Ebenezer Akwanga, exiled Head of Gov’t of the Southern Cameroons has stated vehemently that the ‘War of Independence’ remains the only realistic avenue for the realization of the statehood of the Southern Cameroons.
Akwanga was responding to questions relating to the newly created International Passport for the Southern Cameroons. With a national anthem in place, a flag also invented and now a passport, the Journal, considering that the Southern Cameroons has no diplomatic authority and no visa issuing authority, questioned Akwanga extensively on a variety of issues relating to the struggle of the Southern Cameroons and in particular, demanded to know how usage of the newly created passport will be executed. He spoke to the Journal’s Editor, Chris Fobeneh. The full interview.
I suppose you are the main brain behind the Southern Cameroons passports. They look really pretty. How long have they been in the making?
Let me first extend to Prince Lawrence Ayamba and the entire Ayamba household the deepest condolence from GoSC, the SCYL Family and my own family for the passing away of Southern Cameroons Chief Ette Otun Ayamba. He stood for a good and just fight and would be remembered for this. As for the Southern Cameroons passport, it took a period of eight (8) months for it to be produced.
Since you launched them, how would you appreciate their reception from Cameroonians in general? Point of order – this passport is the sole property of the People and Government of the Southern Cameroons not Cameroun or La Republique du Cameroun. By this the reaction from the Camerounaise population is not of any importance or significance to me and to the Southern Cameroons people.
However, without rephrasing your question, if I have understood it best, the true nationalists of the Southern Cameroons are visibly elated to find that their hopes and aspirations of a free and unequaled country along the Bight of Biafra, so long dampened by reactionary guardians of the status quo, supportive and traitors is on a gradual path of actualization. And just like Taiwan and Kosovo, my people would even be more elated to know that sooner than later, their national Southern Cameroons passport would be their pride to travel to ‘some countries’ around the globe.
This is not the first time that the Southern Cameroons in the diaspora is doing something like this. They created the flag and the national anthem. Now it's the passport. Many people think the passport like the flag will just end up in the shelves considering that there is in real terms no country called Southern Cameroons. What do you say?
If the flag and anthem were securely locked up somewhere in a shelf, you of course wouldn’t have been aware of it. The fact that it is brought up for discussion means, they are visible, tangible and public symbols that are taken seriously. On another note, the flag and the anthem were not invented in the Diaspora. They are simply being made more prominent by Diasporas’ using the social media with its outreach.
In real terms there is a country called Southern Cameroons. This country is simply under physical occupation by LRC. The act of occupation does not in any way extinct statehood especially when there is public opposition and resistance against that occupation. History presents itself as a good template for us to view events. And the history of occupation has
been such that very few occupiers have successfully maintained occupation without the consent of the occupied. Colonialism has been the most acute form of occupation. At a time when movement and opportunities for the colonized was strictly determined by the colonial authorities, resistance against colonialism prevailed. Since the All Anglophone Conference (AAC) of 1993 and 1994, the level of consciousness and awareness of our plight and the vestiges of the occupation has been on the rise.
The single story narrative of ONE CAMEROUN which has been forced and peddled by Yaoundé has been challenged in courts of law, academic writings and the street. The Southern Cameroons quest for statehood is no longer a taboo subject and most importantly our fate as a people does no longer depend solely on how Yaoundé acts or think. The passport only makes this case more visible and concretizes in a small but significant way both the concepts of nationhood and statehood.
How do you plan to distribute the passports and where will they be used - I mean you definitely can't use them in Cameroon. Where precisely will they be used or recognized? A Southern Cameroons passport is a national pride and would only be used for the purposes set aside for all other national passports. And the issue of recognition is as fundamental as the very existence of the People and Territory of the Southern Cameroons.
Many Cameroonians, even Southern Cameroonians think the whole idea of this passport is a joke. Why are they wrong, I mean, you do not have any visa issuing authority. Anyone thinking that to have a Southern Cameroons passport now is a joke should definitely have their head examined by a carpenter not a neurologist. In 2005 while traveling to Banjul, The Gambia to attend the African Human and Peoples Rights Commission Annual gathering, all what I had with me was a World Service Authority Passport, and the WSA is not a country, but an organization which conforms to international law in the issuance of a passport and entry visas. And no man or woman in his or her right senses would equate the World Service Authority to what is codified in public international law as a “People” whom we of the Southern Cameroons are known to be.
So, rather than pose this question of narrow concept of understanding borne out of ignorance and 50 years of “I-don’t care-what-happens-to-my-neighbor” policy cultivated from years of being in the physical and spiritual wilderness imposed by a gluttonous thieving and murderous neighbor called La Republique du Cameroun, as a journalist, it’s not only your duty to tell what others are saying, but what exactly it is – the truth.
Second, the very fact that the very announcement of the production of this passport has become news worthy is evidence enough that this is not a joke. The interest shown so far in this story by your media outlet alongside those other numerous outlets under the technical control of the persecutors of my people who would write a story without verification is an added plus to the significance of having my people take pride in their Homeland with a more forceful national symbol.
Third, I think it is important to give some credit to those who ‘genuinely’ think that the whole issue of a Southern Cameroons passport is a joke, as long as their comment is borne out of legitimate frustration stemming from years of internal squabbles, wrangling and factionalism which has taking my peoples’ struggle to crazy numerous directions – the Northern Nigeria and Southern Cameroons Axis conceived out of the idea of being relevance and keeping on rather than believe from the heart; the former nationalists cum federalist/regionalist, a smokescreen refrigerator for outright traitors and
‘Chameleonites’, those who would gather in the morning for our struggle, text, phone and email the persecutor through its proconsul in the afternoon and dined and bed with them at night in a vicious circle of deceit; the factionalists who want power, not for the purpose of risk-taking for my people but for the cause of personal greed; and the “condemned-every-action-but-make-no-substantive-contribution group which has become the deadliest so far.
Yes, it will be a ‘joke’ to these people until rocket launchers, Kalashnikovs, AK-47s, and all necessary armory of war openly become a legitimate and legal part of our discourse for the struggle of my people. It will be a joke and would remain a joke as long as some of us passing around for the leaders of my people stop paying lip service to the legitimate and acceptable process of a ‘war’ of independence which undeniably remains our only realistic opportunity for the actualization of our dreams, hopes and aspirations.
Over the years, I have heard in the open, at closed door meetings, over the phone and through social media the clamoring of my people for action, real action not words or mere propaganda. I have heard them loud and clear even when their voices are soaked in the ever-turning wheel of the paralyzing schizophrenia of fear. I have heard them and there is no doubt that if it has just been left to my single call for action all these years, the story of La Republique du Cameroun, Biya’s Cameroun would have been a thing of the past.
We should also give credit to those vocal and silent majority who think every step taken to re-enforce our identity and challenge the occupation matters. These are the voices which have always been ignored in this orchestra. This has been the silent and vocal majority who have made both the flag and anthem visible and inextinguishable products of our motherland.
The Southern Cameroons gov't in the diaspora to which you claim to be President isn't a house hold name even among Southern Cameroonians in the diaspora. When was this gov't formed and can you name the rest of your cabinet members please? The Government of Southern Cameroons (GoSC) was created as an instrument of policy formulation and implementation. If it was created to fuel the controversies that have plagued the struggle, its popularity would have soared for a very short time.
It was not conceived as an asylum-paper signing agency or as a byproduct of an illicit intercourse between ‘staying relevant and hindering the progress” of the struggle, thus it is not surprising that those you certainly call Southern Cameroonians in the diaspora, the ones you must have contacted are not aware of GoSC’s existence and what it has done and continue to do so far to practically change the focus of our struggle to the feeling and anxiety of hope and surety that reigned during those sunny and rainy days when the original oath of the struggle was read not just at the Mount Mary Hall in Buea but also at the Bamenda Stadium with the echoing words: “As if the Issue of the Whole Struggle Depended on Me Alone. So Help Me God!” In Bamenda just like in Buea, the Oath our people took was clear: “Southern Cameroons Must Win This War!”
In 1995, it was winning the war of factuality about our history, winning the war of the minds, winning the psychological war, the war between absolute radical and acceptable nationalism vis-à-vis the Vaseline of gradualism grounded on the ideology of frustrating the true nationalist to that point of giving up. And yet, almost two decades later some still think that the time to reach-out for action years after the persecutor has crossed the Rubicon is not yet ripe.
Unfortunately, the reality is that they do not say this because they love my people and fear the outcome of necessary action – not at all. They say this because even as they think and pretend to act Southern Cameroons, they truly do not believe in themselves that the right to external self-determination is synonymous to the right of existence for a people.
As I have often said, it is indeed a shocking tragedy in history that often than not the forces of evil are more determined to pursue their cause to a logical conclusion than the forces of good. However, I am consoled by the solemn fact that good temporarily defeated is still stronger than the triumphant evil. So as we begin a frank discussion on breaking the necessary eggs for the omelets of freedom, it is important to always remember that with GoSC, ‘Southern Cameroons Must Win This War!’
On the issue of when GoSC was created, I would advise you to visit the official website of the Government of Southern Cameroons at: http://www.southerncameroonsgovernment.com, to better understand the formation and modus operandi of the government.
GoSC has a 15-man War Council comprising five naturally-born Southern Cameroons females, one naturalized Southern Cameroons female, five naturally-born Southern Cameroons males and three naturalized Southern Cameroons males. However, based on the first Order of Action by the War Council, the only visible face of the government for now and the near future would be that of the President to whom I am unfortunate to wear the very exciting, but heavy and extremely dangerous shoes.
What are your immediate plans for the actualization of the nation of Southern Cameroons? Are you optimistic you will see this happen in your lifetime? This is a very important question and I would try to give as frank a response to you as an expression of what I truly carry in my heart.
First, you asked about immediate plans in bringing the expectations of my people to fruition, and to this end I hate to disappoint you and your readership that neither GoSC or my office is interested at this time to play the Goebbels war symphony which La Republique du Cameroun has long relied on in its well-organized campaign of inflaming the flames of hatred, prosecuting stylishly the robust deadly Foucault policy of divide, rule and destroy in Africa in its bid to eulogize the infamous Hutu machinery of carnage Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) when Rwandans transformed their land into the world’s largest human abattoir.
On the second part of your question, anyone who engages in a liberation struggle always hopes to see that freedom come during their lifetime. However, as much as this is a normal expectation, as humans our life is not squarely under our own control.
I am therefore not concerned at all whether my people regain their freedom in my lifetime. What is primordial to me is that no matter how dwindling the road is, no matter the curves, the bends and the falls, we must live our life, not just for ourselves but others.
For, in this very complex world of today, anyone who has not found something bigger than him or herself, something that would uplift the lives of others, something so worthy to die for, does not truly deserve to live. We must live for something and that something shouldn’t be what demeaned humankind, what depersonalized them, what thingified them, what dehumanized them – it should be that which gives them hope, real hope for a better tomorrow.
