‘There are two Cameroons that came together’: Revisiting Hon Wirba’s speech eight years later

By Hans Ngala

Today marks exactly eight years since Cameroon’s SDF parliamentarian, Hon. Joseph Wirba, made his iconic speech in parliament. On 14 December 2016, the opposition parliamentarian told House Speaker, Cavaye Djibril that it was wrong to be discussing the budget when Anglophones were being malreated.

“To go out on the street and demonstrate, is a basic right for us and that is why we are saying that there are two Cameroons that came together” Wirba stated to Cavaye categorically as Cavaye banged his gavel indicating that Wirba’s time was up, but Wirba was only getting started.

“If you are telling us, like the State Minister stood here last year and told us that what happened in Cameroon is like dropping a few cubes of sugar into a basin of water. Who is the sugar and who is the water?” Wirba asked rhetorically. “I’m asking the government bench of Cameroon” he clarified.

“That you rape our children – my brother’s daughter has been raped in Buea. I swear to you the government of this country, does the president of this country know that the governors and the D.O.s and all the administrators you have sent to West Cameroon are out there behaving exactly like an army of occupation?” Wirba stated with a cadence that did not belie the fury in him.

Choosing his words carefully and referring to the NW and SW regions as West Cameroon – the name that Southern Cameroons adopted after its unification with French Cameroon, Wirba was trying to avoid coming across as a separatist and hoping that the regime would be attentive to the plea of Anglophones.

His speech came a few days after students of Buea University were manhandled by security forces for protesting a fee increase that had been announced by the university’s vice chancellor a few days earlier.

The student protests coincided with protests launched by lawyers and teachers demanding greater autonomy for Anglophone education and legal systems.

Wirba went on to say that “We (Anglophones) have made all the efforts. Our ancestors and our forefathers trusted you, to go into a gentleman’s agreement, that two people who consider themselves brothers, could go to live together and if this is what you show us after 55 years, then those who are saying we should break Cameroon are right!”

“The people of West Cameroon cannot be your slaves. The people of West Cameroon are not – you did not conquer them in war! If this is what you are saying that we should live in, I say simply ‘No’! It will not work.

How do you have an army that is supposed to protect children, step out there, beat them and rape some? It is not heard of in any country. This is the 21st century and anybody who does that, I cannot be willing for its government to pay the price. We will exact it on you because you are making us believe that we went to the wrong place.”

Wirba went on to detail his experiences driving from Kumbo to Yaounde to plead with the then Justice Minister that “something is brewing” in West Cameroon but the Minister simply dismissed him and asked “vous avais fait quoi?”

Since Wirba made his speech, the Anglophone Crisis has since morphed from just street protests into an “armed insurrection” as the International Crisis group had warned a year after Wirba’s prophetic speech.

As today marks eight years since the crisis began, government has made some efforts which critics say are not sufficient to solve the crisis. Government released some of those arrested in connection with the crisis, created a bilingualism commission and organized two national dialogues which were criticized as not being sufficient.

President Biya himself did not attend any of these meetings and declared that the form of the state was not up for discussion – one of the key demands being made by the now-outlawed Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC).

Major rights groups and various governments including Canada, have offered to mediate talks between government and separatist groups, but Cameroonian authorities later backtracked, saying they had not been in any discussions with Canadian officials.

As presidential elections come up in 2025, the security situation remains dire in the NW and SW of the country and it remains unclear whether Biya and his government will be willing to discuss the form of the state, release a major separatist leader, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe who remains in detention since his arrest at an Abuja hotel in 2018.