THE PROBLEM OF THE BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS: INDEPENDENCE OR FEDERATION?

 

Devoid of commitment into the theology of self-determination, the Church in my homeland would remain outside the world of our people…for the Church has to take its place at the creative centre of culture.  Gerald Jumbam

This essential duty of telling the truth makes the writing of History a thankless and even dangerous enterprise, especially if the Historian has to reveal unpleasant facts about people in high places – alive and powerful!  

                                       Bernard Fonlon in The Genuine intellectual

As the political fabrications, State fictions and lethal forgeries of La Republique du Cameroun’s (LRC)government on Southern Cameroon’s agony continue to infect media houses, it is perhaps more fitting than ever that we turn to something which has always demanded that we look more closely for the root of the Southern Cameroons problem. 

The high court of history is that thing. And therefore historical truth is widely reckoned to be the most powerful weapon against bloodsucking oppression and colonial propagandas – the type the Southern Cameroons is victim to in Africa, at the moment. It was the eminent German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer who said “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” Theodore Herzl was laughed at when he conceived in 1896, the idea of a Jewish State. After a year, he challenged his enemies: “At Basel I found the Jewish State, If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years and certainly in fifty years, everyone will know it.” On May 14, 1948, exactly five decades after, the State of Israel came into existence. Today everyone recognizes it, and this is preeminently self-determination –the type that is gaining ground and taking root in the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia nowadays.

 I talk from – I must confess right away – the standpoint of son of one ageless institution called the Church. Each time a country is declared independent, each Pope earnestly cheers it. The Church believes in freedom from tyranny of browbeaten peoples. One cannot engage in matters of justice and peace and human dignity without involvement in self-determination, in the sovereignty of constituted peoples, and in the liberty of chained human beings.

Self-determination is hinged on the principle that man is born free.  That his dignity is inalienable. That man is pinnacle of civilization. That there is a Creator. That man is image and reflection of that Creator. That God communicates to everybody and that conscience is that medium which this Higher Power talks to us. 

The theology of Self-determination à la Gerald Jumbam rules out armed struggle and sees Mahatma Gandhi as the Morning Star. It believes that where there is truth the Holy Spirit blows and where the Spirit is, the impossible is enabled. It is hatched from God but takes flesh in man’s concreteness and daily doings.  It eggs on members to change political systems that unman, that enfeeble. It  believes in transforming structures rather than adopting colonial emasculating vestiges. It faces empire theology head-on and says No to its debilitating machinery. It believes that one culture is as good as another and so all of them must go through a self-purification when they meet God. It looks at banana republics as bastions of exploitation and is warrior against exploitation and dehumanization.  It is refuge of slaves and voice to the voiceless. It believes with Aristotle that action is the way forward in that “there is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” It believes in the relevance of history and holds that politics can only be service if its doings are connected to moral values and anthropological bearings. These root-elements are absolute kings in the life of each human person. Without these first principles, self-determination is completely misunderstood. 

The theology of self-determination therefore finds concrete expression in the flesh and bone of the ignominy of human suffering.

The victims of human calamity are the material of this creative theology. The Church faithful to her Incarnate Spouse Jesus would incarnate itself in the flesh and bone of our lives. She plays the role of whistle-blowing when tyrants strike the defenseless. She blows her whistle for non-violence by encouraging protest and moral defiance. Theology is either facing these particular practicalities and therefore at the very creative core of contemporary life or it is dead and buried. The one that flows in my blood and the veins of millions of British Southern Cameroonians today is theology of self-determination. Its dynamism in our hearts remind us of Pope Francis’ “the People of God is incarnate in the peoples of the earth.  Devoid of commitment into the theology of self-determination, the Church in my homeland would remain outside the world of our people. It would masturbate with irrelevant phenomena and be dumped in the trashcan of history.

                                                         

Were we to follow the assessment of the diverse qualities involved in the theology of self-determination, we should find that they can all be totaled in the word ‘redemption’. The demand for redemption – in other words liberation – makes the self-determination theologian uncomfortable with narcissistic givens that allow millions of poor miserable people wallow in yokes of oppression and wickedness. This brings the Church to the market place. For the Church has to take its place at the creative centre of culture for “each people is the creator of their own culture and the protagonist of their own history”[2] and therefore any God-oriented theology must return to and respect the people’s anthropology and the people’s history. 

How does one begin to slash through this medley of connected matters of self-determination’s theology in an embattled context like the British Southern Cameroons? History bears us witness and furnishes tangible facts. It was Eduardo Galeano who said: “History never really says goodbye. History says, ‘see you later’”. The powerful rise today of the feeling of independence that has invaded the hearts and minds of British Southern Cameroonians testify to the relevance of Eduardo Galeano’s words above. The proof of this on the case of the British Southern Cameroons nationalism is the burden of this write-up.

British and French Cultures: Essentially different Worldviews 

Since we live in times in which silence is not only immoral but dangerous, to have full knowledge of the tricks and intrigues surrounding the independence of the British Southern Cameroons, is the most important thing to do now. To know this, it is vital to delve into the history of Cameroon itself. Before 1914, Cameroon including Northern Cameroon that is now part of Nigeria was ruled by the Germans as one country. When the First World War broke out in 1914, France and Britain in other to cut off supplies coming from German colonies to help the German war machine in Europe, attacked Cameroon. The British led by General Charles Dobell attacked Germans in Cameroon from the West and the North while the French under General Joseph Aymerich attacked from the East and South.  In 1916 the battle of Mora sanctioned the complete conquest of German Cameroon by the French and British forces.

Between 1914 and 1916, Britain and France attempted to jointly rule the territory of the Cameroons in a system of administration which has gone down into history as the Condominium. In spite of the efforts at joint administration, the British and French realized that their cultures and worldviews were essentially different and that try as they could, French and British cultures could never peacefully live together in one territory. Seeing how General Charles Dobell and the British were behaving as if they were the sole rulers of Cameroon and seeing that the French were playing only second fiddle in administrative matters, the French administrator Picot suggested that German Cameroon should be partitioned into two, so that, each foreign power could rule its own part of Cameroon independently of the other.

For this purpose, a conference of French and British diplomats was convened in London in 1916 and by the London Agreement in 1916, Britain and France formally debated and agreed upon the temporary partition of Cameroon into French Cameroon and British Cameroon, along what became known as the Picot Line.
By this partition, Britain received roughly one-fifth of German Cameroon while France received about four-fifth of the territory. The main reason for this unequal sharing of Cameroon between Britain and France was that France argued that Britain had already conquered and taken German Tanganyika alone and could not therefore expect to get an equal share of Cameroon with France which had no share of Tanganyika.

Cameroon is Permanently Partitioned

When the First World War came to an end in 1918, the world powers convened a conference in Paris and its environs to attempt to redress the problem that had been created by the war. At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the world powers asked Britain and France to decide what should be done to the territory of German Cameroon which they had conquered during war. To meet the request of the world powers, British and French foreign ministers met in a small conference of their own to decide the future of German Cameroon. The final resolution of this get-together known as the Milner-Simon Agreement of 1919 was that the temporary partition of German Cameroon into French Cameroon and British Cameroon along the Picot-Line should become a permanent partition. To reinforce this permanent partition of Cameroon into French Cameroon and British Cameroon, customs officers of the two foreign powers were jointly placed along the Picot-Line. Hence you had customs offices at Munyah after Kutupit, at Santa in Bamenda, and at Fontem in Lebialem. In fact an international boundary was created between French and British Cameroon and Britain actually began building concrete pillars from the coastal South West region of Cameroon to mark the new international status of the British Cameroons.

And it is very clear that you do not have joint custom officers operating within the same country, but they operate only on the boundaries between one country and another.

That is why when the League of Nations was created, the British Cameroons was admitted on July 20 1922 as a completely separate mandate of the League: separate, that is, from the French Cameroon mandate. The two independent territories assumed the character of two different nations. And they were acknowledged as Mandate “B” Territories of the League of Nations Mandate Commission at Geneva in Switzerland. In the language of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, a Mandate was a territory that was either ripe for independence or was being prepared for its independence. In the conference of 1919, only some territories in the Middle East qualified as Mandate “A” Territories and were immediately given their independence. 

No African country in 1919 qualified for immediate independence, in spite of the Pan-Africanist struggle of Dr. WEB DuBois. But by this arrangement, the British Cameroons was named a Mandate “B” Territory, that is, a territory whose independence could come in the foreseeable future. French Cameroon also received the status of a Mandate “B” Territory and was ruled, guided and given its independence by France in 1^st January 1960. 

The British Colonial Mischief

Now instead of the British guiding and preparing their own territory for independence as they were supposed to have done, they tried to do everything in their power to bar the British Cameroons from achieving independence, as had been expected when the League named Britain as the Mandatory Power of the British Cameroons. In fact knowing fully well that independence went along with education, the British Government throughout its stay in the British Cameroons from 1914 to 1961 never established even a single secondary school in the territory. The only effort at secondary education was undertaken solely by the Catholics and the Protestants. 

In the British Northern Cameroons, primary schools were very few and far between, and in many areas in the North, schools were completely inexistent. The highest level of education anybody in the British Cameroons could therefore dream of attaining was the First School Leaving Certificate and even those who had it could be counted on your finger tips. 

That is why when the United Nations Organization (UNO)took over the affairs of the defunct League of Nations and promoted the British Cameroons to a Trust Territory, the British had nothing to show by way of preparation for the territory’s independence. In fact, almost all first generation British Cameroon politicians had nothing other than their First School Leaving Certificate to rely upon in matters of independence and State governance. See the Fonchas, the Munas, the Ngom Juas and the Mallam Abba Habibs. 

Conscious that it had failed in its duty to prepare the territory for its independence, the British spent useful time trying to dissuade the British Cameroon politicians from fighting for their independence. One of the false arguments used by the British to scare British Cameroon politicians from the independence option was the lie that the new State would not be economically viable to stand on its own feet. The huge oil deposits in Limbe and Bakassi Peninsula today for example, have proven beyond doubt the falsity of this argument. Moreover, as the British did not create institutions of higher learning in the British Cameroons, they felt that the territory did not have well-trained personnel, that could run the different ministries in the event of the independence of the territory. The thousands of the British Cameroonians working internationally in such countries as Canada, Britain, USA, Belgium, South Africa and S. Korea show very clearly that the time for British Cameroon independence is long overdue. Finally America and Britain believed during the Cold War days that small states such as the British Cameroons could easily be overrun in the face of Communist expansion. But today Communism long collapsed in Russia in 1989 with the arrival of Glasnosts and Perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev. What then can today stand in the way of the independence of the British Cameroons? Nothing.

Independence is Non-negotiable

We remember how at the Mamfe Conference of 1959, after the deadlock caused by Britain in the struggle to arrive at a consensus point for British Cameroon independence, Britain went ahead to connive with the UNO to impose a plebiscite on the British Cameroons on February 11 1961, in a territory where there was not supposed to be any plebiscite, but outright independence. A plebiscite is usually organized only in a territory where there is a mixed population as in the German Sudetenland in 1938. In the case of the British Cameroons, which nationalities were mixed with which? We were all one nationality – the British Cameroons, and consequently there was absolutely no need for any Plebiscite. What was absolutely necessary was the independence of the British Cameroons. And both Britain and the UN all knew this very well. Hence the Plebiscite question “Do you choose to gain independence by joining the Federal Republic of Nigeria or by joining the Republic of Cameroon”?

The point to note from this so-called Plebiscite question is that you do not become independent by becoming dependent on another territory. You become independent by being on your own, and by taking your own destiny into your own hands.

As we have seen, in their 47 years stay in Cameroon, the British never setup even one secondary school in the British Cameroons. Consequently, the people to whom the so-called Plebiscite question was asked could not reason out the fraud in the whole Plebiscite exercise. 

However one thing remains clear from the so-called Plebiscite question: “Do  you choose to gain independence” means that the UNO knew fully well that they were supposed to grant independence to the British Cameroons.

And that is what the people of the British Cameroons are today asking Britain and the UN to do. For is it not a shame that the UN should constitute itself into an instrument of fraud over the British Cameroons question? Is it not a shame that Britain that has protected human rights and liberties in other climes as in the Magna Carta and the Habeas Corpus should be found trying to suppress the right and liberty of its people whose care and protection she once promised to ensure and guarantee when she took up the Mandate of the British Cameroons in 1922?

UNO’s Task of Today

Believe it or not, therefore, there is today in Cameroon a British Southern Cameroon Problem. And this problem is simply the refusal by Britain ( the colonial master) and the UNO (the guarantor of world peace) to grant independence to a territory which was supposed to have its independence as other African countries were doing in the 1960s. 

If Tanganyika a former German territory and Mandated territory of the League under British rule was given its independence by Britain in 1961, what must have happened to Britain from equally granting independence to the British Cameroons which was also a former German territory and the Mandated Territory of the League of Nations under British rule? If the British Cameroons were not supposed to be independent, why then did France and the UNO go ahead to grant independence to the Trust territory of French Cameroon on 1^st January 1960 without consulting British Cameroonians? The British Cameroons was therefore not part of French Cameroon independence and was supposed to rightfully as well have its own independence from Britain and the UNO.

In fact how cometh that Namibia which the world powers qualified as a Mandate “C” territory (i.e. a territory with remote chances of becoming independent) should come from behind and become independent while the British Cameroons that was called a Mandate “B” territory in 1919 by the world powers should still today be begging cap in hands for its rightful independence from the UNO?

Therefore if the UNO does not turn round and look at what is happening in the British Cameroons today, the UNO will be held responsible by future generations for the bloodshed that is looming in this area of Africa. And it is this habit of neglecting what the world calls little events which led to the outbreak of World War I when Archduke Francis Ferdinand was murdered at Sarajevo in 1914.

So this is the time for the UNO to step in and solve the problem she created in 1961, once and for all, in the interest of Africans and world peace.

 And nothing short of the independence of the British Cameroons can be the answer to the dangers looming in the horizon in this troubled West African region. Fortunately, political fraud can no longer do in the 21^st century what it once did in this part of Africa in the middle of the 20^th century.

In fact those misguided British Southern Cameroonians who are calling for a Two State Federation with La Republique du Cameroun(LRC)are those who foolishly but wholeheartedly accept the results of the so-called plebiscite of 1961. The independents/nationalists on the other hand are those who argue that the plebiscite of 1961 was a violation of the Milner-Simon Agreement of 1919 because the permanent partition of 1919 could not become a temporary partition in 1961. 

Whereas the plebiscite of 1961 was tele-guided by Britain to suit her whims and caprices, the Milner-Simon Agreement was ratified by Britain and France and endorsed by the world powers of the time: America, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Japan, Italy and South Africa, that is, by all the world leaders assembled at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

Indeed the South African president Jan Smuth was one of those who endorsed the Milner-Simon Agreement of 1919. Smuth actually went ahead and like Britain got the Mandate over the other German colony of German South West Africa (today Namibia). Is it any wonder then that South Africa has readily accommodated the Southern Cameroons Broadcasting Corporation (SCBC) in its territory?

This is so because the South Africans know the story of the British Cameroons from inside since the South African Government was actually one of those countries which in 1919 endorsed the Milner-Simon Agreement when both the United Nations Organization(UNO)  and African Union (AU) were not yet in existence. The story of the British Cameroons is obviously in the South African Government files of that time because South Africa got her independence from Britain in 1910 and in 1919 she was already nine years an independent country which had joined the Allied Powers to fight against Germany and the other central powers in World War I. 

The Time is Now

And therefore those who are still calling for a federation to LRC should stop it because when the facts of the  British Cameroons Question would be examined from official files, the federalists would be ashamed to learn that they have been stupidly backing the wrong horse. Historical facts indeed don’t lie. History has been a great tool at the service of truth as is steadily made evident through the clean lights it shines on the hopes and aspirations of each and every evolving community. This is true of Cameroon history which contrived a crossing of the paths of Britain and France. The crossing of these paths let their loud footprints on the memory of the French and the British Cameroons. Perhaps, the denial – by historical tricksters – to acknowledge these footmarks in our memory is the crowning problem of the British Southern Cameroons.

The truth is that he who is oppressed, but seeks not to have his oppression eliminated, is at once the most criminal and decadent of mortals. If at the same time, he is okay and contented, if he takes this satisfaction as normal, or is cheerful and thankful about so sorry a state, I have no word to depict so brainless a person. It is the great object of self-determination to be adversary to such tranquility, to establish the truth about the human being, to restore the dignity of our human person, to give head-aches to the oppressing bully, and to whistle-blow to the world that we are going to restore our independence come what may. The ratiocinative instinct of freedom fighting, the certitude that liberation is coming,  and the strong presentiment of a personal Higher Power that protects the just, is alive. The truth of Southern Cameroons independence soars in its majesty, far above the opinions of cock-and-bull stories. And those with eyes see victory coming.

By Fr. Gerald Jumbam

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[1] POPE FRANCIS, Evangeli Gaudium, 115.                                                               

[2] POPE FRANCIS, Evangeli Gaudium, 122.