Marafa Hamidou Yaya and the Short Memory of the SDF..Revisiting the 1997 Joint Elections and February 2008 Bread Riots

1. Very early in the morn of the 1997 joint elections, someone close
to Marafa Hamidou Yaya called me to announce that Marafa Hamidou Yaya
had told XXX that the SDF would have 45 seats.
I communicated this information to the SDF Chairman 15 minutes later.
Fru Ndi's reaction to me is Classified;
This was even before the voting started.
Later that evening, Kontchou Kouomegni.;announced more or less the
same number of seats for the SDF..even before the counting started.
The SDF ended up with 43 seats.
AS ARRANGED..by Marafa Hamidou Yaya.

(c) Den of Lions. Vol 1. By Ntemfac Nchwete Ofege..manuscript...DRAFT
and UNEDITED.
Marafa's take from the Windward
On Wednesday, March 5, 2008, a several days after the strike, in what
was a display of the burlesque, Mr. Biya's Minister of State for
Interior, Marafa Amidou Yaya, gave a press conference in which he
claimed that the opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF, party, the
SDF had trained youths in Bamenda and then deployed them all over the
national territory to fuel the strike. Mr. Marafa added that the
nationwide strikes were coordinated by the National Chairman of the
SDF, who was assisted by the convicted killer of a certain
Douala-based butcher named Nourry. The convicted murdered was supposed
to have escaped from the New Bell prison in Douala and was directing
the nationwide strike in the cozy confines of Mr. Fru Ndi's car.
According to Marafa, Fru Ndi drove this murderer from one town to the
next as they coordinated the strikes.
Acting his art of the parody, Mr. Fru Ndi called a press conference of
March 17 in Yaounde where he threatened to take Mr. Marafa to court
and Gregoire Owona, Mr. Biya's minister in charge of relations with
the Assemblies. Fru Ndi said Gregoire Owona, fabricated statements to
the effects that he instigated youths to go on strike.
Fru Ndi said that the allegations against him were 'malicious,
unfounded and childish lies.'
'It remains a scandal that government has released Fon Doh after he
was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment term for murder,' said Fru Ndi.
'The SDF resolutely repudiates the blackmail and smear campaign
directed at my person and my party by irresponsible government
officials who, having lost control of the government machinery due to
their poor management and lack of vision, have resorted to political
witch-hunting.'
He said his lawyers would drag the ministers to court for defamation.
He said the SDF would also bring charges against the Mfoundi elite
sowing seeds of genocide by declaring ethnic cleansing in Yaounde.
The SDF Chairman said he was also taking the government-controlled
media, Cameroun Tribune and CRTV to court for publishing insults
against him.
He said Biya ordered for the torture and killing of Camerounians when
he promised to use all legal means at his disposals to restore order.
That is why, Fru Ndi claimed, troops tortured and killed more than 150
Camerounians.
'The regime conjectured that this could go on forever, but scales are
falling off the eyes of the youths because they have been used for too
long. They cannot continue to be jobless, go hungry and without a
future when a few of Mr. Biya's cohorts live in arrogant opulence,'
said Fru Ndi.
On the potency of Mr. Marafa's pronouncement, buses driving into
Yaounde from the English-speaking regions were thoroughly searched,
their occupants brought down, interrogated and harassed. anglophones
who subsisted in Yaounde suddenly found themselves the target of
harassment, intimidation and hostile glare from the forces of law and
order as well as the local Beti natives. The foundation was this set
for an eventual ethnic cleansing.


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The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in
a thing makes it happen.