For two days running guns coughed, they smoked. Yet, determined, albeit, foolhardy angry protesters surged on. Uncountable teargas canisters emitted from the coughing guns, pellets popped out and protesters lay in cold blood… their own blood. Gunboat helicopters hovered over West Cameroonian skies, occasionally spewing bullets at targets. Victims fell; mothers and other relatives wailed and grieved. Mortuaries received morbid tenants aplenty. State authority was prevailing, having the upper hand. Elsewhere, ‘politicians of convenience’ hailed the ‘indivisibility’ of the country and demonized ‘adventurers out to undermine national unity.’ Parliamentarians performed road shows; they hailed the head of state. They outplayed one another in pledging unflinching support for His Excellency’s rare brand of good governance. They entreated the ‘natural candidate’ to run in next year’s presidential polls.
As we went to press, security goons drafted to the two Regions to halt secessionists in their tracks were retreating piecemeal, having ostensibly delivered on their assigned task of keeping secessionists at bay and ensuring that the peace which the nation must ‘continue to enjoy’ prevails. Hundreds, including a pregnant woman, many teenagers and those we can sincerely refer to as human cargo, some very badly injured badly were admitted to pre-trial detention in Buea… The Rambler may not be in possession of exact casualty figures, but, we can state on good authority that they are, by and large, staggering, too shocking, and too gruesome to commit to print.
However, we have dispassionate reports of how October 1 was lived in the two English Regions of Cameroon.
Over the last 12 months, Cameroon has been in the throes of unprecedented civil strife underpinned by callousness, irreverence to human life and coldness from Government, resoluteness, and barefaced bravado from Anglophone agitators who although disparate in their vision of a better Cameroon find unanimity in common enemy – gangrened governance. Contacted, a public affairs analyst that would rather remain nameless noted that a people-centred Government would have curbed the current crisis at its infancy and spared the nation of extremely friendly citizens, the horror and shame that now dangle on its corporate image.
The analyst was of the opinion that the socio-political logjam in which Cameroon finds herself could have been briskly and amicably disposed of since 2016 if the very fundamental concerns that were raised by Common Law lawyers in mid-November of that year and later teachers were given due and sincere attention.
“If maybe, just maybe the issues were looked upon as fundamental for the proper functioning of the society, and not as issues that concern only ‘second class citizens’ and hence, given second class treatment, we would not have been where we are today.
“Things were poorly handled by corrupt and greedy power mongering public officials and cunning politicians; things degenerated and today, we are no longer talking of teachers’ or lawyers’ problems. We are talking of people who are now threatening the territorial integrity of the country. Like the saying, ‘better late than never’ all cards could still be put on the table, with no one trying or pretending to be more Cameroonian than the other because, whichever view, whoever holds, is worth hearing as even the deaf and the dumb have their own story.
“The long and short is, lots of waters have passed under the bridge, within the last 10 months of crisis in this part of the country. Lives have been carelessly lost, property destroyed, businesses ruined, the economy shattered, education disrupted, courts grounded with justice for the common man compromised and life in general rendered desolate.”
From this reporter’s observation, despite the intransigence on both sides; despite the “ghost towns,” occasional brutal crackdowns and the propaganda of Face book activists and other dissidents in retreat, life was gradually returning to normal with many hoping for the blinding dust of the one year long imbroglio to settle.
Many a Cameroonian from across the political divide was hoping for the Government dialogue sing song to eventually see the light of day, no matter how long it took. But the Government went to sleep, hoping against the odds for the agitators to tire out and give up. This strategy turned out to be a very poor political strategy with the bubble eventually bursting.
The Friday, September 22, incidents gave a new but ugly impetus to the issue. Until now, no one had been able to say with exactitude who, where, why, and how the wind which blew that day in the entire Northwest and Southwest Regions came about; but what registered was that the young, the old, children, men and women in Anglophone Cameroon took to the streets demanding for what they termed freedom or the liberation of Southern Cameroons by occupation forces. Prodded by activists in the safety of the Diaspora, protesters confronted armed security goons. Even though the gun-toting soldiers were practically overwhelmed by the surging crowds from all the nooks and crannies of the English speaking Regions, quite a good number of the protesters paid the ultimate price.
Otherwise boastful local administrators are known to have shown a clean pair of heels. President Biya’s rare outing at the United Nations Organization, UNO, paled into insignificance. It was dimmed by spontaneous protests back home and the Diaspora. A rented crowd of cheerleaders planted by regime spin doctors at the New York Headquarters of the UN paled out, compared to the milling multitudes that protested the leadership of the man that has ruled Cameroon uninterrupted for 34 years and counting.
Ekona, a small locality along the Buea-Kumba highway, just like in many other towns and villages of the Southwest and Northwest Regions initially paid the price of having the guts to protest or rise against the regime. Soldiers’ bullets sent many to early graves. Rather belated arrests and torturing started, with security goons breaking into homesteads, dragging out and subjecting random victims to unprintable forms of torture.
The Rambler possesses, but has elected not to publish the names of several victims who died as a result. Plus other maimed individuals that are most likely never going to have a normal life ever. Ekona has known no peace as the people have vowed to resist Government oppression while Government too is poised to clamp down on the people. A situation, an analyst has described as Government’s lack of good advisers on how to handle violence. The analyst however, warns Government to desist from reacting to violence with violence. As he put it, “violence plus violence equal to violence.”
The persistence and intensification of the crisis on Thursday, September 28 prompted the summoning of a meetingin Buea by Southwest elite. Ostensibly at the behest of President Biya, the meeting sought to among other issues, jumpstart the effective implementation of the 1996 constitution which will enable each Region to be autonomous. This step, they believed would calm the flaring tempers especially of Cameroonians west of the Mungo.
By September 29, the Southwest Regional governor read the riot act. Purporting to be acting on instructions from above, he closed land and sea borders with neighbouring Nigeria. He, like his counterpart of the Northwest Region imposed a dusk to dawn curfew with respective durations. Hundreds of troops with military armada in tow, took over every street corner. Even church services were logically banned from holding on Sunday October 1.
Internet connectivity was once again surreptitiously ordered to be cut off from the two Anglophone Regions, ostensibly to deter coordinated protests and other action that could compromise troops movement and operations. But even these actions, including the intimidating movement of troops and armada did not quite deter foolhardy secessionists from taking the plunge. Many of them, contrary to Communication Minister’s cooked records are known to have been decently shot and killed. Still, others were maimed. Hundreds more, including youths of both sexes are being held in detention facilities, some of them improvised.
On the other hand, riotous protesters either burnt or destroyed some public property and surreptitiously hoisted Ambazonian flags, which, The Rambler learnt, constituted a “symbolic declaration of Statehood.”
In the course of this melee, law makers were posing for cameras in Yaounde, reeling out condemnations and platitudes, hailing and praising the head of state. After many decades of treating October 1 as though this was an avoidable, untouchable leprous on the political calendar of Cameroon, flunkies and strategists filed out in towns like Yaounde, Douala and Sangmelima in convenient regalia to “commemorate” the day when two fraternal entities reunited. But mind you, this did little or nothing to mitigate the loss of precious lives, property and perhaps trust at the level of Buea and Bamenda.
By Nester Asonganyi
