The Colbert Factor:
Five Years after 2019 Major National Dialogue: University of Bamenda Academic Relaunches Debate with “Twoness” As Solution To Raging Anglophone Conflict.
Before the advent of social media (SM) as one of the agencies of free speech, the world knew mostly about the church, the media, the civil Society and above all, the university, as veritable agencies of free speech in society.
Each time the world was confronted with a challenge, it looked up to these agencies and especially the university, for bold and fearless proposals that went a long way to challenge the boundaries of conventional thinking, thereby quickly addressing the emerging situation.
Following the outbreak of the crisis in the two English Speaking regions of Cameroon in October/November 2016, the church, through the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda, issued a strongly worded statement as early as January 17, 2017, x-raying the potentially explosive situation and boldly proffering solutions, including a proposal to meet the President of the Republic to urge him to address the root causes of the existentialist problem.
Later that same year, the Catholic church’s position expanded to include that of the leadership of the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches following their meeting at the Bamenda metropolitan Archbishop’s house. Individual priests and various other church leaders have since been articulate on the issue and on different platforms both as their personal positions and those of the collective.
Even before then, the local and national media since made the issue a staple food served on the tables of their readers and audiences. The civil society wasn’t left out as proposal upon proposal tumbled out of these think tanks and thought leaders dotted across the country.
The unfortunately, reflections and proposals seemed to have come in short supply and which was supposed to be at the forefront of such thought leadership, was the university. Apart from a handful of Anglophone and later francophone academics who were articulate on the issue at the onset of the conflict on TV platforms, a majority of university professors and scholars, especially in the Anglo Saxon Universities situated in the two English Speaking regions of the country, maintained stone silence. Interestingly, the one university lecturer who spoke out forcefully and fearlessly at the start of the conflict was a certain Dr Yves Basang, part-time lecturer at the University of Bamenda who later lost his job to the outing.
This singular outing and the immediate consequences, added to the travails University of Buea trade union leaders and initiators of the strike action like Professor Abangma, Dr Neba Fontem and of course, Agbor Balla were already going through, seemed to have informed the cautious conduct of the rest of the University community.
Eight years into the raging conflict and five years after the holding of the Major National Dialogue (MND), that was intended by organizers to be the solution to the existentialist conflict, the conflict is far from having a satisfactory solution and many more voices are rising, calling for fresh and inclusive talks to be organized addressing the root causes of the problem as originally wished by the United Nations Secretary General and other influential national and international figures and conflict resolution experts.
Unlike in the past, bold and fearless voices are now gradually emerging from within the university community with fresh and clear inputs as to how the conflict that has cut down many lives in their prime, and displaced thousands more; could be brought to a satisfactory end. One of such distinct voices is that of Professor Kelvin Ngong Toh, Lecturer of Literature in the English Department of the University of Bamenda, UBa, and Rapporteur at the recent international Third Diasporic Conference that was held in that university.
Kelvin Ngong Toh’s theatrical piece, Symphonic Shades, that constituted one of the major highlights of the diasporic conference that sought to proffer solutions to the thorny issues of conflict and migration, captured both in time and in space, the caricature attitude of a majority of academics who contend themselves with singing and praising the powers that be instead of speaking truth to power. Kelvin Ngong’s thinking (demonstrated in triumphant detail in the one act play that was directed by Dr Visi Sumbom) is that the skewed concept of “oneness” and “indivisibility” of Cameroon was no longer relevant to addressing the critical and existential concerns of living together.
The new directional approach, according to him, was that of imbibing the “double consciousness” concept propounded by WEB Du Bois, and successfully implemented in the United States of America and other countries that were once faced with minority rights challenges related to language, culture, race and/or colour.Arguing that there was nothing new under the sun, Kelvin points out the futility of trying to melt a culture into another instead of allowing the two to flourish side by side while benefiting from each other. He wondered whether there was any amount of bullets and sophistry that could silence the truth. Coming five years after the staging of the Major National Dialogue where the concept of a one and indivisible Cameroon was the rallying cry, Kelvin Ngong made bold on the fact that a workable solution for a Cameroon that wants to stay together (given especially that something is only “one” because it hasn’t been divided, not that it can’t be divided), would be the “Twoness” concept. Following the violence, tension and marginalization within American society in the 20th century, WEB Du Bois had argued that the American problem was simply a colour problem that could only be resolved by one colour or race accepting and living together with the other. He emphasized the “whiteness” and “blackness” in every American.
In the same light, the problem of Cameroon in the 21st century is the ‘Eastern and Western problem for which many of us are the Du Boises, suffering from violence and marginalization’. Kelvin therefore invites every Cameroonian to ‘join the likes of Du Bois to unmask the veil that divides Eastern and Western’ Cameroon where combatants are outsmarting each other in decimating their brothers and sisters because of differences in language and culture.
The University of Bamenda professor’s argument could still be pushed further to volunteer the Canadian experiment in the resolution of the raging existentialist conflict. In Canada, the minority francophone community there proudly refer to themselves as citizens of Quebec living in a United Canada. During La Francophonie games, they send their Quebecoise-only team to the games, not a team made up of English speaking and French speaking Canadians. They decide in which language official business is done in Quebec as well as the language of instruction in their schools. And that’s their definition of “Twoness”.
Cameroon could do well by engaging in a fresh and more inclusive dialogue that speaks directly to this concept in more fulfilling ways that make the special status concept more rewarding.
By Colbert Nkwain
