Your Grace,
When I yielded to the earnest desire within me that I should write
you, a friend encouraged me to do so. I consented with something of the
reluctance which I developed when I thought of the huge and exalted task of
writing you. I rejected the thought of writing. After a little moment, I went on deep thought,
meditation and personal prayer about this issue. When I felt the call, I held
my pen and began writing until I arrived at this letter before you. It may
happen to some persons to feel surprised that it is a priest who is writing an
Archbishop. I do so with the happiness and conviction of speaking my own mind,
in conscience, about a situation which touches us all in Cameroon. These are my
own thoughts and solutions to our recent predicament - welling from unshakeable convictions. I have
written them freely without coercion from anyone but only being guided by my conscience
- a small voice telling me, ‘Gerald tell the archbishop and the world your own
convictions about the crisis bedeviling your homeland. Do so freely without any
fear knowing that you and the Archbishop are just citizens and Christians
seeking to know and serve God’. It is this voice in me that has enabled me send
you this letter in its entirety and helping the world also – by addressing it
an open letter - to learn from its ideas. I am happy to embrace this challenge.
Opening Remarks
I wish to begin straight away by informing Your Grace of the
raison d’être of my letter. I share the conviction of the Cameroonian who has
recently commented about your letter that “It is discernible from an anxious
reading of the first letter of the Bishops of Cameroon, that of the Bishops of
the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda and the present letter of the Bishops of
Cameroon that the latest letter of the Bishops of Cameroon is actuated by
political rather than Christian motivations.” To me the tone and spirit of your
recent letter is not only Pontius Pilating your brother bishops of the Southern
Cameroons, but the silence over what you were supposed to have done and have
not done, is an impeachment of your brother bishops West of the Mungo. What
were you supposed to do? I fear to expose my own ignorance of Episcopal
policies and proceedings, but I had thought that as leaders who feel for their
suffering brothers of English speaking Cameroon, you bishops of French speaking
Cameroon would write a public letter condemning the act of taking whole bishops
to court. We know who is behind these things; not so Archbishop? Why are we
pretending to call a spade a spade when we have been given the mandate as
Apostles of Jesus (who is The Truth) to defend the truth even on to the cross.
To me it has been a betrayal which the Church leaders of East Cameroon
ought to hang their heads in ashame.
Your silence has given the impression that the Bishops of our Church province have been disobedient to
the country. Our Bishops have not been unfaithful to the State. They have been
united to the State very much like a believing wife to a husband who is about
to commit suicide and so as a Christian wife holding to the relationship, the Bishops
have struggled recently to save not themselves, but the government from the crime
of political apostasy.
We of the Southern Cameroons, if we act consistently with our
history, we cannot be loyal subjects to the despicable and tyrannous Yaoundé government.
Archbishop, you speak of Decentralization
and you offer us it as the best gift you think fitting for the resolution of
this crisis? We are determined to decline a gift so laden with spurious
promises and deceitful propensities. And who can blame us for so doing? Who
should be surprised that Yaoundé would still do to Buea what it did after the
Foumban constitutional conference of 1961 – turn traitor to the very
constitution that bound them together as brothers with two equal strengths (and
not that spurious decentralization you are talking about that wants to equate
Buea with Garoua as if you do not know that Buea is the capital of a country
and Garoua is a mere region of another country) or turn Cain against his
brother Abel by killing everything we (Abel) had as culture, economy,
jurisprudence, education, politics, military etc. The Church is the joy and happiness of all of
us, and therefore, when justice cries out as it did in the Southern Cameroons
(with rapes and killings and abductions and military bestiality over
defenseless civilians), it is the duty of the Bishops to speak out loud for the
poor and the underprivileged. You spoke but we never got that loudness and that
weak voice gave the Yaoundé political cabal encouragement to go ahead. Our Bishops of the Southern Cameroons took
the bull by the horns and spoken out loud for the poor and used history,
scriptures and the Church’s social teachings to state their case because they
love the Church which is people and not money.
The world of politics has its own logic and truth that brooks no
breaking. One of them is that of nemesis – that any despotism that goes up
would come down. Yaoundé has perpetuated
that tyranny on Buea and that tyranny is about to have its nemesis. Remember
history – that there are two states in Cameroon represented by Yaoundé and
Buea. That is why I will always equate the two capitals for that is how it was
supposed to be.
I wish to let you know something of the people of the Southern
Cameroons which many French Speaking Cameroonians seem to be ignorant of. They
are people who do not distinguish between their love of country and their love
of the Church. They love those two things with their whole hearts. Their
patriotism is ethical, concrete, and religiously dutiful - reason why your
brother bishops of Southern Cameroons (in the example of that pragmatic
culture) have spoken for their subjugated and dispossessed people against such
a stinking political tyranny as Biya’s. That is why though many from East Cameroon
are comfortable with the atheistic
political system glorifyingly baptized laicite,
it has been scandal of the highest order to the religious sensitivity of
Southern Cameroons who like true Africans (and tinged by Anglicanism’s
reverence for God and respect for the
Monarch) believe that without God and indigenous culture life is impossible. We
know very well that this atheism we see in Cameron politics is not from your
own ancestors but it is borrowed from France. The people East of the Mungo have
been educated in Gallican opinions. We of the West have been educated in
Anglican opinions. The respect of each other’s opinions from those educational
systems have been what La republique du
Cameroun has deprived us of, and it pains us to the marrow. That is why our
teachers and lawyers took to the streets to peacefully demonstrate their anger
and protest against an evil system. They were met with an autocratic response
by a government you fear to criticize.
The Testimony of Early
Church History
Good Shepherds lay Life
for Flock
Times like this are
dangerous times. Times when our future is decide by a clay footed political
clique that has bastardized the fortunes of the British Cameroons to a
shambolic muddle. Sacred altars have been desecrated. For if we are to score
the Church leadership performance in these times, it will be clear to all that
the tail has been wagging the dog.
In moral and spiritual terms, much has been given to religious
leadership, and much is expect of her. That is why the tenacity and integrity
that Christian giants like Cardinal Christian Tumi and Cardinal Albert Malula,
Mgr. Oscar Romero and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. have mustered in the world,
take us back to the visionary words of President John F. Kennedy:
Of those to whom much is given, much is required. And when at some
future date the high court of history sits in judgment of each of us…recording
whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the
state…our success or failure, in whatever office we may hold, will be measured
by the answer to four questions:
Were we truly men of courage…
Were we truly men of judgment…
Were we truly men of integrity…
Were we truly men of dedication…
With the towering paradigm of Pope Francis in recent times, the
world correctly recognizes that Christianity has the potential to lead the way
as champion of mores and faith. Perhaps it would be much truer in the Cameroon
context. However, the current Catholic national leadership certainly has not
lived up to its possibilities, for the most part because the majority of its
bishops have been intimidated into silence and inactivity. A Bayangi proverb goes
that, “a man who cannot challenge what is wrong is not better than a
corpse”. We
are living in times where our political and spiritual shepherds have been found
wanting in challenging falsehood, and therefore Cameroon has turned in to a
graveyard, a cemetery of silence in the face of blatant half-truths, divide-and-rule tactics,
flagrant disrespect of human rights, mass abductions and killings. The National Episcopal
Council (NEC) has been silent because it concerns the British Cameroons.
Though it is disgraceful, we thank them. We thank them for the powerful memento sent to the world that there
are two countries in this country. It reminds us of the evil of silence before
evil.
We know very well that when
the National Episcopal Council (NECC)
speaks out, it is listened to by the political powers in Cameroon. When tinged
by the inspiration and endorsement of Cardinal Christian Tumi in 2000, the NECC
spoke against the canker warm of bribery and corruption. The whole world
listened and the government of Cameroon adjusted. Those were prophetic times
for the clergy. Spiritual leaders the world over are always pace-setters; their
intervention on socio-political disasters has always been prototypical,
precisely because it sets the tyrants quaking. With the retirement and deaths
among your circles, of names like Ndongmo, Tumi, Etoga, Wouking, Verdzekov,
Awah, the national Episcopal Council all this while has been a sleeping bag.
Today, NEC has been a fiasco, if we must speak the truth.
Cameroon should be courageous to accept they are flawed and stop
blaming France or Britain. The Bribery and corruption that we have been African
champions for more than a decade, is self-inflicted. Bribery and corruption are
a moral and spiritual problem. And therefore the moral and spiritual
authorities are to blame. If the Church
truly cared for its members, the problem will not be happening every now and
then. And the oppressed people of British Cameroons are undergoing something of
a genocide now because the National Episcopal Council (NEC) is on holidays, and
the world knows that too well.
We know what the bishops of the British Cameroons have gone
through from the national episcopacy because they kicked up the storm in the
daring letter they wrote (despite earlier hesitations) not because they were
hoping the leadership of NEC would notice, but precisely because they knew that
with the 2016-2017 NEC leadership in charge, every raped, maimed and unjustly
imprisoned British Cameroonian might as well add NEC to their laundry list of
Do-It-Yourself. The bishops of the British Cameroons came up with another
communiqué by the very to the effect that they have not closed down their
schools and that they are waiting for the Catholic pupils and students to
return to school. But right up till now, the pupils and students have not
returned, meaning that the parents have lost faith in the Church’s hierarchy.
It is precisely because the Cameroon National Church lacks the courage to
support what is right that people are going their own sweet ways. Is it asking too much from Church leaders to
say good shepherds must lay life for flock?
The Writing is on the
Wall
If situations were still as they used to be (by bishops not being
able to be taken to court in the face of a pernicious silence demonstrated by
their brother bishops), I would not hold my pen to write you and I would not
have the heart to write this letter to so high an authority as you. Your public
silence on the matter of the Bishops of our Church Province being taken to
court has provoked this letter from a priest of the Church you belong. We are not unmindful of the history of La
Republique du Cameroun when it concerns bishops betraying bishops. In fact, if those
ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, the Christian who is
ignorant of what role the Cameroon Church has played in the governing of
Cameroon is even less fortunate. And the metaphor of Bishop Albert Ndongmo’s
life is the one great example. Albert Ndongmo was
Bishop of Nkongsamba, born to a Christian family of La Republique du Cameroun. His statements on political subjects
earned him the hostility of others in the Church as well as of the government.
But the best statement about the life of this Oscar Romero of Africa came from
the pen of none other than the revered Albert Womah Mukong:
Bishop Ndongmo
understood those fellows and treated them as they deserved…A lot of rubbish was
spread round about him then girls whom he had helped were brought there as his
collaborators in crime. They were declared his girl-friends and even dirty
pictures of him and one Marie Bella were produced which a criminally minded and
gullible audience accepted without asking this simple question: how many
respectable people in the community would ever degenerate to taking photographs
of this act, how much more a highly respectable member of the clergy? Perhaps
his brother, Bishop Jean Zoa, believed in those things, for neither in the BMM
nor in the Tchollire days did he ever visit his brother nor did he send him any
material or financial help.[1]
The comment above about
Bishop Jean Zoa puts me in pain, so much pain because it is Albert Mukong
recounting this story in a book and not just an essay. Albert Mukong is a
respectable man in our parts of the world, and if you count three most highly
regarded human right activists in our country he must fall among them.
Consequently, there is truth in Mukong’s Zoa-Ndongmo
story above. The story above tells us
how the bishops allowed their brother into the hands of the ruthless political
psychopath that was Amadou Ahidjo. It is a story of backstabbing and betrayal
among religious leaders.
That is why I say
perhaps the Bishop Jean Zoa cooperation with the Ammadu Ahidjo tyranny against his fellow brother Bishop Albert
Ndongmo (recorded in the book above-mentioned) is a powerful metaphor of what
is happening in the Cameroon episcopate today.
“Shweri yii shaa baa yen
kinyi ke ngwev” as the Nso would advise you in our rich language. The wind has
blown away the feathers to expose the anus of the fowl. The Ndongmo-Zoa story
is a mesmerizing eye-opener, a revelation and the wind that did blow to remind
me and any other clergyman under affliction in our country that you will suffer
alone when trouble comes. When the Bishops of La Republique rejected and abandoned
their brother Bishop Ndongmo into the hands of tyrant Amadou Ahidjo, was it not
our Bishops of Southern Cameroons through the instrumentality of Mgr. Peeters
that consoled Ndongmo and stood by him and even got a lawyer for him from the
Southern Cameroons? So I expected from you the Bishop of East Cameroon this
time to do to the Bishops of West Cameroon what Mgr. Peeters in a Christlike fashion did to Albert Ndongmo
of East Cameroon . But recently you have failed us woefully.
There is a Country
“I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't.”, Desmond Tutu
By all means, Christianity loathes violence, attends to the poor,
defends the oppressed, embraces peace,
esteems the dignity of each human person. These are ideals espoused by the
cause for the restoration of the sovereignty of the British Cameroons. Most
likely there will be people with
personal cruel agendas. The British Cameroonians have been Mahatma Ghandis.
Contrariwise, the ruthlessness of their oppressors, has been registered by the
high court of history as they callously emit cruelty on peace loving peoples:
Buea/Bamenda, tell me, is this you, this back that is bent,
This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation,
This back trembling with red scars
And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun?
But a grave voice answers me:
Impetuous son, that tree young and strong,
That tree over there
In splendid loneliness amidst white and faded flowers,
That is Buea/Bamenda,
That grows again patiently, obstinately…
The words of the Cameroonian poet comes down to us, warm with
weight and wisdom. This adapted version of David Diop’s poem ‘Africa’,
addresses Bamenda and Buea. Darkness has descended on the British Cameroons in
the killings, imprisonments, abductions, rapes, graves of mass burials and
maim. Bamenda/Buea is facing viral alteration of psychic conditioning. In this
state of affairs, silence is criminal. The sense of urgency has lagged so much
that a month ago I lost my anger on a letter to a compatriot invading media
space with the banner, screaming: Homecoming or Homegoing – the Southern
Cameroons! It is a wakeup call no more
on failed internal religious and political bodies, but on Britain and
International Human rights institutions and activists, not to delay, because what happened in Rwanda
is at our doors. AU and UNO look up and act! UK look up and speak!
The urgency of speaking for despoiled peoples is so felt that I
don’t really care if this anger breaks the bounds of office. How could it be
when a priest is first and foremost a citizen. He owes his community a
contribution to its wellbeing for his upbringing. He serves God and recognizes
that the cry of the powerless and the voice of the voiceless is the cry and the
voice of God. Vox populi vox Dei. Anna Quindlen, said: “Look back, to slavery,
to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come
and go. The right thing lasts.” God lasts. Independence lasts.
The Church teaches its leaders a preferential option for the
dispossessed, for the hoi polloi. Before someone points the finger at me that I
am taking the role of Pope to lay down ways a priest should live today, let me
say that I do feel Christian ethics and
the Holy Bible would be unambiguous that the priest takes sides with the
subjugated. Evidently there is no moral compulsion as pastor to pasture the
flock in a particular way. But there is, I believe, a moral obligation as a priest, not to allow
oneself be used by tyrants to perpetrate spurious propagandas against the
defenseless. A clergyman, in my definition of that office, would not be someone
who takes sides with colonial governors against the oppressed. I strongly
believe that a priest worthy of the name, should go ahead and dare those forces
–morally, nonviolently and with determination - that keep millions of
constituted people caged in a cruelty so dehumanizing as the yoke over the
British Cameroons, our native land. This because, someday history will disclose
to him that those who took courage to work for their mother country, those who
spoke for the speechless, those who stood for justice, those who listened
attentively to the cry of the oppressed, and those who championed the cause for
the non-violently restoration of the sovereignty of a nation, have been
champions of whom all upcoming epochs will be proud.
Your Grace, The cause for the restoration of the sovereignty of
the British Cameroons is a one built on a big idea supported by legality. You
don’t kill an idea with the bullet or prison cells. It is established on a
winning banner that debate is stronger than the gun. The power of debate and
not the debate of power. This power of debate and legality convinces us beyond
all doubt that there is a country.
I look out of myself into
the struggle of our cause and I see a sight which fills me with appalling
sorrow. The ignorance of those who don’t
see it coming, who don’t see the plain truth of which my whole being is full.
There are two alternatives - the way to Southern Cameroons, and the way to la Republique. Federation is the halfway
house on the one side, and New Deal decentralization is the halfway house on the other. I have
been gravely disappointed with the federalists (the moderates). ‘Shallow
understanding’, says Martin Luther King, ‘from people of good will is more
frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of bad will’; that is
why the British Cameroon’s greatest obstacle in the walk towards independence
is not even La Republique’s CPDM or
Mgr. Kledda’s Decentralization, but the federalists. Federalists are cowards
standing on the fence – neither cold nor hot. They have left substance to
pursue shadows. The federalists do not know that it is their presence which is
the triumph of the oppressor; it is the sight of them which is the Southern
Cameroon’s confusion and helplessness. Our oracle of truth is independence, and
it looms high and has a reality, and its “Truth can fight its battle. It has a
reality in it, which shivers to pieces swords of earth.”[2] When we are skilled enough
to dance truth’s music, that truth will set us free. Truth be told: our
miseries as a people would accumulate from leaders being afraid to look
difficulties in the face, palliate falsehoods which they should denounce and
expect truths to spring from fabrications. I speak most earnestly when I say that
our great reawakening like great Achilles, has the soft spot of ignorance –
ignorance of who our opponent truly is. When we begin to see, all and sundry,
that the issue at stake is Independence, we would notice that the enemy is not
Paul Biya, but the structures put in place for a Paul Biya (or any other la Republique party chairman like Ni
John Fru Ndi ) to cage us inside this prison of
despicability forever.
The cause we are undertaking is (to use the words of St.
Augustine), “an abyss so deep as to be hidden from him in whom it is”. Many
have only hints and glimpse of what it truly is. It is a herculean task. But it
is hallowed by God and no one has to be afraid. Is it too difficult to realize
that a constituted people are deprived of sovereign air and autonomous space in
the 21st century? Is it too
difficult to realize that they are bent and determined on anything to see their
goal attained? The good news is that we speak with one voice, thrash out disharmony. It is good news. The
British Cameroons’ struggle, its most significant quality is the re-opening of
topics politicians of doom have tried to close down since the rain started
beating us. It is a breath of fresh air we should be proud of, to stand tall
and speak out, and speak out for future generations. I am comfortable to cross
the red sea with a Moses. It may come out tough, yet there is no complexity
that can’t be worked out with a good crack of Kolanuts, in the mouth. Kolanut
in our traditions is symbol of integrity, symbol of unity, symbol of life, symbol
of love, symbol of strength, symbol of sovereignty.
The Magna Carta of
Liberation
Your Grace, Mahatma Gandhi once spoke disapprovingly of the
followers of Christ when he read the Beatitudes. He said he was charmed by the
magic Christ’s words held, and therefore he loved Jesus. He could, but he would
not be Christian. Christians in India discouraged him. They did not practice
Christ’s beatitudes, and so, “I like your Christ, I do not like your
Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ, ” Gandhi exclaimed. The beatitudes are the
secret keys to the Promised Land. They are the magna carta of liberation. The beatitudes are self-determination.
Self-determination championed by the poor, the meek, the weak, the humble, the
voiceless, the persecuted, the upright, beside us: ‘Blessed are those who
hunger and thirst for uprightness: they shall have their fill’ (Matthew 5:6).
Blessed is the British Cameroons under colonial yoke, they shall have their
independence restored to them.
Choose what you like, but you can’t open eyes and not see the
valley of tears of our people and their quandary in a despicable Cameroon New Deal apartheid cage. It takes faith to keep their spirits
afloat. And what is faith? Faith is a simple ‘yes’ to my heart and my
conscience. Faith is Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s “I wish I could shut up, but I
can't, and I won't.” Faith is Patrice Lumumba guillotined for an embattled
continent. It is Nelson Mandela’s “if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am
prepared to die”. It is the British Cameroons’ “enough is enough”. It is a sweet kiss whistled on the lips of a
fatherland in the restoration of its Independence.
There is a mustard seed that is deep in the heart of every human
being. It is faith. “Were your faith the size of a mustard seed you could say
to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey
you.” (Luke 17:5-10). Let us believe without seeing, and sing when our voices
are cracked, and move to victory. And were your faith the size of Mount Fako,
you will tell the mountain to move and plant itself in Ndop Plains, and it will
do!
Criminals Without Crime
Our people say that when the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a
hole nearby. That hole for us is God. We are fighting a battle of the oppressed
and God has never failed underprivileged peoples. Sometime ago, I arrived at a
motto of life which I like to remodel once more and bring to use: “You only
Live Once”. Then some weeks ago I shared with a priest-friend, this good news
of a rule in my life. The gentleman
laughed. He asked me and I gave him the reason for such a pledge. I said I find
it atrocious that poverty has been death penalty passed on the crimeless people
of the British Cameroons. Criminals without crime!
Your Grace, there is a recent story of two girl friends, one
Bafia(French Cameroon) another Babungo(the British Cameroons) who congregated
along buyamsellam lines in Bamenda
food market and after petty gossips of what caused the wild fire that consumed
the market, they landed on the following informative discussion:
“A young man is suffering terribly in jail in Kondengui, my
boy-friend” Babungo said. “It is the right thing for him. Are you for the
restoration of Southern Cameroons independence?” Bafia intervened.
Babungo seems startled “of course”.
“You Francophones” she continued. “You’re so lucky to be free:
free internet, free boyfriends, free husbands, free children, free people. But
living in the British Cameroons, it’s impossible to escape brutality, it hangs
in the air.”
“You can’t really blame the air for brutality” Bafia cuts in. “The
brutality is generated by you Anglos. 55 years under domination, for nothing,
for not taking your destiny into your hands. That’s quite a prison sentence!”
And that is the word: prison sentence. crimeless criminals serving prison
sentences. But the rumbling of the people’s anger is on.
I tell this story to say that it has reached a level where we have
to dream our own dreams, live our own views, believe our own beliefs, and do so
with dignity. On the recent imprisonments without crime of the cream of our
native land, it is difficult to comprehend. But let us be consoled by the brave
Martin Luther King Jr. : “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that
conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of
imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its
injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.” Let this be
known: arrests of freedom fighters is an advantage. It hastens freedom. Christ
was arrested. The apostles were arrested, but sang alleluias in prison cells
and bamboozled their oppressors to shock. They knew, as I know today, they only
live once. The imprisonment of our leaders is a warning: freedom is important
but fragile. Sovereignty and liberation are won at great price. We must guard our liberty stance like egg and
not allow the British Cameroons’ non-violent revolution be hijacked by
exploiters of popular anger. The problem is not Paul Biya, neither is it the
military all over our land. It is disunity planted by those who enjoy the flesh
pots of Yaoundé and won’t move an eye for a united moral force against a
communal threat. But the poor masses are wiser than power seekers know. When
the anger of Mount Fako’s Chariot of God and the Holy Ghost of the Kilum hills
will rise! (The time is near):
You shall cross the barren desert but
you shall not die of thirst.
You shall wander far in safety though
you do not know the way.
You shall speak your words in foreign
lands and all will understand.
You shall see the face of God and live.
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine
In a nation where
silliness is given a standing ovation and fools ride on royal horses, a sell
out like PM Philemon Yang who shamelessly takes himself a dishonorable recent
trip around the North West, should be taken critically. Cameroon’s false impression of greatness and self-styled portrayal
as the island of peace in a sea of troubled Africa has been exposed for what it
truly is. The Internet blockage and the mass abduction of the British
Cameroonians to Yaoundé by the republican forces of lawlessness and disorder,
expose them as a flimsy country pretending to be tough. Our people say that there is no greater
injustice than when anus farts, head receives a knock. The tyrant who is oppressor
has engaged in placating international eyes that he is the oppressed. What a
shame!
The heart of our people is bleeding. They are carted like cattle
in groves into prison yards away from homeland to Yaoundé. In a country where
you are arrested because you are poor, in a
country where you go to prison because you have no godfather to back you
up, in country where you are put behind
bars because you stand for justice and freedom – in such a country, good men
must rise up to say Enough is Enough.
Now that
the shambolic regime is abducting our strong men, how do we gain patience when
we are challenged by hurtful things? How do we pick up patience when a villain
has cut the throat of a beloved, when a loved one has been raped from life by
impious brutes? The undisclosed trick is to busy yourself with some other thing
in the period in-between. Gandhi said “If patience is worth anything it must
endure to the end of time.” Patience is protest in non-violence. Patience is
Mahatma Gandhi’s “Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of
mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the
ingenuity of man.” Many people gamble with their lives. They take disasters for
wives or husbands because of lack of some little patience. And they pay for it
when the mask falls off. Patience is faith in a journey fraught with dejection
but rewarding still. Once patience goes, everything goes. It might take a day,
it might take a year, it might take a decade, what will be will be. So be patient.
”Be patient, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. Think of a farmer: how
patiently he waits for the precious fruit of the ground until it has had the
autumn rains and the spring rains! You too have to be patient; do not lose
heart, because the Lord’s coming will be soon.“ (James: 5:7-10). One patient
pause in ill-tempered times can save us painful apologies after. Organization
is patience. Patience in other words is stock-taking. Patience is telling the
tyrant NO, and giving time waiting to gain breathe, to build other strategies
in the darkness of the cause. It is victory when it looks like defeat. Courage
is patience. Leadership is patience. Truth is patience. Integrity is patience.
Freedom is patience. Ma pipol, mumu don do. A mumurised people are doomed forever. We
tried. Your Grace, we tried. We tried. We are tired. Patience is
enough-is-enough. The danger signals are enough. UNO, AU, UK, act now or never!
A stitch in time saves nine.
Conclusion
The fortunate have been able to break through this militarized and
ignominious iron curtain with freedom songs in foreign lands. The rest back
home have been blocked from internet use and therefore have had for about 93
days no media through which to inform the world’s people of goodwill of the
shocking evils each day exacted on their British Cameroon compatriots. Alas, we
have eaten the bitter fruit of blind compromises made with boorish neighbors.
We have learnt from this concubinage with
Cain, that he who keeps a scorpion in his pocket must constantly watch
his groin and he who inherits a cobra should know a cobra is not a pet. The
lesson is learnt once and for all.
Your Grace, because we are commissioned to preach “the good news
to the poor… announce release to the prisoners and … to set oppressed people
free”(Luke 4:18), I will do all it takes. I will comfort the powerless people.
I will pull them out of the affliction of so painful a colonial yoke. The world must hear their story through me.
There has never been a time like this fitting for this challenge. My defense
for a fatherland is put on this context. In fact, preaching to empty stomachs
without showing them how to come out of misery is as worthless as saying Mass
to dogs. Go grant them the secrets to improve on their standards of living and
conscientization to bring down the tyrant who has held their progress hostage.
Go tell it on the mountain that injustice has been practiced on depraved
peoples for the whole length of fifty-six years.
Of course, Amos’ denunciation of social injustices quickly puts
the poor in perspective: “Listen to this, you who trample on the needy and try
to suppress the poor people of the country” (Amos 8:4-7). Archbishop Desmond
Tutu is told to have said that when the missionaries came to Africa, they had
the Bible and we had the land. They said “let us close our eyes and pray.” When
we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land. This may not have
exactly been true but there is some grain of truth in it when we consider the
type of doctrinal material we got from missionary pulpits in those days and how
all wealth was bad. That Christians should have nothing to do with the things
of the earth. Abandoning their lands and properties to gain passport to Heaven.
That is bad and dangerous theology. Here is the type of theology that
impoverished our people. They gave up their lands and forests and mines and
best places in cities to imperialists and ended up empty. Churches, mosques and
synagogues should be careful. Religion has sometimes been used to impoverish
the already despicable situation of poor people. What I mean here is the social
doctrine of the Church. And where Christianity stands there is
Self-Determination.
Your Grace, you may wonder why such an important letter like this
to such a respected personality like you was not written in French for your
personal benefit and the rest of the Cameroon Francophone episcopate. The
simple reason is that English is the language that the British taught their
colonial subjects in the British Cameroons. And so I want to ask Your Grace,
what France and her subjects are doing in a British colony at this time in
history? Would it not sound strange if for instance the people of the British
Cameroons moved to neighboring Equatorial Guinea and were asking in English the
people of Equatorial Guinea to accept the British Cameroons control of their
territory when everybody in Equatorial Guinea knows that Britain was not their
colonial master?
Accept
then, Your Grace, the expression of my gratitude for taking time to go through
this message from the pen of a priest of the Church which you are Bishop.
Yours
devotedly,
Fr.
Gerald Jumbam
