Open Letter to the International Monetary Fund

Dear Sir/Madam,

I'm particularly concerned with the recent admission of Cameroon to the completion point of HIPC. I am a Cameroonian and a graduate student at Bemidji State University in Minnesota. My fear here is that your institution has been misled into believing that the Biya's regime in Cameroon has satisfied the conditions for debt relief. It's hard to think that students are being killed, raped and tortured in the University of Buea, the only Anglo-Saxon university in the country and no one has been formally charged. Last year, the forces of law and order used excessive force on students who were on strike because the results of the competitive exam into the newly created school of medicine were falsified. The chairman of the commission of inquiry was appointed into a government office before he could publicize the findings of his report thus compromising the veracity of such a report if it will ever be made. Of course, no reports of military excesses in Cameroon are ever made public.

The crisis plaguing our universities and the government reaction to them has become worrisome because of the consecutive brutality of the police and the gendarmes with impunity since 2005. When peaceful demonstrations are organized in Buea tear gas bombs, water canons and life-bullets are used and in the other universities, well, it is a different story. A case in point here was at the University of Douala where the student leaders were expelled and barred from all state university for organizing demonstrations to mourn the slain students in the University of Buea on November 29th 2006 as well as demand the release of students who were arrested arbitrarily. As if this was not enough, Professor Cornelius Lambi, the then Vice Chancellor of the University of Buea was given a verbal lashing by the Minister of Higher Education on national radio and television for telling the truth and then sacked from a position he had only held for a couple of months.

What did the president say about all these happenings? Nothing! He did not as much as mention it in his end of year address. One can infer from such a silence that he ordered and supervised the events. After all, with such a centralized system as that which exists in Cameroon is there anything that happens without the authorization of the head of state? It could also be that he does not know what happened in Buea since the events took place in Anglophone Cameroon and probably the echoes came to him in English which he does not understand or care about. It's worth noting that he has never addressed the nation in English and early this month a government minister banned the use of English during an official press conference.

I actually wonder at the reports that were submitted by government officials to make Cameroon qualify for an especially economic slap on the face as a heavily indebted poor country when the president for his more than two decades in power does not know what is wrong with Cameroon economically. Hear him during his end of year address: "How come our country, which is well endowed by nature and the climate, which has acknowledged human resources and which enjoys peace and stability, is yet to achieve its economic take-off?" What reforms have been carried out by this guy who appears to be so dumb about the affairs that should concern him most?

I wish to remind you that the freedom of association is still to be practiced in Cameroon. There exists at the moment a volatile situation caused by first the failure of the government to acknowledge the presence of an Anglophone problem and second the excessive use of force by the military in subjugating Cameroonians of English expressive, effacing their identity and destroying in totality the Southern Cameroons National Congress (SCNC) with lethal force. An example of such acts of terrorism by Mr Biya is the arrest of Nfor Ngala and Mbinglo Benjamin, leaders of SCNC and forty others during a press conference on the 20th of January, 2007.

I am strongly of the opinion that you’ve been misled by the reports that put Cameroon in her present point with the HIPC initiative. I am ready to work with you in having a clean slate about Cameroon before Mr Biya gets away with the debts he accumulated over the years, without even anything to show for them in terms of development. I wonder how you can do business with this guy! What was done with the initial loans? God! There is no accountability and no structures for that with the present dispensation.

There is no doubt that the Cameroonian people need the intervention of the IMF and World Bank to recover from the recession that has plunged the country into untold misery, hopelessness and shame. I think Cameroonians of good will appreciate a factual account of what is going on before you consummate your present marriage with Mr Biya for it is with him and him alone that you are taking vows and not with the Cameroonian people who lack the peace of mind to enjoy a night’s sleep and must drink to do so.

Sincerely,

Brendan.

Bits and Pieces

The other day I was caught by this sudden fit to react to what I’d read about Oprah Winfrey in “The Globe”. It was an outrage on forty-million-dollar school in South Africa. This set me thinking and the lines that came into my head were quickly written down. Then I also thought of what happened in Cameroon, especially the role of the professors in managing the strike on the university campus as well as protecting the integrity of the academe. The result was another poem. I don’t know whether you will call them poems. Well I just want to share the revised versions with you.

Thank You Oprah

A new South Africa shouts hurrah
And on the streets the children sing
Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrica
As a marching song to school
Or in hope that one day ripening plums
Now being harvested will fall their way

Yes Oprah, you’ve planted a tree of life
To bring back life lost in getting today
You’ve shown in true African spirit that
The dead are not really dead but nearby
As the cries of Soweto and Sharpville
Of children gruesomely murdered
For love of education and their country
Continued to reverberate from their graves
Refusing to rest until their course is fulfilled
Now they can rest as you have brought hope

This may sound like a panegyric for Oprah
And condemned by the detractors who of late
Shouted inanities at the present day world arbiter
For turning eyes of mercy and looking on Africa
Like a goddess, dreamed of and prayed for by
Many African children whose talents will die
For want of educational facilities to exploit them
And like Gray’s pearl ever lost to human eye
Theirs will be a life of tribulations and regrets
Unlike those who think of candies and i-pods

Let God in Oprah continue to bless Africa
So that in next-door Zimbabwe, girls too can
Sing a different song other than letting their
Pants torn at street corners to get fees and books
And in Cameroon where the hot pools of blood
Have continually been refilled on UB street
When students cry for better learning conditions
And academic integrity with branches and placards
Emperor Paul Biya with his secret police CENER
Respond angrily in teargas, water canons and gunfire
It takes only an Oprah to sing a new song for Africa
When others rather enjoy the regular rhythm of disease,
Infections, poverty, coup d’êtres and genocides
Nkosi sikelel’ iOprah


When Intellectuals Recant

It’s always hard to get the right music
For a dance party of Afro intelleticians
Except to create slapstick comedy
Intellectuals and politicians have to dance
At arms length for fear of falling in love
This holds true at the armpit of Africa!
The advanced democracy in Cameroon
Looms on the horizon of the academe
And controls every academic decision
While the chalk and the pen coexist
the one used to sign decrees is awful
When promotions in the academia
Are orchestrated by a scrawl on paper
By some far removed demigod
Who sits high in the White House
And has been in power since 1982
Is that not advanced democracy?
The dons who aspire then adjust
Their glasses and microscopes
The specimen being observed:
A society in grips of a democrat
And in class, chalk that which is pleasing
Presenting academic papers of progress
Peace and prosperity like paupers
Others craft motions of support and
Praise epithets to be used for campaigns
Critical papers written during their twenties
Are disavowed and their very consciences
Either sacrificed for fear of reprisals
Or for hopes of appointments and tips
What then becomes of those in the search
of the truth – the very essence of being?
In Cameroon the answer on the wall is Isaiah
The hollow barrel of the gun is the test
The vomit of which truth is determined
And successful candidates join the
Champaign party at the White House
To celebrate the honeymoon of lies
When intellectuals recant the gate of hell is ajar
A future of nothingness awaits those yet unborn
A Cameroonian experience is true democracy
For freedom is there for the taking and only
True patriots fear to tell the truth of what is
Their lives are changed for the better
By the tiny sacrifice of this irritating truth

The First Step: A Way Forward

I found myself by the end of the day today in great spirits, after accomplishing what I’ll like to call the first step towards meaningful change in the status of Cameroon State Universities. Never in the history of violence plaguing especially the University of Buea, has a foreign institution, let alone a university out-rightly condemns the brutal murder and rape of students by the forces of operation sent by the imperial regime governing the country.

Of late, it dawned on me that after having been blessed with admission and a graduate assistantship position at BSU, that my next blessing was meeting Prof. Brian Donovan. As a master rhetorician and great teacher, he took me into the realms of truth and its place as the essence of being, and encouraged me to seek it beyond everything else. My passion for change in Cameroon found sustenance in him and with the recent crisis at UB he sought for me an audience at the BSU Senate meeting. God! That was incredible! I addressed the faculty senate on no other topic than the UB crisis. My brother back home must hear of this and Benneth's soul and those of others will now begin find rest now that something is being done about their murder.

At the meeting, the resolution on the Buea University Crisis was the last item on the agenda. When the time was ripe, Brian read the resolution and called on me to address the senators on the issue. This was the moment I had been preparing for, waiting for since the death of Benneth. I talked about the immediate cause of the strike, the strike, the verbal lashing of Prof. Lambi and his consequent dismissal, the rape, torture and incarceration of students etc. I related the 2005 crisis to last year’s as an ongoing military campaign by his Emperor Biya on hapless and armless students and then went on to talk about how the resolution was going to bring about change. With Biya’s attempts to reach the completion point of HIPC initiative, he’ll readily bring about reforms on human rights issues if the international press were to expose the situation at the universities and the fake campaign against corruption. This would cause the IMF and World Bank to suspend the current courtship with La Republique and push the emperor into a tight corner. He will not only institute freedom of expression in the university milieu but also admit the existence of an Anglophone problem. Ultimately, the SCNC will then be recognized and plans can be underway for a referendum on the independence of Southern Cameroons!

What a dream! Well, great things have been accomplished by big dreams. “Dream big dreams,” Fr Joe Awoh, former principal of Sasse College.

As would be expected, some of the senate members were troubled about my fate when I go back home and I told them that fear was out of the question now. If I had hopes of safety when I eventually go back, then I had to work towards changing the status and making it safer for everyone and myself when the time comes. This meant that I had to keep personal safety at bay for a moment. After all, where is my little brother and the others whose lives have already been wasted in the struggle. We must learn, I think, to live beyond personal apprehensions.

The draft resolution is as follows:
"The Bemidji State University Faculty Associating reprehends the use of deadly force by government forces against unarmed student protesters at the University of Buea in Cameroon on the first of December, the suppression of funeral observances for the slain, and the near-total silence of international media regarding these events."

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Emperor Biya's End of Year Address

It took me a while to take a look at what the Emperor had this time for those who had time to listen to him and when I did today, it was painfully unbearable.

I still don't know what to make of that address but a few things caught my attention. One of them is what Biya set about to achieve by his analysis or commentary. The question I find myself asking is whether the speech was meant to be used for a mock presentation at one of the World Bank - IMF sessions that is yielding fruits in national shame or pride (depending on how u look at it), of Cameroon as poorest of the poor heavily indebted countries of the world. What deception of the international community! That Cameroon is not poor is found in Biya's own words: "How come our country, which is well endowed by nature and the climate, which has acknowledged human resources and which enjoys peace and stability, is yet to achieve its economic take-off?"

Well, as for existence of peace in Cameroon, that is a different question. If peace is the absence of war then when people are at war with themselves as intimated by that speech is there peace? When many go to bed hungry, see their children driven from school for lack of fees, uniforms and exercise books, are they at peace with themselves? Many die for want of basic drugs, experience the heart rending disasters of seeing wives die enroute to maternities for deliveries because of the terrible conditions of roads (a situation deliberately left out by Biya's speech writer). Is there peace in Cameroon? The Anglophone question is yet to be openly discussed while in the meantime the people fighting for the correction of the smeared history of this region are quietly persecuted and exterminated just like the identity of this region is gradually being erased. Yes, there is Peace. After all, Biya let stage-managed elections go on to confirm himself as the president for life. What he calls fondly "Elections Cameroon" (the body he himself has created to run elections in the country) is what according to the leader of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) will trigger a civil war in Cameroon. With the proliferation of parties, most of them funded by him, there is freedom and democracy! What a ludicrous scenario!

Another interesting thing about the speech is that it shamelessly portrays a head of state who has no grasp of where he has taken a country to for the past 24yrs. Is it not absolutely ridiculous that he dares to compare Cameroon with South Asian states 40yrs ago? At the wake of his 25th year in power Biya says: "I am well aware that these efforts are far from adequate. But this is just the beginning." For 25yrs he describes his efforts as inadequate and is still to begin the development of Cameroon!

Where does the Southern Cameroons stand in this lamentable spectacle? Biya proves the point of the subjugation of this region when he talks of the need to build more dams for increase of power in the country. Anyhow, there is no problem with that declaration since he means La Republique du Cameroun and not the Federal Republic of Cameroon. Didn't he shut down the Yoke dam that provided energy in the Southern Cameroons and left the installation to lay in ruins like the other economic sectors in this part of the country? What has become of the Menchoum Falls that if harnessed could generate hydro electricity in all of West Africa? These of course are in the Southern Cameroons and it is incumbent on the citizens of this country to see to the develop of their territory and not on the Emperor who comes around only to rape it of its rich natural resources.

When I call Biya 'Emperor', some may wonder at such an epithet but hear him in his speech: "I have instructed the government"! Who but an Emperor of autocratic leanings will instruct the government on what to do? He claims that "With a few exceptions, political party activities are being conducted smoothly and freely." If we have to delve into the truthfulness he has surprisingly expressed here, that is, looking at the "few exceptions" then the size of the wolf that made the statement would be so fearfully disturbing. Added to this, the fact that he has tolerated limited party activities is something he wants the people to clap and sing alleluia to him as usual: "l'homme lion", "l'homme president", "Doctor of Agriculture", etc. Hear him: "Believe me, this is an exceptional situation. It is quite a rare privilege in our continent. We should, I think, give it due recognition."

One thing however, stand out clearly for all Cameroonians be there Southern Cameroonians or Cameroonians West of the Mungo and it is that they should continue to hope that God in his own time will provide the solution when he finds it in his merciful heart to strike their persecutor. They should remember that His ways are not the ways of men and that he gives evil men long lives so that they may have the chance to repent and repair their ways. Another difficult year is ahead of them and they should take solace in the fact that Cameroon like the Emperor says, is blessed with especially food. They should continue to eat, to stay strong and bid their time because soon, very soon, the trumpet will sound for them to shake off the shackles that have held them for so long. While the Southern Cameroonians will sing gloriously to the rise of a new sun, the Francophones will be dancing to the freshness of a new person to lead their own country although this will mean that their source of oil will be blocked and they will buy this in the open market.

May God bless us all in 2007.