Fru Ndi and the SDF, Riding Southern Cameroonians Like A Horse
The SDF was founded on the principle of “Power to the People” and “Equal Opportunity”. For these principles, six martyrs lost their lives on May 26, 1990. For these principles, people were maimed by grenades. For these principles, Southern Cameroonian women were raped and traumatized for life. For these principles, our grandmothers and mothers debased themselves to the deepest levels of shame – protesting NAKED on the streets of Bamenda.
For these principles, the economy of Southern Cameroons was brought to its knees during the infamous ‘ghost town’ periods. For these principles, Southern Cameroonians lost property, life, sweat and blood. For these principles, many worthy civil servants were blackmailed by the regime and these lost their jobs, their livelihoods and the futures of their whole families. For these principles, many Southern Cameroonians lost their lives from overt and covert actions of the dark and poisonous secret police and military surveillance machinery.
Indeed for these principles, AIDS was propagated, especially in Bamenda, during the “house arrest” of Fru Ndi,1992 – a period during which our women and girls were compromised by the mostly ‘infected’ soldiers who acted with the immunity that was afforded to them by the regime that had sent them. Whether this was intentionally malicious or a coincidence of ugly events, the reality is that, this epidemic is still being suffered by the population of Bamenda.
For these same principles, a few in the SDF found the windows and openings to be opportunists, dictators and vile hypocrites. These enriched themselves at the expense of an unsuspecting, defenseless, freedom-questing, liberty-yearning and happiness-seeking people of Southern Cameroons. This was done through power grabs, sit tightism, corruption and nepotism – the self-same mortal sins, ills and crimes at the very basis of the creation of the SDF.
Let us acknowledge upfront that there is no political organization or party anywhere in the world that does not have internal quibbling, differences, fights and even ideological variances. That is why there are liberals, moderates, progressives, conservatives, ultra conservatives, left-leaning, right-leaning, centrists etc within political parties. Even so, these are healthy differences that fuel change and growth.
When a political party goes against the very core principles of its own foundation, the signs of political suicide and death are glaring and obvious. POWER TO THE PEOPLE means power to the people. Power to the people means grassroots organization and empowerment. Power to the People means the acknowledgment that representative democracy is founded on the idea that power moves upwards from the single vote or votes in the ward to the winner of the primaries and then to the Council representative at the Council level.
Power to the people means that at the parliamentary level, candidates compete within a specific constituency in contested primaries wherein platforms and different ideas are debated and then chosen by the electorate in primary elections. The candidate who prevails in the primaries carries the aspirations and expectations of the people who voted for him at the grassroots level. Should the same candidate prevail in the parliamentary elections, that candidate then represents the hopes, aspirations and expectations of his whole constituency. This is what representative democracy means. This is what power to the people means. At the Presidential level each political party has to go through choosing its flag bearer through a primary process that involves the same people at the grassroots.
Power to the people does not mean that a few individuals selected on criteria that is at best the decisions and choices of Party moguls and hierarchy and at worst the influence of money and filial relations and connections. Power to the people does not mean an “Investiture” committee actually selecting candidates for core democratic positions in a democracy like municipal councilors, parliamentarians, senators and presidential candidates.
An “investiture” committee can be useful to vet a group of candidates and approve their inclusion in a list of candidates to stand for primary elections. An “investiture” Committee CANNOT and SHOULD NEVER replace the power of the primary voter at the grassroots. After all the person to be elected will be representing the interests of the grassroots voter or voters and NOT THE INTEREST OF THE INVESTITURE COMMITTTEE. The Investiture committee should be an administrative organ and tool within a party in a democracy and not a ‘crowning’ mechanism and apparatus. When an Investiture Committee replaces the grassroots vote, we are squarely and neck deep in a dictatorship.
In equal measure, EQUAL OPPORTUNITY is directly and inextricably related to the principle of POWER TO THE PEOPLE. Equal opportunity means that every citizen is given a chance to realize his or her god given potentials within the context of his community and political party – ward, municipality, parliament, senate and presidency. Equal opportunity means anybody who meets the fundamental qualifications and qualities of a CITIZEN has a right to aspire, organize, campaign, compete for and be voted into any office of his or her choice, regardless of his birth, status, stature or relationships. Equal opportunity means that talent and merit eternally take precedence over connections, relations and influence. Equal opportunity is anathema to nepotism, corruption and favouritism. Equal Opportunity disfavours birth rights and favours hard work and merit.
A party or a people who have power is an empowered people. This is people who know and are experiencing the holy communion of “Power to the People”. A party or a people who have been anointed by the spiritual endowment of ‘power to the people’ is a people who should expect to be confirmed with the sacrament of “Equal Opportunity”.
A party or a people this blessed are a chosen people of the kingdom of Democracy. It is this nirvana that Fru Ndi promised the people of Southern Cameroons when he mounted that rostrum at Ntarikon on May 26, 1990. It is this promise that was worth the lives of Fidelis Chosi Mankam, Tifuh Mathias Teboh, Asanji Christopher Fombi, Nfon Edwin Jatop, Juliette Sikon, Toje Evaristus Chatum and others known and unknown, celebrated and uncelebrated, venerated and vitiated.
It is this promise and nirvana that Fru Ndi and the SDF have betrayed and desecrated with their decision to participate in these upcoming elections in the most undemocratic fashion – the dictatorship of investiture and the arrogance and effrontery to “maintain” parliamentarians in the various parliamentary constituencies. The essence of democracy lies in the fact that, ever so often, the ‘people’ must be called upon to reaffirm their choices in their representatives or CHANGE those choices, according to their aspirations and expectations.
In a democracy, which Fru Ndi and the SDF claim, the elected representative is a STUDENT or an EMPLOYEE of the electorate, otherwise called THE PEOPLE. An election period is the critical and indispensable period of evaluation, examination, affirmation, reward and sanctions. In the present context, the period of study, work and actualization is five years – whether at the municipal or parliamentary level.
It is truly embarrassing, annoying and shameful that after an employee or a student works and studies for five years he or she cannot be genuinely evaluated, sanctioned or rewarded by his Employer or his Teacher – The People. It is true betrayal for Fru Ndi and the SDF first to accept, to participate in the upcoming Municipal and Parliamentary elections, in the name of a “People” they purport to represent and whom they know in deed and in truth that they do not represent, and who for all practical purposes are not being represented by Fru Ndi or the SDF. It is insultingly arrogant, to go ahead and accept to participate in the said elections within the present socio-political environment that shrouds all the constituencies of the North West and South West regions. It is doubly provocatively audacious to so decide and go right ahead to determine that there will be no primaries by arrogating the right to themselves to ‘approve’ and ‘maintain’ candidates and lists from the imperial throne of the investiture committee.
This is brazen betrayal for three reasons. First, in a normal socio-political climate, the electorate should EXPECT AND MERIT a vigorous primary campaign at all levels, in order to be given the tools and opportunity to choose their candidates. By adopting the dictatorial long arm of the absentee-landlord Investiture Committee, Fru Ndi and the SDF are shamelessly and arrogantly telling Southern Cameroonians that the same ideals that they fought and died for in 1990 were either lies told to them, by Fru Ndi and the SDF or ideals that do not and cannot hold sway in the present political dispensation. Either way, Southern Cameroonians know better. Southern Cameroonians know that “Power to the People” and “Equal Opportunity” are sacrosanct principles of democracy, not just in the SDF.
Secondly, the world knows that the North West and South West regions are not only ungovernable but are inoperable and impenetrable – physically and administratively. With this knowledge therefore, the SDF and Fru Ndi are well aware that NO GENUINE Southern Cameroonian will vote. By accepting to go for elections, Fru Ndi and the SDF know that Biya and his military accomplices will be at their best to do what they do best – perfecting their rigging machinery. By acting as accomplices to a criminal government, Fru Ndi and the SDF are just as liable to the crimes of the regime as the regime itself. This is betrayal of the highest order.
Thirdly, Fru Ndi and the SDF know in their marrow and bones that they do not represent 99% of the constituencies of the North West and South West regions. Fru Ndi and the SDF know and acknowledge that none of the SDF Parliamentarians live in their constituencies since the crisis began. Who are they deceiving – the Biya regime or Southern Cameroonians? Fru Ndi and the SDF know that the ‘maintained’ parliamentarians will not even vote in their constituencies.
Fru Ndi and the SDF know that Soldiers of the regime will be the ones casting phantom votes. For a man and a party who purportedly stood for transparency in the ballot box so that there should be “Power to the People” and “Equal Opportunity” wherein “WE ARE THE PEOPLE”, who are the “People” in such a dispensation – the voting soldiers, ghost voters or the grassroots in the various Southern Cameroonian constituencies? (Remember when, in his vintage Fru Ndi style, he would ask rhetorically at rallies “Who are the People?”, and the crowds and population would chorus and thunder back “We are the People!!!” – what happened?, what went wrong?, when did soldiers and ghost voters become the “People”?)
To conclude, let me put this in perspective. The SDF and Fru Ndi, in their betrayal, cannot and will not wash away the crimes of the Biya regime. After all, this regime is the one that is executing and perpetuating the war in Southern Cameroons. It is this regime that in the face of all the evidence, past and present, proving the impracticability and infeasibility of any kind of elections in the North West and South West Regions, gave itself the license and immunity to go ahead to defy the international community, ignore realities on the ground and the deaths of thousands of Southern Cameroonians and even the regime’s own soldiers and not only announce elections but creating the tempting, co-opting and corruptive michiavelic options to the SDF and Fru Ndi.
After all it was the Biya’s regime that rigged the 1992 Presidential elections and started the spiral and irreversible descent to this inferno in which we find ourselves – not Fru Ndi and the SDF. It was, after all, this regime that declared war on Southern Cameroonians at the Nsimalen Airport in November 2017 – not Fru Ndi and the SDF. It is this octogenarian regime that is self-perpetuating in power for half a century and counting – not Fru Ndi and the SDF. It was this regime that defied all calls, from all neutral, objective and international stake holders calling for an inclusive dialogue without any pre-conditions – not Fru Ndi and the SDF. It was this regime that abrogated all norms and jurisprudence of international and local laws to illegally and illegitimately lock up the leadership of Southern Cameroons and close to three thousand of her citizens, all over Cameroun – not Fru Ndi and the SDF. In fact, it is the regime of Paul Biya that is the perpetrator, enabler and sustainer of the chaos in Cameroon. In the words of our late friend Lapiro de Mbanga “Na you bi spoil this Kontri!! You mushi fixsham o!!”. Even so, one devil does not cleanse the other. Two wrongs do not make right.
This means that, the criminality of the regime and the betrayal of the SDF point only to a one-way road to freedom – the ability of Southern Cameroonians to unite, introspect and continue forging ahead knowing full well that their salvation cannot come from the present hierarchy and political trajectory of the SDF. The present Southern Cameroonian issue is not one of elections. The Southern Cameroonian dilemma is one of sovereignty, statehood, identity and restoration. Municipal and Parliamentary elections in February cannot and will never address this quagmire.
From this colossal betrayal Southern Cameroonians should learn how to know their own and where to put their political trust and capital in the future. When Southern Cameroonians were fooled once before, the shame was on Fru Ndi and the SDF. If Southern Cameroonians let themselves be fooled again this time with this municipal and parliamentary elections in February 2020, the shame and curse will be on Southern Cameroonians and they alone.