It was an exciting and enriching experience chatting face-to-face with Dr. Simon Munzu. When I proposed an interview with him on phone a few days earlier and he readily accepted, I could not wait to meet the awe-inspiring personality; the man who, together with a few others, intrepidly championed the Anglophone cause in the first half of the 1990s.I was more than anxious to meet the towering figure who, at the time, shocked the Yaounde regime and the entire nation with his irreversible stance on constitutional reforms in Cameroon; the valiant mouthpiece of the oppressed English-speaking masses who astounded Cameroonians with a memorable appearance and stupendous performance as guest on CRTV’s ‘Cameroon Calling’ in the morning, ‘Dimanche Midi’ in the afternoon and ‘Actualité Hebdo’ in the evening, all on the same day, Sunday, 23 May, 1993!
He rose graciously from his sofa to welcome me on that wet Friday afternoon (6 September, 2013) when I stepped into his modest residence at GRA Bota, Limbe (which he prefers to call Victoria). The unimposing stature I saw in front of me was the same I had seen twice or so in the early 1990s, and the soft mellifluent voice that caressed my tympanum did not differ from the one which resonated in Mount Mary, Buea on 2 and 3 April 1993 during AAC 1, and in the church house in Nkwen, Bamenda from 29 April to 1 May, 1994 during AAC 2.
But the passage of time has naturally played some tricks on his physical features. I noticed that he is now slightly wrinkled and going grey, just as a person in their (early) 60s should look. However, from the signals sent by his body and verbal languages, it seemed to me that the older Dr. Munzu grows, the more vivacious, alert and eloquent he becomes.
The entertainment was torrentially abundant. And when I saw more coming, I had to remind my host of my reason for being in his abode. He replied overly politely that he was not oblivious of it but just wanted me to be comfortable before our interview.
Then I started posing the questions. If I did not know who Dr. Munzu is, I would have been baffled by the language in which his responses were couched as well as the profundity and sincerity of the responses. If I were not the one asking the questions, I would honestly have thought that he had known them prior to our interview.
He discussed almost everything in this wide-ranging interview – from his role in the intense national debate on constitutional reforms of the early 1990s to the subtle punishment he received from the powers that be for being ‘rebellious’, to what he has been doing since he resigned from the Cameroon civil service in 1994 and his scepticism about recent and ongoing politico-economic happenings in the country. Read on…
Good afternoon, Dr. Munzu, and many thanks for agreeing to receive us here in Limbe at such short notice.
Good afternoon, Mr. Achingale. I have to admit that your request for a meeting and press interview came to me as a surprise. It’s been nine months since I returned to Cameroon following my retirement a year ago from service with the United Nations. I chose to settle here in Victoria (also known as Limbe), where I’m living my life quietly, away from public view and, especially, from media attention.
Indeed, not much has been heard about Dr. Simon Munzu since the holding of the famous AAC 1 in Buea on 2 and 3 April 1993, AAC 2 in Bamenda from 29 April to 1 May 1994, and the intense national debate on constitutional reforms of that period. In this connection, we recall your memorable appearance and outstanding performance as guest on CRTV’s ‘Cameroon Calling’ in the morning, ‘Dimanche Midi’ in the afternoon and ‘Actualité Hebdo’ in the evening, all on the same day, Sunday, 23 May 1993. Many Cameroonians still remember the political shockwaves that you sent throughout the country at the time. So, where have you been in nearly 20 years?
Wow, has it been that long? How time flies!!!!!
You are right. Publicly, I have not been on the national scene in Cameroon since September 1995 when I commenced my career as an international civil servant with the United Nations. My first posting was as a United Nations Volunteer (UNV) with the UN Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda (UNHRFOR) which I subsequently headed, from August 1997 to June 1998, as interim Chief of Mission. I worked in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) office in Rwanda as Programme Manager from July 1998 to February 2001 and, from March 2001 to September 2004, as Senior Policy Adviser on Human Rights at UNDP headquarters in New York. I returned to service in the field with the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), first as Director of the Human Rights Division of the United Nations Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) from September 2004 to May 2011 and then as Director of Political Affairs in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) from May 2011 until my retirement in August 2012.
Those must have been rather difficult assignments…
Indeed, they were. Apart from the three and a half years spent at UNDP headquarters in New York, I chose to serve my 17-year UN career in what many would consider ‘trouble spots’. Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were countries embroiled in, or just emerging from civil armed conflicts that left the massive loss of human lives and other forms of gross human suffering and abuse in their wake. Working in those environments was extremely challenging and often dangerous, even for United Nations personnel. Many friends and well-wishers back home considered my decision to work in those highly risky countries reckless, even suicidal. But I saw in those difficult settings a call to touch the lives of tens of thousands of destitute men, women and children in need of basic conditions for survival, a decent life and respect for their inherent human dignity. I thank the Almighty God for giving me this opportunity and for guiding and protecting me through the often-encountered hardships, dangers and ordeals right through to my retirement.
So, now you know where I have been since I left the domestic scene in Cameroon in September 1995. Of course, during this time, I frequently came home on leave and keenly followed developments regarding the political, economic and social situation in my own country. However, as a United Nations employee, I was under a contractual obligation not to speak publicly on the internal affairs of a member state of the UN, including my home country, except in the performance of my official duties, which I sometimes did, for example, between December 2010 and May 2011when I regularly held press briefings for the national and international media regarding the horrific human rights violations that were committed during the post-presidential election crisis in Côte d’Ivoire.
We understand that you were first a member of the CPDM before you started your fight for the secession of former Southern Cameroons. Was it out of frustration that you did so?
I did not, repeat, not start a fight for the secession of Southern Cameroons. Together with others, we started a fight for an end to discrimination against Anglophones and for the recognition of their rights as full citizens of this country. These are, and remain, legitimate objectives that we fought for and would continue to fight for as long as the need to do so persists. That does not require the secession of Southern Cameroons, and I have never, repeat, never been an advocate of the separation or secession of the Southern Cameroons.
In the 20 years since Barrister Sam Elad, Professor Carlson Anyangwe and I launched the struggle for the achievement of these objectives by convening the first All Anglophone Conference (AAC I) in Buea in April 1993, noticeable progress has been accomplished towards the mitigation of discrimination against Anglophones and the recognition of their rights as full citizens of our country, Cameroon. The efforts in this direction should continue because a great deal more remains to be done in this regard.
What about your previous membership of the CPDM?
Yes, I was once a member of the CPDM.I joined the youth wing of the CPDM in 1969, when the party was known as the Cameroon National Union (CNU). I was 19 years old and a high school student in the Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology (CCAST) in Bambili, near Bamenda, which I attended from October 1968 to June 1970. I travelled to England in January 1971 to pursue higher studies in law that lasted from 1971 to 1981 and culminated in my graduation as a Barrister-at-Law from the Inns of Court School of Law and call to the Bar at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in London as well as my obtaining a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) degree and a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from the University of London and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in law from the University of Cambridge.
In 1972, the CNU established a section in the United Kingdom. I was a pioneer member of the UK Section and, from 1972 until I returned to Cameroon in January 1982, I held a succession of posts in the executive of both the UK Section and the South of England Subsection of the CNU.
In May 1983, in his capacity as National President of the CNU, a post that he maintained after resigning in November 1982 from the office of President of the Republic, Mr. Ahmadou Ahidjo appointed me as Chargé de mission within his political team in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CNU, cumulatively with my duties as lecturer in law at the University of Yaounde. I successively served under two Political Secretaries, Mr. Felix Sabal Lecco and Mr. François Sengat Kuo. In 1990 or 1991 (it was one or the other – I am speaking from memory), President Biya who had succeeded Ahidjo as National President of the CNU (renamed CPDM in 1985) modified the composition of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the party. He abolished the post of Political Secretary and established that of Secretary-General as head of the National Secretariat, to which he appointed Professor Ebenezer Njoh Mouelle. He also reshuffled the Secretariat, promoting me to the post of National Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs.
It is, therefore, as National Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs in the National Secretariat of the CPDM Central Committee and a member of the CPDM delegation that I took part in the deliberations of the historic Tripartite Conference convened by President Biya in Yaounde from 30 October to 18 November 1991. It is also as a representative of the CPDM that the same Tripartite Conference selected me to join the 11-member Technical Committee for the Drafting of the Constitution, made up of seven Francophones and four Anglophones and chaired by Professor Joseph Owona, which was charged with drafting a new constitution for Cameroon.
That’s amazing. I guess many Cameroonians did not know this about you. So then, why and when did you quit the CPDM?
Remember that the three ‘parties’ to the ‘Tripartite Conference’ were the government, political parties (comprising the ‘presidential majority’ and the opposition) and so-called ‘independent personalities’. At first, the Conference decided that political parties, including the CPDM, would have three representatives on the Technical Committee for the Drafting of the Constitution. Initially, it was Secretary-General Professor Njoh Mouelle who was designated to represent the CPDM on this Committee. The other two members nominated by other political parties were Francophone.
This meant that all three political party representatives were to be Francophone.
The leaders of three opposition parties based in the South West province (as today’s ‘regions’ were called then) objected to this. They demanded that at least one political party representative should be an Anglophone. To satisfy their demand, Njoh Mouelle stepped down and proposed me, CPDM National Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs and an Anglophone, to replace him as the CPDM’s representative on the Technical Committee. This was unanimously accepted by the Conference.
But Mola Njoh Litumbe, the Chairman of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) with headquarters in Buea, came up with yet another demand. While acknowledging my Anglophone credentials, he asked that the Anglophone party representative should come from the ranks of the opposition and not those of the CPDM. As a compromise, the Conference chairperson, PrimeMinister Sadou Hayatou, raised the number of party representatives from three to four and asked opposition parties to propose an additional Anglophone party representative for the Technical Committee. Mr. Litumbe promptly nominated a member of his party, Barrister Sam Ekontang Elad, to the applause of the Conference. This brought to four the number of Anglophnoes on the 11-member Technical Committee: Minister Benjamin Itoe representing the Government, Sam Elad and Simon Munzu representing political parties and Carlson Anyangwe as ‘independent personality’.
During the floor debate at the three-day Tripartite Conference, all Anglophones who addressed the Conference, whether of North West or South West origin, elderly or young, traditional rulers or civil servants, men or women, and whether attending the Conference as delegates of the Government, of the ruling CPDM and its allied parties, of opposition political parties or as the so-called ‘independent personalities’, raised the issue of the ‘marginalisation’ of Anglophones in the conduct of public affairs and called attention to the fact that Anglophones were treated as ‘second class citizens’ in their own country. They insisted on the need to address and remedy the ‘Anglophone problem’ within the framework of the new constitution that participants at the Tripartite Conference stridently called for.
Consequently, the four Anglophone members of the Technical Committee for Drafting the Constitution strongly advocated the return of the country to a federal system of government because we sincerely believed that such a system would be the best framework for recognizing, upholding and protecting the Anglophone identity and giving Anglophones their full rights as citizens of this country. To this end, we submitted a 14-page memorandum to the Committee that was disdainfully ignored by Professor Owona and the other six Francophone members of the Committee. They insisted that Cameroon was a unitary state, that it must remain so and that the Tripartite Conference did not give our Committee a mandate to propose any change to the unitary form of the state. The chairman of the Committee, Professor Owona, pointedly reminded me that I was a high official in the National Secretariat of the CPDM Central Committee and that I had joined the Technical Committee set up by the Tripartite Conference as a nominee and representative of the CPDM. He insisted that, in that capacity, I had a duty to defend the unitary form of the state.
I retorted that, while it was true that I was representing the CPDM on the Technical Committee, it was also true that I had been specifically selected as an Anglophone who was expected to bring the concerns of Anglophone Cameroonians before the Committee; that, to my knowledge, the form of the state had never been discussed at any meeting of the CPDM; that, during the floor debate at the Tripartite Conference, no preference had been shown by CPDM speakers for one form of the state or the other; that, in principle, both the federal and the unitary forms of the state were open for consideration by the CPDM; and that, therefore, it was totally legitimate and consistent with my status as a senior CPDM official, for me to advocate putting the federalist option before the Tripartite Conference for consideration alongside the unitary option.
There must, therefore, have been considerable disagreement among members of the Technical Committee on this critical issue. Am I right?
Oh, sure. Disagreement within the Technical Committee between the seven Francophone members and the four Anglophone members over the form of the state that should be recommended in the proposed draft constitution led to a stalemate and to the suspension, sine die, of the Committee’s meetings and deliberations in April 1993. The Anglophone members of the Committee used this long period of suspension of the meetings of the Committee to produce a ‘Draft Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon’ to counter the draft unitary constitution spearheaded by Professor Joseph Owona.
Since the Technical Committee for Drafting the Constitution had been set up by the Tripartite Conference, we had expected that the latter forum would be reconvened to receive, deliberate and decide on the report and recommendations of the Technical Committee, which would include both recommendations based on a unitary form of government and those based on a federal system of government, between which the Tripartite Conference would have to choose. As advocates of a return to the federal system of government in Cameroon, we needed to be sure that, among the political parties that would be attending a re-convened Tripartite Conference, there was at least one that would wholeheartedly champion federalism and the ‘Anglophone cause’.
Mr. Njoh Litumbe and Ambassador Henry Fossung, Chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP), were both strong and outspoken advocates of federalism and of justice for Anglophone Cameroon. We persuaded them to join forces through the fusion of their two parties to produce one strong political party that would champion everywhere, especially at the re-convened Tripartite Conference which we were expecting, our stand on the constitutional debate then raging in the country. That is how the Liberal Democratic Alliance (LDA) was born out of the fusion of Litumbe’s LDP and Fossung’s NDP. I accepted the invitation from the leaders and members of this new political entity to become its first Secretary-General. Consequently, I resigned from the CPDM, a party to which I had belonged, taking the life span of both the CNU and the CPDM, for a cumulative period of 24 years, from 1969 to 1993.
On 17 May 1993, President Biya established an enlarged Technical Committee on Constitutional Reform comprising the 11 members of the Technical Committee appointed by the Tripartite Conference and about 20 other persons. On 26 May 1993, we formally tabled the ‘Draft Constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon’ before this new Technical Committee, but its chairperson, Professor Owona, refused to submit it for examination by the Committee.
You can see that in taking the decision to leave the CPDM, I did not act ‘out of frustration’, whatever that may mean. I was pushed to that position not by ‘frustration’ but by my commitment to the ‘Anglophone cause’ and the emerging signs that my party, the CPDM, was not paying enough attention to the ‘Anglophone problem’. I am aware that some people have said that I left the CPDM out of frustration because I was not appointed a Minister or to another senior position in the state apparatus. That, of course, is utter nonsense. Those people do disservice to my character, but I forgive them, for they know not who I am. Those who know me would not say that about me.
Of course, for a citizen interested in the conduct of the public affairs of his country as I am, to serve one’s country as Minister would be a great honour. By my education, my professional experience and my knowledge of public affairs, I had the profile to be a Minister or even Prime Minister. In fact, many people at the time used to say that I was, in one of those peculiarly Cameroonian expressions, ‘Ministrable’.
However, I do not believe in power for power’s sake and have never, in my life, sought to be appointed to any state office. I believe strongly that leaders should be servants and that the purpose of state power and authority is to serve the people and not those whom they have put in power. That is why I always took a rather principled stance within the ruling party in favour of running affairs for the public good, not for the benefit of the few elites in power. I knew that adopting a progressive and constructively critical stance on public issues while I was a senior official of the ruling party would not endear me to the hierarchy of the party or the state. But I preferred that to selling my soul, my convictions and my beliefs in exchange for transient office and perks.
As Senior Prefect in St. Joseph’s College, Sasse, as Speaker of the Student Union Senate in CCAST, Bambili, as President of the National Union of Cameroon Students in the United Kingdom (NUCS-UK), as National Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs of the Central Committee of the CPDM, in 17 years of service in senior positions in the United Nations and in all leadership positions that I have held in my life from my youth to the age of ‘senior citizen’, I have been guided by the biblically-inspired ethical principle that those who lead must be servants. That’s why, when I became Secretary-General of the LDA, I persuaded the party to adopt as its motto: ‘To Lead is to Serve’. I am no longer a member of that party, but I suppose this remains its motto to this day. In any case, that motto succinctly captures the essence of my personal view of leadership and its purpose.
I cannot stop those who say that I left the CPDM out of frustration from clinging on to that erroneous and slanderous view. But I know that they are an infinite minority and that, on the contrary, the vast majority of people who know me appreciate me for being a man of conviction who puts the general interest above personal benefits and privileges.
Nevertheless, your going abroad has been seen by many as a deliberate abandonment of a genuine cause you and others began. Many are those who now brand you “escapist.” What do you have to say about that?
I doubt if it can be rightly said that I deliberately abandoned a ‘genuine cause’ or that I ‘escaped’ from anything. I can tell you, however, that two main reasons led to my decision to leave Cameroon in September 1995.
In the first place, and paradoxical as it may sound, I left Cameroon in 1995 as an act of patriotism. As I said earlier, in our capacity as members of the Technical Committee on Drafting the Constitution, Sam Ekontang Elad, Carlson Anyangwe and I convened the first AAC in April 1993 (Benjamin Itoe gave our initiative his endorsement but felt that, being a government Minister, he could not sign the notice convening this grand meeting of Anglophones which, nevertheless, he attended). The purpose of the All Anglophone Conference, as we its conveners made clear, was for Anglophones, regardless of province of origin, social status or political party affiliation, to arrive at a common set of proposals for asserting and safeguarding Anglophone interests, to be submitted and defended at the impending national constitutional talks that had just been announced, in March 1993, by the President of the Republic – the famous or, if you prefer, infamous ‘grand/large débat’.
This would enable Anglophones to avoid the mistakes of 1961 when Southern Cameroons politicians went to the so-called Foumban Constitutional Conference without adequate preparation or a common agenda and, consequently, got a raw deal, the debilitating effects of which succeeding generations of Anglophones are suffering to this day. In fact, by the time we convened the AAC, several other regional and special interest groups, notably in the ‘Grand Nord’, the ‘Grand Centre’, the ‘West’ and the ‘Littoral’, had held their own meetings and adopted their own positions to be tabled at the forthcoming constitutional forum. We were about the last special interest group to meet and adopt a set of proposals to be tabled at the constitutional talks that were in the offing.
Because, on 3 April 1993, the massively attended, hugely representative and immensely successful AAC in Buea adopted federalism as the form of the state to be proposed by Anglophones at the announced national constitutional forum, the regime in Yaounde instinctively and summarily dismissed the entire outcome of the AAC and peremptorily branded its recommendations ‘secessionist’. Instead of seeking to understand the real nature of our demands so as to give them the proper response that the justice of our cause called for within the framework of a united (but not necessarily ‘unitary’) Cameroon, the regime chose rather to trivialize Anglophone grievances and make nonsense of the pertinent recommendations of the AAC. It paraded a horde of Anglophone and Francophone hirelings on national radio and television in a campaign to deny the existence of an ‘Anglophone problem’ in Cameroon and to smear the exponents of that problem as disgruntled, misguided and unpatriotic ‘secessionists’.
In short, the powers in Yaounde gave a profoundly deaf ear to the Anglophones who wished that the Cameroonian people (Anglophones and Francophones alike), holding constitutional talks in a national forum convened by the President of the Republic whose authority no one contested, should together examine and find an adequate and equitable solution to the ‘Anglophone problem’. The Anglophone National Council (ANC), subsequently renamed the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), had been established at the end of the AAC in Buea as the moderate voice of the Anglophones. The steadfast refusal of the regime in Yaounde to dialogue with the ANC and get a better understanding of the exact nature of its demands radicalized the Anglophone movement and weakened the voices of moderates within it, like myself, whose advocacy of dialogue with the regime in Yaounde was made to look illusory, futile and unachievable.
As Spokesman of the SCNC and the latter’s designated public voice and communicator, I was caught between the dismissive attitude of a deaf and insensitive regime in Yaounde and the demands of some impatient and radical SCNC members whose rhetoric veered increasingly towards a call for ‘separation’ or ‘secession’ of Southern Cameroons that I did not support but which I would have to speak up for if that became the official position of the Anglophone movement. I chose, in the face of this dilemma, to opt out of the movement that I had pioneered but whose deviationist orientation towards separation or secession I did not share. My joining United Nations service in 1995 took me out of the SCNC and out of Cameroonian politics in general.
I remain staunchly committed to the aspirations of Anglophone Cameroonians towards the recognition and preservation of their identity and heritage, the enjoyment of their rights as full citizens of Cameroon and the autonomous conduct of their own affairs. That, I believe, can be achieved without the separation or secession of the Southern Cameroons to which I am unequivocally opposed. I see the day when the regime in Yaounde, whether the one we have now or one that, in the course of events in our nation, may come tomorrow, will abandon the policy of denial and engage constructively with the Anglophones to find an adequate and equitable solution to the ‘Anglophone problem’.
You said that two principal reasons led to your decision to leave Cameroon. What was the second?
The second reason for my going abroad in September 1995 was a matter of pragmatism. I had chosen, on various national issues, to take a principled stance within the National Secretariat of the ruling party because I believed that, in many respects, the CPDM and the government that supposedly emanated from it could do a great deal more to ameliorate the living conditions of the population across the ten provinces (as today’s ‘regions’ were called then) rather than serve essentially the interests of the ruling elite at various levels of national and local government and in state corporations.
When some like-minded members of the party initiated the ‘progressive wing’ of the CPDM as a platform for pushing for reforms within the party and the state, I joined them without hesitation, the only member of the National Secretariat of the party’s Central Committee at that time to have done so. On a number of occasions, I was designated to represent the CPDM on panel discussions on burning national issues organised by CRTV on radio or on television. I invariably introduced my contributions by stressing that, although I was representing the CPDM, no one had told me what to say, so any views that I expressed were mine and not those of the party. This was factually true, but stating it so bluntly on TV or radio was considered by some in the party hierarchy and the state apparatus to be politically incorrect and even disloyal.
Matters came to a head when I openly supported federalism and publicly argued for an equitable solution of the ‘Anglophone problem’ in the national constitutional debate of the early 1990s, co-convened the first and second All Anglophone Conferences, took on the role of Spokesman of the AAC and, ultimately, joined the ranks of the opposition upon becoming Secretary-General of the LDA. I was harassed and ‘punished’ for my ‘rebellious’ behaviour in many subtle ways. For example, at the University of Yaounde and, subsequently, the University of Yaounde II where I taught law, I was always passed over for promotion and denied research missions abroad on which the university routinely sent its academic staff during the long vacation.
A Senior Divisional Officer (SDO) for Meme division in the South West province, my province of origin, refused to sign administrative papers that I needed to be able to register in my name a piece of state land in Kumba regularly allocated to me years earlier by one of his predecessors, sarcastically saying in a hand-written note to the divisional chief of lands that I should wait for the advent of the ‘Republic of Ambazonia’ to have the land registered in my name. In July 1994, after this SDO had been replaced by another, I was detained for several hours some kilometres away from Kumba, on the Victoria-Kumba road, by gendarmes who said that they had an order from ‘the hierarchy’ banning me from entering Kumba, even for the purpose of passing through to go to my home town of Nguti situated on the Kumba-Mamfe road.
After I resigned from the University of Yaounde II and the civil service in August 1994 on political grounds, with loss of pension rights as provided for by the general rules and regulations of the civil service, I was denied, up to this day, the ‘immediate’ refund of my past pension contributions to which I was entitled under the provisions of the same general rules and regulations of the civil service. When, following my resignation from the University of Yaounde and the civil service, thus ceasing to be a civil servant, I applied to be sworn in to practice law as an advocate, having fulfilled all the legal requirements for admission to the Cameroon Bar, my application was denied in the Ministry of Justice, which legally had no power of decision in the matter, with no reasons given. The list goes on and on and on.
After I resigned from the University of Yaounde II and the civil service, I spent one year in Cameroon without a paid job and no income to take care of myself and my family. This was a price that I chose to pay for the freedom of my conscience, the liberty of my mind and the integrity of my being. However, in September 1995, I received the offer to serve in post-genocide Rwanda as a United Nations Volunteer. The assignment was for a period of three months. I took it. In the event, three months turned into 17 years and volunteer service became a career with the UN. If that is what it means to have ‘escaped’, then escape indeed I did. Today, I don’t regret for having done so.
The SCNC is today divided into factions. Does that mean that the cause you and a few others began has failed?
As I said earlier, I have been out of the SCNC for nearly 20 years. I don’t know if it is today divided into factions and, if so, which factions.
Be that as it may, I wouldn’t say that the Anglophone cause that we championed has failed. First of all, looking at developments over the past 20 years, it is evident that Anglophone self-aware ness and sense of identity have been strengthened by the movement that we launched when we convened the AAC in 1993. As I observe the scene in our country today, I am pleased to note that the strong and growing sense of an Anglophone identity is trans-generational. Based on fundamental core values and an outlook on life that are worth preserving and emulating, it permeates Anglophones of all generations, including young people who, in 1993, had not yet been born. It warms my heart to see that the grand design to ‘assimilate’ Anglophones has failed.
Secondly, although the regime may not want openly to admit this, it has been led since 1993 by the spirit of the AAC to redistribute state power and authority through appointments to senior posts and to establish state institutions, notably universities, in a manner that increasingly takes the aspirations of Anglophones into account, thus reducing their marginalization and making them feel less as ‘second class citizens’ in their own country. Today, it has become virtually natural for Anglophones to occupy positions in the state apparatus and in state corporations that were unimaginable 20 years ago. In fact, one of the ironies of the situation today is that some Anglophones who were hired in the early and mid-90s to denounce and combat the AAC, its leaders and its offshoots, are the ones who have drawn the greatest personal benefit from the gains brought by the same AAC.
You can also judge the solidity and vitality of the Anglophone heritage, whose preservation we must continue to advocate, from the fact that, today, more and more Francophone parents are voluntarily sending their children to Anglophone schools , colleges and universities implanted not only in the two Anglophone regions but also in the eight Francophone regions. They do so because they recognise the quality of our system of education that does not focus narrowly on academic achievement but stretches out to encompass moral and civic education from pre-school to university. This is as it should be. For when Anglophones advocate and strive for the recognition, protection and propagation of the our heritage and our way of being and doing, it is not for the benefit of ourselves only, but for that of all Cameroonians, Anglophones and Francophones alike, so that, ultimately, the Anglophone heritage becomes an integral part of our country’s heritage accessible to all the citizens of this ‘Land of promise, Land of glory’.
The trend observed in the past 20 years is far from showing that the cause that we began two decades ago has failed. On the contrary, that cause is bearing fruits that were unimaginable 20 years ago. I have no doubt that many more will be borne in the decades ahead.
A.M.B a été violée au champ à la frontière par des militaires et gendarmes Equato-guinéens samedi 11 Janvier 2014 avec cinq autres membres de la famille. Toutes faisaient la récolte des arachides.
Entre le mois de décembre 2012 et janvier 2013, les corps de 7 jeunes filles âgées entre 15 et 30 ans ont été découverts mutilés dans les broussailles du quartier Mimboman. Ces découvertes qui se font les unes après les autres créent l’émoi au sein de la population. Les moto-taximen opérant dans le secteur sont soupçonnés d’être de mèche avec les malfaiteurs. Le gouvernement entre dans la danse avec les enquêtes conjointes de la police et de la gendarmerie. Des suspects sont interpellés et passent aux aveux complets selon le ministre de la communication qui a une fois de plus réunis la presse à Yaoundé. 
C’est à l’occasion d’un séminaire de la Fifa sur les différents aspects de l’organisation de la compétition. Lentement mais sûrement, l’on s’achemine vers la coupe du monde de football 2014. 
Le guide national pour la prise en charge nutritionnelle des personnes vivant avec le Vih/sida a été validé le 17 janvier 2014 à Yaoundé. La cérémonie organisée par le ministère de la Santé Publique du Cameroun et le Programme Alimentaire Mondial (Pam) a permis d’édifier les différents participants sur l’urgence de la prise en charge nutritionnelle des Personnes vivant avec le vih/sida, au regard de l’évolution du vih/sida dans le monde. 
Au cours de sa conférence de presse, le 14 janvier, à l’Elysée, le Président français, François Hollande, a encore martelé sa volonté d’en finir avec la Françafrique. En suivant la logique politique hollandienne, la France socialiste dit définitivement non à ce système françafricain dont le maître d’œuvre reste, sans conteste, le ténébreux et mystérieux « homme de l’ombre », Jacques Foccart. Mais très sérieusement, Hollande est-il crédible, cohérent quand il nous annonce la mort de la Françafrique ? 
C’est officiel 
