John Fru Ndi: Is he an Insider or an Outsider?

Henry Monono

The juju which used to dance behind the house is now dancing in the market place. ….Anonymous.

Since Paul Biya received John Fru Ndi tongues have not stopped wagging. The advent of multi –party politics put Paul and John apart. They were unlike poles that people thought would never meet. The fire brand rhetoric of the SDF at that time was such that it was rumored that the head of state turned down many opportunities to meet the opposition chieftain. The SDF was a hotbed of revolution and its rallying cry of “power to the people” was in sharp contrast to the tame and vapid “oye ye ye ye” of the ruling party.

The chairman cuts the picture of an uncompromising no nonsense revolutionary who is ready to overturn the apple cart with his advocacy of a socialist revolution. It is more leftist then centre of the road. Many observers believed that it was this stance which informed the western powers to side with Biya and the ruling party when many of the SDF supporters generally believed he had won the elections in 1992. Fru Ndi’s mantra in every political rally was “Wunna want make I chop Soya?” To the ordinary SDF militant chopping soya meant and was meant to mean, Do you people want me to compromise with the government , tone my hard stance and become a middle- of- the- roader like the other opposition parties ? Fru Ndi refused to tone down his rhetoric or in the words of Professor Bole Butake he refused to be “La Piroed”. The masses loved it. This is a man who was on their side who was ready to buck the system. Even when Fru Ndi was bereaved and the government paid the medical bills of his late wife and word went out that Joseph Owona a baron of the system had visited him with a briefcase or was it a” Ghanamust go” bag the masses of the city did not loose confidence in their man. He remained the only one who could cock a snook at the government and stir it out of its comfort zone.       The greatest strength of John Fru Ndi is the facility with which he connects with the hoi-polio. He speaks the language of the streets and his down to earth style is far removed from the staid and starchy manner of Paul Biya. It is not only in their sense of dress and body language that the two who hold the destiny of the country differ. Biya is an arch conservative His language, manner and attitude are like  that of the haughty and uncompromisingBourbons of France who in the words of Talleyrand “had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing”. Biya has been heard to say “If you find yourself on a good road stay there” and   “They want change, what do they want to change?” Fru Ndi on the other hand wants to bring the status quo down but it is not apparent if he wants this for altruistic reasons or merely for his own interest in order to perpetrate himself in power like Biya. 

Fast forward to Bamenda December 2010 and the lion of Mvomeka came to the den of the lion of Ntarikon and the two men met , held hands, looked into each others eyes  sat down and talked. Then they met again at the unity palace over dinner, then they met again at the agric show and Fru Ndi showed Paul Biya his cows. The two who could not meet for twenty years have suddenly met three times in less than forty days. Who has changed or is changing?

 In retrospect the two have some common ground. They are both sit-tight autocrats who do not brook any opposition within their parties. The democracy within their parties does not permit any opposition that can threaten their own positions .They are both pseudo-democrats. They have both lost wives and are both monolingual .Biya carries himself like a king and Fru Ndi like a tribal chieftain. They both encourage and court a fanatical following and the mystification or deification of power. They are both farmers, both rich, of the same generation and they have educated their children abroad. We do not know what they may have seen in each other because as the Yoruba’s say, when two witches dance a man does not go there to watch.

This new look Fru Ndi has confused quite a few people. Is the old lion loosing its claws? Is he becoming an establishmentarian? Is he now ready to moderate his stance and to temporize and disengage? Is he tired of fighting from the outside and is he now ready to join the party and eat some soya? Would he join the government if invited? How would this new understanding affect the chairman in the pools? All those who have dined with Biya have got their wings clipped. So if the chairman is coming to the party he better have a long spoon. On the other hand a new middle –of- the- road- image may augur well for the SDF as it would shake off its image of violence and revolution. There is nothing wrong for the leader of opposition and the head of state to talk to each other. There should even be a hotline between the two keeping in mind that the opposition is a shadow government always ready to blow the whistle, raise eyebrows and advance constructive criticisms. It is the SDF parliamentarians who started the Mouchipougate which ushered in the national cleansing now called operation epervier.

Paul and John have been around for too long and if anything is wrong with this country both of them are to blame. They have become unwitting partners in the delicate business of nation building. So the government should give the opposition the respect it deserves and cloth Fru Ndi with all the privileges, prerogatives and rights attendant thereto. The dance must go on.

Source: Lebs295’s Blog

Cameroon and the issue of “Motions of Support”.

By Julius Fondong

Someone recently quipped that if we were to go by the numerous motions of support addressed to President Paul Biya and read every day over CRTV, there will be no need to hold elections in Cameroon. As I write this there is a debate raging in Cameroon over whether university lecturers and intellectuals can send motions of support to the president. According to Professor Jacque FameNdongo, Minister of Higher Education, there is no reason why they shouldn’t.

Cameroon-Info.Net reports that at a recent conference on the subject of motions of support held in the Amphi 700 of the University of Yaounde 1, the Minister emphasized what he considers to be the “scientific “attributes of motions of support. Professor Fame Ndongo surmised that these motions are an expression of a profound political commitment to a respected governing class or governing authority. The Minister surmised that a motion of support is a literary genre and a form of political communication that must be taken seriously, not derided.

It is important to note that this conference was coming on the heels of a motion of support purportedly addressed to Mr. Biya by about 1000 University lecturers of some state universities, appealing to him to stand as candidate during the next presidential elections. Some of the university professors have since claimed that their signatures were forged.

Such claims (of forged signatures on motions of support) are not without merit. I remember sometimes in 1993 I was invited to take part in a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office. According to the convener of the meeting, the objective was to discuss “development issues facing the North-West”. I showed up at the meeting at the appointed time but curiously there was no one. I signed the attendance sheet and left. That same evening, CRTV Radio read out a motion of support addressed to President Biya by the “elites of the North West Province resident in Yaounde”. According to the motion, these “elites” were pledging their unflinchingly support to the President for his appointment of Mr. Simon Achidi Achu as Prime Minister and Head of Government. To my total bewilderment my name was read out as one of the signatories of the motion!

Such is the dirty politics that surrounds motions of support in Cameroon. I have never understood why supposedly decent people will go to great lengths to forge motions of support to the president to give the impression that some sections of the population are still loyal to him, when most of the time quite the contrary is true. Some of those who tried to violently overthrow Mr. Biya in April 1983 are most likely to have appended their names and signatures to motions of support pledging their unconditional and unflinching loyalty to the President, just months before staging their failed coup. And I’m quasi certain that if we dig deep into the files, we’ll see motions of support bearing the names and signatures of all of Cameroon’s past and current so-called ‘opposition’ leaders.

So who is fooling who? Does the President really take these motions seriously? In fact, can any political leader worth his salt give serious consideration to such cheap political demagogy? Contrary to what Professor Fame Ndongo will have Cameroonians believe, Motions of Support are the by-product of a one-party authoritarian state, which have no relevance in a modern constitutional democracy like the one Cameroonians are yearning for. In both form and content these motions are a regressive, meaningless, antiquated form of political expression practiced nowhere else but in Cameroon, and may be also in a handful of some backwardFrance-Afrique countries.

Serious politicians use opinion polls to gauge the public’s attitude towards the great policy and political issues of the day. Thanks to well developed computer software programs opinion polling is now becoming almost an exact science.Public Opinion Polls (POP) are indispensable to any political leader or any governing establishment which cares about what the public thinks. As a man of science, I would have expected Professor Fame Ndongo to be promoting the use of more scientific methods of measuring the level of public support for the President’s policies; not trying to encourage his colleagues – fellow men and women of science – to indulge in the archaic practice of sending motions of support.

The rest of the world is modernizing and moving on, politically, socially and economically. And so must Cameroon. But first we have to wean ourselves from some these backward and negative practices like the gratuitous flattering of our leaders with meaningless motions of support. These are the kind of things that hold us back and make us the laughing stock of the world. If we can’t modernize things like our banking system or our road infrastructure, we can at least refine the way we do politics. It doesn’t take much to do it.

Source: Lebs295’s Blog