SDF Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi’s recent action in Bamenda and now in Buea is very disturbing and a negative distraction to the Anglophone Spring. With so much goodwill wasted on this CPDM collaborator, our lawyers and teachers should distance themselves from Fru Ndi and his SDF.  The so-called Cameroon’s main opposition party has been in a state of brooding, and its regional outlets in North, South West, West, East and even the North West region are facing an energy-draining soul-searching brooding. Yet, the SDF leadership had been contented with their CPDM status of “main opposition party in Cameroon”.  SDF militants were never worried because internally the party leadership had accepted that the SDF revolution was actually over. So why is Fru Ndi who announced last year that he was ageing and could no longer hold public meetings be seen around Anglophone protest rallies? Why are the SDF MPs and Senators staging protest marches in Anglophone Cameroon when their just ended NEC meeting did not highlight any Anglophone problem in its final resolutions? What does Fru Ndi actually represent?

The SDF leadership is now tormented by fear of losing the North West region and is graciously accepting to be a part of the Anglophone Uprising. For a political party that has enjoyed parliamentary seats awarded by a CPDM government-rigged election to emerge at this difficult and complex time in our Anglophone history is very worrying. Fru Ndi and his Bafourchu mafia knew from the very beginning that the SDF will do nothing in parliament, but decided to act on the principle that “what will it achieve by staying out?” It would have continued as a front as some recommended and the Anglophone problem would have been half way solved. But the Fru Ndi boys such as Joseph Mbam Ndam who hijacked the SDF were tired of staying on the sidelines of power and those luxurious hotels in Yaoundé. The quest for money and power through some counterfeit parliamentary elections slowly but surely reduced the SDF to a North West Regional political party.

Fru Ndi even stood for senatorial elections and lost and the SDF leadership maintained a kind of deliberate silence that betrayed frustration arising from the fear that the SDF as a political entity in Cameroon has outlived its usefulness and the revolution that came along with it is over.  The SDF going to parliament and the Senate under CPDM conditions was in effect surrendering and beginning a new form of cooperation with the President Biya regime. It was indeed a decision that was contrary to the SDF’s fundamental objective which was to overthrow the Biya Francophone Beti-Ewondo regime and bring about democracy, economic prosperity, law and order and above all good governance in the Republic of Cameroon.

Chairman Ni John Fru Ndi did not know that his greatest distinction and strength laid in his consistency and unswerving faithfulness to the party’s objective over the years. A pro-National Assembly policy destroyed this overnight. To be sure, the 1997 pro-Assembly decision weakened the SDF and its leadership forever!!  Fru Ndi traveled the nooks and crannies of the nation with the argument that there is no future prospect for free and fair election under President Biya. So what Fru Ndi and his acolytes were saying was that “if you can beat them, join them”. Which they did!! Why is Fru Ndi now serving Biya’s interest by trying to divert attention from our lawyers and our teachers?

The SDF it can now be said was never ready for a long term campaign, consequently, Fru Ndi should be told to retire back to his home. What we know as Africans is that similar liberation struggles have lasted for decades and even more. The revolution that finally brought Meles Zenawi to power in Ethiopia in 1991 lasted 17 years. Though a very bad example in modern day Africa, but it is on record that Yoweri Kaguta Museveni challenged the electoral fraud of Milton Obote and that led to a long campaign based on a 10-point programme. He finally beat Obote and all the others in 1986, after 16 difficult years. In Namibia, Sam Nujoma and Toivoja Toivo founded SWAPO in 1959 to fight abusive colonialism. Nujoma went on exile in 1966 but kept up his fight for liberation. He won and became President of Namibia in April 1990-after 31 years. In South Africa the ANC campaign began in 1910. Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. That did not daunt the spirit of the struggle. The campaign for African majority rule in Northern Rhodesia now Zimbabwe lasted for more than 20 years. Our attention is now focusing on the Anglophone Prime Minister coming to Southern Cameroons territory with his Francophone bosses. This is not the time for any SDF activity in British Southern Cameroons.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai (Editor-in-Chief)

Cameroon Concord News Group