Cameroon: A Tale of Two Countries

The Two Cameroons:

Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun

Louis Egbe Mbua

The tinkling sound of the little bell of social and economic deprivation may, sooner or later, generate into the sonic boom that is registered on the arrival of a technological crash rather than a marvel. If there exists the marvel scenario today and the foreseeable future in Cameroon, then the long suffering population of that country would have cause for hope and celebration; and not riots. Yet, there are no civilised values or technological economic boom in the farthest distant future. It is not the opinion of this writer to propound alarmist pessimism nor should one pander to delusively-induced euphoria and unfounded optimism. This proposition will dwell on the causes of the present decline to mass poverty and economic want that led to the recent unrest in Cameroon; and to expose the irresponsible and corrupt people who made this national disaster possible. It took Cameroon less than 20 years from independence to reach middle-income status of about £1000 GDP per Capita in 1980; by a wide contrast, it took another 20 miserable years for grossly incompetent, corrupt and ethnocentric leaders to actually reduce this figure to about £500 thus taking the same country into the beggarly seat of the unreformed and shameless Poor.

The revolt of 25 - 29 February 2008 in Cameroon has been attributed to destitution and poverty; and that there are ongoing attempts by Mr. Paul Biya to commit an openly constitutional fraud without the consent of the people of Cameroon; and that he is an extremely ungrateful man who has fed from the public purse for 46 years but refuses to grow up and live a private life without the usual support from state coffers to furnish his lazy and jet-set life-style. While these may have caused immediate resentment to trigger an uprising, the seed for the destruction of Cameroon had been laid from the very beginning when the UN forcefully, fraudulently and illegally conducted a referendum in Southern Cameroons that was already far more advanced than La Republique du Cameroun -- in governance, democracy, education, law and economy. It is not clear why the UN committed such a blatantly illegal act in clear violation of UN Charter, the Trusteeship Agreements and the rights of the inhabitants of Southern Cameroons. In any case, the results clearly show that the people of Southern Cameroons achieved their independence by forming a Federation with La Republique du Cameroun. Meanwhile, in another show of of grave or deliberate negligence, the UN left the territory without finalising the constitution of the Federation but conspired with other Powers to hand over Southern Cameroons to a far more backward La Republique du Cameroun thus setting the stage for what happened in February 2008 and what awaits the future. The aftermath of this doomed Union between the two former UN Trust Territories will be visited more expansively in the future.

The aim of this short summary of history is to explain why the Uprising was fundamentally located in the four provinces in today's Cameroon: The South-West (Buea and Kumba) and North-West (Bamenda and Kumbo) -- which constitute the Southern Cameroons; the Littoral Province where the Port City of Douala is located and where the riots were most vociferous and violent; and the West Province, the stronghold and political pinch point of the influential but politically disadvantaged Bamilekes. The two maps shown above give vivid indications of all the areas where the riots occurred; and that they are located adjacent to the Southern Cameroons and to each other; and that these are the areas where the opposition to the autocratic, tribalistic and incompetent rule of Mr. Paul Biya has been concentrating. The reason for this consistency in geopolitical action is simple. Before the re-unification of the two Cameroons in 1961, Southern Cameroons had a well-developed agricultural, politically democratic and educational institutions. Infra-structures were well maintained until 1972 when the neo-colonial French government of Ahidjo master-minded a constitutional Coup D'Etat by overthrowing the then government of Southern Cameroons; again in violation of the Federal Constitution of the Cameroons. The reason for this fraudulent and criminal act was then not evident at the time. But it became clear in the mid 1980s that this act was bent on destroying the Southern Cameroon's well-founded and maintained institutions and way of life so as to re-colonise the country by his own country La Republique du Cameroun. This, Ahidjo carried out with savage brutality: closing down ports, airports, financial institutions, Import and export businesses and above all Southern Cameroons entrepreneurship; roads and railways were left to rot or were never built.

The fall of Southern Cameroons -- economically and politically -- was the beginning of the end of contemporary Cameroon. Since the Western and Littoral Provinces of La Republique du Cameroun benefited from the economic and and governmental know-how, peace, security and business liberalism of Southern Cameroons; and on account of being neighbours, the poverty and economic destruction of Southern Cameroons was to visit them at some later date in some kind of domino effect -- the destruction of a powerful neighbour ensures one's own fall. The only ingredient required was to appoint a foolish and equally vision less leadership to finally bring this certainty to pass. And appointed them they did. Consequently, the recent riots in Cameroon had been sown 47 years ago; and all evidence suggest that it will get worse if this very unfortunate trend of political fraud, theft and social exclusion continues. Further, the longer Monsieur Paul Biya remains as President of La Republique du Cameroun, the higher the chances of a wreckage resulting from the disastrous crash that, normally, is closely associated with or related to the slaying of an untamed and dangerous Leviathan.