By Ngala Hansel
As the Anglophone Crisis rages on and enters its sixth year in its current form, we hear a lot about ‘Cameroon is one and indivisible’. This slogan is often chanted by CPDM party members whose definition of ‘patriotism’ means blind support of the government of the day, regardless of how that government acts.
This was recently the case with the CPDM USA section where party supporters reiterated their age-old ‘one and indivisible Cameroon’ stance.
While this view may seem like the highest form of patriotism, it presupposes two things:
a) That CPDM diehards place more value on the material land of Cameroon than they do on human lives
b) That they care more about pleasing the people that pay them their salaries than they care about the sufferings that the population is suffering at the hands of both government soldiers and separatist fighters.
It would be good to address what patriotism really means. Perhaps a definition from the celebrated American writer Mark Twain would suffice. Twain defines patriotism as “supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it”. This definition should be one that CPDM party supporters would do well to remember. It would be extreme for us to claim that our government has never done anything worth celebrating. Obviously there are very good things to thank the government for. Education is a priority in the government’s agenda as is the effort to create jobs for youths by President Paul Biya. Mr. Biya has done a lot in attempting to encourage youths to go into agriculture and has also done his best (albeit misinformed) as was the case some few years back when he donated laptops to some university students across the country. These are certainly things we can be grateful to the government for.
However, there is no sin in calling out our leaders when they make an error and instead of those close to them like some CPDM bigwigs to give them good advise, they are the ones championing a slogan that only serves to embitter others.
The truth is that singing ‘Cameroon is one and indivisible’ when clearly there is hardly any unity – if ever there was any to begin with – is just going to make people from the Northwest and Southwest regions angrier when we ought to be thinking of ways to heal our national wounds.
According to these CPDM stalwarts, when they suck up to President Biya and continue to deceive him, then they will get favours from him. This is not patriotism, it is hypocrisy and outright lying and deceit!
Cameroon is more polarized, fragmented and teetering on the verge of a steep cliff and CPDM people should stop acting as if they love Cameroon more than the rest of us. They should stop acting as if they are more Cameroonian than those from the Northwest and Southwest who instead of patting government on the back, chose to stand up to the government and say, “Our part of Cameroon is not doing well, let us fix it”.
For them to be so scared that Cameroon could be torn into two and forget that they are dealing with human lives is to be out of touch with reality. The reality is that people in the Northwest and Southwest also have feelings and it is good to note that while some people in these regions want outright secession, there are others who still believe that setting up a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for national healing to begin regardless of the outcome of how the current war in the two embattled regions would end.
We have a problem on a national scale and the solution is not to shut people in the Northwest and Southwest down, but to rather take time and invite ALL of them to the table and ask what they would want President Biya to do.
The truth is that President Biya is not only a president to those in the CPDM but he is also President to the entire Cameroon, including the more than 8 million inhabitants of the NW and SW.
Patriotism would not be hiding the truth from Mr. President, but it would be to rather petition him to give a listening ear to ALL his children in the NW and SW even those who feel that they no longer want Cameroon in its current form.
So until such a time as this can be done, it would be good to remind CPDM members just like George Orwell did in “Animal Farm” that ‘some Cameroonians are not more equal, or more Cameroonian, than others”. We all matter and even if they do not agree with the complaints of the aggrieved people of the former British Southern Cameroons (which President Biya admits was headquartered in Buea), they can at least start by LISTENING to the people from this region if ever we are to begin the journey to national reconciliation.
