Remembering October 1, 1961: Ben Muna in his Own Words

It now seems that the English-speaking Cameroonians enjoyed more freedom of expression under the colonial government than they do today after gaining their freedom and independence.

October 1, 1961 met me in London as a student of Law in Lincoln's Inn. This date is important to me because after that day, I was summoned to the British Council Offices in London. I was received by the then Director, Colonel Cook. In spite of his military background he was a very polite and friendly person, who went out of his way to make sure that overseas students in London did not confront too many problems.

Cook invited me to sit down and then told me the reason why he had invited me to his office. He told me that my country, the British Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons, had become independent on October 1, 1961, by re-unifying with the former French Territory of East Cameroon which had gained its independence since January of 1960.

He went on to inform me that when I was admitted into the United Kingdom in November 1959, I was a holder of a British Colonial Passport issued by the British Governor General of Nigeria, High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Cameroons.

He then informed me that I now had three choices: the first choice was to take the passport of an independent Nigeria, the second was to take the passport of the new Federal Republic of Cameroon and the third was to take a United Kingdom passport.

My Three Alternatives

The choice I made was not difficult because during my teenage years, I grew up in the exciting period of passionate Cameroon nationalism. Names such as Um Nyobe, Dr. Felix Moumie and Ernest Ouandji from the French Cameroons, had become household names in conjunction with British Cameroons political leaders of the time; Dr. E.M.L. Endeley, J.C. Kangsen, V.T. Lainjo, S.A. George, Victor Mukete, Dr. J. N. Foncha, N. N. Mbile, P.M. Kale, A.N. Jua, Motomby Wolete and of course S.T. Muna, among others. During this time the question of re-uniting the two Cameroons dominated the political agenda of the Southern Cameroons.

The household in which I lived was dominated by the question of re-unification. My father resigned from the Eastern Regional Government of Eyo Ita to fight for a separate region under the leadership of Dr. Endeley.

When Dr. Endeley changed his mind about re-unification, my father resigned from the KNC party to join Dr. Foncha in the KNDP party, in order to continue the fight for the re-unification of the two Cameroons.

Cameroon nationalism and re-unification were part of my political diet as a teenager from 1951 to 1959 when I left for Britain. Therefore, to ask me to choose a United Kingdom or Nigerian passport was to ask me to deny who I was, to cast away the nationalism of my formative years and to cultivate a new nationalism for a country that I had never considered as mine.

It was a proud day for me when after several weeks I was again called by Colonel Cook to receive a stiff-back, green passport on which was boldly written The Federal Republic of Cameroon and La République Fédéral du Cameroun. This is how significant October 1 is to me.

National Amnesia

Today, many Cameroonians born after 1970 and some who were born before, have no memories of what October 1 stands for in the history of our nation. One cannot blame them. The blame falls squarely on the historians and politicians, who for reasons known only to themselves have distorted the history of our country.

Today we celebrate May 20 as our National Day, but some people forget that without the October 1, there would never have been any May 20. Without the re-unification on October 1, 1961, the East Cameroon would have been stuck with January 1 as its National Day. Historically, therefore, October 1 is a more important date than May 20.

To celebrate May 20 and to pretend that October 1 does not exist is to distort history and to deny the fact that the English-speaking Cameroonians, in a plebiscite conducted uniquely in the then Southern Cameroons, willingly and freely decided to come into a federation with their French-speaking brothers. The rest of the history of our country is based on this historical fact.

October 1 has once come and gone. The Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) will again try to make its point and the administration will again try to prevent the members of this organisation from making this point. As a matter of fact, some members of the SCNC have already been arrested as a run-up to October 1.

What is striking is that when the Southern Cameroonians were fighting to separate from Nigeria and join the East Cameroon, those fighting for the separation at the time were never arrested. Today, some other Southern Cameroonians seek to question the wisdom of what happened in October 1961 and they are being thrown into jail.

It now seems that the English-speaking Cameroonians enjoyed more freedom of expression under the colonial government than they do today after gaining their freedom and independence.

Without using arms, I do not see what harm can come from revisiting the question of re-unification. Sometimes I really feel that the SCNC is promoted by certain members of the administration so that they can always declare that there is a threat to the unity of our nation and that this threat comes from the Anglophones.

Understanding Anglophone Anger

The reality is that if there has ever been a threat to the unity of our nation, it has never come from the Northwest and Southwest Provinces. The attempted coup of 1984 is a case in point.

When you travel in a four-wheel-drive car such as a Pajero from Mutengene to Kumba in four hours; when you travel from Kumba to Kurume, a distance of 35 kilometres in two hours as I did in a new four-wheel-drive; when one can not get to Ndian in four or five months of a year; when it is virtually impossible to drive through the ring road at any time; when one notices that in a government of 62 ministers only six come from the Anglophone provinces, then one begins to understand that the SCNC is not about secession; it is about the total neglect and abandonment of the two Anglophone provinces.

First of all is road infrastructure. The road linking Limbe and Douala was built because of the petrol in Limbe and for no other reason. Remove the Limbe-Douala road and the Southwest Province has no roads. Even the Kumba-Loum road that was tarred during the days of West Cameroon is untarred today.

The Kumba-Mamfe road is full of uncompleted bridges. In the Northwest Province, some roads are tarred in patches, and the untarred patches are virtually impassable during the rainy season.

Secondly, comes employment. There are no industries worth talking about which employ Anglophone Cameroonians. Even the National Oil Refinery (SONA.RA) located in the Southwest Province, recruits 90 percent of its workforce from the Francophone region when it was built.

The Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, which employs about 17.000 Cameroonians, mostly Anglophones, is being sold off in bits, starting with the tea estates. Since then nearly 10.000 Cameroonians, mostly Anglophones have lost their jobs in the CDC and there is an attempt to confiscate the land of the Bakweri tribe on which CDC built its estates.

In the Northwest Province, there is no industry at all. The future of these two provinces look bleak and no one in the administration really cares. If this government really cares about national unity and is serious about combating this supposedly secessionist movement, then it must start by doing in the Southwest Province what it is doing in the South and East Provinces.

In these provinces part of the revenue from timber exploitation is returned to the locality for investment in the infrastructure and social services such as roads, schools and hospitals. Even Ndian from which our petrol comes does not receive any such advantages.

Why this double standard? Let a percentage of the revenue from petroleum oil exploitation be invested in the Southwest Province on road infrastructure and in creating employment in order to reduce poverty. Take away the problems and secession for secession’s sake becomes meaningless.

Ben Muna at a Glance

Mr. Bernard Muna was born in 1940 in Cameroon. He was admitted to the English Bar (Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn) in 1966. In September 1966 he became State Counsel in the Office of the Attorney-General (later Procureur General) with responsibility for the prosecution of all criminal cases for the then Federated States of West Cameroon. Three years later he was appointed Magistrate in Bamenda, Cameroon. He was named Chief Prosecutor for Northwest Province in February 1971. In April of the same year he resigned from the Public Bar, and in May 1971 he was enrolled at the Bar of the Federated State of West Cameroon and established his practice in Buea. As a member of the Criminal Procedure Code Drafting Committee in 1975 he participated in the drafting of the new criminal code for Cameroon, produced in 1980. From May 1986-1992 he served as the elected President of the Cameroon Bar Association. In 1987, he was named United Nations Country Rapporteur for penal reform and crime prevention, and he was also elected in the same year as President of the newly created Central African Lawyers Union (UNAAC), Union des Avocats de l'Afrique Centrale. He was re-elected President of the UNAAC in 1989. Mr. Muna the Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on 29 April 1997 to May 2001. He has since returned to private practice in Cameroon.

Subtitles by Scribbles from the Den

Comments

[somamo]

I want to thank barister Ben Muna for his write up captioned ' Remembering October 1961,' in which he was able to tell the world how the people of Southern Cameroons are jailed because they are asking for their rights.
Good job but I am always push aback when people label the entity of Southern Cameoons as anglophones.
To the best of my knowledge, the appellation ' Anglophone ' never came up durring the re-unification 1961, uptill 1972 when a large quantity of crude Oil was discovered in the offshores of the then Kumba division and LRC with help of France, set up their hellish plans for the despoilation of the Natural Resources in Southern Cameroons and dividing Southern Cameroons into two provinces in LRC, thereby reducing the power of SC as an entity.
Afixing the the Anglophone appellation on the entity of Southern Cameroons, by some of our intelectuals and leaders make me sick because it reduces the Southern Cameroons that had had a government the ran the affairs of the state as a nation, before the blunder of the UNO that asked for re-unification of LRC as SC as equal partner 1961.
Can some one tell our Southern Cameroons interlectuals and leaders to stop using the appellation Anglophone in the place of Southern Cameroons so that our history can be kept striaght and clean for our unborn generation?

[Ma Mary]

You just said it. Use of "anglophone" denotes:
dishonesty
absence of intellectual rigour
ignoring history
giving away power.

SOUTHERN CAMEROON POLITICIANS LIKE BEN MUNA NEED TO STOP GIVING AWAY OUR POWER!

[Ambe Johnson]

While lazyness explains the use of the word Anglophone in many cases, I beleive that there is nonetheless and ideological justification for that term.

In my opinion when discussing the relationship between French-speaking Cameroonians and English-speaking Cameroonians within the context of the cameroon republic; and when referring to those Englilsh speaking fellows who believe in the Union, and are fighting over the spoils of the system, the term Anglophone is very apt.

I think it would be weird, wrong and even insulting to southern Cameroons nationalists to say, for example, that three Southern Cameroonians were appointed in the Biya government. No, those are Anglophones.

Similarly, Political parties based in the former British Cameroons that take part in Cameroonian elections are Anglophone parties, NOT Southern Cameroons parties.

On the other hand, saying that Anglophones are trying to secede, as the Frogs always say, is wrong; Southern Cameroonians are fighting for the rebirth of their state/country.

So "Anglophone" refers to an English-speaking Cameroonian who is contented with the state of the union, even if he or she may have serious reservations or issues with how that union is being managed - but nonetheless believes in an x-state federation or a "decentralized unitary state". Muna, Fru Ndi, Inoni, etc., are all Anglophones

A Southern Cameroonian sees the union of the Cameroons as one between two independent territories, and not the reunion of "lost brothers". The Southern Cameroonian believes that following the violation of the terms of the union between the two distinct territories (territories which could very well have both been French speaking...), the aggrieved territory is determined to leave the union - in a situation akin to the senegambian case. Members of the SCNC, Ambazonia, etc., are Southern Cameroonians.

Rather than try to ban the use of the term "Anglophone" I think SC nationalists will be best served to use the term to disparagingly refer to those who are determined to remain second class citizens for ever. They did it with "La Republique" which is now a dirty word, even to Francophones, so they can do it too with the word Anglophone.

"Anglophone" correctly describes a living reality.

[paolo laurent]

ambe johnson you are right.

southern cameroons must be independent by
any means necessary, those anglofous who love tostay in la republique ,like inoni,
achidi et all , just have to start packing.

[paolo laurent]

southern cameroon is in west africa
la republique du cameroun is in central africa.
to those anglos, like muna, they are central africans, since they ,lost their
west african identity by crossing the boundary at (mungo bridge)
you know the frogs things southern cameroons is in central africa, by any stretch of imaginationits not.
ask them, and they will tell you its politcal. if you dont like it you should go to nigeria.
and leave your villages and land to them.
muna and fru are a bunch of anglophones.
central africaine.

[Ma Mary]

Good points Ambe. I believe in the no Southern Cameroonian left behind school. But for now, these chickens will be called anglofowls or anglofools or anglofous, depending on what side of the bed I rise from in the morning.

[Dr. Gahlia Gwangwa'a]

I'm very grateful to Lawyer Ben Muna for his vivid remembrance of the journey that culminated in the reunification of 1961. There's an old adage that when starving for food, it's better to refuse poisoned food than to eat and perish to oblivion.

Southern Cameroonians were free and independent during colonization administration. Today they are in search of days gone. Cameroonians from the autonomous Federated State of West Cameroon are caught in the web of endogenous imperialism, expoitation and constrained to wallow in abject poverty. "Anglophones" is the title of their identity.

Remember: It took Eritria 30 years to regained its freedom from Ethiopia. It was not delivered while they remained on their laurels. At last, they were free, free at last! West Cameroonians, what is our dream? Who are we? Let the dream "dance" be positive to cajole all to stand up. Let's banish the "me syndome from our person.

The sun has refused to set. Where do we really hide? The forests are gone. The desert has encroached! Where do we really hid? Our real identity is destroyed. Where do we really hide? We want honey and we're afraid of bees. How do we get to the harvest? It won't be served to us at the dining table! Is our thinking unstable! How do we get there in unison to lean on constructivism? Food for thought!

[Smith Elie]

I just fell on this out of a stroke of luck and found the write up very interesting. Such can only come from some one like Muna, whose wisdom of Cameroon's history comes from his expirience and his reputation from his authority. Some may not agree with him, but this post of his, is honest and must be appreciated. Congratulations Sir.

[geogette]

what is the importance of celebrating the reunification day in cameroon