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Drawing from Foncha’s withdrawal statement from1994 Constitutional Consultative Committee: Imprisone

2019-09-24

No: 448

Drawing from Foncha’s withdrawal statement from1994 Constitutional Consultative Committee: Imprisoned Tassang Wilfred makes case for non-cohabitation with Francophones!

????We have had time to , during the present revolution, acquaint ourselves with our story and history. Tons of literature have been written, published and consumed. From Prison Principale Kondengui, Yaounde, I have devoured my own fair share of these publications. I don't know how you feel when the truth of our story is told you; I don't know how you react in the face of the stark reality of our "less than slave status" in this hood; for me, it is an ever increasing frustration and a seething feeling of frustration.

????Permit me mention a special word of thanks to Ni Ben (Muna), for the biography of his father, a very impressive work which he brought to us in prison so that we may come to terms with some hitherto unpublished truths. However, I wonder why, after not only living these truths, and after having painstakingly committed them into volumes, any Southern Cameroonian would still think and or believe that continuous cohabitation is possible between these two entities. Is it fear, and if it is, of what exactly? Certainly, no one can be afraid to cast off their chains of enslavement, except of course that they are under some demonic stronghold. (Excuse the strong words; they come with anger).

????If they be that have forgotten so soon what the immediate causes of this revolution are, a little probing may help:

????Sometimes in the Spring of 2016, in my capacity as the NESG of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, I paid a couple of revered gentlemen visits. First, I called on Barrister Harmony Bobga Mbuton, President of NOWELA, in his Old Town Bamenda Chambers, and from his office, I called on Barrister Henry Kemende, representative of the Bar president, Batonnier, if you will, in the North West. At the time of my visits, Common Law lawyers had been spoiling for a showdown with the Yaounde junta for two years. The lawyers were doing right, but I had reason to both rebuke the corps and also sound a strong note of caution. To both gentlemen, I expressed the frustrations of our community that lawyers whose duty it is to protect the law and get Justice for the people had stood by and watched teachers try to deliver in tethers as it were, whereas, education, a fundamental human right, should be everyone's concern, and a concern in particular to them who double both as parents and guarantors of rights. As a note of caution, I let these gentlemen of the second "noble profession" know that as a corps, they were the "last hope" of our community. Anyone can ignore teachers and get away with it. That however should not happen when lawyers come into the fray. On this note I warned and I will try to quote myself, unfortunately:

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“It were better for lawyers not to even start, if they will not take it to an end, because if you fail, they will be no more hope for our people."

????My fear was genuine and I was actually trembling inside as I spoke to these gentlemen that Bamenda holds dear. Well, yes, dear, because I still do.

I should here declare that the two tendered their apologies for ignoring the problems of education which should long have been their concern and insisted the corps was committed to deliver and would not chicken out or allow themselves to be bought over or intimidated.

????You all are witnesses to the fact that what happened to Common Law advocates greatly provoked our community. What happened on our streets when the education strike started was not only the expression of a people's long harboured quest for freedom; it was, and I insist, it was also a protest at the humiliation of our culture through the public desecration of the Common Law, our cherished system of justice. How could we have hope in a system that beats up lawyers in streets, drags them in mud, and calls us two cubes of sugar? Concerning education which is my corps, and the fountain of all others, the foundation of any nation; how can anyone continue to beg to belong to a system that does not even care to use euphemism when referring to us as "inconsequentials"? What hope is there for us when we can not even determine the kind of education that our kids should receive? What hope is there for us when our kids can no longer become teachers in the system that brought them up? Or have things changed? Is it a lie that those francophones against whom we complained are still in our universities and that their numbers are instead increasing? Is it a lie that "bilingual science and technical" teachers were recruited? Did you not like me see that list and determine that these were all francophones? Have they not rather increased the number of genocide machines in our system of education? Did they bother to tell you the college in which these "bilingual" francophone teachers were trained?

????To you the "intellectuals", you who try so desperately to rationalize this evil from Yaounde; what reason do you have to want to continually keep us in bondage? Is it that you have kept away for your progenies enough loot to last them ten generations, or you truly, after Knowing the truth, just don't give a damn what happens to our generations to come?

????Or is it your vast investments in La Republique that have rendered you so insensitive??????????

Before I let you read Pa Foncha's Withdrawal Declaration, which declaration you will henceforth read with fresh lenses, permit me also sound this note of warning that I made to the two gentlemen hereabove mentioned, the which I also sounded to the General Assembly of North West History teachers in GBHS Batibo in September 2016 and which warning note you will now henceforth carry on your consciences as you go about dissembling: We of this generation, with all our huge baggage of knowledge and wherewithal; we who have judged Foncha and his brothers with all unfairness have no reason not to do better. Shall we expect the history written after us to judge us fairly? As for me, I am a happy and an unrepentant prisoner of conscience because I have decided that the children of Ambazonia shall not deride me as we have done Foncha, wrongly or rightly. (Even if as some hold, they erred, we have a duty as the children of our fathers, to make their once "disreputable names" reputable. The words "correction and eraser" exist because mistakes and errors get made. Let use them.)

????After Foumban 1961, after the 1994 Constitutional Consultative Committee, shall we bungle again?

(Did Pharaoh speak? Did he say his dialogue will take place in the framework of the constitution of La Republique? Did he say his dialogue is meant to strengthen national unity, integration and bilingualism? Did he double down on his war option? Was an attempt even made to entice you with even the federation that we have so roundly rejected? Did he say decentralization? And about "integration", do you integrate what already belongs? No. Only foreign, strange bodies or strangers get integrated. Ignore this, for as you can see, it is parenthesis)

????And now, I present to you this brief resignation declaration and demand that you allow this to speak to your conscience.

????1994 Withdrawal Declaration????

There is no one here in this hall today who can claim not to know how much I struggled on the eve of independence of our country in favour of the reunification of our fatherland. For more than forty years, our country was divided into three different parts and governed simultaneously by two different European powers. Everyone knows the fundamental character and differences that exist between the British and French systems of government and of the conduct of public affairs in general. Patriots in both British and French Cameroons saw the necessity for unification of our country. However, they could not deny the fact that forty years of our separate experiences had left an impact which we could not neglect. It was recognized on both sides that for unification to be meaningful and a source of satisfaction to us all, it had to proceed on the basis of a federal union in which the specific character of each component of the union would be safeguarded and protected....

????Mr. Ahidjo publicly stated to the people of southern Cameroons during successive visits to that territory in 1960 and 1961 that unification would not mean annexation, that its modalities would be negotiated between representatives of Southern Cameroons and those of La Republique du Cameroun and that to render unification viable and useful; a flexible and federal form of the state which he qualified as unique and diverse, was envisaged...

????????????????????I can state here and now that the People of southern Cameroons would never have voted in favour of unification if it had not been for the assurances given that the resulting union would take the form of a federation...????????????????????

????The hounourable S. T. Muna and I have often been accused of having allowed this situation [i.e. 'annexation of Southern Cameroons'] to come about. History will reveal that these accusations are largely unjustified. They fail to acknowledge the several endeavours that we made at various stages of the evolution of post-unification Cameroon to dissuade those who monopolized and held the full reins of political, financial, judicial, military and police powers in our country from acting autocratically in breach of promises that they had given us and our people, and which had served as the foundation of the union of our two territories.

????At this point in time, I do not feel the necessity--nor, I suppose, does the Honourable S. T. Muna-- to defend myself against these accusations, unjust though they are. What is important is that the Good Lord who, in his infinite wisdom determines the affairs of each man and of each people, has preserved me long enough to have the opportunity of pleading before the Cameroon Nation for the correction of the wrongs which have been done, over the past three decades and more, against an unsuspecting and trusting people that I, acting in good faith and as a Cameroonian patriot, led into what I was assured would be a union of equal partners, but which has since turned out to be an arrangement for the annexation, subjugation and domination of one of the partners by the other...

????I responded to the invitation of the President of the Republic to attend this Committee in the confident expectation that the deliberations of the Committee would offer us the opportunity to correct the wrongs which I have referred to above. For nearly two years, the people of Southern Cameroons whom I led into the union with La Republique du Cameroun have, through the All Anglophone Conference- AAC (now the Southern Cameroons People's Conference-SCPC) carefully studied, responsibly formulated, and respectfully submitted to government, substantial constitutional proposals. These proposals are aimed at ensuring a better governance of the entire united Cameroon, while also putting an end to the annexation, subjugation and domination of one of our two territories by the other, thus restoring the spirit and intent of the union of 1961...

????In any event, in the proposals that have been submitted before us, I do not see any provisions at all which go in the direction of making even a token attempt to respond to the grievances of the Southern Cameroonian People...

Mr. chairman,

????In the final analysis, the people of Southern Cameroons never participated in the elaboration and adoption of the supposed federal constitution of 1961 which was adopted by the National Assembly of La Republique du Cameroun on September 1, 1961, that is to say, one month before the birth of the federal Republic of Cameroon. These same people never participated in drawing up the unitary constitution of 1972 which was imposed upon them in a nationwide referendum.

????Bearing this in mind, I had hoped that the present constitutional reform process would provide the people of Southern Cameroons the opportunity, for the first time since independence of our respective territories and the reunification of our fatherland, to contribute effectively to the elaboration and adoption of a truly Cameroonian constitution which responds to their aspirations as well...

????I feel distressed that the constitutional proposals put before this committee do not offer the opportunity for us, as a nation, to address our minds to, and resolve, the genuine and legitimate grievances of the Southern Cameroonian people in particular and the Cameroonian people in general.

????I feel all the more distressed that this should be happening under the chairmanship of a son of Southern Cameroons whom, I believe, is as sensitive as any one of us to the injustices which his People and their Territory have suffered in more than three decades. Today, he has been designated to preside over the completion of the process of annexation of that People and that Territory.

????For this, He shall tomorrow stand accused by his People, as I stand accused today. However, whereas in 1961 the bitter experiences of Southern Cameroons lay in the future that we could not predict, in 1994 we have behind us thirty-three years worth of these experiences, with the prospect of more to come unless something is done now. In the light of these experiences, we have no reason in 1994 to repeat the mistakes of 1961.

Mr. Prime Minister,

????I would like, through you to express my gratitude to the President of the Republic for having invited me to this Committee. I assure him of my readiness at all times to collaborate with him and with your government to provide a suitable constitution for our dear, complex and diversified country which I have contributed however modestly, to build.

????In the light of this foregoing, and pending the creation by government of a more appropriate forum for a broad-based debate on the constitution, I have no other option now than to withdraw at this point from the deliberations of the present consultative Committee.

Thank you for your kind attention.

????????????Hon. Dr. John Ngu Foncha

Architect of the Unification of Cameroon????????????

Ex Vice President of the Federal Republic of Cameroon

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Drawing from Foncha’s withdrawal statement from1994 Constitutional Consultative Committee: Imprisone