Cameroun - 54 Years After: Derailed Dreams Of The Foumban Conference

Today marks the fourth day and the last but one day when the fate of the new Cameroon, and indeed that of especially English-speaking Cameroonians, was being decided in the East Cameroon town of Foumban (17-21 July 1961). This was a moment that every Cameroonian, and again, especially English-speaking Cameroonians thought that the dawn of living together with your brothers was going to usher in a new nation – one that promised justice and fair play, mutual respect, freedom and growth within an environment where people were going to be judged not by their colonial lingo-cultural heritage but by the content of their character.

Fifty-four years after, a vital segment of this bi-cultural African experiment is only questioning whether it wasn’t a faux pas from the onset. The new dawn that was expected to come out of the Foumban conference is, to say the least, having a sour taste. To many, the new dawn has not arrived; in its place, retrogression, repression and glaring marginalisation are the order of the day.

As the bells toll on the 54th anniversary of what was supposed to be a historic conference, the cries of a failed enterprise, of a dream that never was, or is yet to be realized, and of a well-intentioned initiative that has gone adrift are only growing, signaling disappointment and , failure stemming from sheer deceit and greed.

Anglophones have always believed in the force of argument as opposed to their Francophone brothers whose attitude in the conduct of our common destiny hinges more on the argument of force of numbers and a siege winner-takes-all mentality. This has been exemplified at almost every stage of our national life, a situation that spells doom for the much-heralded “an emerging country, strong and unified in its diversity”. A few examples here will suffice:

Cameroon’s accession to the digital world is known to be providing CRTV, the State television house with six channels. Detestable as that is, but not surprising in the spirit of the force of numbers or as they say, majority takes all, none of the six channels is programmed to be exclusively in English.

The national print media house, Cameroon Tribune, that started with two separate editions, in English and the other in French, was unilaterally “integrated” into what is today called “Bilingual” edition where the level of bilingual coverage reflects the practice of bilingualism in our national life. More than 90 per cent of each edition’s lead and front page stories are in French; the same percentage in terms of its news, government announcements and advertorials that fill its 32 to 40 page so-called daily (Mondays to Fridays).

Cameroon’s economy is public sector (government)-driven as against the private sector as obtainable in every capitalist economy except ours and probably in much of Francophone Africa. This makes our Francophone brothers the prime movers and shakers of our economy, since they are the ones in control of 98 per cent of all important and strategic government ministries and enterprises. These undue advantages stemming from “the majority-takes-it-all mentality” reemphasis the marginal role assigned to Anglophones within a Cameroonian nation that they have and continue to contribute more than their fair share, in proportion to their population.

Even in such leisure and somewhat abstract things like sports, the spirit of oneness that Foumban was supposed to have ushered in is absent. Take football and the participation of Anglophones in our national team. Anglophones are always marginally represented as if the more than 5 million English-speaking Cameroonians couldn’t produce a national team had the West Cameroon nation not been diluted in Foumban and completely shattered on 20 May 1972. Today, far smaller nations with far smaller numbers than the Anglophone population like Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Benin, Togo, to name a few, produce national teams that threaten and even beat a francophonised Cameroon national team.

Very agonising for Anglophones but true the fact that more than 80 percent of the outside world sees and knows Cameroon as a Francophone rather than an Anglo-French bilingual country. This is perpetrated by the continuous representation of Cameroon in all international fora by French-speaking Cameroonians. Even our diplomatic missions abroad are largely headed by Francophones. Where an Anglophone is head of diplomatic mission, 95 per cent of the rest of the key staff are all manned by Francophones, even in purely English-speaking countries, making the Anglophone head more or less titular.

The list of injustices and marginalisation that Anglophones face in this country is endless, and points to the derailment of the Eldorado that the Foumban constitutional talks sought to craft. But like every train that derails, conscious and sustained efforts built upon a strong will, do bring back the train on the rail. The Cameroonian bi-cultural project could and should be put back on its rails. It only requires the will to accept the reality of the facts of history. The history agreed upon in Foumban in 1961, no matter how imperfect it was, demands that the Cameroonian train returns and re-takes off from there.

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