THE PROBLEM OF SCHOOL ATTENDANCE IN THE BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS by Fr. Gerald Jumbam

THE PROBLEM OF SCHOOL ATTENDANCE IN THE BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS.

What is today called schools in the British Southern Cameroons is a destruction machine put in place by our enemies from LRC. Fr. Gerald Jumbam

"Every day I leave my house...my family knows...for the past twenty years...when I leave my house I know I will not come back home. Every play I write, Any poem I write,  I write as if it is my last poem, as if it is my last book".       Bate Besong

The launching of the Independence Revolution of the Southern Cameroons has been like the umpire’s whistle blow for which Southern Cameroons’ freedom fighters have been waiting on the sports’ ground.  In one short generation a massive package of  new feeling has spiraled into being from all over the country and, for the first time since 56 years, The Southern Cameroons’ present generation begin to picture in their mind’s eye not some green-red-yellow thing, but have imbibed how to see a dove/eagle as symbol and heavenly blue and immaculate white as colors of their much esteemed nation. The enthusiasm that has stimulated this national feeling has been great indeed. I hate to make mysteries out of nothing, but I am seeing a new powerful nation state come to being. I say that the enemies of our progress should know that their obsession with seeing the burgeoning Southern Cameroons destroyed by all means possible is a big waste of time and akin to waiting for the ship at the airport. And therefore, like Dylan Thomas once said of writers, I say today that there is only one position for the Southern Cameroons’ freedom fighter anywhere; that is,upright. This uprightness is the fruit of a self-determination that is legal, forthright and God-ordained. 

There comes a time when man must shy away from fear and speak out his mind for a generation and for institutions that he owes allegiance.My allegiance to the Church (as one of those institutions ) is allegiance to the truth and not to unreflective persons. Christ is truth and his Body is truth’s bulwark and dispenser. It is my contention that the Church (and not that of clericalism or that aligned to State power) has always been the staunchest defender of the Southern Cameroons’ culture and statehood; that the golden eras of the Southern Cameroon history have also been high tides of Southern Cameroonian Church; and that the Southern Cameroon nationalism only would become disordered and perverted when it strays from the guidance of the wisdom of the Beatitudes of Jesus Christ and that of the fear of the Lord. But confusion has visited the Body of Christ the Church today as a result of the problem of school attendance. While a majority of Church faithful are crying foul at the Church’s hierarchy for persisting to open school, some have engaged in stopping this by burning parts of some schools. Because of the recent attacks on schools owned by the Church, it is not clear to the Church hierarchy in British Cameroons whether they should open their schools or not come September 2017. But as a son of the Church I would like to make my own statement about the prevailing situation and thus clarify the Church on this issue of school attendance. 

Will the Church Make or Mar?

When the Catholic Church in France stood in the way of the French Revolution of 1789, the French philosopher Voltaire said this of the Church: “Crush the infamous thing”. The Church in France by taking sides with the oppressor had made itself so unpopular with the French people to the extent that a moral and spiritual institution like the Church became ‘the infamous thing’. The peoples of the former colony of the British Cameroons are today asking for their freedom and independence just as the peoples of the French Cameroon had organized and fought for theirs.

If there is anything which Jesus Christ came into the world to fight for, it was for human freedom. Hear Him: “I have come that ye may have life and have it more abundantly”. If the Church is to remain faithful to her mission of saving life, she cannot be on the side of the oppressors of the human person. Man is made in the image of God and anybody who oppresses man is therefore oppressing God.

The attitude of Amadou Ahidjo and Pual Biya towards the peoples of the former colony of the British Cameroons have been consistently diabolic and has been recorded in the writings of such eminent Cameroonian Catholics as Bernard Nsokika Fonlon( The KNDP Memorandum of 1964, Will we Make or Mar) and Cardinal Christian Tumi (The Political Regimes of Amadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya, My Faith: A Cameroon to be Renewed). From the evidence provided by these two eminent Catholics, it is clear that in the struggle for the independence of the British Southern Cameroons, the Church cannot be neutral. She must be on the side of the suffering and oppressed people of the British Cameroons whose sudden clamor for independence and freedom is seriously turning world over the attention of freedom lovers, to this part of the world. 

The Catholic Church has taught dogma for centuries. But a profound study of this dogma reveals that it is a liberating and saving dogma. To be dogmatic on the side of evil and oppression cannot therefore be the right attitude of the Church. Already the Second Vatican Council by insisting on reforms in the Church gave the right attitude the Church hierarchy should adopt towards the so many changes that are taking place around us today. The Church’s social agenda proclaims human freedom and democracy by strongly opposing any encroachment on human dignity and freedom. The Catholic Church in the Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province should therefore desist from supporting the evil and oppressive regime of La Republique du Cameroun. 

The struggle to liberate a people has always been fought around the issue of education.

It is the enlightened minority that has always led the masses to freedom. Hence the growth of the Western school in Africa gave rise to the struggle for African freedom and independence. It is indeed around the Ngugi wa Thiongos, the Wole Soyinkas, the Leopold Sedar Senghors and the Denis Brutuses that African freedom was fought. 

That the freedom of the British Cameroons should today be fought around the issue of the school is a reflection of history. 

Why is it that LRC is insisting that schools in the British Cameroons should reopen? So that they may continue to destroy the young minds of our children in their so-called schools. What is today called schools in the British Cameroons is a destruction machine put in place by our enemies from LRC. When the British ruled here, the school system produced the likes of Bernard Nsokika Fonlon, Kitts Mbeboh, Bate Besong, Siga Asanga, Kenjo Jumbam, Asonganyi, Ngoh Nkwain, Charly Ndichie, Bole Butake, Augustine Ngom Jua and Albert Mukong. All these were systematically targeted and killed or silenced by the evil regimes in LRC. 

To what kind of schools then do we want our children to return to? Is it not a wise act to call the attention of the world to the horrible situation in the British Cameroons by keeping our children at home? Is it not proper that we should let the world know that the Ahidjo and Biya regimes have killed all the leading Anglophone intellectuals in Cameroon? And the worst of all after completing the so-called schools, how many of our children are ever employed? Why are our children, in desperate need of jobs, pushed to have sex with dogs and serpents in Kuwait while Francophones are feasting themselves fat on SONARA oil in Limbe?

Our children today are distressingly immoral and the situation is becoming even more alarming. Which school system is producing these reprobates if not of the school system that our Bishops are calling upon our children to return to? Are marks not bought and sold in our schools today? Are examinations questions not made known to the children of the high and the mighty before examinations are written? Do our so-called teachers not transmit marks sexually to our female students? Is mediocrity not rewarded and excellence punished in our school systems today? Is immorality such an important component of our school’s curriculum today that we are unable to see the colossal damage we are doing to the Southern Cameroon youth of today? The answers to these questions are blowing in the wind. 

Our school system in the British Cameroons is so sick that one cannot but take sides with the School Revolution occasioned by the irrepressible Tassang Wilfred and his colleagues Teachers’ Trade Union. To do otherwise would be to sell one’s conscience for a cup of garri. 

The Murder Machine

As a teacher of divine mysteries, I am most partial to education. There is, however, one type of education I would rather the world had never known. It is the assimilationist murder machine French Cameroon has hung on the neck of the peoples of the British Southern Cameroons for decades. It ranks in my mind as one of the most miserable, most morally enfeebling learning processes known to the world.

The metaphor of Mandela is a  fitting one on explaining the narrative going on about school reopening. So much has been said about this proud son of African that my voice would seem to be hard of hearing. Yet, I know I have something of what Mandela represented to his South African people that I do not need to be deceived or distracted by voices that are shallow about the Mandela figure. "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”, are his most famous words on education.  I am absolutely delighted to be at home with this subject. We will do well to recall the noble words of Nelson Mandela on education and the context they took in addressing the predicament of South African scholarship. There is time for everything. Therefore let it be known that those words came not from the Mandela of prison cells or from the Mandela of 1990. It was Mandela the president. He had achieved the grossest of all human rights – freedom from tyranny. Then classroom education could come now since they already educated themselves in freedom fighting of the importance of man’s independence, the human person and human dignity. Seek you first the Kingdom of Freedom from Tyranny and all other human rights would be added onto you. Wherever tyranny is so cruel as is in Southern Cameroon, life is threatened, and the right to life is the greatest of all rights. This because without the right to life the talk about education, classroom etc. is meaningless. 

Mandela’s words come in the context of a world that has manifold challenges and that required a modeled excellent tool to answer the multifaceted questions of the African struggle after independence. Mandela as president singled out education, and rightly so. Change in our communities would only come through educated men and women. Yet looking at Mandela’s quotation from another Christian point of view I say that it doesn’t say all that needs be said. Look at the political kleptocrats, the financial thugs, the cabal that rule our government – these are all men and women with what we call education.  Yet they are a disgrace to our our country, to our continent. So the most powerful thing in the world, to us believers, is a person. It is Jesus Christ. It is his Gospel; for “the mystery of our religion is very deep indeed: He was made visible in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed to the gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up in glory. (I Tim. 3:16). Having an educated person without the wisdom that comes from God, from Allah, from Jehovah, is a waste of resources. Men and women need to be educated alright but that education must build the moral and spiritual foundations of the peoples – and we know very well that there are many educated swindlers and tyrants out there.  So if you ask me, I will rephrase Mandela’s words thus: ‘Education is one of the powerful weapons which can change the world, but the Gospel is the most powerful of them all’.

After all, freedom fighters and human right activists are the greatest educationists of the world. They are greatest because they are experts in humanity, they are greatest because they teach us what man is, what he is capable of. 

They teach the world the worth of human flourishing. They teach us the inalienable rights of man, they bring us to the knowledge of the infallible truths of life. The freedom fighter’s main weapon is education. And let me be clear about this: our sons and daughters within these months of struggle have had an education like never had in the history of Southern Cameroon – the education of the worth of the human person, the education of knowing their rights, the education of living by the Law, the education to freedom fighting, the education of standing strong against injustice and oppression, the education to autonomy and sovereignty, the education of seeing their parents beaten, humiliated, abducted and imprisoned and their indomitable spirit to fight back. That is education of the highest worth – education to virility. These are things they have heard happen in South Africa. They are witnesses to them today in their own land. And therefore our children are in school. They have never stopped going to school. The classroom has changed from colonial emasculating classrooms to decolonizing classrooms building courageous citizenry. And therefore when the Bishops of the Southern Cameroons quote the Second Vatican Council with the benign words on education, they are right. They are right that we would not stop at just classroom talk, we would go after education that mans, education that emboldens, education that speaks of the divine attributes of Truth, Justice, Love, Faith, Hope and Human Dignity. The Church has never stopped teaching these things in pulpits and the personal example of Saints. They have never stopped going to school. So let us give a break to this colonial nonsense called classroom education from LRC educational homicidal education, this murder machine that has assassinated all godly principles in our hearts. I am virulent in denunciation of this murder machine and of celebrating its FINAL FULLSTOP in our land. Let us look up to real things, to real education for our children – and that would come from us, from our kind, from our educated men and woman and not some half-baked nonsense from Francophone forged fries. 

The Conviction of your Independence

The constant seeking of a balance between independence and liberty from tyranny has been the Southern Cameroons freedom fighter’s unavoidable burden and boon. One suspects that to them, independence means courage and responsibility. It means doing things not monitored by fear, but out of conviction. Man’s sense of integrity is noticed when fear has no space in his heart. Little wonder that Peter affirms: “I saw the Lord before me always, for with him at my right hand nothing can shake me.” (Acts 2:14,22-33). This is the conviction of a freedom fighter. Independence  does not question. It does not say, why? Any such skepticism is betrayal. The Questioning is somebody who is still disbelieving and cynical.

Disbelief is the biggest obstacle of a liberation movement. 

It is not a bad thing as such to ask questions, nor to seek to be clarified. But such questions should take the name of examination and not questioning. In fact we cannot without silliness call ourselves at once examiners and skeptics. Those who believe for example that the independence of the Southern Cameroons looms large and seek to be clarified on some things are examiners into that cause.  Some people have denied within them the truth of independence before questioning it. Their questions are clouded with dark clouds, clouds that are impossible to disappear because they are stubborn on their stand. I therefore hold that a true Southern Cameroonian is either penetrated into the truth about his sovereignty or he is not. He is allowed to examine, and he is fake if he examines by questioning the country’s autonomy. The assent to the idea of sovereignty becomes a conviction, a belief. It fires the soul. It entices feeling. It warms our hearts. It enlightens the mind. It emboldens the will. This is conviction  – conviction in the sovereignty of a constituted people. When I see my fears starve to death, that moment I have unbending conviction.

Conviction is saying stop to worries. 

Conviction is not success. It is the power to fail without losing the ground under your feet. Conviction is a stonework of a wall against the flood waters of despair. Conviction is accepting I can’t control everything – that I can throw myself on Someone’s shoulders and say take it all. It is God’s whisper to man to the effect that he is there for him. It is the moment you say with saint Paul I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me. No matter how much your soul is shattered, you will not surrender. 

Conviction tolerates what is, conviction is uncomplaining in moments of teething trial, conviction throws itself completely in the hands not only of the future, but on to God. The resurrection message to the apostle was ‘peace’, ‘peace I give to you’. And next to peace, was: ‘fear not’. When we believe God, he puts his peace in our hearts. And it is the only one thing – God – that remains when conviction looses friends and popularity. God.

Priest and Patriot

I believe in standing up to tormentors. I speak because the assault has crossed my personal line. I am a priest of the Kumbo Diocese in the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda. I was raised up, thanks alone to the sweat and suffering of the English speaking peoples of Cameroon. And as Christ says in the Holy Scriptures, “To whom much has been given, from him much shall be expected”. It is therefore but logical that people of the British Southern Cameroons should expect me to tender an account of the education they gave me. To do thus, I must defend to the last of my energy the Anglo-Saxon school system which brought me up; a school system which is under full threat of destruction by the evil regime in LRC. It is to this call that I am now responding and let every man in the British Cameroons be responsible for the health of his own conscience. 

And that brings me back to the question which has haunted Cardinal Tumi throughout his life: Should a priest be concerned with the political life around him?

Cardinal Tumi has said in his work The Political Regime of Amadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya that a priest is first and foremost a citizen of his country and must vote in elections as a sign that he is a politically responsible being. A priest cannot vote responsibly if he doesn’t take enough interest in the political life of his country, the Cardinal argues. As a theologian I would say that this is sound moral theology today. 

Now, has a priest the right to fight for the freedom of his country? Can a priest be a political nationalist? Church hierarchy in the two English speaking regions of Cameroon would strongly hesitate to give an answer; but the most dogmatic among them would not hesitate to say: “No, he should not”.  One of the greatest mistakes that the early missionaries did was to always identify themselves with the colonial master. For this reason, the first African nationalists tended to believe that the Church was a hidden or spiritual arm of colonialism. Today in independent Africa, this belief ought to be abandoned because the mission of the Church and the State are not the same. Politics and spirituality are not the same fields of study although there are points of intersection. 

Gauging the Political Temperature

To continue to support the neocolonial political structure put in place by the colonial masters who were obviously enemies of African freedom cannot be the right posture for the post-colonial Church in Africa. 

As for me who is seeing very clearly today the injustice done by Great Britain to the peoples of the British Cameroons, I have a great duty to fight for the freedom of my people. It is obvious that if reunification were an issue in the British Cameroons question, the UN and France would not have gone ahead to grant independence to the French Cameroons on 1^stJanuary 1960. By so doing the UN and Britain showed clearly that they had a clear duty to grant independence to the British Cameroons. Hence the prefacing of the Plebiscite question “do you choose to gain independence by joining …”. This means that both the UN and Britain knew very well that the British Cameroons was supposed to be independent. 

It is this independence that I am bent on fighting for, and it is this that all British Cameroonians should fight for. 

This fight has already started on the right battle ground: the School. And anyone who chooses to send his child to the warfront of the school should expect his child to be knocked down by the hot exchange of mortar and artillery. 

For let me tell you that the situation in English speaking Cameroon has become so tense that if the present provocations by LRC are not halted, war will become the only way out of the present dilemma. And in a war theater there will be no place for schools. Are the bishops who are calling for a return to schools actually gauging the political temperature in the British Cameroons? Will any of these bishops have a child to lose in the event of an attack on a school? 

My dear parents, why did schools close up prematurely last academic year? It was because the bishops, the pastors and principals could no longer guarantee in the school milieu safety and security for our children. Are we sure that social tension has not increased with the donkey intransigence of the Government of LRC and its refusal to dialogue with the teachers and solve the educational problems created by the regimes in Yaoundé? And do you think, my dear parents, that the resultant social tension is an appropriate environment foe learning? Let us not fool ourselves. Since 1961 LRC and its hoard of gendarmes have shown that dialogue is not a word in their vocabulary and that they would stop at nothing to oppress and torture the peoples of the British Southern Cameroons. 

Our New Name

I have recently defined my destiny and spelt it its proper name. The brutal thought comes and quickens the desire to want to free yourself from their contemptible yoke. It comes from the tremors of learning that the country where your native land is found and the land you owe your being and name has not in its whole structure of actuality fashioned any space for you. 

One of the key qualities of sovereignty is the ability to spell your proper name, to tell your own story and decide your destiny. We traded our true name and took over something that caged us for 56 years. They did to us what Tortoise once did to other animals in the legendary story our old parents used to tell us around the fireside. It is the story of Tortoise and the Birds. The birds are invited for a great banquet in the Sky and Tortoise their friend convinces them to take him along. They first hesitated because they know how cunning, untrustworthy and covetous their friend the Tortoise is. Tortoise convinces them that he is a changed person, a born-again Tortoise. So the birds accept and decide to donate a feather each to help the Tortoise join them in the flight to the feast. They further fall for the Tortoise’s tale that it is a good thing to change names for such an important banquet. They birds have never heard such a thing, but see it as a wonderful idea. Each one takes a name. The birds carry very boastful and glorious names like ‘the elephant’, ‘queen of peace’, ‘Daughter of Zion’, ‘Star of the Sea’ etc. The tortoise declares his own name. It looks a very strange and unattractive name. He says he would like to be called during the party ‘You all’. The birds give it a laugh and congratulate themselves for taking such a comedian for a pleasure trip. When they arrive the venue of the feast in the Sky, and the people of the Sky present assorted dishes for the feast, he tortoise jumps up and asks the host: “who is this feast intended for?”

“You all of course”, replies the hosts. “You heard them,” says Tortoise to the birds. “the Feast is for me. My name is ‘You All’.

We are told the birds took their revenge by taking back their feathers and leaving the Tortoise high and dry in the Sky. But that does nothing to satisfy their hunger as they get back to the earth hungry.

The lesson, on our struggle, is clear: never again should we take a false name as we did during the 1961 and 1972, even when taking them in playfulness among ‘friends’ and ‘brothers’. 

Just like a plant must have the soil from which it grows, so also a culture must have a political framework within which it grows. 

The destruction of the English State of West Cameroon in 1972 by LRC was therefore a destruction of the political framework within which an English culture could grow in Cameroon. Given the hostile attitude of the French imperialists towards Anglo-Saxon culture in Cameroon these past 56 years of the so-called Cameroon Reunification, it is clear that English culture in Cameroon is completely dead. And nobody can ever accept a political arrangement which leads to its own sterility or death. 

As  I see it, the independence of the British Southern Cameroons is an urgent necessity today. 

It is surprising that the other members of the British Commonwealth Organization could accept a political arrangement which leads to the death of English culture in any part of the world. Conclusively, the membership of LRC in the Commonwealth should be terminated because she cannot be bent on the destruction of English culture in Cameroon and still lay claim to its membership of the Commonwealth. For where are the English examinations today in Cameroon? Where is the City and Guilds? Where is the London Chamber of Commerce? Where are the RSA stages One and Two? The other members of the British Commonwealth should follow the example of South Africa which now houses the Southern Cameroons Broadcasting Corporation (SCBC) and press for the independence of the British Cameroons. 

We Shall Fight with Gandhi and King

The time to fight has come, and this fighting will not be done while our children are wangling their way through bullets and tear gas on their way to school.

The battle is on. It must be fought to the end. The necessary tools for this war are Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. for a remodeling of our national moral character. Ten thousand offences are punishable with imprisonment – marching in protest, civil disobedience, speaking your mind, stealing a guava fruit, and after all the excesses of the banana republic at home, the seas of blood they have spilt, the rapist soldiers of state, and the fomented prejudice and jealousies over its citizens are merely argued away and nothing is done. We shall not retaliate with violence. We shall humiliate them with love, with protest, with defiance. As long as the Southern Cameroons is in chains, the only commendable position for the Southern Cameroonian men and women is the position of rebellion.

Genuine Nationalism is Holiness

Restoration of independence is not new wine in the Catholic Church’s cup. The Vatican State itself is the paradigm par excellence. Remember, the Papal states had lost all their lands in 1870 as a result of the unification of Italy.

But thanks to the spirit of self-determination that grew in the hearts and minds of some brilliant Cardinals and bishops especially under the auspices of Cardinal Pietro Gasparri and Pope Pius XII, the clamor for Vatican’s independence became muscular. Mussolini had no alternative in the face of these uncompromising prelates. He bowed to them.  Because of this inflexible determination for sovereignty, the Vatican  did not only retain the autonomy of the present Vatican land; it also received £30 million in compensation for lost lands and the Pope was also given a State retreat house called Castel Gandolfo.[1]

The Vatican city is country located within the capital (Rome) of another country (Italy).  It has its sovereign rights and enjoys the autonomy enjoyed by sovereign nations. It has an area of approximately 44 hectares and a population of just about 1,000 inhabitants. It is the smallest nation in the world and its independence was hard fought, and restored in 1929 against the threatening clouds of Mussolini’s subjugation and political maneuvering.  So in 1928, the Christian Vatican Country stood in the same position the Southern Cameroons stands today. By the daring and the doing of Pope Pius XII the Vatican restored its independence in 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaty.  Thus the power of self-determination.

In the 19^th century during the struggle for Italian unification and liberty, Rev. Fr. Vincenzo Gioberti did not hesitate to call upon the Pope to lead the Italians in their struggle for unity and freedom. In 1834 Rev. Gioberti wrote down his views for the liberation of Italy in a book entitled De Primato Morale del Civile degli Italiani. Giorberti worked alongside other Italian nationalists such as Manzoni, Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour for the liberation of the Italian people from foreign domination. 

Today as a Phd student on Moral Theology in Rome, I salute the memory of Rev. Fr. Gioberti whose attitude and activities clearly showed that there is no contradiction between the struggle to be free and the struggle to go to Heaven. 

Rightly understood, nationalism and the priesthood are not incompatible; for genuine nationalism is one of the surest roads to holiness and sainthood. If this were not so, why is it then that the Catholic Church in Tanzania is today calling for the canonization of their first president, Julius Nyerere, if not for his genuine nationalistic character and temperament?

Truly a genuine Christian is a genuine patriot and you cannot like Cardinal Tumi has done, act in a genuine Christian way without impacting on the nation political scene.  Today, like Rev. Gioberti in 19^th  century Italy, I am compelled to be on the side of my people of the British Southern Cameroons in their struggle for independence and freedom. 

So God help me to free my people of the British Southern Cameroons from the ugly claws of a flying and rampaging tyranny in LRC. 

By Fr. Gerald Jumbam 

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[1] Cfr. Wikipedia

RUSSIA AND THE SOUTHERN CAMEROON'S STRUGGLE by Chris ANU

Fellow Comrades, this is a suggestion from Chris Anu an international journalist, let us read and make our comments till it gets to our interim leaders.

RUSSIA AND THE STRUGGLE

It is a pleasure for me to officially make this proposal which seems to have fallen on deaf ears through my various audio messages. While I believe you have enough on your table with the people’s eagerness to get a break through from your team, I have a proposal which I strongly believe will add momentum to this struggle and put some pressure on those who have been ignoring our street protests.

This concerns a crucial but neglected member of the UN Security Council, and that is Russia. We have been on the streets of Europe and America for months, begging the traditional allies who happen to be our economic exploiters. We cannot pretend that these people have not got our message, yet we still continue to demonstrate in front of their embassies and parliaments. I believe we have to coerce them in one way or another.

There are five members of the Security Council split into two blocks – the western alliance of Britain, USA and France, on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. If there is one thing which we have seen over the last few years and just recent with the election of Mr. Trump is the fact that, Russia is the country that has used its veto power to promote its interest. Assad of Syria, is still in power today because of Russia. This has been possible because of the re-assertion of Russia by President Vladimir Putin, on the world stage, and the fact that East West Relations are at an all-time low.

Let us step back a moment and look at the Petro-politics in the Gulf of Guinea; Britain is in Nigeria, France in Cameroon and the USA in Equatorial Guinea. Putin will like to have a strategic ally in this vital region, to challenge her imperialist Western foes. Ambaland can provide him that opportunity. We have the potentials that Russian oil oligarchs would like. Let us remember even if we have a breakthrough with any country, we will still meet Russia at the Security Council of the UN, and she can obstruct anything. On the contrary, Russia remains the only Security Council member who can support us and defend it anywhere.

My suggestions are that instead of us begging the usual allies in the streets of Europe and America, we can focus our demonstrations in front of Russian Embassies in these European countries, calling/begging on the Russians to help us. After every demonstration, we deliver a well-written letter (like the one delivered to the French National Assembly on July 17, 2017), to the Russian Ambassador. This letter will enumerate what we are asking with a brief history about British Southern Cameroons. We can then through the diplomatic offensive try to get a face-to-face meeting with the Russian foreign minister or UN Russian representative etc.

These open demonstrations according to me will achieve two things:

1. It will bolster President Putin, because he will see that there is a country or a people somewhere who love and need his help, despite western animosity towards the Kremlin.

2. It will force the West to think about their policy of ignoring us, because they will now realize that Russia might solve the problem her own way. We all know what Mr. Vladimir Putin can do. I believe we just have to convince Mr. Putin with the facts and what Russia stands to gain.

Brothers and sisters, while I know you might have a lot on your plate, I strongly believe this can be an opening and our law firm can be of help, but we will need to show (Putin and) the world with these demonstrations that we asked President Putin to do what he is doing, in case he accepts our request. We can make this August the month to achieve these demonstrations in Washington and Europe. We all know how Russia got back Crimea.

While hoping for a note of acceptance, I wish you all in the leadership team abundant blessings as we forge ahead to complete freedom from our oppressors.

South Africa Follows After Belgium by Mbiydzenyuy D. WANTANGWA

After the showdown in Belgium following a series of meetings organised by the Government of La Republique du Cameroun to brief its citizens in the diaspora about the situation in the Anglophone Regions, South Africa took its turn in taking the Minister and his entourage to task. How adequate did they want to listen to the people, amidst the lock out for some of the Southern Cameroonians who were denied entry into the meeting hall under pretence of lack of space. How adequate would have been the answers to the very pertinent questions that were serially asked by the disgruntled Southern Cameroonians. How ready is the government of La Republique Du Cameroun to face the outright challenges presented to them by all and sundry? How appropriate are the government measures and lastly, how disgraceful are these series of meetings organized all over the world. Click the following link below to savour the situation in South Africa.

https://www.facebook.com/scbctelevision/videos/445226479210130/

Laurent Esso Has A Good Story to tell From Belgium by Mbiydzenyuy D. WANTANGWA

As earlier announced, La Republique's Minister of Justice and Keeper of the Seals, Laurent Esso was today in Bruxelles, Belgium where he was supposed to explain to Cameroonians in Belgium, the situation of the Southern Cameroons to the Cameroonians there.

If this man did not pick his greatest shock today, to see how much rejection he faces from the citizens of the Southern Cameroons and probably other Cameroonians, then either he is a hardened criminal, or a higher Devil or a Stoic or all of them.

This is a figure that comes through very terribly in the minds of Southern Cameroonians. We remember the first Press Conference where Laurent Esso, Issa Tchiroma and Jacque Fame Ndongo got it totally wrong from day one and since then they have insisted and continue to insist that they understand the problems of the people of Southern Cameroons. He is alleged to be at the origin of the arrest of Lord Justice Ayah Paul Abine. He has made a series of paper-plaster decisions about the legal system if not a bad immitation or call it, a travesty of what the lawyers demand. Remember, during that press conference he refused to recognize the Common Law system of the Southern Cameroons, and later on went ahead to create common law departments in various courts and law schools.

With other Ministers, he was supposed to meet the Cameroonians in the diaspora, who to please in this endeavour, maybe the dictator President Paul Biya his master or to blind-fold the United Nations or for God's sake, what occasioned these meetings. The very protagonists of division, who are at the cause of the escalation of the crises that have crippled the educational and legal systems in the Southern Cameroons, are exactly the wrong persons to have embarked on such a fruitless and risky adventure.

While Ebong Ngole and Ghogomou told their own set of lies in the United States of American he was trying his own hands in Belgium, thinking he could make away with it, without knowing that the meeting in the USA had already infuriated Southern Cameroonians in Belgium.

Now the question still remains. What are we to expect from the other meetings scheduled for the other parts of the world. Will they still hold? Were these Ministers not conscious of the results they would get from the field. State coffers which are almost depleting, are still being emptied further in such badly aimed attempts. While the Biya administration is aware of the demands being made by the people of Southern Cameroons, the International Community, and other international bodies, they still plan one aimless strategy after another. And we are tempted to ask this question: Is the Biya administration and its adherents and disciples willing to genuinely solve the problems of the people of Southern Cameroons and the problems of the country they want to call their own? They stand a better chance to answer.

The protesters in Belgium were infuriated by the fact that the delegation in the USA had deliberately told lies about the arrest of their leaders in jail and now still want them to listen to them.

We shall still be watching to see how this stage of the political drama unfolds.

SCHOOLS TO RE-OPEN OR NOT TO RE-OPEN? By D.A.

SCHOOLS TO RE-OPEN OR NOT TO RE-OPEN?
WHY ONLY SCHOOL CHILDREN SHOULD BEAR THE BRUNT OF THE STRUGGLE
By D A

Dear People of Ambaland,
Dear Southern Cameroonians,

In the name of our beloved country, the Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia, I write to you. I have heard many people asking the question why only our children should bear the brunt of our struggle. Why civil servants and all other groups are not also being asked not to go to work? Added to these questions is the enemy’s endless intimidation and brainwashing of our people. We understand and appreciate the enormous sacrifices that the parents, teachers, lawyers and school children are making. Moreover, owners of private schools, mission schools and many others whose incomes are heavily dependent on school reopening will also suffer. We cannot and do not overlook them. The questions some of you are asking are important and we would like to put your mind to rest about them. If we look at all human struggles, especially the struggle to free a people from slavery, colonisation, apartheid or imposed wars by foreign countries, the first thing we can see is that the sacrifices paid by different sectors of the public, by different individuals and by different families is never equal and can never be equal. Depending on their strategic importance there are always people and groups that bear a heavier burden than others. In our struggle, we can see that the lawyers, teachers and our school children are already bearing a heavier burden. But even more than them, there are families that have already lost their own children in the struggle; there are husbands that have been killed by the enemy; wives and girls that have been raped or killed; others shut, kidnapped, abducted and tortured and even more are still in foreign jails in La Republique du Cameroon, paying a heavier price than others, for our liberation. Can we therefore insist that all of us must pay the same price? Are you going to give up your lives as those who have given up their own for our freedom? What would you say to those families that have already lost their own children that could go to school? What would you say to those who are in jail? What would you say to those teachers that are languishing in the enemy’s dungeons? Dear countrymen, this is not the time for us to start counting the sacrifices, or demanding that we all make equal sacrifices. It has never been so in any struggle; this is just the history of humanity. We totally agree that all of us need to make more sacrifices for our freedom, and we are calling on all to do so. And do not make any mistake: more sacrifices will be asked of us as circumstances demand.  And let me ask you: if our schools were closed by the enemy, if it is La Republique du Cameroun that declares that our schools would close what would you do? I guess many of us would simply say “the government” has said schools should not open, and stop there! What we are facing here is not about how much we will lose in terms of money or how much investment we have made. We are facing the survival of a people; we are facing 56 years of slavery, and many more decades if we do not stand up now. Our determination and resolve not to send our children to school this September will provide some consolation to those who have already paid the ultimate price. There is some consolation to those whose families have lost their own children; to those students, teachers, lawyers and all others who are still languishing in the jails of the enemy. That consolation is that we hold firm to the struggle until victory. We cannot hold firm if we surrender too soon to the schemes of the enemy by reopening our schools, by letting our children go back to school. Let us remember that whether it is for the interest of our children or not, by reopening schools, we are reversing our struggle for freedom; we are helping the enemy to continue dominating and colonising our country; we are stabbing ourselves in the heart. If we surrender now, the sacrifices that we have made and that we are still making would all go in vain. Is that what we, the proud and resolute people of Ambazonia, want? I guess we all celebrate Mandela and Martin Luther King. Mandela accepted imprisonment for 27 years and Martin Luther King lost his life in the struggle for the freedom of Black Americans. Nagasaki and Hiroshima bore the heaviest price of the atomic bomb for Japan to surrender in WWII. Can we argue that everyone needs to pay the same price for freedom? Let each of us, let each Ambazonian family, let every school child call themselves a Mandela in this struggle. Let us remember that one or two seasons of school closure is not equal to fifty-six years in which we have suffered slavery.

And remember my Dear People, the freedom we want to gain by sacrificing our lives, our schools for a few seasons, by doing whatever we must do to be free is freedom for eternity! Yes, perhaps we are not comparing our sacrifice to what we want to achieve. The freedom we will gain is not for 50, 100, or 1000 years: it is forever!! What are two seasons of school closure compared to eternity of freedom in which our children will not be trained as Republique’s slaves but as free people? What are two seasons of school closure compared to the survival of our people? Look at the cultural genocide we are suffering in the hands of the foreign country of Republique: we have no space we can call our own; our children are being taught in French; our courts are ruled by them; our roads are full of their sign boards; we cannot celebrate our identity and national day, they lord over us in our own land as their slaves, and so on! Some of our people are in their fifties, yet they have never known the true history of our country, the Southern Cameroons. Why? Because of the fraudulent school curriculum and the false history Republique is teaching our children. Is this the education we are fighting to keep alive? All of these crimes will end only through the sacrifices we are willing to make. And our interim government has given us assurances that it is working overtime to design a new school curriculum for our children. Let us give it a chance to come out with that new school curriculum.

Further, the real issue is not whether schools should reopen or not. When schools were shut down in 2016, the story of the illegal occupation of our country, which La Republique had successfully hidden from the world for 56 years suddenly came to light, and the longer the schools were shut down, the more the world focused on the crimes of Republique: UNESCO, international human rights bodies, main organs of the UN and other countries got involved. Republique struggled frantically to reopen schools and to ensure the GCE was written. Do you think it was doing all of that because of the love it has for our children? Absolutely no. Those were simply attempts to take the problem from the attention of the world, to hide it again. The struggle over control of our schools in the Southern Cameroons became a big issue in La Republique du Cameroun’s illegal occupation of our country! La Republique du Cameroun does not love our children more than we do! It is struggling to reopen our schools only to prove to the world that it still has control over the southern Cameroons and its people; only to continue hiding its colonial and illegal occupation of Ambazonia; only for fear that the people of the Southern Cameroons would regain control of their schools and therefore their destiny. Do our parents and school children not understand this? Behind the question of school reopening hides these questions: who controls the Southern Cameroons, is it its people or the colonial regime of Republique du Cameroun? Shall we surrender to the enemy now after sacrificing so much and coming so close to gaining control of our territory and our lives? If it is by keeping our schools closed that we shall free our people and our country from fifty-six years of brutal occupation and slavery, why should we not pay that price? If it is by keeping our schools closed that we shall refocus the attention of the international community on the Southern Cameroons problem for its eventual solution, why should we not pay the price? If it is by keeping our schools closed that we will show the world and ourselves that we are resolved to be free from colonisation and fraud, why not pay that price?
Look at other examples of countries that have shut down their schools for years to make things right: Ghana, Nigeria and many others. When shall we accept to pay the price it takes to free ourselves once and for all from Republique du Cameroun’s illegal occupation of our land? When? If we go to school, we are doing so only to support La Republique in its colonial occupation of our territory; in its cultural genocide. Republique wants the schools to start not because it loves us, or that it is concerned about the education of our children. Republique wants our schools to reopen only to prove to the world that it controls us! If schools don’t open, attention will refocus on the Southern Cameroons problem. And that is what Republique does not want! So do we want to support Republique du Cameroun in its colonial occupation of our territory or we want to be free? What is the price we are willing to pay to be free forever, forever? Dear People of Ambazonia,  In the struggle for the survival of a nation; in the struggle for the survival of our people, we shall be called upon to make even greater sacrifices than simply shutting down our schools! Make no mistake about that! We only need to look at human history to know what peoples and nations have sacrificed to free themselves from foreign occupation. They accept to sacrifice their lives and even to turn their children into soldiers. We must burn it firmly into our beings that our own shall not be different! We are not asking our children to sacrifice their lives; we are not asking them to go into the streets; we are not asking them to go to jail; we are not asking them to stop school forever; we are asking them to stay home only for a short season. Let us accept it whole-heartedly for the goal we want to achieve, which is our everlasting freedom from slavery.  This is not the time for us to lose sight of our goal; this is not the time for us to waver; this is not the time for us to play into the hands of the enemy, no matter its quibbling; this is not the time for us to surrender by reopening our schools. This is the time for all of us and our children to consider ourselves as Mandela’s for the freedom of our beloved father land. This is the time to hold on firm until independence, until we reach Buea. This is the time to show the enemy that we control our schools and our territory, and that the enemy shall never control them again. Yes, the sacrifices are painful, but worth their weight in the lives we have already lost, in the eternal freedom we shall gain; in the future freedom and sound education our children will enjoy. All of these sacrifices are for our children and the generations unborn. Hold firm and we shall soon be in Buea, the capital of our free and proud country.

I thank you.

D.A.

New Roadmap Proposals for all Pro-Independence Groups By Christoph Messner, Germany

My fellow Ambazonians & SCs, here are my new roadmap proposals for all pro-independence groups:

1. Congratulations to the new spokesman Milton Taka! He did a wonderful first public presentation, including answering live callers, by hitting the nails, saying the things like they are and having the courage and vision to call our soon to be independent state “Ambaland”, which pronounces that we are not only a “zone” in another country but a full land, country, nation! Also Congratulation to SCACUF’s new leader trio Tabe-Millan-Tassang, who have presented themselves in public convincingly to be humble servants of the people’s interests, intelligent visionaries showing the right way and mediative bipartisans, who are able to further unite different groups and opinions! And Congratulation to the adherent Ambazonia- and Youth-groups, both in the homeland and in the diaspora, who persisted to do all the necessary nitty gritty background work for real effective progress towards further mobilization and unification among our own rows and pulling on one rope together against our common enemy: the occupant, annexor, exploiter, corruptor and brutalizer of our homeland: the Biya puppet regime hanging on the threads of puppet player France. This tendency to let competence, intelligence and humble servitude become the leaders is the right way to go and will lead us to victory. And that victory will not only be the restoration of something British, but the achievement of real independence, self-governing and full sovereignty in our own state, country, homeland: Ambaland, Ambazonia, Amba Nation, however our people will name it later in a referendum, even “Southern Cameroons” or “Volcanic Guinea”, if they want it. It is the holy right of the people to determine their name.

2. Biya clings to power no matter what and he has the money to pay Chinese hackers or agents who do all kinds of dirty jobs for him, and a supervision apparatus which is taping people on the streets, letting MTN work for him in spying into social media, registering all people who go on demonstrations and track and check their suitcases when they fly from Europe to Cameroon, installing spies in Nigeria in the border area who pretend to be Southern Cameroonians, and do kidnappings, tortures, law breakings by occupant soldiers whenever he orders, although the whole world knows that he is not a president but an illegitimate puppet dictator and embezzler-in-chief of Cameroon for France and Switzerland. But he has several major points of weakness: senility, stupid stubbornness, and dependency on the resources he steals from Ambazonia and Cameroun, with which he maintains his bribing and corrupting system. And these weak points are where we can attack him and make him fall now. The wonderful civil disobedience and protest strategy “ghost town” will not only be maintained until real change comes, but we can add up to the partly self-harming sacrifices now the enemy-harming sabotage actions of all the economic and military supply routes of Biya’s system of oppression in our homeland. Everything which brings Biya a robbery-Franc from our resources shall be cut down now at the origin of the exploitation: where timber is cut, we immobilize the motor saws, where a pipeline is built, we unscrew the pipe connection parts, where the soldier’s vehicles get their gas, we fill in water, where they eat, we take their food away, where they have a bank, we crack the tresor, where they have a camp we cut their current, where they have their politicians we throw them out, where they want to bribe, we take their money and don’t do what they want anyway …. But all this, and that is most important: without killing the enemy in outright terrorist actions. Only psychological warfare. The enemy shall fear! Because the UN may send peacekeeping troops as puffer zone into our country, if we show to the world that not we but Biya is the terrorist. And when the UN peacekeepers are in, then Biya must leave our homeland!

3. Everybody who still has the old passport of British Southern Cameroons and his/her children have a right to get the British passport. To make all of them request it from the UK will help to make the UN sending troops to us and recognize our sovereignty even more, especially if we continue to show the UN with vehemence, that back then we were tricked into a union with French Cameroun under false pretext. So all our pro-independence groups must advice all possible candidates for a new passport to apply for it, and additionally prepare a professional print of our own Ambazonian / SC passport for those who don’t get the British one. But it is most necessary that we stop doing kindergarten passports which are not really valid and only create impression of doing illegal things, which only Biya could exploit on us again. In general, all half-baken things have to stop now. We need real hardliners as our own leaders now who box all individuals out who still want to do collaborative, federalizing or advantageous stuff for or with the Biya system. No, from now on, we can only allow real independence advocators, real professionally made passports and own embassies, real buildup of an own army and police and Amba currency anymore and all this inside the frame of international legality. We need to show to the UN and the world, that our interim government is really able and willing to act like a responsible representation of an independent country which forbids individual rambos to start unnecessary illegalities.

 4. The diaspora can stop expensive travels to frequent conferences in which only hot cocks show that they want to be the king of them all or entertainment chicks show that they are the fashion queen on a fundraising gala which only collects peanuts. Instead, every Ambazonian citizen needs to get historic documents and truth-telling, officially signed letters together with a list of addresses to journalists, channels, organizations, politicians and CEOs in his area, to which he/she has to send all this information or educate that third party in personal meetings and conversations. Smol smol fundraising is good and necessary but our leaders need to become appreciated negotiation partners to bigtime supporters who have billions of dollars and can overtake Sonara to our favor so that most of the revenue will flow to our people. We need to understand that nobody, who thinks first about how much profits it will bring for himself if he joins the new government or movement of a free Ambazonia, will become a member of the new Ambazonia government or economic elite, but only those who serve the people and the common benefit first, will be leading and get positions. Because the new, liberated Ambazonia will have a new constitution which is anti-corruption, anti-dictatorship, anti-colonial, anti-tribalistic and anti-entitlement-mentality. And those who don’t swear an oath of allegiance to it or who are not elected by the people or who are refusing to teamwork won’t be ruling. Freedom is not only about restauration of something historic, it is a permanent political education process, in which we all learn to serve the common benefit before the private interests. So all pro-independence groups need to establish a common best website which provides all the info the people, a common account which has strict controlling be members of all groups, and a common agenda, which is followed by all in a way which obeys the leadership council.

LONG LIVE AMBAZONIA! Best greetings,
Christoph Messner, Germany