Since 2016, Cameroon has been in the midst of what has become known as “the Anglophone crisis.” Posts have thus far been published by Father Lado, (available here), and CIHA Blog Co-Editor and literary scholar Dr. Cilas Kemedjio earlier this week (available here and here). Today’s final post by Dr. Kemedjio reflects on his experience of the war in Cameroon and calls for scholars and citizens alike to undertake the patient and arduous task of producing a language to better account for the situation at hand, avoiding the temptation to depend on vocabularies learned during the colonial school. Kemedjio argues that we must unlearn these vocabularies if we are to move closer to an indigenous understanding of African realities and we must listen to the frustrations, screams, tears, of African peoples from Kumba, Buea, Bamenda, Wum, Mamfé, Kumbo, Bali, Widikum.
The Anglophone Question in the Media and the Popular Imagination
By: Cilas Kemedjio, University of Rochester
War is war, and it is ugly. There’s no way to sugarcoat war. I came back from Cameroon quite distressed. War happened to me in the form of military trucks. War is happening to my fellow human beings in the form of death, injury, displacement, burned churches or schools. I cannot imagine what the fate of my fellow human beings is like in the South West and North West. I simply cannot because I do not know what they are going through. I call for this war to end sooner than later. I do know that their frustrations are legitimate. In my last post, when I mentioned the military trucks I encountered in Bafoussam, I should have added that it took almost 45 minutes to travel a half mile. The road needs maintenance. This road is the only gateway out of Bafoussam to the West. Cars coming from Yaoundé to Dschang, Mbouda, Bamenda all go through this road. The pain and frustration drivers experience on this road is symptomatic of the demise that befalls all Cameroonians. Without banalizing the claims made by citizens of the North and South West, I believe that these frustrations are one of the common denominators that bridge the gaps that divide Cameroonians.
Desperation and frustration about governance are discussed on radio, the press, television, and dinner tables. Yet, no one knows what to do about the aging dear leader. People pray that nature takes its course. I kept telling everyone who would listen—not sure I got a single one of my friends to listen—that waiting for death as a solution is the ultimate practice of irresponsibility. Whenever the discussion got too animated, I was reminded that I was a deserter who could not understand the country. I’ve heard that line too many times to even care about. My feelings were not hurt because to some extent they are right; I do not live in Cameroon. And this latest trip was my first in more than six years.
The war in Cameroon is everywhere. It is in many conversations. Many so-called Francophones back the war because they hope that it may help get rid of the current dear leader, who has been occupying the presidency for 36 years. He has just announced his candidacy for a new seven-year term, and he will win because he cannot lose. Many people I spoke to are of the opinion that this war is a “regime-made disaster.” The President made the first statement about the conflict when members of the security forces were killed, almost two years into the crisis. He has since made a couple of comments about the crisis, but he has yet to dedicate a speech or even a press release to this crisis. The dear leader has resorted to his traditional political bricolage. He set up a National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism led by a former Prime Minister from the Anglophone South West region. He appointed many cabinet ministers from the Anglophone region, but as the saying goes, it was a day late and a dollar short. When Paul Biya became President, he took the oath of office in English. He made a speech in English in Buea. That was thirty-five years ago. He has since gone missing. He is a ghost president, making only appearances when absolutely needed. A recent study has concluded that over the last 35 years, the President spent more than five years in private visits abroad, mostly in Switzerland, one of the most expensive countries on planet Earth. I understand why so many Cameroonians see the current crisis as the outcome of the disastrous governance of the Biya administration.
If Ghana would give me a passport, I would gladly move there. I met a beautiful old lady at the Makola market some years ago. She looks like my paternal aunt. I told the driver who was with me to convey this message to her. She said something very simple and powerful: “God Bless you.” It reminded me of an encounter I had centuries ago near a creek when I was with my mother. An old lady asked me to fetch water for her. I was tired, but I knew how my mother would have unleashed some bombastic anger should I have failed to behave according to her ethical standards. I gave the lady her water and she said to me: “Thank you! Thank you! You will pass the brevet (the national exam at the end of middle school) without a problem.” I did, and when I told my friends years later in college, they laughed and claimed that my academic journey was based on mystical grounds. This lady at the Makola market reminded me, with her simple words, that no good deed ever goes unrewarded. I’m not sure there’s space for this simple belief in Cameroon, the land of ultra-cynicism. A desperate citizenry cannot solve a problem. When poor governance and lack of a programmatic vision combine, we get what we deserve: disaster. This war is a regime-made disaster. It started. It is wreaking havoc on the lives of ordinary citizens. No one knows when it will end. The mediocre gerontocracy taking this country hostage has no idea where the country should be heading.
Redeeming Our Shared Humanity
I argue that the use of theoretical, descriptive, and analytical vocabularies of the Europhone linguistic plantation constitute a convenient excuse that prevent so-called Francophones and so-called Anglophones to undertake the patient and arduous task of producing a language that could account for the situation at hand. I may come to read the saturation of our collective imagination by the ghosts of the European linguistic plantation as symptomatic of an intellectual laziness. By intellectual laziness, I designate a practice of intellectual, analytical, and conceptual irresponsibility. The temptation of theory, the temptation to depend on vocabularies learned during the colonial school is another temptation of the West.
Case in point is the import of another western import: radicalization. I’ve heard the term “radicalization” thrown around a lot about the consequences of the militarization of the North and South West regions. I have serious reservations about this term. No one bothers to explain what it means in this context. Do we have to take it for granted or are we supposed to know what it means? This term comes straight from the so-called war against terrorism, and more precisely the transformation of young Muslims into extremists. I belong to the University. In this space, people should take the time to explain, analyze, and document what they are claiming, stating, or contradicting. In this case, “radicalization” is simply a claim, or worse, a slogan short cut that prevents the arduous work of critical analysis.
We must unlearn these vocabularies if we are to move closer to an indigenous understanding of African realities. We must take the risk of listening carefully to our realities. We must take the risk of listening to the frustrations, screams, tears, of African peoples from Kumba, Buea, Bamenda, Wum, Mamfé, Kumbo, Bali, Widikum. Listening to our realities presupposes that we must be ready to bypass and even discard, if necessary, the Europhone linguistic masks that may be covering the root causes of this painful experience. I have learned much about this crisis by talking to friends who either live in the North West or South West, or who have relatives in the area. The knowledge they have provided is very human. And since we claim to be human, knowledge should be human. I’m convinced now more than ever that the urgency to continually formulate these new vocabularies constitutes one of the reasons to repudiate colonial-made identities.
In the current context experienced by the African peoples of Cameroon, being Francophone amounts to being part of the “privileged segment of the population” that can “view the disaster as spectator.” I am borrowing this expression from Ariella Azoulay’s Civil Imagination. A Political Ontology of Photography (2012). I find the expression “regime-made disaster” that Azoulay uses to be quite relevant to our discussion. I would simply add that the regime-made disaster in Cameroon proceeds from a chronic deficit of democratic practices, to borrow from Achille Mbembe. Mbembe subsequently suggests that only a radical democratization of the Cameroon political landscape can bring about a satisfactory resolution to the crisis. I would further suggest that the “widespread attributes of violence as we commonly understand it” have been and are becoming one of the most distressing manifestations of this malaise. You may understand that, being a francophone in this contemporary moment may carry too heavy a load that I am not ready to endure.
A francophone, in the yet to be decolonized political and cultural imagination around which the current problem of the African peoples of Cameroon is unfortunately caught, is also a génocidaire, if we are to believe the daily pronouncements made in social media platforms. Francophones have been reduced to oppressors. I wonder how my paternal aunt, who has never spoken a word of French, could be construed as a francophone oppressor. In this regard, the current crisis, at least at the rhetorical level, represents a failure of congealed and stereotypical categories. The repetition of La République, which has come to signify the ultimate evil, has led to a creeping dehumanization. Some media pundits have called secessionists “rats”. They further called for the “deratisation/erasure of rats” from the country. They did not even receive a symbolic suspension from their network. Instead, the owner of the said network contributed about US 20,000 to the government sponsored humanitarian plan. La République, it is my understanding, derives from the change from the United Republic of Cameroon (an acknowledgment of the two components of the State) to the Republic of Cameroon or La République du Cameroun. This move proceeds from a vote in the National legislature, a departure from the direct consultation of the citizenry that was used to usher in the Federal State and the subsequent United Republic. Unfortunately; this rhetorical posturing has been yielding death. We have entered the tragic moment of what Ebousi Boulaga would call our common anthropological mutilation. It is about time to redeem, to borrow this expression from my friend Anthonia Kalu, our shared humanity.