Re: Letter to my Francophonized Brothers from Boh Herbert

Vintage, Mr Boh Herbert.

I am proud to call you friend and brother.

Ntemfac Ofege - Prophet.

On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 1:05 PM, Aleuh <baleng03@ymail.com> wrote:

Folks,

Good morning. Know your History and the truth why you should have back your country instead of remaining brainwashed and enslaved by another country in the name of brother. Read this article below and study the maps. Take care.

Pateh

Letter to my Francophonized Brothers from Boh Herbert

March 1, 2014 at 4:25pm

Liberation Graveyards are Built under One-Party Tents: by Boh Herbert

 

Dear Bonav,

 

Permit me to open by stressing anew all the respect I have for you and Dr. Yagnye. "Chapeau!" not only for what you stand for and profess publicly, but also for what I consider to be a genuine effort on your part to understand the Southern Cameroons Problem.

 

It is my belief that we have educated each other on this and Africa's struggles and that we are right to seek leads from the aborted efforts of our forefathers in Cameroon. In so doing, we must objectively consider why they failed.

 

We have often fallen short of understanding each other, provoking on occasion the kind of I would dare say justified dismissive one-liner from Professor Tatah Mentan, whose views I rarely do not share. Here are a few historical facts and guideposts that could help our reflection:

African Political Entities before 1884

1. Our peoples (be they the peoples of Cameroons or the peoples of Africa) were not one before colonialism. Let us cut the revisionism. Our peoples were many fractious factions, tribes, clans and traditional kingdoms; often at each other's throats; drawing any blood we could find to win farmlands, conquer territory, expand rule and influence.

1884: Every African Child should know this date

2. Colonialism destroyed that part of us. It destroyed the multitude of African kingdoms - too many to enumerate in any book. It is colonialism that imposed unity upon a conquered and dominated peoples. That does not mean that there were no big African empires. It means that small empire survived alongside micro states.

I am the Man!

3. German Kamerun - the grand empire that extended into parts of present-day Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Chad and Cameroon, of course -  was the byproduct of that forced unity, built at gunpoint, often by hanging the leaders of our kingdoms and at the price of endless bloodletting.

See German Kamerun?

4. I am about to make a very big declaration. Here it is: I believe and I am sure Nuremberg agrees that any nostalgia for a restoration of German Kamerun is an apology for Nazism and the kind of fascist expansionism that led to the two World Wars. May be some hunger for it. We are definitely opposed to it and I believe you are opposed as well. If so, then we need to cut the talk of reuniting the peoples of the Nazi invention named Kamerun.

 

5. It is that expansionism, annexation and colonization - similar to the policies of Nazi Germany deciding against international law, to move into and occupy Czechoslovakia - that we, Southern Cameroonians accuse Yaounde of. Like Nazi Germany, everything La Republique has done in Southern Cameroons it has claimed to be legal, in keeping with international law and consistent with the will of the people obtained at gunpoint.

Kamerun Coat of Arms

6. If you take away the years of the World War, the peoples of Southern Cameroons and the peoples of La Republique du Cameroun were governed as one country for less than 30 years.

 

7. Now compare that short period of common destiny to the longer period - more than 40 years of joint administration alongside Nigeria. Is one expected to be more brothers with the friend of 40+ years or with the friend of under-30 years? The dozen years of post independence were not years of association given that La Republique was steeped in the " Maquisard War".

                                     

British Southern Cameroons is NOT Fiction

8. As two different Trust Territories, our destinies have been separate for a very long time. The international boundaries of our territories have been known and enforced internationally for years. Our two brotherly peoples - not any more brotherly than us with Nigeria or you with Gabonese - were, each in their own right, put on the path to independence as separate countries. As different peoples, we each earned the right to self-determination.

 

9. Without depending on the peoples of La Republique, Southern Cameroonians fought for and won self-government at once from Britain and from Nigeria. We made sure that independence meant that the colonialists - both Nigeria and Britain - left us to handle our self-government. Not so, La Republique, where the French left so they could stay permanently.

 

10. Without waiting for the people of Southern Cameroons (still caught in Trusteeship), the people of La Republique du Cameroun were too impatient - they asked for and were granted what France claimed was independence. It was okay if Southern Cameroonians - the so-called brothers of the West of the River Mungo - were held in captivity.

Cameroons: a mutating entity?

11. While the sad experiences of Southern Cameroons in Nigeria endeared La Republique to our leaders in Buea, who wanted genuine "union in diversity", leaders in La Republique were scheming day and night to colonize. Once admitted into international sovereignty, La Republique du Cameroun set its greedy eyes on colonizing Southern Cameroons.

 

12. During the late 1950s but most especially in April 1961, the annexationist country of La Republique voted against independence for the brotherly peoples of Southern Cameroons at the United Nations. Ahidjo spoke English from the rostrum to declare his lack of interest in freeing the slaves of Southern Cameroons from the plantation of colonialism.

 

13. The crime did not stop there. In August of the same year, the parliament (Assemblee Nationale) of La Republique voted into law a Constitution that consecrated the annexation of Southern Cameroons even before the territory had gained independence. Every time Ahidjo thought he would be found out, he made speeches in which he reaffirmed from his lips - his heart elsewhere like a thief at night - that La Republique had no intention or right to meddle in the internal affairs of Southern Cameroons.

 

14. While the charm of this bite-and-blow "arrata die way na yi mop find'am" approach was on display, the leaders of Southern Cameroons of the time trusted those they called their brothers from La Republique. They pleaded with them then - as they do with us now - that if they could only get rid of the French and British colonialists, they could sought their unity and mutual respect issues among brothers once the stranger is gone.

British Southern Cameroons Govt: Cabinet Members.

15. Southern Cameroonian leaders - the Fonchas, Juas, Endeleys, Mbiles, Nyentis, Dinkas, etc. - were approached by and they chose to believe their brothers from East of Mungo - the the Ums, Ouandies, Ndogmos, etc. This is the same way that our Francophonized brothers today (Bonav, Yagnye) expect our Anglophonized Southern Cameroonians (Prof. Tatah Mentan, Chief Taku, Njoh Litumbe, etc.) to trust them.

 

16. The trouble with that "trust without verifying" or "trust because we are one" - the trouble with that picture is simple: Southern Cameroonian leaders have been down that road before. They were not only lured into the Foumban Tent and bitten by the millipede; now their successors are being asked to trust that they will, in their turn, not be bitten by a snake. Or, once bitten, twice shy.

 

17. It does not help the "just trust us approach"... It does not help the "there is no Southern Cameroons Problem" approach that they now use the same sing song. Their call is for Southern Cameroonians to drop their fight for self-government of their territory in favor of joining - did I just use that word? - well, in favor of YES joining them to fight the perceived common enemy (France-Yaounde) who happens to be the same now as before, and true to script, is embarked today - as Biya said so clearly in Buea last February 20 - on the same annexationist tricks as before. The hunter's bullet cannot be blamed if the inquisitive monkey cannot read the bait.

 

18. The invitation from our Francophonized brothers begs a zillion questions. Where did trust lead Foncha, Jua, Mbile? Where did giving up their people's fight for self-rule for the bigger, mord general fight against the common enemy get them? Why should any Southern Cameroonian do the same thing as Foncha, Jua, Endeley, Mbile, Nyenti and Co. and expect a different outcome?

 

19. The truth on the other hand is self-evident. Our peoples made progress together only when Um Nyobe and Ouandie fought their own battles against the neocolonialists in La Republique while counting on what support they could get from Southern Cameroonians which never gave up the fight for its own self-government from Nigeria and Britain. Different fronts weaken even the most formidable adversary, it is said.

 

20. The invitation to collapse all struggles into one united front which has been made time without number on this forum and elsewhere repeats the tactical mistake of taking splinters of weak small forces up against a crushingly more powerful enemy and doing so on front. It is a strange doctrine to invite all combatants to trust all battle victories into one basket.

 

21. Truth is that we are a more united country by recognizing our differences than by ignoring them. Canada is. As a matter of fact, Canada and the USA are more united despite being two different countries. That's the Southern Cameroons and the La Republique du Cameroun I think we can achieve in trust and dignity for all. 

 

22. It is clear - it has been clear in the past and will be for the foreseeable future - the army of liberation that is divided in objective and strategy cannot fight in unison. That does not stop that liberation struggle from winning battles in dispersed ranks and in adding up these many small battle wins into the big final victory of the war.

BSCameroons Leaders make a Symbolic About-Turn on the Mungo Bridge.

23. Let me reiterate my belief in and support for what Chief Taku says: "The Southern Cameroons Case is a case for the respect of international legality, a struggle against annexation and colonial rule and, indeed, a fight for justice against international criminality".

 

24. I was delighted to read that Dr. Yagnye buys this declaration - hook, line and sinker. I was disappointed by what he said next - consisting of watering down someone's cause by saying that yours is the same. Let me be clear, though. Yes, indeed, La Republique has a case to make against colonial France. The citizens of La Republique du Cameroun need to make that case themselves. They may want our help and we would most likely grant it, but it is their battle; not ours to lead.

 

25. The trouble, so far and no matter how deep we bury our heads in the sand, is that the peoples of La Republique behave like they do not have such a problem. They are not as agitated about it as the people of Southern Cameroons. They act like they did not have a problem. It would be okay if that was all. What is hard to swallow is the feeling/impression they share so generously that Southern Cameroonians may be making a mountain out of an anthill.

Cameroons: 1919 till 1961

Enough from me! But, let me close by not comparing what is clearly less evil with Ahidjo's scheming. It worries me - I don't know for you - but it worries me that this strategy by my Francophonized brothers is somewhat similar to Ahidjo's one-party drive in 1966. We know the outcome. Failure is guaranteed. The call for the impossible unity (given mere human nature), has already been tried without success by the opposition movements in Cameroon, if we were looking for a recent precedent. It is my view that embracing such a strategy is the best way of leading the hopes of self-government for Southern Cameroons straight into the Biya Crematorium of so-called Reunification.

 

Boh Herbert

A nation is known not by how it treats its highest citizens but how it treats its lowest citizens. Madiba Nelson Mandela

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