THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS GENOCIDE: THEIR CRIMINALITY SHALL NOT HAVE THE LAST WORD

It is normal in our day to doubt the reality of the devil. But if you doubt the existence of Satan, come to the former British Southern Cameroons(Ambazonia) and see what the devil, in form of genocide, has recently been capable of. Satan’s vital victory is when people don’t take him seriously. If they are not certain you live, people won’t try to halt your activities. We fail to take the Evil One earnestly. And as a consequence, we are ignorant of his strategies, his power, his massive military, and his horrible tactics. Most of our dissatisfactions originate from a silly self-confidence which takes too lightly our own abilities and underestimates the influence of our supernatural opponents. On Sunday, 1^st October 2017, a swamp of military men armed to the teeth swooped in on jubilating civilians in the major cities of the Southern Cameroons, weaponless civilians who were on festive mood celebrating their Independence Day. By the time their murderous and infernal mission was concluded, Paul Biya’s Mephistophelian military men had left more than 100 unprotected civilians butchered, over 500 arrested and arbitrarily detained, and several more injured in what has come to be the most recent and most despicable genocide in living memory and what is certainly a reckless desecration of not only the sacred but also the inviolability of human life.

Quite a lot of stories are recounted, questions asked and investigations carried out on this upsetting and disgusting 1^st October calamity to bear repetition here. Numerous perspectives have been given of who orchestrated this ongoing vicious siege, what led to this heinous crime against humanity and inquiries are being conducted on the monstrous deed. Whole bishops of the Catholic Church have described how “Government gave firm instructions…asking people to stay at home…The majority of the people who stayed at home were quickly visited by the Forces of Law and Order who intimidated them, arrested them and took some to where we do not know. I Buea, Kumba, Mamfe, Kumbo and Bamenda, this trend of activity was rampant. In Bamesing…some young men were caught and shot on the legs…Some people who were killed were carried away and it is not known where their bodies were taken to…It is reported that truckloads of people arrested have been driven down to Yaoundé…citizens of these two regions have been branded terrorists.” The tears and pangs of pain released on our suffering people by the reckless massacre still endures, and the people have stomached a great dose of anger against a despicable plague called government in Yaoundé. If the Ambazonians had no concrete reason for pulling out from the contemptible union they engaged themselves with the so-called brothers, the recent genocide unleashed on them is enough reason. 

When the Takenbeng mass Protest of 22 September took on such national and international breadth and success, we should have inquired why people in such great numbers came out seeking a hearing…but the international bodies in their blindness on things Africa, allowed Paul Biya to stage out his genocide and go free.The resourceful #GenocideInSouthernCameroons campaign has electrified a hitherto unsure international community to pay attention to a conflict that was formerly viewed as a parochial ‘Cameroon problem’. One gets the feeling that even in Africa people believe that the restoration of the independence of the Southern Cameroons(Ambazonia) by their beleaguered peoples is ahistorical or something that could well be checked by the dictatorial and irresponsible Paul Biya.

That is far from the mark. The Southern Cameroons problem may have its origin within the internal political framework of Cameroon, but something has occurred several times in our history that Southern Cameroons has not always expected and has instead, to their surprise reinvented an unyielding Ambazonian Federal Republic which has grown beyond the capacity of the Cameroon state to control and the people are stubbornly submitting their loyalties and wills to their leaders in homeland and the Diaspora. A 'wild, dangerous beast' has unleashed its fangs and teeth on our people. They are hurting. Paul Biya the Almighty and his military can kill the bodies of the people but they cannot conquered their wills and hearts. It is now the duty of the global community, the UNO. A crime against humanity has been committed in that State called the Southern Cameroons.

Delinquents of Genocide

Power has mounted the head of Paul Biya and it needs episodic nutriment in blood. They sat down  - Biya, Esso, Sadi, Fame, Tchiroma, Assomo, Belinga, Meka, Bokam, L’Afrique, Okalia - and cooked up the witches’ soup of genocide with which they judiciously worked it out and effectively have poisoned not us but the reputation of their whole country.Their goof has just been one metaphor for a country in pandemonium. And verily they can’t help their own self-inflicted chaos – this embarrassingly duplicators’’ recalcitrance. 1^st October we witnessed the Real Presence of Satan in our land in the ‘Beasts of no Nation’ called LRC militia. Today, a few weeks after, that Devil is still around; it has left land and has caught us nearly everywhere, even in the Diaspora,  in our very hearts, in our very minds, in our very wills. That Satan is the temptation to fear in areas that never troubled us before, protracted spells of discouragement, bouts of reservations that seem to eat us up, enticing appeals to wicked compromise, hostility toward other comrades, longings to give up on the liberation struggle, the lure to turn away from the means of God’s grace, apologies made for lack of progress, and dangerous remarks about other activists.

When we face these evil spirits, these demons, these trials, with courage, with the determination of true soldiers of the God of history, Satan the father of lies, the father of thieves will fly away; and therefore: ‘Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit.’ (Ephesians 6:14-17).

 The gory happening unlocks a new vista of examination and investigation into the dynamics responsible for the near-total extinction of an internationally recognized people, the Southern Cameroons. The recent Southern Cameroons massacre underscores the calamity writ large on a government that has traded human rights to the swamp of political bestiality and momentary economic trappings. It has advertised the intoxicating dangers staring the two Cameroons for exchanging basic human values for political gains and injudicious consolidation of power. It illustrates a frightening portrait of the alarming dangers that we face for the simple reason that we have downgraded the importance of human life in preference for money, pomp and power. It is as scary as it is intimidating and the pogrom visited on Southern Cameroonians recently, pictures a disgusting harvest we stand to gain from the families of the victims from this state of anomie. History never forgets, it only delays and when their time of reckoning comes, they would be tried by global law for crimes against humanity.

In the best of times, catastrophe is unavoidable for any regime on the verge of a high cliff of self-infliction. But under Paul Biya, the decimating conflict started since 1984. It began with the failed coup d’état where Tchiroma obtained his banchelors degree in state terrorism, and the consequent warning that a kleptocracy had sold the nation nd changed the name overnight to the so-called La republique that stands stupidly tall as metaphor for the wretchedness and misery of my people. It has been worsened by Biya’s inflexible narrow-mindedness and, deplorably, compounded by old age.  A thoughtless gerontocrat who doesn’t know the difference between the apple phone and an apple fruit decides to make a thieving promise of Chinese computers to famished youth , a pipe-promise that would take millennia to come. 

What is more, the rise of brutality and mayhem among Paul Biya’s political surrogates is connected to another disease: that of impunity. By impunity I mean the failure of national and international bodies to prosecute powerful individuals guilty of crimes against humanity. Here I am talking not only about the Tchiromas Bakary’s or the Belai. This involves those SDOs and Commissioners of police and army colonels who engage in vicious political and military action – beatings, kidnappings, lynchings – in the name of the State, and go scot-free. It is our job to counter the narrative of the Tchiromas who think they have a divine right to mess up our lives.

The Mission of the Governing Council

The problem-du-jour in the Southern Cameroon’s leadership is fairly obvious: the case of the hundreds of lives slaughtered by the Cameroon military, the thousands of our strong men in bushes and forests, and the other hundreds kidnapped to unknown detention camps. Little wonder that some people are now beating the drums of war at ear-tearing decibel. Many howl for blood. The social media has burst at its seams with invectives against one another. Facebook, twitter and whatsapp are teeming with all types of wicked propaganda. Each person believes he has the truth, and half-truths and entire lies are winning the day. All this boorishness makes the blood boil and the emotions threaten to jump out of the body for war.  I have seen individuals come out and daringly proclaim their willingness to die for the cause they so passionately promote. It is so terrifying; and there is this feeling we are already in war. These are normal feelings especially when we consider what bullies from LRC have wrought on innocent souls back home. Our people are justified in their fire and anger.

It is very easy to jump to open warfare. But when vision abandons us and the first bomb  explodes, and military cruelty takes over, and vulnerable civilians - the old, the weak and the helpless - begin to perish, the highway to solution begins zigzagging; and enormously expensive. Remember the destruction that accompanies wars. Remember the humanitarian disaster that visits war zones. Remember the lukewarm attitude of  the so called super powers and those who supply arms to us - remember their coldness when things grow awry. Remember those innocent people who would perish out of no fault of theirs. Remember the pillaging of property and landscape. Do arithmetic with this, and ask yourself if war is worth the sword.

The fact is, the price of warfare is difficult to measure. An additional reality is, no matter the morality for war, regardless of whatever provokes the fighters, warriors would still come to the debate table one day. Even in the nastiest of combats, people must still bump into each other at some point to dialogue. So why not spare ourselves the pains this time and rekindle the fire of our non-violent fight which in the 21st century is more compelling than gun and bomb. Think also of our military might; and you know the Bible is true: “suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won't he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?” Grief-stricken by the pictures of the innocent blood that has flown as a result of military bestiality and therefore the hundreds of lives lost in that carnage on 1st October, we can be tempted to anguish and compliance.

There should be no room for anxiety since we are on the right side of history. The independent State of the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia would not die. It would never be defeated. LRC apparently won the battle of exterminating unarmed civilians, but has not won the fight. The fight is of God and victory is God’s. This God has taken sides with the oppressed and no matter what the oppressor does, the tyrant’s ending will be Goliath’s.

Absolutely, the evil day is on us but we are not cynics. God the Almighty is our armor! We were prepared for moments like these. Stand steady in the evil day. Stand up for freedom. And therefore, Paul Biya’s criminality shall not have the last word. My rendition of this faith wells up from unshakeable convictions.

The time for true Ambazonian leadership and statesmanship has therefore arrived. In such volatile times, experience has taught that tanks do not necessarily bring peace. When outright war breaks, only innocent civilians on the ground agonize, and foot soldiers and internet stars come out scot free. And therefore Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, we know with your sagacity and smartness, with your humility and large-heartedness, with your fear of the Lord, you and your creative crew would know what to do to teach Yaoundé the lesson of their life. Culprit-Yaoundé must pay for it; yet we do it in a way that casualties are reduced. Among the things I propose  - and I do it with modesty – is that dialogue should still be prioritized even as we are fighting. I have not changed from my stance of non-violent combat. Combat in diplomacy and combat with the pen. In such ways, violence doesn’t. Dialogue does. Open talk does. Negotiation does.

But how do we talk of dialogue at this hour, how do we talk about dialoguing with a known crook, dialoguing with a person who has raped my daughter, killed my brother, knocked to near-death the head of my grand mum, kidnapped my parents and banished me from my own homeland. In the dialoguing table, whose case will this man of a housefly sponsor if not that of the leg damaged with wounds. In our justified misery we would ask these questions! Yet, we must eternally remember that even though laden with blood-cuddling challenges, and despite the gory 1st October, our people’s hearts still beat for peace.

Am I here proposing ethical passivity in the face of blatant evil? Far be it from me. Like the Catholic Church I am not a pacifist who rules out the gun completely. Let the Yaoundé genocide-plotting mafia be brought to justice because the lives of our brethren lost in that carnage would not go in vain. They will pay for their wickedness because self-defense is an absolute right. Even the Church endorses self-defense. If you break into my house, kill my son, rape my wife, and you are coming for me and I have a knife or gun I am going to gun you down; and go to Heaven with a clean conscience. If you shoot my weaponless father who is marching with a peace-plant  and shouting ‘no-violence’, and you are after my own life, and I catch you, you are not going to go back home alive! The story is that simple.

Dear Governing Council, take your time, take it slow and steady. Work on your own consciences. Don’t follow anyone but your hearts. Follow your judgment. Don’t allow yourselves to be bullied by anyone, even us who write these things. 

There is need for the Governing Council to be reorganized. For those who fear the word reorganization, let it be clear that it doesn’t imply destabilizing this body that has served us so faithfully within so short a time. Neither does it imply that we are going back to the status quo ante of pre-SCACUF.  That is implausible. Let no one deceive you – the diplomatic offensive Sisiku Tabe and Atam Millan undertook recently in Europe and the USA are among the finest activities this struggle accomplished. They, in their beautiful elegant appearance demolished the nonsensical Tchiroma Bakary classification of us as terrorists and made Paul Biya and his conmen look like political rascals. Just their(Sisiku and Millan)  statesmanlike presentation of themselves to the world and to their people won a great diplomatic point and whether we like it or not, the world looks at appearance before it looks at the reality. I was personally present at their Maryland USA visit and I felt as I have never felt the birth of a new nation, I felt for the first time that I had a president and it was the feeling of the thousands of people present at that come-together. So to me, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe has won the hearts of our people and we know that in sports we do not change the winning team.  But his Governing Council should be reorganized, and take on the look of a country and a nation. Reorganization is not a silver bullet. It won’t take care of our difficulties, but trying to solve our national crises without reorganizing the Governing Council effectively will amount to putting the cart before the horse. The bottom line is that if we are truly working for our people who day by day are killed and kidnapped and disappearing, we must stop this rivalry and power mongering and give way for reason and good sense to reign.

We can point to poor direction, bad management of finances and the need for attitudinal change, but these are symptoms of a much treacherous disease, the practical crisis that exists inside our camp. We are betraying ourselves and shouting out for the enemy to hear. This is the greatest malady, and not Millan or Tassang. Their conflict is just a symbol of what has wreaked havoc in our midst since 1961: Foncha and Endeley, Muna and Jua, Ben muna and Fru Ndi, Akere Muna and Sisiku Ayuk Tabe! The Bible warns us that “Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall.” (Luke, 15:17). But the Bible also admonishes us to look outside and see and try to be inclusive for “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” (Luke, 15:23). We would lead nowhere if we do not step aside and rearrange or reorder things. The undying words I have for the Governing Council are those I borrow from the great Pan-africanist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheen: “don’t agonize, organize”!!!

Deh Go Kill we Taya

You call us troublemakers and terrorists. The Southern Cameroons armed with a tradition of troublemaking, have scarcely spilt a drop of blood; LRC and their thugs have shed it in torrents. You call us terrorists; we don’t like the magidas up North own guns and knives. And so the Southern Cameroonians are left duly locked up by Ahidjo, Biya , because, unfortunately, one grain of LRC’s logic outweighs – to their own eyes – more than a cartload of Southern Cameroons’ testimony. Evidence is not their staple. So they go to prejudice, blackmail, brute force, to win their ends. They have flung falsehoods and fallacies on us. We have lived in a system that has repeatedly told us we are fools, bad, troublemakers, we are this and that. The thing is impressed in our minds so that we think we are fools, bad, troublesome, since they tell us so. They have flung this dirt on us. The proverb is true: ‘fling dirt enough and some will stick’. Some has stuck on us and it is therefore the duty of a writer to reinvent, to remodel what we are and to point the touch of who we truly are. You see that we are not dogs or rats or goats but men and women. Good men, bad men; weak men, but still men and women. Our job is to use evidence to strip off their fables about us, because we have been victims of their slander, calumny and obloquy. Our written culture is in our literature, in Sankie Maimo, Sanda Eba, Bate Besong, Bernard Fonlon, Albert Mukong, Bole Butake, Linus Asong. But new refined blood has been injected into the literary fray. And to this is the praiseworthy dexterity and grace of Mark Barah, Pauline Akoson, Chris Anu, Dr. Sly, Tapang Ivo,  etc. With their wit and literary flair, we have taken back our mental and psychological possession and denied to be spat upon, all this with irresistible arguments. They have used not only argument but also fiction to strip off the fables of Tchiroma and his LRC media surrogates about us. But I tell LRC this: If you continue to hold us on, you will neither rest by day or sleep by night; because the ghosts of our martyrs will keep you awake. 

That Cameroon is one and indivisible is their first principle. They think non but an idiot can doubt it. None but an Ambazonian can deny it. They think it axiomatic. I should never shrink from any controversy, having the experience of 30 years, that the more we get close to these ‘brothers’ the more distinct it is clear that unity is a farce. The Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) is more than a geographical location; it is a traditional entity. We have beliefs and practices which are peculiar only to us. Our culture may not be shouting but it is there – a mighty one. Like the rapids of a river, it is silent; but when it meets the rock the river of our culture speaks. It is our people’s habit of opinion, of feeling. These things are unwritten, unseen but like air, they are there. Only us truly feel it, sense it and especially when interrupted brutality by a vile regime, experience it. Their truth lives in the hearts and tongues of the Ambaland people. To tell us to surrender our land and live their lie is to tell a China-man to abandon his chopsticks and take on fork.  We know they are but feeble and fallible creatures.

Disgrace

For some time now, we have observed as criminal money has overran the peoples’ culture. Because money has become the standard measuring rod in this country, the society has sold out its cherished ethical values. It is shameful that chiefs ad fons who were custodians of these things are the first culprits. Ways of gaining money have been eased up such that no questions are asked of how one gets the money he displays unto society. This deeply contrasts with what obtained in the Southern Cameroons of our forebears where profound checks were carried out on any riches any member of the society flaunted. The noble court judgments were a ready weapon the Southern Cameroons society used to curtail the acquisition of ill-wealth. Then, it was unheard of that any Southern Cameroonian should espouse unlawful means to obtain capital. But LRC’s crooked habits have invaded the Southern Cameroons and negatively transformed the moral landscape as the adoration of cash and illegitimate affluence has swept our decent values away. The image of the brain drained chief  in town with loads of coins to spend has collapsed the entire society into the grips of the illicitly LRC political kleptocrats. Because with these illegal riches, one takes imposing control of all aspects of the community, it is all too evident that no one takes that long and honest road to success but cuts corners to make money and claim a top spot in the society. This we have seen in people leaving prisons conditionally to engage in such practices. This cancer has virtually permeated not only political and business lines, it has recently invaded religious and traditional palaces of the Southern Cameroon society. It has afflicted these zones and ensured that the Southern Cameroons reaps a basketful of anomies that threaten not only the foundation of the Ambazonian State but the complete edifice of our leadership.

If you want to live in denial or in doubt, look at the lawyers of Fako and their invisible drum-players – and we know those invisible guys who are playing the drum in the bush and the lawyers are dancing at the market square. This is disastrous and foretells a terrible scenario for the future of the Southern Cameroons if we do not stem these heavy tides. If lawyers begin to engage in such nefarious activities what happens with that age old saying of theirs that ‘Lawyers are for only what is right’? Ambazonia must return to that golden era of placing moral principles on the pinnacle of the Ambazonian State. We must take strategic steps to end this bizarre philosophy of daylight burglary if we don’t want to end up reducing Ambaland to a theater for such bleeding spectacles as we saw recently. In endorsing this moral rebirth, in determining to halt this lunacy, we must realize that indeed, it is an act-or-die obligation and the disadvantages of not acting are calamitous.

The Southern Cameroon genocide should serve as a wakeup call for our people that there is fire on the mountain. It is a reminder that our homeland is in dire need of its own government, parliament and the judiciary. It is a reminder that our people are in dire need of freedom, which can only come from returning to the ancient values that prize integrity, honesty, tolerance and justice. The Southern Cameroons massacre kindles a take-action-or-perish determination all Southern Cameroonians must follow or be ready  for an expansion of such blood-spattered dramas all over our beloved land.

I am not a mouse; and no hole entraps me. I am a person with a kingly state; it is unchallenged. ‘Why take it on yourself to write on such dangerous things when you can be relaxed in comfortable priestly calm enjoying the goodies clerical ease can afford in a world so troubled with want and misery?  Who are you to take a stance unlikely to wed with the Established order as you have done some time ago?’ I respond to myself that my deep-seated temperament when faced with optimal moral questions is incorrigible non-conformism.

I will not – even if a thousand church ministers do – sell out to the oppressor-bully. Once on the right side of history, I don’t care the damn! If I can be a linchpin to the struggle for the liberation of an afflicted, beleaguered and oppressed people, AMEN! 

Fr. Gerald Jumbam

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR OF OUR RESTORATION: TIME FOR PRAYERFUL COURAGE

It is remarkable how much the Bible has for oppressed peoples of the Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia. If we only know how much God loves us, how much He strengthens us, how much He protects us, we would not have anything to be scared of. Independence means auto-determination and therefore we are left to determine what we want, the way we want it, how we want it, knowing history and God are on our side. No amount of pressure would weigh us down. Comrades, remember always that “God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Only by Daring and by Doing did a State Grow

What we need is – especially in cruel, ruthless, terrorizing regimes like Paul Biya’s - wisdom that comes from above, smart creativity, but above all the moral courage to dare and do. We have never been wicked; the Southern Cameroonian has been upright, righteous and candor-loving. Of course, “the wicked man flees though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.” (Proverbs 28:1). Read your Bible and count the amount of times God says “Fear not.” My Bible gives me 365 fear nots; that is, in each day of the struggle for our independence God has dedicated one ‘fear not’ to each one of us for each day. 

When the sanctity of my conscience, the spirits of  my warrior ancestors and the fire on the breast of my paterfamilias assigned me this task of beacon for the oppressed, I did not know it was the beginning of a long journey that would peak with the complete restoration of the independence of our people, the Southern Cameroons. A plethora of threats and bullyings has been voiced by the La Republique du Cameroun (LRC) colonial ministers, governors and military agents against our peace-loving freedom fighting Southern Cameroonians. Ah my people, LRC is jaga-jaga! They think they would distract us. They will not frighten even an ant because it is our right to protest, and we are determined to go all length and all out. Protest is a divine right, inalienable and fundamental for oppressed peoples. And therefore, I like us to look at courage with the simplicity the word itself captures. It is an uncomplicated word which simply means: first to face a thing or person, and secondly to deal with the thing or the person. 

Daring and doing demands four dispositions from the freedom fighter:

1. audacity in the face of danger.

2. confidence in the face of hopelessness

3. firmness in the face of antagonism.

4. victory in the face of hostility.

Courage says: I won’t be frightened, I won’t give up, I won’t be panic-stricken, I won’t lose heart. It is amazing how much courage our people, the common man has mustered. To you and me, God is saying:  “Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous.

Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go,” And then “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” These are times to spend with God – times that David trusted in his living God to deliver him from the claws of Goliath’s oppression, and God did.

If Mandela were a Southern Cameroonian

No one who desires the liberation of the British Southern Cameroons after its many and hoary bondages can have any other feeling but joy, at finding from the recent national and international protests, that our people are resolved to the teeth to see their independence restored. For a freedom movement so badly scorched by the heartlessness of its oppressor and the silence of its so called elites still licking the flesh pots of LRC,  the Southern Cameroons liberation movement has some cause for optimism as the protests at New York and all over our Southern Cameroonian national territory disproved the naysayers who thought our enthusiasm was waning.
The sense of belonging our people have mustered, the sense of courage our leaders have garnered in homeland and abroad have given all and sundry a renewed sense of purpose and encouraged a surge in members, taking our numbers to many millions. What is going on in Cameroon today is beyond the grasp of the human mind. There is yet no evidence to me what the young country called Ambazonia came to such colossal global identification so speedily. However, its ascendancy to this height strikes me as indicative of the state of the Southern Cameroonian in the current dispensation. It goes to say that the Southern Cameroonian, both those at home and the Diaspora,  have lost complete confidence in  blood-sucking political structures that have never had an elected president. And therefore our euphoria and celebration is justified, the euphoria and celebration of our independence.

An African proverb holds that a fly with no one to advise it follows the corpse to the grave. If no one advised our brothers who came out from prison, let they who are nearer them do well to counsel them on the level the struggle has now assumed.

The way to make self-determination workable in our pale is for us all to first come down from our high moral tools – from those self-seeking tools where we can attract attention. It is I call moral grandstanding. It is a phenomenon where each person has this resolute feeling that they are exquisitely correct while others are incurably mistaken. For most of us there are most horrible cases only in other groups. We are pure and therefore the world is centered around us.

In fact, if the definition of a freedom fighter, as one who affects the mind of his generation, is true, Mancho Bibixy is candidly the greatest freedom fighter the Southern Cameroons has had in recent years. Arousing awareness and stimulating admiration appears to be what has enabled his civil right activism and aboriginal capacity rival such great men as Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. Yet Madiba Mancho Bibixy is to us more than just quantifiable greatness; he is to the Southern Cameroons a genuine symbol of the miracle the sons and daughters of this embattled nation aspire to achieve – complete restoration of their sovereignty.

And what is that miracle? Mancho was incarcerated many months ago, but he had taken good care in just very few three months before his imprisonment, to ensure we will never forget him. 

Agbor Balla lost a great occasion for a Mandela to emerge in him, when he fell into the trap set for him by Ben Muna and his legal surrogates. During court sessions, the heyday of his incarceration and the  D-Day that conditionally ended this incarceration of his moments in prison, the euphoria expressed in support of him in the Southern Cameroons defied region, religion and tribe. Southern Cameroonians were thirsting for a Mandela in Agbor Balla and Neba, but reactionary forces didn’t allow that opportunity.  In the short aftermath of their liberation from Kondengui, their actions and silences have spoken volumes. Sharing a cup of drink together among companions some few days ago, someone cracked the ribs of his onlookers with loud laughter that our leaders from Yaoundé prison cells have been ‘la republiqued’ or  - to use the famous Bole Butake lexis - ‘lapiroed’. I felt during that gathering among friends that we should not jump to hasty conclusions yet. They have, out of the prison, shown both the good the bad and the ugly in them, but we must not judge that we be not judged.

Perhaps, if Mandela were a Southern Cameroonian he won’t be recognized like we recognize him...he would have died in prison! And that is why we must recognize Mancho Bibixy for what he is, and tell the LRC kangaroo jurists and politicians that if anything happens to our Mandela Mancho and his associates in your prison cells, the anger of the gods of Mount Fako and the ancient spirits in the Menchum Falls would react and the wrath of the God I serve would not allow his life to go in vain. The response from Ambas Bay would shock them.

And this thing is simple. If we get a man who is selfless, a leader who assures Southern Cameroonians he would die for them, a leader who doesn’t allow blood money to soil his hands, a leader who doesn’t allow empty promises from colonial Yaoundé to thwart judgment,  Southern Cameroonians will follow him. Sisiku Ayuk Tabe has, in a matter of just months proven to be that Oliver Tambo we badly needed at this hour. His faithfulness to the cause of the restoration of our independence is unbending. His characteristic sangfroid, his dialoging and cohesive spirit, his boundless courage in standing upright against the tyrant, his humility in governance has given us a leader that homeland has believed in and acknowledged as their leader in a unanimity hard to describe. My hope is – and it is only a hope – that this spirit continues in the right direction and that we give him our support and encouragement.

The SCACUF Governing Council under the muscular leadership of Tabe, Tassang and Atam has galvanized the people and given focus, has encouraged unity among disparate factions of our struggle and electrified the people to stand up as one man at a time when LRC’s maneuverings have struggled in vain to spirit away the spirit of self-determination from our peoples’ breast. They have disappointed and fluffed LRC’s expectations since the struggle reignited. We thank Ayaba Chuo, Boh Herbert, Dr. Akwanga - they can not be forgotten in their concerted effort to unite and make things happen for our Ambazonian nation.We pray they join hands and we march to Buea as one man.

It behooves the present Southern Cameroon leadership to see the huge presence of faceless fraudsters around our struggle as signals that the battle to snatch Southern Cameroon from the jaws of LRC is still a long and winding war. So long as Southern Cameroonians find ground to solidarize with  compromised characters, so long will they remain caught up in deep muddle and grave moral crisis. Our leadership impelled by the lofty sagacity of his Excellency Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is rising to the occasion and has refused to take refuge in myopic tribal politics. They have distanced themselves from the federated empty-talk that for 30 years now has helped to feed confusion among our people.

What is more, Mancho Bibixy has shaken the very foundations of La Republique du Cameroun’s Pharoah-like resistance and the Yaoundé Apartheid colonial system has confirmed that there is no one like Mancho with Mandela qualities in the Southern Cameroons. That is why they have kept him in prison.

I wish I had known Madiba Mancho Bibixy more, much more. I wish he had been around a little longer to give us more inspiration to get to know the struggle a little more. I had the once in a lifetime opportunity to experience him spiritually during the Joe Wirba Kumbo rally. In his slightly feminine but powerful voice he could not hide his enthusiasm and his determination. It felt like KUMBO was the moment he had been waiting for the last 56 years. What a born freedom fighter!

Human Rights abuse of the most Horrible type

The shooting of civilians to death, using animal imagery to describe the Southern Cameroonians – rats, dogs, two cubes of sugar – has been a disgraceful fuel to what Ruanda went through in 1994. The Genocide. Until some few days ago our grand-mother from Ekona, a mother in her Nineties was monstrously pierced on the forehead by the evil hands of military bastards. Is there a good and bad method to portray wickedness? When a terrorist government wants to exercise beastly power over millions of unarmed civilians and protesters, when it has abducted hundreds and killed many, is what we call government in LRC any longer necessary? When that political cabal calls itself “ a one and indivisible State,” and it takes inspiration from atheist theologies abroad and rapes students and assassinates even prelates, why not refer to it as such? What’s the use of opting instead, to call it a government?

 We must learn to call things as they are for what has perpetrated the plague called North Korea is the fact that journalists had persistently called it before the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is obviously the antithesis of a democratic republic. Deploying words against  absolutism and despotism is difficult to do in Cameroon, even among writers, clergymen and journalists.  Yet, in the words of Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka, “Art should expose, reflect, indeed magnify the decadent, rotten underbelly of a society that has lost its direction.” The artist must see the rotten underbelly stinking rubbish that spoils the air of his people and propose ways they can do away with it or escape its debilitating effects.

I take off my hat for the resolute poor masses, the hoipolloi of the Southern Cameroons and I denounce the many elites of our land for their promiscuous use of poor people’s revolution, their hijacking of the achababoys’s anger against a despicable system, and their using it to benefit their empty egos and financial positions in the name of a federation that is an unnecessary option for the typical man of the two Cameroons.

The Southern Cameroonians’ determination in seeing LRC as an artificial edifice forced on their throat is dramatized in the thousands of calls its people have publicly made in protest.

And therefore, the idea of a one indivisible Cameroon is an absurdity. Cameroon is a collection of two self-contained and distinctly independent Political States, estranged from one another by territory, by divergence of history and traditions, and by ethnological, political, social and religious barricades.

Political upstarts from Amadou Ahidjo to Paul biya have radically altered the rapport peace loving people had with their history and torn apart their people’s sense of identity. In fact, things have fallen apart – to invoke the title of Achebe’s first novel – with the arrival of the colonial programme of Paul Biya and his terrorist attacks on the Southern Cameroons. He has lost legitimacy over them – a legitimacy he never had in the first place.

LRC has a scary history of perilously balancing herself on the cliff’s edge from time to time. And each instant frequently comes with a considerable quantity of nervousness and deadening horror. See what humiliation the almighty Laurent Esso passed through in Belgium – and yet would not learn. They take decisions which scare even supernatural forces to sympathize.

La Republique du Cameroun(LRC), this so-called nation, has arrived at the frame of mind of a madman oblivious of where it is going to. The pathologies that LRC suffers are incurable. Now, those who have argued that we have even never had a country now look the wise ones. We have only one thing to do: embrace our country Ambazonia, a brand new country for ourselves, with a people-driven constitution, and a leadership that is answerable to the masses. Only our Anglo-Saxon heritage can deliver the goods to guide us through a democratic journey. No more no less.

 The clamor for independence is the fundamental option of this era. It is fundamental because it is the final phase of the liberation of our people. Many people loud the word freedom as if it means everything we opt for. It does; but remember that even Paul Biya uses the word freedom when he emasculates us, remember he uses it when he abducts our children and parents. Remember that Tchiroma uses the word ‘freedom’ when he uses the apartheid LRC media to spew invectives on and parody our victimized and raped peoples. What I say is, that to qualify the plight of our people with the word ‘freedom’ or ‘federation’ is as lazy as the system that has put us in servitude for 56 years. It is independence we are talking about and therefore I am not just supplying an argument to the muddled debate over the evil that has been meted on the Southern Cameroons by LRC. I am making a case for the primacy of restoration of independence come 1^st October 2017.

The Southern Cameroons is no joking Matter

 The British Southern Cameroons’ peaceful protests, civil-disobediences and agitations have been long enough to justify us in acting as such, in matters of self-determination in the annals of history.

Its character, validity, and credibility, its tenable principles, its integrity and standing cannot more be approached as a matter of proposal or idea, unless we may plausibly so regard the Gambia and Eritrea. And therefore the Southern Cameroons is no subject of pastime or amusement. It is concrete material, it is existence, it is out there in the streets, it is the destiny of millions of people who are after legitimate space to breathe. It has become public property. In the words of the Psalmist, its “message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. God has made a home in the heavens” for this country, the British Southern Cameroons.  
   Of course I do not say that we have surmounted all huddles and filled every pothole on the matter of the case of our sovereignty. We say that it has a reality that needs more than human calculations, human reasoning, and logical semantics. It is reality itself and shows itself in this that life is life, that Ambas Bay is Ambas Bay and not some wishful thinking. You can’t simply reason it out, but you can feel and touch and hear and imagine and live it. There is a self-evident surety about it that only God can better qualify. That is why it were better we die than that the British Southern Cameroons doesn’t gain sovereign space. 

One cannot engage himself  like the Church, in matters of justice and peace and dignity of persons without getting involved in self-determination, in the dignity of people’s sovereignty. Freedom is God’s gift to you. He creates and allows you to make your decisions. To do your thing. When there is that sense of human worth, when it is difficult to allow any man trample on your personal rights, you can’t live under a yoke. You will fight for your people. 

At some period, liberation theology was treated with contempt by high profiled theologians. From  a parochial and purblind viewing, they saw Karl Max’s agenda in the work of South American theologians. Guiterrez and Boff particularly went through this screwing. Their detractors didn’t see the good battle these Latin American luminaries were doing with structures of poverty and unbridled capitalism. Theology of the tyrannized, theology of the downtrodden, theology of self-determination – whichever one you wish - calls for the men and women of faith to not only empathize or mind about the poor. It calls on them to cry for a 90 year old mother whose forehead is recently pierced by the bullet of a Cameroon military soldier-of-a-bastard, for nothing. It calls on them to engage spiritual communities onto moral values, onto improving the social standards of the marginalized and oppressed. It underscores the urgency of human dignity. The current Cameroon’s calamity, I believe, is largely a calamity of spirituality and morals. A society where unruly deportment from individuals and State goes scot free without penalty - the breeding of impunity.

Come to think of it, someone has even dared to pose as teacher to me on how I am supposed to comport on issues concerning the liberation of my people and the restoration of their stolen dignity. To teach me what I should know about this, is to teach the Pope Catholicism. It is impossible.

Fantastically fight, fight to restore your independence. Fight wherever you reside – homeland or Diaspora, keep the fight on. The only Kilimanjaro we are to climb is the determination to victory to independence even when depravity stares at us in the face. This is current and alive as I speak and with a sense of our history on board, we are ready to go any mile to see this through in the teeth of any adversity. This we do because we keenly feel we have matured enough to be vessels of our own Statehood, our own destinies, our own Country.

By Fr Gerald Jumbam

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[1] Psalm 19: 4; The New Living Translation.