The Anglophone Question
After fighting together to decolonize Cameroon from French and British hegemony, French-speaking Cameroonians now tend to lord it over their English-speaking compatriots. There is no gainsaying the fact that there exists a generation of English-speaking Cameroonians who now find themselves at a crossroads and would like to know where they really belong. Many Anglophone Cameroonians are now asking themselves why they are condemned to play second fiddle in the land of their birth. The unfair treatment meted out to English-speaking Cameroonians by arrogant, condescending francophone compatriots in positions of power is a time bomb, I believe, that needs to be defused before it explodes to do irreparable damage. Unfair discrimination sows seeds of discord regardless of where it is practiced. Prejudice, in all its shades and colors, is deleterious in all parts of the world. A celebrated American literary icon, Maya Angelou (1986:5) once said: “Prejudice is a burden which confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.” 

The cohabitation between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians has been branded a marriage of convenience by scholars and students of post-colonial Africa. In fact, the uneasy co-existence between these two linguistic communities has been likened by some critics to the attitude of two travelers who met by chance in a roadside shelter and are merely waiting for the rain to cease before they continue their separate journeys in different directions. No other metaphor could better depict the frictional coexistence between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroonians.

More often than not, the perpetrators of this macabre game of divide and rule are the French-speaking political leaders who take delight in fishing in troubled waters. They divide in order to conquer to the detriment of the proverbial man in the street. In so doing, they stoke the flames of animosity and whip up sentiments of mutual suspicion between Anglophones and Francophones at the expense of nation-building. Many of them have been heard to make statements intended either to cow Anglophones into submission or to incite them into open rebellion. Yet these self-styled leaders would mount the podium to chant to the entire world that there is no Anglophone Problem in Cameroon. This type of hogwash, it seems to me, will come back to haunt them. Nemesis has uncanny ways of getting at its culprits. The plain truth is that there is a palpable feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction amongst Anglophones in Cameroon. Questions that remain unanswered are numerous: Are Anglophone Cameroonians enjoying equal treatment with their Francophone counterparts in the workplace? Are Anglophone Cameroonians having their fair share of the national cake? Do they feel at home in Cameroon? These and many more interrogations constitute what has been labeled the Cameroon Anglophone Question.

The Cameroon Anglophone Problem manifests itself in the form of complaints from English-speaking Cameroonians about the absence of transparency and accountability in matters relating to appointments in the civil service, the military, the police force, the gendarmerie and the judiciary. In short, the Anglophone Problem raises questions about participation in decision-making as well as power-sharing in the country. This is not a figment of anyone’s imagination! It is real, tangible and verifiable. The Anglophone Problem is the cry of an oppressed people, lamenting over the ultra-centralization of political power in the hands of a rapacious oligarchy based in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital, where Anglophones with limited proficiency in the French language are made to go through all kinds of odds in the hands of cocky Francophone bureaucrats who look down on anyone speaking English. The Anglophone Problem stems from the supercilious attitude of French-speaking Cameroonians who believe that their Anglophones compatriots are unpatriotic, and therefore, should be asked to seek refuge in another country! This bigotry compounded by conceit has given rise to the rampant use of  derogatory slurs such as” les Anglophones sont gauches”, “c’est des ennemis dans la maison”, or  “ce sont les biafrais” and so on. 

The consequence of this anti-Anglophone sentiment is the birth of the misconception that Anglophone Cameroonians are unreliable and untrustworthy, and therefore, undeserving of positions of leadership. This explains why key ministerial positions in Cameroon are the exclusive preserve of French-speaking Cameroonians. Such ministries include: Defense, Finance & Economy and Territorial Administration. Anglophobia has also led to the appointment of Francophones with no working knowledge of the English language to ambassadorial positions in strategic countries like the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany, Nigeria and South Africa where they wind up making a complete fool of themselves linguistically and culturally speaking. The presidency of the Republic and its ancillary organs are “no-go” zones for Anglophone Cameroonians. Although political appointments in this country ought to be done in conformity with the constitutional “regional balance paradigm”, it is common knowledge that distrust of English-speaking Cameroonians has made the implementation of this constitutional stipulation a dead letter over the years. It should be noted that the relegation of Anglophone Cameroonians to the periphery in matters pertaining to political appointments has nothing to do with incompetence. In fact, the cream of Cameroon’s intelligentsia are Anglophones thanks to the existence of world class Anglo-Saxon secondary schools such as Sacred Heart College-Mankon, St. Joseph’s College-Sasse, Our Lady of Lourdes-Bamenda, CPC-Bali and a host of others that have churned out well-groomed administrators, scientists, technocrats, etc.

Sadly enough, the administrative system in Cameroon does not reward merit. In fact, the requiem for meritocracy was sung in this country the very day the colonizers left for Europe. Giving reward to those who deserve it has no signification in Cameroon. Corruption and nepotism are the yardsticks used in the selection of applicants to work in the civil service and other workplaces in this unfortunate geographical expression called Ngola. Little wonder, the Berlin-based watchdog, Transparency International, has declared Cameroon one of the most corrupt nations in the world! In the same vein, Marilyn Greene (2005:1), Press Fellow from USA, in an interview with Jeff Ngwane Yufenyi in the November 23, 2005 edition of the Post, pointed out: “Corruption is a plague affecting everyone from top government officials to poor folks in the street.

 Corrupt practices affect the manner in which revenue from natural resources is used in Cameroon. Statistics indicate that about sixty percent of Cameroon’s wealth in natural resources is located in the English-speaking part of the country. Yet the Francophone region takes the lion’s share of the national budget intended for the building of roads, hospitals, schools and other social services. This state of affairs has been described by some critics as “jungle justice”! We are where we are today, saddled with the elephantine problem called the Anglophone Problem because of mutual misunderstanding amongst Francophone and Anglophone Cameroonians. 

Open hostility toward Anglophones reached its acme many years ago when English-speaking Cameroonian students protesting against discrimination on the basis of the language of instruction at the University of Yaoundé went on strike and chanted the “We shall overcome” rallying song. Francophone members of government with limited proficiency in the English language accused them of singing the national anthem of a foreign country, Nigeria, and told Anglophones to go and live in Nigeria if they were not happy in Cameroon! In other climes, these officials would have been asked to resign without further ado. Never in Cameroon, where nonsensical statements like these actually earn accolades. How else can leaders show the world that they are square pegs in round holes? 

In a similar vein, the clamor for the democratization of political system in Cameroon has been branded by some narrow-minded francophones as an Anglophone-Bamileke conspiracy to overthrow the government of President-for-life, Mr. Paul Biya Mbivodo. Political myopia is one of Cameroon’s cancers! There have been unbridled attempts by French-speaking Cameroonians to whip up anti-Anglophone sentiments in order to score political points. The Cameroon GCE Board imbroglio that bred fire and brimstone in the early 1990s is a case in point. The saga to create a separate examination board for the General Certificate of Education Examination for Anglophones brought Cameroon to a virtual standstill because French-speaking Cameroonians could not fathom how Anglophone “underdogs” could have the temerity to demand equal treatment with their “overlords”. Thus, there is no gainsaying the fact that the use of language is a divisive factor in the Republic of Cameroon. TO BE CONTINUED