Citizenship and belonging: Who takes the prodigal child? (The Anglo-Bami and The 11th Province in a divided Cameroon: In search of a southern cameroons citizenship)

Citizenship and belonging: Who takes the prodigal child? (The Anglo-Bami and The 11^th Province in a divided Cameroon in search of a southern Cameroons citizenship)

As the debate rages on about the independence of the southern Cameroons, one group of people are left puzzled by what becomes of them. These are people in quest of an identity and a sense of belonging in a political debate that continues to polarize communities as well as divide families. For the most part, the Anglo-Bami have been struggled to assert allegiance in a political construct that thrives on promoting hate, division and pitting communities against each other.  Among the ruling francophone junta (the government ministers and CPDM big wigs) especially those from the “Pays Organisateur”, the Anglophones have always been “les enemis dans la maison”.  Where they have been deemed partners, their role has been to serve and promote the government’s agenda in bringing the Anglophone to toe the line of political expediency.

Today the question is being asked what happens to the Anglo-Bami and the 11^th Province when Southern Cameroons become independent. A lot of the debate in this quest for identity and belonging has included defining the terms Anglophone and francophone, identifying and defining who a southern Cameroonian is and how does someone become a citizen of an independent southern Cameroons. This is not a thesis on citizenship, neither is it a glossary on contextualising terms to suit their applicability within the Cameroon and southern Cameroons polities. Rather it is a personal reflection based on the realities of that I face and will face in an independent Southern Cameroons given my personal and family situation.
I am Anglo-Bami. My maternal grandmother hailed from Baminjindam and got married to a man from Akum.  I don’t know much about maternal grandfather and where he came from but I won’t be surprised if he had a Bami lineage. My paternal grandmother hailed from Babajou and got married to a man from Akum, born to a Bami father and a princess to the Akum Palace. My paternal grandfather, the son of a Bami man and the princess of Akum was to be given authority by the Babadjou chief to proclaim himself chief of Santa after the British and the French divided the Babadjou chiefdom at Matezem (present day tollgate in Santa) to create an international boundary that separated British southern Cameroons from French Cameroons. So if you know the Bomas you’d certainly know that by blood and by marriage we cannot distinguish ourselves from the Bamis. All my sisters but one is married to Bamis- Bafang, Bandekop, Babadjou, Bagante etc etc. My nieces and nephews are pure breed francophone: born, breed and educated francophone.
There is no universal definition of citizenship. However, in a much more liberal sense citizenship is conveys a sense of or a feeling of or a meaning of belonging and being included in the nation-state. It is the membership of nation state and this membership is dependent on a set of rights and duties forming a relational contract between the individual, peers and social institutions. There has been an erosion of people’s rights and the negation of its duties and responsibilities to the people by the state. Paradoxically the state has expected and has sought to command that citizens uphold their responsibilities to and perform their duties under the social institutions. This has contributed to the loss of the meaning of belonging, of that sense of identity, of acceptance within the Cameroon nation state.

As the southern Cameroons seeks to assert itself as a nation state there seems to be emerging an irony of fact or a paradox of history. The some Anglo-Bamis and people of the 11^th province are feeling alienated and are losing their sense of and the meaning of belonging all over again.

Within every nation state or country citizenship is attained through clearly defined pathways. Most often the primary route to citizenship is by birth. For some countires if you’re born in country or what constitutes that country’s territory (a plane, a ship in international waters etc) you automatically acquire that citizenship (principle of jus soli). Others grant citizenship by right of blood (principle of jus sanguinis), where automatically qualifies to take the citizenship of their parents irrespective of where they are born. Some countries also grant citizenship through meeting clearly defined qualifying residency requirements.

To be able to ease the worries, galvanize the movement, to be able to flesh the bones of the visionary state it is important that we start articulating what citizenship will look like in an independent southern Cameroons. For a new nation state, a country becoming independent and being able to exercise its sovereignty including deciding who its citizens are it will make a lot of sense for an independent southern Cameroons to apply jus soli and jus sanguinis in its elaboration of citizenship statutes/law and applying this retrospectively to cover those who can demonstrate birth rights or blood ties to qualifying parents at the time of independence. Therefore if you were born in the southern Cameroons or if your parents were born in the southern Cameroons, or qualify for citizenship by virtue of blood rights (jus sanguinis) you automatically qualify for citizenship at the time of independence.

If you’re unable to attain citizenship through jus soli and jus sanguinis then residency requirement should be applicable to determine your suitability for citizenship. This principle too should be applied retrospectively, meaning that if at the time of independence you can demonstrate that you have lived in the southern Cameroons for the required duration then you should be able to attain citizenship.

There should also be a transitional period for citizenship acquisition by affiliation. For example for people who do not meet jus soli, jus sanguinis or the residency requirement they may apply for and be granted citizenship if they have been married to someone (for a length of time equal to or surpassing the amount of time required to meet the residency requirement and) who qualifies for and takes up citizenship or whose children qualify for and take up citizenship.

Finally, considering that there is over half a century of shared history between the southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroon it might be reasonable to set a transitional period for citizenship acquisition by application. What this means is that for people who do not qualify for citizenship by another means but will like to become citizens of the southern Cameroons, they may apply to commission for citizenship affairs, based clearly defined criteria for citizenship. They must demonstrate that they believe and uphold the ideals and values of the southern Cameroons state and where possible be willing to demonstrate that they are of upright moral standing. While the state may seek to promote inclusion it must also strive to protect its citizens.  

The main idea is to portray that the southern Cameroons state will not function on exclusion. Rather its principles should be guided by a desire to not repeat the ills of history experienced under the baton of French Cameroons, to fight marginalisation in all its forms while at the same time delivering social justice, development and highest services for its citizens.

 I must state that I believe in the historical rightness of the southern Cameroons struggle for independence. I believe in its legality. I believe it is not only justified but morally imperative and incumbent on us, as a people, as Cameroonians and as Southern Cameroonians, to assess within the prevailing context and for the sake of the social and economic development of the peoples of the two Cameroons, what will be in the greater good for the greater number of people. Mind you not everyone will benefit from a separation. Far from it! However, it is time to rise above self-interest and self-preservation to a point of self-sacrifice; it is time to inconvenient us to convenient future generations.

As an Anglo-Bami by birth and having children of my own caught up in the Anglo-Bami dilemma I don’t struggle with asserting myself as a Southern Cameroonian because I was born and breed a Southern Cameroonian. For you my fellow Anglo-Bamis and the people of the 11^th Province if you believe you’re a Southern Cameroonian don’t question your right to citizenship; claim it, assert it and exercise it. Don’t doubt where you belong because if you’re unable to define yourself others will define you. In 1961 Southern Cameroonians walked into already defined structures and institutions skewed to systematically disadvantage and exclude them. A new Southern Cameroons will be starting on a clean slate. It is therefore important that as an assertive citizen you make your voice heard in shaping the institutions of state designed to advantage the many and not the few.

 

Anglophone Teachers Are Unpatriotic: An Open Letter to Professor Hubert Mono Djana

Dear professor Hubert Mono Djana

Permit me to call you Hubert in this less formal communication. I know that in our Bantu culture I should call you papa Hubert, or grandpa or at least big brother. Age in our community, they say brings wisdom and is usually accompanied by the greying of hair. I have a few grey hairs myself but will not venture to think that we’re age mates though I may take the liberty to pretend to be wiser yet less academically endowed.

We live in an age where adults now behave like children and children are forced to take responsibility for prerogatives hitherto considered the purview of grown ups: teaching the truth for example or teaching children to be honest; to have values; to have integrity. I will not pretend to teach you truth, or integrity or how to be honest. Besides, what can an ordinary Anglophone teach a high and mighty professor?

 

Hubert, I understand you have written an article in Mutations news paper as reported by the Cameroon Journal, in which you describe Anglophone teachers as unpatriotic. It is also my understanding that these teachers oppose the machinations of your colleague and co-conspirator to annihilate Anglophone culture and abolish Anglo-Saxon higher education in Cameroon. And so you choose to question their patriotism.

Dear Hubert, on this question of patriotism, I understand from the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the trusted dictionary for us Anglophones that patriotism is having or experiencing devotion and vigorous support for one’s country. Some others have said patriotism is the love for one’s country and Hubert, you will agree with me that when you love someone, when you have a strong devotion to someone you will do everything in your power to protect them, to keep them away from harms way, to shield them from apprentice witches and wizards controlled like puppets by a master hidden in the shadows of a palace in Etoudi or Hotel Continental in Switzerland.

Hubert, you claimed that when Mr Biya, I will not call him president because he lost his legitimacy and therefore the right to be president when he stole the elections in 1992 and has rigged every election ever since to maintain himself in power; dropped the “United” from the name of the country to the republic of Cameroon, it was in a bid to foster national integration. I understand you probably suffer from the same amnesia or intellectual negligence that has contributed time again to see your friend appoint deceased persons to government and public offices. That decision had nothing to do with national integration. It was a continuation of the same scheme to systematically and institutional erode national integration and create a francophone hegemony in the Cameroons. It started with a violation of article 42 of the federal constitution to hold an illegal referendum in 1972 that changed the name of the country from a federal republic to a united republic.

Hubert, if you are honest to your children; if you want your children to know the true history of their country you will teach them that there are two countries in Cameroon: the Anglophone country and the francophone country. You will tell them that on 1^st January 1960, francophone Cameroon was known as the Republic of Cameroon. You will also tell them that on 1^st January 1960, Anglophone Cameroon was not part of the republic of Cameroon. You will teach your children that Anglophone Cameroon used to be a separate country called the Southern Cameroons. Hubert, if you are honest to your children you will teach them that when Anglophone Cameroon chose to join francophone Cameroon the two were to be known as the federal republic of Cameroon. Hubert, teach your children the true history of their country that they may avoid the same mistakes your peers have made.Tell them that when Mr Biya decided to revert to the name of the republic of Cameroon without asking the people of the Anglophone country what they wanted he was withdrawing the francophone country from the union; he was violating a sacred trust that brought the two countries together. If he wasn’t withdrawing the francophone country from the union then he was absorbing the Anglophone country into the francophone country. That is called invasion, annexation or colonisation. That is the truth. Teach your children the truth that they may have integrity and honesty. Alas! Nemo dat quod non habet...  

An Anglophone professor, one more deserving of the title who wrote the English version of the national anthem, whose contributions to national integration have over the years been systematically and institutional eroded from collective memory and national history books by  professors of your kind, less deserving and less worthy of the title; once wrote a book titled The Genuine Intellectual. If for some reason you’ve not read it I’ll recommend it to you. If you’ve read and have forgotten as it is quite common with professors of your kind who suffer from a kind of selective amnesia, who choose to distort history or who for reasons best known to you and them choose to be economical with the truth, I recommend you read it again. I will not remind you of its content; neither will I give you a lecture on being a genuine intellectual. Are you not the professor?

Hubert, you wonder which country Anglophone teachers are defending. Isn’t it obvious? They are defending their country-the Anglophone country, they are defending the common law, the Anglo-Saxon system of education. They are patriots fighting for the good of the country, putting the commonwealth before personal interest. They are being genuine intellectuals. Anglophone teachers a patriots speaking up for what they believe in, putting their hearts and livelihood on the line because they hold firm to the sacred truth that the fatherland comes first. They are not toeing a political line; they do not have a hidden agenda. As true patriots they believe in social justice, the have morals and hold dear the republican values of truth and integrity.

You see, the United Kingdom is made up of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each has its educational policies and systems managed at local level by either national governments or local authorities. There has been no systemic drive to harmonise them. That still has not cancelled the fact that Scots have continued to call for the independence of Scotland. Those who have clamoured for Scottish independence have not been labelled unpatriotic. Rather they have been given the opportunity to access the political space and vote in a referendum, to engage the public in political debates. No! When it comes to Cameroon you and your kind will refer to Anglophone teachers as unpatriotic because you think that you have a monopoly of patriotism; that anyone who does not fit your lopsided narrative of political advancement is unpatriotic; that you own a monopoly of intellect.

Hubert, I agree with you that Cameroon is Cameroon. Cameroon is unique in its diversity. Cameroon is unique because it is only in Cameroon that we will have the same absentee president hold sway over a nation for 33 years. The uniqueness of Cameroon is evidently in the moral decrepitude of its leaders, of which you are a part of, dominated by people of the “pays organisateur”. Cameroon is unique because it is only in Cameroon that we have a new constitution at every election; where we will have toll gates without roads, where at 84 years of age we will have people holding onto their jobs in the public service yet retiring others at 55; where youths are 50 and where getting a job is always thanks to the president.

Hubert, I suppose you think Anglophones should be grateful to your country for its generosity in accepting them in 1961. Well, you are wrong. You think Anglophones are only complaining because they have discovered brown gold in their country. Well, you are wrong again. Before the 11 February 1961 plebiscites a good proportion of Anglophones wanted to be independent, brown gold or not. The rise of Anglophone nationalism today has nothing to do with new found oil, it has nothing to do with wealth, but all to do with patriotism, with a strong devotion to the fatherland. As a people Anglophones are proud of their historical, cultural and political heritage. They are not fighting to preserve the language of Shakespeare as you may have thought. They are fighting to preserve that which makes them uniquely Ambazonians or Cameroonians, which ever expression suits your whims.

I have often wondered myself why you and your colleagues are so fearful of the Anglophone way of life, of Anglophone consciousness. For some reason I have been led to believe that you see Anglophones in Cameroon as a social and political inconvenience, an obstacle in the way of consolidating a French and francophone hegemony in central Africa; the stain that has blotted your master’s record to perfect the “Francanization” of the central African region. You think that it is time to bring the anglofools to toe the line; to curtail their aspirations; to take away their name; strip away their laws, absorb their legal system; harmonise their educational system; take away their electrical supply; take away their seaport; wipe away their political institutions; create military basis. Soon you will harmonise the language; make French the only official language. Isn’t it already the de facto administrative language? Take away everything that makes them think of themselves as a people, as a country. Accuse them of being unpatriotic and make them feel guilty. Bully them! Bully them into submission.  

Your article is a simple confirmation of what some of you, the francophone elite think of us Anglophones. Yesterday it was “l’enemi dans la maison”. Today it is your turn to describe our teachers as unpatriotic. I hope our teachers don’t take offence with your utterances. Rather I hope Anglophones, especially the youths will learn from such declarations the spite with which you hold their educators and parents. I hope Anglophone politicians who ascribe to the fallacious notion of one and indivisible Cameroun see the contempt with which you treat their children’s teachers.

You see,   building a house that will stand the test of time requires a solid foundation. The foundation on which the present Cameroun is built, that is the Cameroun made up of the Anglophone and francophone countries is not solid. It is not solid because it is built on falsehood and illegality. There is no consensus on which to build a nation. There are a million cuts and bruises, open wounds and sores, some of them infected that no amount of plaster and bandages will prevent the pungent odour of their rottenness from rising to the surface. If you and your president want to build a nation, you should consider healing the wounds that you inflicted on nationalists like Felix Moumie; unravel the plasters that you’ve used to conceal the cuts you inflicted on Um Nyobe. Cleanse Ouandie’s name and reinstate him in his rightful place in history. Call them what they are: national heroes. And if your national integration drive will include the Anglophone country then you must right the wrongs of history. You must acknowledge the existence of the Anglophone state as a country in its own right, review the terms of the partnership, halt all plans to harmonise cum append it as an extension of the French empire in central Africa. You must accept the illegality of the 1972 referendum, you must let the Anglophone country recognise and celebrate October 1^st as its national day, recognise February 11 as a day of national unity so that it can take its historical significance, teach our children the correct history and bring back Ahmadou Ahidjo.

Hubert, I understand you and I may not agree on who to call a patriot you see; but that’s life and no matter our degree of disagreement I will not for once question your patriotism. I know you’re a patriot but of which country? Are you a patriot of France or a patriot of Cameroon?  However, if you asked my opinion who I think the true Cameroon  patriots are, I will say mothers and farmers in our villages who till and toil everyday to feed the nation; the buyam sellam ride the death traps called roads to ferry food from the villages to feed professors in the cities; I will say the nurses, midwives and doctors who strive everyday to operate patients in theatres with no running water or electricity; I will say the taxi driver and the “bendskineur” who ply our streets only to be robbed why hoodlums in uniforms; I will say the teachers in both private and public schools who struggle against all odds to teach our children a lesson or two in civic responsibility. I will think of girls and young mothers like those of the Associations of Aunties (RENATA) or Collette Bekaku of CAPEC, who are striving against all odds, as true heroes and patriots should, to protect and educate the Cameroonian child. I will ask you to learn a thing or two from these women about the true meaning of patriotism.

I will say a patriot is Felix Moumie, Ruben Um Nyobe, Ernest Ouandie, Lapiro de Mbanga, Bernard Fonlon, and Albert Mukong. I will not say Paul Biya, or Andre Mama Fouda who has 555 million francs cfa stashed in his home. I will not call you, or anyone else who is perpetrating this political hostage taking by a clique senile, grave dodging and corrupt chums, a patriot of the Cameroons because if you loved the Cameroons, if you were devoted to them you will protect them from greed and corruption, from lies and plundering.  

Dear Hubert, you’re the professor though and excuse my gullible youthful exuberance in thinking that I can question your authority on issues like patriotism. I am only 40 and still quite young by your standards and feeling rebellious at heart, believing that when I grow up I will be able to change things, make Cameroon right again. Maybe by the time I reach your age and not yet ready to retire I will know when to step aside and usher in my friends and school mates, those who will still be alive at 70 and 80 to sit in for me and do my bidding while a take a break by the sea in La Boule, or by a lake in Switzerland. Hopefully by then you’d be retired and playing songo’o and drinking palm wine in the village but if by then you find yourself in Kondengui I will send you a copy of Bernard Fonlon’s The Genuine Intellectual. It will make a good prison companion.  In the main time I hope you find a conscience that will keep you awake all night.