabbing and ingratitude to the welcoming indigenes. They have not hesitated to use the settler presence to explain all political disturbances in the South West Province, even going as far as insinuating that the poor performance by the ruling CPDM and secessionist tendencies among Anglophones could be attributed wholly to the settler opposition and dissidents. The litmus test for ‘South-Westness’, it would appear, has become membership and militancy in the CPDM.
The constitution has equally stimulated an alliance between the ethnically- related Anglophone and Francophone coastal elite (Grand SAWA Movement) on the basis of common feelings of domination and exploitation by Anglo- phone and Francophone Grassfielders (Grand West). The Grand SAWA Movement is opposed to wider Anglophone ambitions, including separation from Francophone Cameroon or the creation of a two-state federation. Like most Francophones, the pro-CPDM South West elite continues to strive for a ten-state option, which they regard as a safe guarantee against North West domination. The Grand SAWA Movement demonstrates strong allegiance to the regime in power for the latter’s protection and strategic appointments in government.
It is with this divide in the Anglophone identity that the Biya government has made considerable progress in undermining support both for the North West-based SDF and the Anglophone movements’ pursuit of autonomy in the form of either a two-state federation or an independent Southern Cameroons state. We have, however, provided evidence that the regime has failed to fully deconstruct the Anglophone identity, even among elites who support the CPDM and the government. A growing number of CPDM leaders appear to
identify with Fuh Stanley, the president of the Bafut section of the CPDM in the North West when he openly confessed in February 2000: ‘I am CPDM in blood and bones, but we must admit that Anglophones have a problem’.75 The proclamation of Southern Cameroons’ independence by Justice Ebong on 30 December 1999 appears to have given added impetus to the Anglophone struggle.