Barrister Ben Muna Fires back at the "Mfoundi Elite" Genocide Ringleaders

By Barrister Bernard Muna
(Original Text in French translated by Fon Christopher Achobang, Freelance translator in Limbe)

I read the “Statement from Mfoundi Elites” published last week on the national daily, ‘Cameroon Tribune’ with rapt attention.

Till date, I have lived in the illusion that Cameroon was a nation. It is true that our country is made up of many ethnic and tribal groups. I sincerely believed that chiefs and the traditional leaders from these many ethnic and tribal groups, alongside their subjects had already healed the deep wounds of colonization and transferred the authority, which was theirs before the arrival of the colonizers to the central government of an artificial country created by the colonizer.

The different peoples of Cameroon, alongside their traditional leaders had, therefore, decided to be united by a social contract, implicitly to build a nation, which successively moved from the Federal Republic of Cameroon to the United Republic of Cameroon, and presently the Republic of Cameroon.

In fact, République du Cameroun was the appellation for francophone Cameroon at independence. Anglophone Cameroonians welcomed the old name “République du Cameroun”, as such, refusing to recognize Cameroon as unified.

It is this nationalism which spurred people like the late John Ngu Foncha, Solomon Tandeng Muna, my late father, and many other Anglophone Cameroonians to work hard and selflessly, in order that the two Cameroons became truly unified.

On my part, I have always been moved by the challenge of building a strong bilingual nation and it is for this reason that I relocated my law firms from Bamenda to Yaoundé in 1974.

I have always considered Yaoundé as the capital of our great nation. It is here in Yaoundé that people like John Ngu Foncha, Solomon Tandeng Muna, E.T. Egbe, Nzo Ekangaki, Bernard Fonlon and others came together with President Ahmadou Ahidjo and other Cameroonian patriots, from all the regions of the country, to work towards the building of a great nation called Cameroon, whose capital is Yaoundé.

In reading the abhorrent “Statement from Mfoundi Elites” I have the impression that these valiant people who fought and continue to fight for the fatherland had deceived themselves.

Is Yaoundé, therefore, no longer the capital of Cameroon? Are we still a nation? As such, therefore, Yaoundé belongs to natives of Mfoundi or precisely to the “sons and daughters, elites, notables and traditional chiefs of Mfoundi”.

Some of us who have only come to Yaoundé are simply aliens benefiting from the hospitality and goodwill the people of Mfoundi have accorded us. We should be prepared to be kicked out of Yaoundé by those who are the rightful owners of the town when we dare to open our mouths to say things, or when we commit acts they disapprove of. Therefore, we should expect to be driven out of Yaoundé with cutlasses, knives, sticks and even guns and forced back to our respective areas of origin.

I know it is difficult for you and your children to be obliged to trek because of social disturbances, and moreover after you have acquired huge and luxurious means of locomotion. Cameroonians are not asking you how you acquired such means. We also understand that it is annoying to see markets locked up just when you were about to shop for you and your family, especially as you have huge amounts of money in your pockets to spend.

Perhaps you do not know that there are millions of Cameroonians who always trek and many more that cannot go to the market, may be because they have no money at all, or the bit they have is not enough.

Concerning the damage of tarred streets in Yaoundé, I also understand your anger, since you are used to driving your luxurious cars on good roads. But there are millions of Cameroonians who travel on dust, either on foot or in old battered vehicles.

It might be necessary to remind you that roads, for example in Ndian, source of Cameroon’s oil revenue, are impassable for eight months of the year. And these inhabitants live in dust during the dry season and mud during the raining season. Many bridges between Kumba and Mamfe have been abandoned and uncompleted for close to 20 years. Bamenda, headquarters of the North-West Province has few tarred streets and adding to that Mbengwi, headquarters of Momo Division hasn’t even a meter of tar. We swim in dust during the dry season and mud during the rains.

I have not come to Yaounde because I do not have a village of my own. This is same for most Cameroonians living in Yaoundé. When we consider the intellectual and educational level of the signatories of this declaration, we are frightened by the document because the authors are sufficiently knowledgeable and intelligent to weigh the power of the words used.

I am sure most of us are ready to pack bag and baggage and trek back to our villages. As for me, I have taken this warning from the “sons of Mfoundi” seriously and I am actively thinking of returning to Bamenda and re-floating my law firms there, or I might decide to go to Limbe, where the natives are welcoming.

Today, in Limbe, there are many descendants of Mfoundi, and Bassa who escaped from the excesses of French colonization at the time, to establish a new home for themselves there.

They still feel at home there, in a part of the country they consider their fatherland, and they are not threatened under threat of being expelled, and can proudly and honestly say they have no other home. Perhaps, those of us Cameroonians still harbouring the idea of building a nation where all citizens have equal rights wherever they live, should come together to found a new capital for ourselves. In this new capital, everybody will feel at home; nobody will have the right to threaten the neighbour that, “hence we will reply tit for tat” or “from now eye for eye and tooth for tooth”, and nobody will be considered an alien predator expected to leave rapidly and definitively “our land” and tell the neighbour they will never be safe again.

Your statement has vindicated the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), which like you preach the disintegration of our country. But as a credit to them, they have never used the type of violent words in your declaration. If the crime of the SCNC is preaching the separation of West Cameroon, your crime is worse because you have attempted to separate Mfoundi from the rest of the republic.

On the contrary, your act is of graver impact because you have not only attempted to secede Mfoundi from the rest of Cameroon, but you also want to cleanse Yaoundé of all those who are not of your ethnic group.

Drawing from my 4 years experience as prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, I can guarantee you that it is in the same manner that genocide started in that country.

I thank God because I personally know other respectable sons and elites of Mfoundi, who do not reason like you, the authors of the statement. They don’t believe in an ethnic nation. During these trying moments, they instead believe in a nation with many tribes. I am comforted in the knowledge that such people exist, if not I would have left Yaoundé.
As a matter of caution, I will do well to always keep my things together, in readiness to leave for Bamenda, if elements like you continued on the course of division and conflict.

In the hope that we are living in a republic where everybody has the same rights transcending ethnic origins, I hope steps would be taken in the next days to bring about a peaceful and calm atmosphere.

In this regard, I expect that:

1) The President of the République du Cameroun would sack all the signatories of the “Statement from Mfoudi Elites”.
2) The Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization confines the authors of this statement under administrative detention and that they be transferred to prisons as was the case for militants of the Southern Cameroon National Council;
3) The Minister of Justice orders the State Counsel to arrest the authors of this declaration of war and try them in court for inciting violence and threats under condition;
4) The National Assembly endorses a motion during the March session starting on 13 March, to condemn firmly this dangerous statement, for the sake of national unity. Once these measures are taken, Cameroonians will be reassured of their safety wherever they live, and that the State will seek to rid our country of dangerous ethnic and tribal sentiments.

Cameroonians, likewise I, are waiting, without guns, knives and cutlasses; we are ready to return to our own villages, if State authorities want to encourage division.

Long Live solidarity between ethnic groups and tribes
God Bless Cameroon

By Bernard Muna
Barrister-at-Law of Cameroon Bar Council
Chairman of Alliance of Progressive Forces