Prof. Asonganyi, the divorce with SDF and the love for Country

Prof. Tazoacha Asonganyi as I know him living in the same room in North London during his student days was a political activist, but what flew in his blood was the scientific cuff of a biochemists.

He wasn’t a politician – people who play the game with dirt. But his urge for social justice and democracy dragged him into the political fray when he became Secretary General of the SDF after the late Siga Asanga.

It did not take long before “the real politicians” some of them “apprentis sorcière” to borrow from President Biya, realized the biochemist did not belong to their polity going through the wild convulsions of manipulations, self interest, tribalism and hero worshiping.

He began to read the writing on the wall during the SDF- CPDM talks that used to hold at an unholy hour at Monte Febe Hotel, presided by then Prime Minister Peter Mafany Musonge. Being an uncompromising personality in the midst of those who were interested in negotiating for their personal gain, he stood firm in opposition and was sidelined from further participation.

At the Yaounde convention, he was the only candidate against SDF Chairman John Fru Ndi in the hope that he would not obtain a majority vote ordered that he should still go through an election. Asonganyi scraped through with 53 percent, enough to maintain his position to the mortification of those who wanted him fired at all costs.

The crux came at one of the union for change meetings at which the leaders of the major opposition political parties decided to elect a single candidate to challenge President Biya. Asonganyi conducted the election and Adamu Ndam Njoya won to the anger of John Fru Ndi who stormed out of the meeting.

Being a man of principle and an advocate of “a level playing field” in politics which was one of his favourite phrases, Asonanyi gave notice to quit the SDF.

He was suspended and later dismissed after being found guilty by the National Executive Committee which conferred on itself the powers of a disciplinary committee. He was charged with six “offences” based on the party’s obnoxious article 8.2 which expels militants for anti-party activities at its makeshift “court” that held at the Presbyterian Church Centre, Ntamulung, Bamenda.

One of the charges was a press conference he gave in Yaouinde on September 27, 2005 at which he conceded that the party’s leadership had “failed” and deviated from the policies of the SDF, its ideals and fundamental principles.

Asongayi was also found guilty of referring to the chairman as a “personality cult” and aggravating the matter by adding that “all criticism, even constructive, is considered a crime against the chief”,

Asonganyi had in one of his declarations said the SDF was having secret dealings with the Biya regime otherwise he could not comprehend why President Biya hurriedly ordered the evacuation of the wife of the chairman Rose, who collapsed at a reception in Yaounde, to Geneva where she passed on.

The SDF ruling was hash: “To have gone public with the above declarations, which stigmatize the party leadership as embezzlers and sordid dealers, means you have proof of the facts alleged, but that you are not part of them, thereby carrying out such antiparty activities as are provided for and punishable under section 8.2 of the party constitution'”, the verdict read in part.

He was also guilty of refusing to hand over a party jalopy jeep he was still using after his suspension.

Michael Ndobegang who took over from Asonganyi was reported later to have said that the counts were all tailored to make a verdict of guilty inevitable. He said NEC could have provided a political and not disciplinary solution to the problem.

Unlike other SDF officials who left and joined the ruling CPDM or formed their own parties, Prof. Asonganyi remained apolitical, a social critic picking holes in both the SDF and the ruling party in his contributions to build a better society and as he always said: “strong institutions” and not “strong men”.

Farewell Prof. as your fans take solace in the wisdom of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross an America Psychologist who writes :”It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us.

Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.” Tazoacha Asonganyi to me was biochemists who lived before the political era he had envisaged.

*Asong Ndifor is a veteran Cameroon Journalist, he writes in from Mutengenie