A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay on some of my views on what is a growing (‘alarming’ may be the appropriate word soon) problem in Cameroon: the Anglophone problem. In that essay, I assumed that the average reader of this essay would be quite familiar with the nature of the problem, and then moved to comment on more peripheral issues.

However, in the days since then, I have found several reactions which have led me to write this follow up. This essay is a response to those reactions

Most of the discourse surrounding the problem on social media is focused on administrative and geopolitical issues in the country. For example, some people point to the fact that almost all the Prime Ministers of the country have been Anglophone, and that several key ministerial posts are occupied by Anglophones.

However, they are not paying attention to the language used by many Anglophones themselves: that of dignity.

Many Anglophones feel that they are second-class citizens in Cameroon. This has nothing to do with the number of ministerial appointments that are held by their “brothers”, but everything to do with how they experience daily life when they move to the Francophone regions of the country.

I understand that feeling. I lived in Yaoundé for six years (for school and work), and I cannot count the number of times I was told, to my face, that I was “a gauche”, “stupid”, or something similar – for the simple reason that I was “Bamenda”. In the beginning, when I spoke little French, it was painfully obvious to everybody that I was an “outsider”.

Eventually, I learned to speak French fluently enough, but many other Anglophones are not as fortunate. As such, when they get into trouble with their Francophone counterparts, the lowest-hanging fruit, is to insult them by telling them that they are “Bamenda”, and therefore by nature behave awkwardly – as if Bamenda was some tribe or village, whose main characteristic is an inability to speak French fluently.

It is no wonder therefore that the average Anglophone feels slighted. She realises that it is possible to rise to the highest levels of accomplishment in the country with no knowledge of English whatsoever, but that to truly succeed and be in the centre of things, she must learn to speak French. She feels like she was born in the wrong part of the country. The feeling is akin to that of being a minority (at best), or a refugee (at worst).

As such, when she says she wants a secession, she is not saying that Ambazonia, West Cameroon, or South Cameroon will be a utopic country where Anglophones will be role models of good governance, but she is asking for a place to call home, and mean it when she says so.

“Cameroon is one and indivisible”. I hear this repeated quite a lot, mostly by people who think that the Anglophones who are complaining are simply being obnoxious.

For the record, I am against dividing the country, for reasons I explained in the previous post.

However, to say that Cameroon is one and indivisible is simply false. We may be indivisible , but we definitely are not one. We are a collection of tribes, who happen to share the same national territory. Often, our tribal loyalties supersede our loyalties to the nation. And, if there is anything recent events have proven, it is that what divides us is stronger than what unites us.

What unites us, exactly? To be honest, I have no good answer.

Other nations can claim to be one on different grounds. The people of the United States claim to be united around the ideas of individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those in some parts of the Middle East are one because of race and religion . European nations are also united by race.

However, Cameroonians cannot claim to be united by blood, or by religion – we are divided on those grounds. As far as I can tell, none of the tribes currently making up the country voluntarily chose to be a part of the entity called “Kamerun”. I am originally from the North-West Region of the country. The only reason I can look at somebody from the South and call him “my Cameroonian brother” is because the lines drawn by the Germans included us both in the same territory. If some of those lines had been further North, I would probably be regarding him as my Congolese brother. If they had been further East, he would probably call me his Nigerian friend.

We cannot claim to be united by ideology either. True, we share a common motto, “Peace-Work-Fatherland”. But then, how many of us actually believe in it? Or even know what those three words mean in our context? My guess is: Not as many as should.

If we cannot clearly and forcefully articulate what unites us as a nation, how then do we stop anybody from leaving? What if the “Anglophone problem” metastasizes, and then the three Northern regions decide they want to leave the union as well? What arguments does anybody have to keep them from doing so? So far, most of the people arguing against secession (myself included) are arguing from the vantage point that we are all suffering under an oppressive government. But nobody (that I have come across anyway) is giving any compelling reasons why anybody should stay in the union.

This represents the failures of the government in articulating a clear vision for the people to believe in. It also presents an opportunity for those people who aspire to lead the country one day: any one of those candidates who can formulate a clear, unifying vision for our country, and sell it successfully to the people will not only have a tremendous advantage in the race, but a chance to do something particularly historic.

But until we get such a vision, anybody telling us that we are “one and indivisible” is simply peddling propaganda – no matter how well intentioned they may be.

Some people also mention that the movement has lent itself to extremists and purists, which is a very fair point. What started as a teacher’s and lawyer’s strike has become a larger, radically more political movement. It is unclear whether secession/federation was the original motive of the strike, or whether the strikes simply metastasized.

Inevitably, some of the rhetoric surrounding the movement has been quite divisive, and the debates often been contentious. Some people went as far as burning flags, or trampling the flag, while hoisting the Southern Cameroons flag.

The question in such circumstances is not whether there are extremists (every social movement has its own extremists) or not, but whether the extremist views are the majority. I won’t comment on this issue at the moment, but anybody interested in the role of extremists in social movements should read Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s essay on the dictatorship of a small minority.