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Showing posts with label Cameroon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cameroon. Show all posts

The crackdown on Southern Cameroonians

~ Tribune Nigeria. Thursday, October 12, 2017.

THE axiom that freedom is never willingly given by the oppressor but must be demanded by the oppressed cannot be more apt in dissecting the current crackdown on “dissident” elements in Southern Cameroon. Just like the unsavoury events that followed the independence votes in Kurdistan and Catalonia, Southern Cameroon was a theatre of anguish penultimate week. On October 1, the day some separatist elements in the region sought to symbolically regain their independence from the Republic of Cameroon, the Paul Biya-led government unveiled the state apparatus to crush any dissent. The symbolic declaration of independence was made on social media by one Sisiku Ayuk, the “president” of Ambazonia.

Early this year, the Biya government cut off internet access in the region for three months. It did not even bother to adopt the option of counter narratives to whatever the “separatists” were saying. It announced a temporary restriction on travel and public meetings across the South-West Region. This was after imposing a curfew in the neighbouring North-West Region. Only a fifth of Cameroon’s 22 million people are English-speaking, and the government has always sought to suppress this minority. In 1961, the former British entity, Southern Cameroons, united with Cameroon after its independence from France in 1960. At the inception of the union, the federalist system was adopted, but things were to change in 1974 when a patently fraudulent referendum stage-managed by the centralist government in Yaounde imposed the establishment of the Republic of Cameroon.

The assimilation process, a feature of colonial rule, was adopted by the Yaounde government, along with disparities in many parts of the country’s national life: the distribution and control of oil wealth, education and the judicial system. Believing that the federal arrangement, which would allow them considerable power over their own destiny is the way forward for a united and prosperous Cameroon, the Southern Cameroonians have always staged protests, with a much more hard-line section embracing violent rhetoric and calling for outright secession from the country and the formation of a dream country, Ambazonia. But the central government has never pretended to be enamoured of the federalist proposal, let alone secession. On September 22, as thousands of “Ambazonians” took to the streets in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, soldiers reportedly shot at least eight people dead in the restive Anglophone belt, notably Buea in the South-West and Bamenda, the main town in the North-West. Thereafter, teachers and lawyers hit the streets in protest over the use of French in Anglophone schools and courts. This soon mutated into an outright demand for Ambazonia.

Africa’s longest-serving leaders

~Vanguard Nigeria. Friday, December 2, 2016.


Jose Eduardo
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who is set to stand down next year after 38 years in power, is one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.

The continent is home to many men who have held office for two decades or more, and dos Santos is currently second overall, just a month behind Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea.

Here is a rundown:

– African leaders for more than 30 years –

– In tiny, oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, President Obiang is Africa’s longest-serving leader, at 37 years.

Obiang came to power in a coup on August 3, 1979, ousting his own uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, who was shot by a firing squad.

– Dos Santos is next in Angola, having taken up his post on September 21, 1979.

– Robert Mugabe, 92, rounds out the podium at number three, having run Zimbabwe since its independence in April 1980.

Mugabe is the only leader to have ruled since independence, and has now been either prime minister or president (since 1987) for more than 36 years.

– In Cameroon, Paul Biya has 34 years under his belt. He became president on November 6, 1982 after serving seven years as prime minister.

– Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso has spent 32 years in office, but not in one go. He first served from 1979 to 1992 and then came back to run the country in 1997 at the end of a civil war.

Sassou Nguesso was re-elected in March 2016 and could run again when the current term expires.


– In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni has been in power for more than 30 years. He took office in January 1986 after winning the war that ousted Idi Amin Dada, with help from neighbouring Tanzania.

He was elected to a fifth term in February 2016 amid allegations of fraud.

– King Mswati III of Swaziland is Africa’s last absolute monarch. He acceded to the throne of the tiny southern kingdom in April 1986.

– In power for more than 20 years –

– In Sudan, Omar al-Bashir has ruled for 27 years since he staged a successful coup in June 1989.

– Chad’s leader Idriss Deby took over the north-central African nation in December 1990, giving him 26 years in power. Deby won a disputed fifth term in April 2016.

– Eritrea’s head of state Issayas Afewerki has been around since 1993.

– Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh has ruled for 22 years since he staged a coup in July 1994. However, he was defeated by opposition leader Adama Barrow, failing to get a fifth five-year term in Thursday’s election.
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