HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS When one talks of INDEPENDENCE for a people, one is basically talking about the human rights of those people. And when one thinks of human rights one very quickly realizes that the so called rights are really privileges that are earned or lost depending on how a given group of people empower or weaken themselves in the on going power game that dominates human life on earth. But empowering or weakening of a people is not always the outcome of what the people do, it is also what other forces outside of those people do to create for them a new reality. The Independence that most African countries gained in the 1960 was the out come of many forces working for a long time to create that reality. It was gains in technology that made slave labor redundant, it was abolitionist activity that brought shame and higher cost to the enterprise of slavery, it was even Nazi Germany and Adolph Hitler that gave Europeans a taste of their own medicine; breaking the spine of colonizers and in the process motivated President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) of USA, to decide that colonialism must go and then ordered African independence to be programed and delivered in reality as it did in the 1960s. It was in this programed independence for Africans that the independence of the British Southern Cameroons was also programed. By 1958 the British had written a constitution for an independent Southern Cameroons to take place in 1960, along with that of Nigeria, which she had ruled together as colonies. Today the Southern Cameroons exist only in the memories of its lost citizens wondering in the fringes of French colonial Africa. She would have been 53 years old today, October 1, 2014, the day she was supposed to be independent but instead was forced into independence by joining La Republique du Cameroun. This was a case where a people who had worked hard and empowered themselves with self government from 1954 were weakened by outside forces that included the United Nations, France and Britain. After 1961, a very strong and vibrant parliamentary system of government in the Southern Cameroons was destroyed by France and in its place a colonial dictatorship was imposed on a now leaderless people. The citizens of Southern Cameroons became wide opened to be exploited and destroyed by a foreign people who spoke to them through interpreters. The economy of the Southern Cameroons was dismantled and its language and culture undermined. Today if you call Bamenda, a city in the heart of English speaking people the phone operator will answer in French. The people now must talk to their government though interpreters. Job discrimination is wide spread and income disparities grow wider and wider every year, every where. This cannot be right! Until Southern Cameroonians are free and respected in Cameroun, they will always look at their history as the future; a future where they could build a country like the one they were building before 1961, a future where they could again be themselves, speaking their English language without fear of inviting discrimination and down grade. Happy October 1, 2014 Southern Cameroons. You are still alive. You are still alive because the fact of your birth and life can never be changed. You are alive because your sons and daughter are constantly reminded that they are your sons and daughters and only you have a heart for them. You did not drown in Nigeria and you are not about to be turned into ashes in La Republique du Cameroun. Happy independence Day BSC! youtu.be/mY4W3Vwcv8w
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 03:45:33 +0000
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