Cameroon: exiles feed split
Diaspora nurtures secessionist efforts via social media
SECESSIONIST revolt is gaining ground in the Englishspeaking west of Cameroon, but for lack of charismatic local leaders, the impetus is coming from the diaspora, analysts say.
On October 1 militants proclaimed the independence of Ambazonia, the name they give to the two Anglophone regions, provoking a crackdown by President Paul Biya’s security forces that left dozens dead and many injured.
The upheaval, which broke out at the end of 2016 and threatens to become an “armed insurrection”, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG), was at first motivated by the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC), locally known as “the Consortium”.
Formed in December 2016, the Consortium – chaired by Felix Khongo Agbor Balla – comprised four lawyers’ associations and several teachers’ unions and shared a moderate attitude in favour of federal ties with the larger French-speaking parts of the country.
In January, the Consortium was dissolved and two leaders were arrested. They were later freed, but several others fled abroad, where their political stance hardened and they joined the secessionists.
France and Britain divided up the one-time German colony under the League of Nations after World War I. A year after the French-ruled territory became independent in 1961, the southern part of British Cameroons was integrated into a federal system, scrapped 11 years later for a “united republic”.
In the Southwest and Northwest Regions, home to about 20% of Cameroon’s population of 23 million, the secessionist struggle is waged “by local teams acting in semi-clandestine fashion”, says Mathias Eric Owona Nguini, an academic researcher specialised in geostrategic analysis in central Africa.
While differences over strategy and tactics remain, small secessionist groups have in recent months emerged to call for violence, particularly against the security forces but also against francophone citizens. They intimidate hostile members of the local elite comfortable with the status quo.
Yet the main political battle is “waged from abroad” by known individuals acting openly in favour of an independent angolophone Ambazonia, says Nguini.
Living in the US, Julius Ayuk Tabe Sisiku, self-proclaimed president of Ambazonia, has a personal guard. A computer technician little known in Cameroon at large, Sisiku uses his Facebook page to give orders to his followers. He also haunts the corridors of power quietly to win global recognition for his “country”.
Two exiled members of the Consortium, Wilfred Tassang and Harmony Bobga, have announced the creation of a “Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front” (Scacuf), which preaches independence and gives guidance in the fight against the Yaounde government. Exiled members of the old Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), a secessionist movement that was decapitated over the past two decades by the security forces, have joined the front.
Inside the country, radio personality Mancho Bibixy, or “BBC”, emerged as the voice of the radicals in the anglophone town of Bamenda in the Northwest. He was arrested in January and remains in jail accused of “terrorism”.
“This crisis marked a generational renewal within the anglophone movement and the diaspora,” the ICG said in a report published in August. “The historic standard-bearers of the anglophone question who came from the SCNC, the Cameroon Anglophone Movement or the AAC were not centre stage.
“Militants of the 1990s from Cameroon University who emigrated in the period after 1995 were succeeded by young people from Buea University and the University of Buea Student Union, who left Cameroon more recently.”
“Radicalisation” of anglophones is the result of intensive “propaganda” from abroad on social networks which feeds into feelings of marginalisation at home, Nguini says.
Separatists also have a cable television channel, Southern Cameroon Broadcasting Corporation (SCBC TV), which is officially banned but operates from South Africa. “Internetcampaigns contributed to mounting public anger and increased the popularity of secessionist ideas,” the ICG said. “The diaspora helped give the crisis a higher profile at international level.”
Amid the crackdowns carried out by the regime, the ranks of the secessionists grow by the day. More and more of them are turning to the notion of “self-defence”. — AFP