An Albatross in the Cameroons

Louis Egbe Mbua

Never, since the formation of the defunct Cameroon Federation in 1961, has there been such a growing generation of curiosity and euphoria by four rapid letters in succession. Had it been love letters for a long lost Casanova to his damsel in the land of utopia, it would have created a different kind of fantasia in the imaginations of the populace:  if, on the other hand, it were a single letter conjured up to fire a company director from a renown multinational, a different sort of phantasmal excitement will again be expected but a great expectation all the same. One can quickly recall, summoning at lightning speed, periods at one’s teenage years when a silly student’s love letter was caught by the college Principal who would proceed to announce and then move forward to promptly read it up aloud in front of a curious bunch of fresh-faced love non-starters: who would be waiting, anxiously,  and fully alert for the juicy parts to be serialised so as  to burst out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter while the supposed culprit would watch in total helplessness and fright  on the stage with his eyes firmly glued to the floor.

Mr. Marafa Hamidou Yaya is no small student or is he a small time office clerk working in the Buea Council in Cameroon. A Cameroonian and USA trained geologist and engineer, he had scaled the heights of his engineering profession by sheer raw talent, worked as an oil man, transformed into a respected oil executive in Cameroon and then morphed into a top flight politician with the clout and position as Secretary General at the Cameroon Presidency, and latterly as Minister of Interior. How he did it is any one’s guess. All that may be gleaned from his biography is that he did it with easy panache. That, however, is not the point of this essay. The main focus is that he was promptly arrested without warning in the national capital Yaoundé, together with Chief Ephraim Inoni, the former Cameroon Prime Minister, who was quietly living off his retirement in his native coastal village of Bakingili near Victoria, Cameroon; and performing his functions as the local Chieftain.

According to reliable reports, both former African big men were summoned to Yaoundé,  to answer questions relating to or directly connected to what has now been aliased as the Albatross Affair. The intricacies and twists of the matter have been diagnosed and documented by many renowned writers, and so will not be fully sermonised in this expose. Nevertheless, a fast-paced précis will add much needed Indian spice in the cooking of the story to be followed by the books for exotic and exquisite taste on this complex of state matters.

Accordingly, President Biya of Cameroon wanted a Presidential Aeroplane for his own and family personal use. Unfortunately for the seemingly politically sweet-toothed or power-spoiled Mr. Biya, the IMF had imposed tight restrictions on the rumoured and evident Cameroon squandamania as a trade off for Cameroon to qualify as a Heavily Indebted Country Status (HIC). It is with irony, and the wringing of the hands for one to make a note that Chief Inoni was the architect of this Cameroonian “rescue” plan as Cameroon was on the verge of total bankruptcy due to years of the Biya regime’s gross mismanagement and gross corruption. That is another story.  Anyway, Biya had other ideas. Following our thread, Biya sort a cunning and illegally irregular plan to go ahead and purchase the luxury jet in breach of this international economic compromise agreement.

Knowing full well his usurped dictatorial powers, he grafted the defunct Cameroon Airlines (CamAir) to do the ignominious task so as to evade detection by the international body. In a further complex dictatorial manoeuvre he ordered the state-owned Cameroon Hydrocarbon Company,  La Societe Nationale d'Hydro-carburant (SNH)  to stump up for the plane, further covering his gaming tracts. Trouble is that those responsible or given the task to purchase or procure the aircraft or both appeared not to have understood the great act of deception by Le Grand Sorcier de la politique (GSP). As a result, the entire project was bungled with corrupt officials having a field day with more than $31 million sent directly to the “manufacturing agent” abroad (the story is so full of complex webs of lies and deceit that nobody can quite decipher exactly who is the manufacturer or agent or both) by the SNH to buy the plane. The “project” was so badly executed so much so that Biya ended up with a second hand or third hand (nobody quite  knows to this day at to whether it was an actual  plane or a converted 18^th century Zeppelin balloon) aircraft.

The interesting matter here is that it was not immediately obvious as to the state and mechanical conditions of the Albatross since it was given a good coat of metallic paint, so it was said. The machine had very little difference with the fake disguised tanks used by the allied forces to deceive Hitler into bombing an empty paper tank. Whatever the case, Biya and his family appeared to be very pleased with the “results”; well, not until the Albatross “aircraft” took to the air. From preliminary “technical” reports from the media, it seems the aircraft took off but immediately had intractably serious problems flying and staying in the air. With the President and his entire family in the Albatross, there are rumours of Biya and his family entering into a fit of fright, intermittent panic attacks  and massive hysteria because it seems the plane was about to plummet onto the ground like a huge savage stone. What would have happened to the Albatross and the fate of the passengers if, by some cruel poetic orison, the Albatross hit the ground in its shaking rage with a deafening bang nobody can quite tell. With a stroke of good luck, the able Captain managed to control and land the “aircraft”. There began the strange and scandalous Albatross Affair.

Now, Mr. Biya claims Marafa and Chief Inoni were fully responsible for the “hold-up” or hijack of public money “set aside” for the doomed aircraft, and that they are outright embezzlers or that they planned to finish him off complete with his family, depending on whose story is to be believed and whose side one takes. Who, exactly, is the culprit on top of the stage with his eyes permanently glued onto the floor? Marafa has washed his hands and says it is not him. Chief Inoni also denied any involvement in the scandal by staying mute. So who stole the $31 million from the SNH? That is the first port of call in the source of the Marafa letters.

There are so far four letters released by Marafa which can be considered as the CamMarafa Scandals. These letters are widely circulated in the internet thus I will not belabour the reader with its details. However, the crunch summary of the matter is that Marafa stated clearly that he had nothing  to do with the transfer of  $31million abroad  in connection with the acquisition of the Albatross; and that the transactions were done in violation of normal  and official working practice of the Cameroon government which conduct state matters by means of letters of credit. In another separate missive, he decried lack of consultations with the recent electoral reform Laws in Cameroon; and that he clearly advised Biya to step down, and not to stand again in the 2011 Presidential elections; he was opposed, he stated, to the altering of the constitution to eliminate term limits in 2008 that gave Biya a free reign to transform himself illegally into a life President against the consent of the Cameroon people. He went further by stating that he opposed an “inherited” Presidency since Biya was planning to create a position of a Vice President that would take over the Presidency after he “leaves”. Most poignantly, he called for his own fair trial before a competent judge since he dismissed the original judge who recommended his incarceration as “corrupt”. He questioned Biya’s judgement for appointing incompetent ministers who display amazing tepidity and incomprehension in executing state functions while reporting that Biya replied that “not all minsters were actually “ministers””.  

Finally, Marafa claims to have  a “democratic“ plan; and an objective for future and prosperous Cameroon, then went on, in some kind of political bravado, to openly challenge his accusers to either produce or conjure up their own plan. Nobody quite knows the exact content of the Marafa “plan”. Nevertheless, his intrepid and politically damaging actions may indicate that his road maps and objectives fall under the heading of the revolutionary. This perfectly mirrors his present actions as what he is undertaking, at the moment, is nothing short of direct confrontation with the status quo as an insider. His rivals –if we may call them as such – so far, have failed to produce any meaningful  “counter” plan for the country with a clear vision save pitiful photshopped graphical illustrations of a possible mirage in 2035.

It should be drawn to the notice of the eminent readers that Marafa is not the first high profile prisoner to write from the notorious Kondegui prison facility in Yaoundé. However, what gave his correspondences added weight and impetus is that he directly challenged Biya’s 30 year strangle hold on power and dictatorship. Mr. Mebara, another incarcerated apparatchik and former Secretary General at the Presidency who is also allegedly implicated in the comical Albatross uproar with Biya and the ensuing Brouhaha within the Cameroon press corps appears to have begun his literary career in prison. Yet, although he was praised for his soothing style, gripping narratives and ease of words as well as carefully crafted grammatical terminologies, his was written to solicit a sort of “pre-condolence” telegram from the self-proclaimed Supreme  Magistrat de l’Etat. The killer bite was palpably not there, the punch de grace noticeably lacking. These correspondences will serve as excellent historical and social documents for future references, a literary bonanza for “kongossa” and gossip champions, a personal testimony, undoubtedly, but at the moment they can only be viewed as missives of procrastinating entreaties with supine acquiescence as the moulding block.

In a desperate attempt to fight back, a calculated move to strike back, at halting the incessant and vicious attacks from Marafa into the left and right ventricular power flow lines of the Biya oligarchic jamboree, Professor Fame Ndongo, the Cameroon Minister of Higher Education, and a CPDM ruling party operator-manipulator wrote and circulated in the Cameroon press what may pass as a purely theoretical philosophical academic “rebuttal” of the Marafa letters. As ana academic treatise, this was of excellent grade. However, as a counter political guerrilla tactics, it counts for an impecunious zero political capital. While this served as a necessary distraction for a while, the near convoluted disquisition that quoted medieval philosophers was totally devoid of iron teeth to bite the increasingly accelerating intellectual bullets from the firing stun gun of the Marafa pen. Instead of even slowing down the momentous political contours that these events were carving in the landscape of the Cameroon dramatic scene, the Fame Ndongo rebuttal rather added more impetus to further attract the Chariot of the Gods to dispatch more fire and dark smoke through vents that penetrate into the very foundations of the Cameroons lands.

Late in July 2012, Marafa appeared in court in Yaoundé together with his Chief Attorney Professor Kofele-Kale. Dressed in a crisped and well-pressed suit that seemingly resemble a tailored couture cut out by a skilled hand in Saville Row, London, he proffered a tentative “Presidential” wave to the crowd who had jammed the court area as well as lining the street to see him. The crowd didn’t disappoint. In a spontaneous move to return his felicitous accolade, the 10,000 strong crowds boomed back in an unmistakably unanimous stanza: “Bienvenue notre President”. Seeing the scene in pictures takes the motion of a compelling premonition in moving images as in a silent movie. Reminisces of biblical similitude completes the chorus:

 Saul has slain all his one thousand;

The girded one has his tens of thousands

Saul came, did not see, empty went

The people came, saw and fear conquered

The Albatross has come to stay,

An Albatross ‘round their necks strung

What is in there for the millions?

Extracted from the forth coming Book: A 21^st Century Trilogy of Essays Book 2.

Afriqiya -- Hole in the Plane

Louis Egbe Mbua

Note: This is not a negative rendition of the Afriqiya Airways. Their services were very good.

In July 2009, I arrived at the Douala International Airport in Cameroon en route to London. I had come to Cameroon to attend my brother’s wedding in Kumba.  With the formalities over and all marriage vows etched in stone, I found my return ticket, and was escorted to the Douala International Airport. The Afriqiya flight was scheduled for 11.00 pm Cameroon time; and was, therefore, important that one arrives at the airport at least an hour so as to check in and board. Furthermore, there were no computers displaying light emitting signals on huge electronic boards in the airport.

The consequences are that travellers have to depend on their raw instincts to ascertain as to what time one’s particular plane arrives. The trick, I found out later, was to check in as quickly as possible, and then move on to quickly find your way into the waiting room. As most of the waiting rooms are adjacent to the runway; and that their glasses windows are in the same geometrical location opposite to the runway, one can actually physically see their aircraft complete with their logos and inscriptions in the fuselage, landing and then taxiing to the gates. Or so I thought.

Having arrived in time, I went through the motion until the last security post manned by a certain burley Cameroonian “security officer” in plain clothes, possibly a secret agent as the custom of Cameroon.

“Ton passeport Monsieur! “, he growled in French looking a bit menacing straight into my eyes. I handed him my passport. He took it, looked at it intensely as though observing the parts of a microscopic organism poorly magnified by the traditional microscope. Having thoroughly examined the soft back, he opened the first page, scrutinised it again and saying in his breath:  “Not sure about this”. I equally hissed under my breath, quite instinctively: “sure, you won’t”.

“Tu as dit que quoi?”, he half-shouted in a quite self-important intonation and apparent anger.

“Oh, I was just practising one of my songs”, I threw back a hastily concocted reply in English to save my skin; and risking the presumption that he may not understand English fully (Cameroon is officially bilingual although the officials in the French-speaking part of the country always insist on speaking in French and assuming that every other person understands French).

The security guard was taken aback.  His countenance recovered from my seemingly surprising positive attack on his attitude.

“Alors,tu es musicien a Londre?” he asked with a mixture of excitement, surprise and seriousness on his face.

If I said yes, he would have to investigate me further, and possibly delay my check in, almost certainly missing my flight; but if I said no, then he would have to suspect what I had just said putting my “security” clearance under profound jeopardy. So, I quickly answered without batting an eye lid:

“Oui  et Non, man no make erreur.” I kept my face straight holding back an audible laughter in case he mistook me for a kind of stand up comedian. He stared at me; and I Iooked at him, inspected him from top to bottom, and then fixated my darkish brown-blue iris( I change the colour of my Iis to frighten potential adversaries), which actually change in colour as the circumstance warrant, on his face in a bid to apply an importunate psychological dressing down and to administers some fright. It transformed into a stand-off match in an intimidating battle of the batting of the eyelids. The security man was frightened out of his wits.

I allowed my eyes to wander around the other commuters who queued behind me without actually turning my head or alter my iris position. I noticed from the corners of my eyes that every eye was fixed on the unfolding spectacle, some of the travellers actually giggling.

Confused, and perhaps believing that I was some kind of Lapiro De Mbanga supporter, the Security man demanded abruptly as if one were in a military training selection exercise in a camp somewhere in the middle of the forest:

“Can you make a photocopy de cet passporte?” he demanded in a new version of Franglais or Camglais as some would like it be referred to, depending on what part of Cameroon one has their origins.

“Why would you require a photocopy of the passport when you actually hold the real document?” I rhetorically responded fervently in English and in half-amazement, with conviction.

“By the by, do you have a photocopy machine in the airport?” I made a reasonably polite demand.

I was ushered into a shop in the airport, handed out a  CFA 1000 (about  70 p) note to the lady on the till, who made a photocopy of the desired pages of my passport, hurried back to the check-in point and gave the copies to the custom officer or the suspected l’homme de CENER. He glanced at it, thanked me, handed back my passport and opened the gate. I reciprocated the polity; but not after again questioning the officer as to why he would need a photocopy of a passport.

 “Well, I’d have to send it to the London High Commission for checks of authenticity”, he replied. “We have to be absolutely sure that this is your passport,”   he said quietly.  Not to cause any more commotion, I decided to leave it at that and trudged the long straight corridor, turned one or two sharp corners into the waiting room.

There were other travellers waiting for the Afriqiya aircraft. Since there were no computers or bill board to indicate flight schedules, one had to depend on his own sight or that of other travellers to actually see the aircraft taxiing to the gate for passengers to board. One had to keep asking;

“Has the Afriqiya plane arrived yet?”

“Non,” was the answer from a seasoned traveller. “It is normally late by up to two hours,” he continued.

He was right.  At about 1.00 am, the distinctive 999 logo pasted on the tail of the Airbus manufactured aircraft could be seen advancing onto the gate, a cool 2 hours late. No apologies were given but each and every traveller was relieved that the plane had arrived; and that we are to leave at last. We boarded the plane and had a smooth, enjoyable and uneventful flight to Tripoli where we had to catch the next plane to London Gatwick. There was another delay in Tripoli but we eventually boarded a similar Afriqiya Airways Airbus plane.

After a brief announcement by the flight attendant, we boarded the aircraft. Took my seat by the window, pulled out a book and began to read. Next to me was an African woman of about middle age range. After exchanging a few African pleasantries, the flight attendant began her health and safety instructions and signifying that the plane was set for take off. At that very moment the African woman pointed at the hand luggage compartment just opposite to and above our seat:

 “There is a hole in the plane!” she exclaimed. I looked intently and actually saw that one of the compartments was damaged and that there was actually a hole in the plane. To be absolutely sure, I got up from my seat and had a good old-fashioned look. To my ultimate horror, there was actually a hole in the plane. However, the hole appeared to be confined onto one damaged luggage compartment. At the same time, who knows where the hole led to?  Did the hole lead to the outside of the plane?  I went back to my seat, picked up my book and resumed my enjoyable perusal. The plane was geared to take off anyway.

“What happens happens,” I thought, secretly frightened out of my wits.  But the African woman continued to insist that there was a hole in the plane; and reported the matter in full hearing of the already disconcerted passengers. So, we decided to draw the attention of this seemingly grave technical matter to the flight attendant who was already giving health and safety instructions in case of a plane crash! The Lady next to me, pointed to the hole, asking the flight attendant to “do something about this”. She looked around, appearing at a loss for words and said “Oh it is but a small matter, it is not important, and the plane is about to take off.” Now, we did not know what this meant exactly. Is it because the plane was about to take off that made the hole unimportant or was the hole unimportant because it didn’t actually lead to the outside – the atmosphere? And if the second hypothesis is true, how did she know where the hole led to? Was she speaking from experience? And even if she spoke from experience, was she a qualified Aircraft Engineer? With all the arguments and counter-arguments conflicting in my mind, I decided to leave my seat, took off my glasses and took a good old fashioned look again, but this time I went nearer to the whole. I saw nothing because the hole was dark.  At least I didn’t see the outside lights of the day; and because we were travelling during the afternoon, I could conclude that the hole was confined to the single luggage compartment.

Extracted from the forth coming Book: A 21^st Century Trilogy of Essays Book 2.

Living in the 21st Century (16): The Lovers

Louis Egbe Mbua

The dripping unending kisses

Heavenly ecstasies are these

And eternal are the silent moments.

From eternity emanates the touch

With the lovers’ entrancing glance

That makes the throbbing hearts ponder,

Thumping and pumping so to push

The very essence of fulfilled lives

With existence founded on lovers!

Living in the 21st Century 15: Love and Hate (Day & Night)

Louis Egbe Mbua

 The wise does not have a self-praise

But praises to the Creator he gives.

He who is in the house scatters

Shall have nothing in his barn but hate,

And he who in high place friends collects

Will in abundance in store as love.

Better a little a man with love abides

Than he who has so much with hate.

That who loves is with eyes open wide,

Yet that who hates’ with eyes shut tight:

 

Vision is to further see

As darkness’ to shorter sight

Vision’s to daylight

As darkness’ to night

Bitter is the taste

As darkness’ to hate

The real honey is too sweet

As a woman is to love!

 

Remember the past of a rumble

And blot not today in solitude

As the little love shown a past

Transforms future can never to hate.

A man who for hate forgets to love

Has a memory less inanimate.

Always in gratitude in awe strive

For that is a duty for a man in love

With the bride in the aisle oblige

To walk in the way of the Lord:

Dreaming is to the true seer

But a mirage is a shimmer

A dream in the night

 And mirage in the day

Sweet’s the juicy fruit

As a dream turns true,

The real money is so good

And the dressed bride is in love!

A Reply to Dr. Susunji’s RE-UNIFICATION: CLARIFICATION NOTE

Louis Egbe Mbua

I was interested in Hon Chief Ayah’s internet-circulated posting, 29 June 2012, which clearly stated that there is no legally binding document deposited at the UN, as required by international law enshrined in the UN Charter that created the so-called Union between the Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun. Hon. Ayah was correct. However, it seems Dr. Susunji, in his own rebuttal article equally published yesterday, 29 June 2012,  in various Cameroon internet fora is stating that Hon Paul Ayah’s is misleading and that there is or was a kind of legally binding agreement. This is incorrect as the following analysis and argument will reveal in this essay.

 
In the first place, if there was any “Treaty”, then that Treaty has been violated since Ahidjo abrogated the Treaty in 1972 by violating the Federal constitution that brought to birth the de facto Federation in 1961.  The Federal Constitution which came to force in September 1961 could not possibly be classified as a Treaty since the only signatory in the document was President Ahdijo of the Cameroun Republic who single-handedly signed it in September 1961. Southern Cameroons was still a UN Trust Territory at the time; and that the British Commissioner of Southern Cameroons, JO. Fields, who was responsible for the territory, never signed it.

 There is no such a thing as a singled-handed Treaty of Union. A political or economic union is formed and agreed by more than one party and not by a single political or economic entity. The following is that Dr. Susunji’s premise is flawed to begin with. Furthermore, President Biya went further and destroyed any vestiges or pretences of this “Treaty” in yet another single-handed decree signed in 1984 by altering the name of the country from the United Republic of Cameroon adopted in the illegalities of the 1972 constitutional violation to La Republique du Cameroun: the exact name that the French Cameroon employed to gain independence as a UN Trust Territory from France.

 Therefore, even if for argumentation’s sake, we agree that there was a de facto Union, it now no longer exists as the 1961 Plebiscite terms have now been violated single-handedly by the two Presidents of La Republique du Cameroun which is a separate territory from Southern Cameroons: Ahidjo and Biya. No Southern Cameroonian institution or person was ever signatory to these two acts. It follows that Dr. Susunji’s assertions and long explanations are entirely hollow. According to Dr. Susunji, the Joint Communiqué that happened in Yaoundé in 1960 between Foncha and Ahidjo setting the terms of the envisaged UN organised and supervised Plebiscite in the Southern Cameroons; and the envisioned creation of the Federation of Cameroon was a “Treaty”. He attempted to defend it by writing on point 11 of his missive that:

“11. The catastrophic mistake which was committed by Commissioner JO Field is that when Foncha, Muna, Jua and Kemcha took off for Yaoundé for the 3rd round of negotiations with President Ahidjo, the Commissioner did not expect them to succeed. The unexpected "success of Foncha's delegation took the British Government and the Opposition by surprise and changed the course of Southern Cameroons history. The British Government initially took the agreement lightly because it was still believed that the 1st plebiscite option of joining Nigeria would prevail and render the Yaoundé Agreement caduque.”

 I believe the reason given here by the learned Doctor is again grossly flawed. He is assuming that JO Fields and the opposition didn’t know the intent of the meeting between the KNDP and Ahidjo’s UC. They merely took it to be a partisan affair with no direct bearing to the future of Southern Cameroons and rightly so. Political parties have a right to meet and discuss issues of interest. JO Fields and the opposition didn’t have to go to Yaoundé with the KNDP as he, in particular, was not a member of the KNDP; and that his role was non-partisan. If this was to be the actual Treaty, then JO Fields who was the UK representative on behalf of the UN would have had to go with them. He didn’t, meaning that Foncha went for just talks; and any agreement with Ahidjo was just for them: and that, exactly, was what happened. Dr. Susunji should not assume that JO Fields and the opposition didn’t know what the resulting Communiqué stood for.

 He went further on point 12 stating:

 “12. If the outcome of the plebiscite was that the people of the Southern Cameroons had voted for integration into Nigeria, the Yaoundé Agreement would have automatically become useless. However, when the outcome of the plebiscite favored reunion with Cameroun Republic, the Yaoundé Agreement (Joint Communiqué ) became a legally binding agreement between two states, whose terms and conditions had to be executed as required by UN General Assembly resolution 1608 (XV). But it was too late to expand the boundaries of that vague agreement.”

Again, this is mistaken thinking. It was not possible for that Communiqué to be automatically and legally binding as it never carried the signature of the Commissioner of Southern Cameroons who represented the Administrative Authority, the UK, and hence the UN. The Communiqué remained just that until given the authority of the UN as signatory being the authorised Trustee of the Territory in line with the Trusteeship Agreements of 1946.  The UK and the UN could be taken to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) if they even as put their signature, retrospectively or presumptuously, to the Communiqué since they were not present, and that it was a simple partisan affair.  That is why the UN General assembly moved quickly to call for a meeting between the Administrative Authority, the Southern Cameroons government and the government of the Republic of Cameroun to meet and work out the “agreed” terms.

If it was automatically and legally binding, then the UN had no reason to pass another resolution for a meeting after the plebiscite -- a compulsory condition for the Cameroon Federation to occur. The following is that as long as this meeting never happened with the three parties agreeing on the kind of Federation, the Communiqué cannot be legally binding. Consequently, this cannot be accepted as a legal document. Furthermore, Southern Cameroons was a democratic state. As a result, all agreements and envisaged constitutions must have to be ratified by the Southern Cameroons Upper and Lower Houses. There is no evidence that such ratification occurred in the Southern Cameroons parliament of both the Ahidjo’s signed 1961 constitution and the alleged Foncha-Ahidjo pre-plebiscite Communiqué of 1960.

In addition, The Joint Communiqué was not a Treaty because Foncha had no powers on foreign policies because Southern Cameroons was still a UN Trust Territory in 1960. The UN never put their signature there as they were wont to. The Communiqué was what they
agreed to do if both the Southern Cameroons and the Northern Cameroons voted to be part of the Cameroon Federation with the Cameroun Republic. It did not mention Southern Cameroons alone.

The Northern Cameroons never signed anything because it was not a treaty and no negotiations were involved; and that they were never part of the meeting with Foncha and Ahidjo in 1960. Foncha and Ahidjo could not possibly, and had no powers to decide the future of Northern Cameroons when he [Foncha] was not a citizen of that part of the UN Trust Territory since the Northern Cameroons were actually politically and legally separate from the Southern Cameroons. They eventually went their separate ways to choose Nigeria in the plebiscite. It was just talks. People come up with a joint Communiqué on what they agreed/disagreed after talks but this cannot be counted as a Treaty without the peoples’ consent in a democratic state.

What the UN meant here was the talks after the plebiscite and after the Southern Cameroons independence was voted at the UN in April 1961; and when the people must have made their decision on where they wished to belong; and not before the people had decided. If the Communiqué was the Treaty, it meant that the plebiscite results were, in effect, null and void since there was no discernible reason to hold the plebiscite as the results were a forgone conclusion.  Dr. Susunji appears not to take to this fundamental fact.  It has to be noted, also, that there was no Union of any form between the Republic of Cameroon and Southern Cameroons before the plebiscite; so how can the Communiqué be transformed into a “Treaty” of the Union when it was signed in 1960 while the plebiscite happened but in 1961? This makes little legal sense as it is similar to a birth certificate being issued by the local authority or hospital before a child is actually born! No court of law will accept such a document.

Thus, according to Dr. Susunji's logic, the union existed in 1960, and before the plebiscite results in 1961 were known: meaning that the Union came to being before it was born. This does not make any sense and must be rejected with full force. What mattered was what the UN Resolution said should happen after the plebiscite and the Southern Cameroons independence vote. Nothing happened as the UN envisaged. Consequently, no legally binding document exits in Cameroon that joins the two former UN Trust Territories possibly why Biya is arranging to “celebrate” the “Re-Unification” in a year that means little or nothing to the history of Cameroon -- 2012.

What Cameroon is attempting to celebrate in Buea this year should be viewed as a non-event. Whether it goes on or not, it means nothing in both legal and historical terms. The correct way forward is for the two parties to meet in the auspices of the UN as planned in 1961, reach a mutually acceptable Agreement and then sign a Treaty that meet their political aspirations. Anything short of this is meaningless, and will continue creating tension between the two former Trust territories with a potentially devastating explosion in full view.

Action Cameroon: Stolen Tole Tea, Stolen Baby, Football Fiasco and Ethnic Riots: Part 1

Tole Tea Women Camping in front of CDC Head Offices, Bota, Victoria

Louis Egbe Mbua

I turned back my mind to revisit the general social contour of my country Cameroon as to what has changed and what has stayed the same in the last few years. The pitiful conclusion, in this context, seems to be reached that the more times the earth orbits its lone star the more the state of affairs remain the same at best; or that they progress in a sort of speedy reverse at worse. A kind of peculiarity, this is, one may inveigh, as the earth never reverses its path around the sun for that matter nor does it travel at different kind of speeds – it progresses year in year out in one forward clockwise direction at the same kind of acceleration.

The day one notices a reversal of progress by this rock on which one is permanently implanted on, then we may surmise that something is in dramatic remission in this troubled world of ours because this is an unnatural occurrence, an artificial state of affairs. When one critically examines the Cameroon situation, in a wider context of the world, conjuring a panoramic view, with this invoked concept, it clearly points to the direction that there is something unnatural happening in that country; and that the law of nature is in serious reverse. The trouble here is that we are certain, without a shadow of doubt, that the laws of natural justice can never be reversed by the same natural laws themselves since that would be an anathema; but that if such laws are reversed, it can only be temporally and artificially done by a human hand defect in dominion. The long-term consequences are catastrophic as we shall soon find out.

The grave problem here is that of a leadership whose love of absolute power absolutely is at its zenith while its conscience has plummeted into the almost impossible absolute zero temperature ranges. There are telling and outward signs to this effect, to know the minds of these people, why they act in this inexplicable monstrosity in manners and the barbaric treatment they met onto the most vulnerable in society: how they abuse their powers to manipulate the supposed “weaker” beings to squeeze out the life blood from them so that the defective powers may sit down and drink, eat and be merry on the blood and sweat of the people. These leaders have no shame; this writer insists, have no moral rectitude and are extremely corrupt. The best way, the writer contends, to start curtailing their heartless misadventure vices is to expose them, complete with their sinister agenda, to the world community of mankind as it seems dialogue always meet a deafening silence with them.

It was about a decade ago that a Cameroonian business man called Baba Danpullo of took over a branch of a company attached to the parent Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), a state run company and a huge Agro-Industrial complex. The company in question is now called Cameroon Tea Estate, located in Tole, Buea, Cameroon.  It later transpired that the new “owner”, used fraudulent methods and means to acquire this company by creating a non-existent company called Brobon-Finex in South Africa and then using this company to buy the Tole Tea Estate. Investigations have shown that this company is a fake. It is interesting to observe that South Africa, which was the bastion of racist Apartheid policies and injurious discrimination would be the foundation base that this man, Danpullo, chose as a base for his illegal and diabolical plans.

The reader should also be drawn into the quick notice that there was, and still is, an ongoing land dispute between the Cameroon government and the indigenous Bakweri tribe headed by the action group, the BLCC. At the time of Mr. Danpullo’s “acquisition” of the Tole Tea Estate, the Cameroon government had been banned -- and are still banned -- by the African Commission from further alienating the indigenes from their land. So, first count, two illegalities and fraud – fake company and illegal land deals by the fake company with corrupt Cameroon government officials in complicity with corrupt South African officials. The first line of the poetic fraudulent stanza is now complete. Now the second verse.

The new “owner-landlord” of the “Cameroon Tea Estate (CTE)” proceeded to do exactly the opposite of this acronym and eponymous name brand; reversing almost a century of social policy that was embedded on the founding of the plantation. He stripped the plantation workers (who were already lowly paid) of their basic fringe benefits—free housing, health care, water, fuel and electricity. He then proceeded to commit the most outrageous social crime, dismissing hundreds of workers without compensation and throwing them out of the company houses without any alternative arrangement for their accommodation. It is to be noted that a vast majority of these workers who toiled in sweat and blood, plucking the tea leaves in these plantations to make a name for the Tole Tea brand were women. With their meagre salaries cushioned by their social benefits they could maintain their families, give them a decent education and therefore escape abject poverty.

He went further. In blatant violation of international company rules and regulations, he stripped some of the machines from the Tole Tea processing factory and transferred them to his new private Tea estate in the North-West Region of Cameroon thereby down-sizing the capacity of the Tole Tea Estate; and consequently, the quality of its production. The immediate effect was for more jobs to go without due compensation to the affected workers. While all the drama was unfolding, the Cameroon government, a part of the crime, watched from the sidelines and at a considerable distance without intervening almost certainly because the women were from the English-speaking region of Cameroon; and that the regime and its collaborators feed on corrupting influence. Although many social critics brought this gross injustice into the public and international notice, nothing happened and the dismissed worker’s plight continues to this day – homeless, sick, hungry and destitute.

The Cameroon opposition politicians, having been bought over by the corrupt system merely bleated like captured sheep with no teeth to block the wind pipe of a rapacious, ruthless and politically cannibalistic system. Moral bankruptcy, bribes to the elite is in full swing. The poor and weak abandoned, the same elite went on to campaign for the October 9 2011 Cameroon window-dressing unconstitutional election in Buea with little shame; and where this horrendous crime against the very people was at open play. The second stanza was now complete after the “election” of the “new” Cameroon President who has said absolutely nothing about this grievous bodily harm and disgraceful saga after 5 years in the brew.

The third part of this dramatic tragedy now deals with the heroic reaction and actions of the aggrieved workers. In a show of force, grit, guts and sheer will power, the rejected and dejected women have decided to take matters into their own hands, taking the fight to a different and totally new level. In a society where men have allowed themselves to be politically castrated and, therefore, may no longer function as real men, it is only natural that the woman becomes the ruler. A community, a land, where the “elite” men have no strength left, having willingly transferred their natural powers to an inept and corrupt sea of wine and unsanctified food, there is always – and inevitably-- a social and moral drunkenness leading to stupor, societal blindness and day-dreaming: so, the song continues. If the men have allowed themselves to be stripped of their manhood, well, God made man in his own image, in the image of God he made them; male and female did he make them. Women must now become the new men while the man follows like a complete nobody. This, exactly, is what happened in the Garden; and the Fall.

While these women have been refused their basic rights by the scheming Apartheid and fascist regime of Paul Biya (whose administration openly discriminates against English-Speaking Cameroon and other Cameroon ethnic groups) and his English-Speaking collaborators, he suddenly announced that he will come to Buea, the capital of Southern Cameroons, to “celebrate” the “Re-unification” of Cameroon. It should be noted that this is a fraudulent political posturing as the 50^th anniversary of Southern Cameroons Independence and unification of the two Cameroons was celebrated last year 1 October 2011 amidst arrests and barbaric torture of celebrating civilians by the brutal forces of occupation of that territory. But that is another story; another time. The main thrust of this article is to remind the international community on the impunity and satanic agenda of this present illegitimate Biya regime, in complicity with an unscrupulous business man that is refusing to grant the fundamental rights, dues, of women who have worked all their lives to develop the nation.

Mr. Danpullo,a member of the Biya ruling CPDM regime and who donated up to £150,000 to the Biya campaign but refuses to pay the workers, is in breach of international labour laws with this callous and corrupt method of treatment of employees; and that he obtained that part of  the state owned company by fraud. The women should report the Biya regime and Mr. Danpullo to the International Labour Organisation and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions so that he should be banned from doing international business. The Cameroon community should rise up and challenge the Biya regime’s corrupt government; and come to the aid of these women who are still putting up a courageous fight against this outrageous monstrosity.

In another strange recently poetic development, a young Cameroon mother, Vanessa Tchatchou, had her baby stolen from an elite clinic in Yaounde days after having a successful delivery on 20th of August 2011 at 7:43 am . After she staged a heroic 4-5 months sit-in in the hospital, the case has taken a curious national and international twist with the Communication Minister of Cameroon, Mr. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, this week coming out claiming that the stolen baby has been killed and has been buried. No more details were given. Does this corrupt regime have a hand in the disappearance of this child, and the stealing of a newly born baby? If this turns out to be the case, why is this? Will the law of natural justice follow its irreversible path? These are the intriguing questions that finally end this choral war drama of heroic deeds against despicable misdeeds.