Is gov’t giving the Zogo murder more importance than Wazizi’s?

By Hans Ngala

This is the question that a lot of Cameroonians have been asking ever since Martinez Zogo’s decomposing body was found in Soa, nearly a month ago.

For the first time in the living memory of most Cameroonians, Biya’s 40-year government sprung into action and arrests were made within days. It even seemed that no one was too powerful to be untouchable. Amougou Belinga, the wealthy businessman who was a prime suspect in Zogo’s murder was swiftly taken into custody as well as officials from the country’s intelligence unit, better known by its French acronym, DGRE.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Justice Minister Laurent Esso was also mentioned by Justin Danwe of the DGRE as having a hand in Zogo’s murder and RSF claims that the Minister in a telephone call reportedly asked that the job be finished to avoid a similar case as that of Paul Chouta, another investigative reporter who was beaten last year and left for dead, but regained consciousness.

In the midst of this brouhaha, most Anglophone Cameroonians have been swift to point to an unfair handling of the case of Samuel Wazizi, an Anglophone journalist in the SWR who died in military detention two years ago. According to authorities, Wazizi had sepsis and that’s what killed him but how he got the sepsis in the first place is not mentioned.

CNA’s Hans Ngala spoke to US-based Cameroonian writer, Dibussi Tande who is also a political scientist for his assessment of the Zogo and Wazizi murders. A respected scholar and critic, some of Tande’s writings have been published in ‘The Rhodes Journalism Review’ and ‘Focus on Africa’ magazine. Tande believes the cases are not the same. He explains:

“To me, the difference between the Zogo and Wazizi deaths are very clear. For starters, Wazizi was arrested at the height of the Anglophone Crisis, when hundreds of individuals were being arrested daily, including journalists. His arrest and his subsequent sham trial (when he was already dead) were simply footnotes in most media reports. In fact, most people first heard of him after the government confirmed news reports that he had died in detention”. He goes on to distinguish the death of the former from the latter:

“Zogo’s case is completely different. Thousands of people listened daily to his very public denunciation of Amougou Belinga in the weeks leading up to his death. They also heard him announce that he feared for his life. In the same vein, his kidnap became public knowledge barely hours after it happened, and for days, even people who had never heard of him before, wondered if he was still alive; who had kidnapped him, and whether he had indeed been kidnapped. Finally, the gruesome and very public manner in which his body was discovered also added to the notoriety of the case which fired up public imagination. Add to the fact that the main suspect was a well-known/controversial and generally-disliked individual, and you have all the elements for the most fascinating human interest story of the year”.

Tande therefore refutes claims that the government has been biased in the way it treated the Wazizi case versus the Zogo case:
“I don’t see a double standard here at all. Using examples from the football world, this would be akin to comparing the very public and televised death of Marc Vivien Foe to that of Emmanuel Tataw or Louis Mfede years later. Foe was treated to lavish national and international honors and thousands lined the streets to mourn him. On the other hand, Tataw and Mfede did not get the same treatment not because they were not worthy, but because of the private circumstances of their death.”

Read also: Zogo murder: Belinga was present at murder scene, made calls to Justice Minister – RSF