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.