ABSTRACT
While the politics of belonging has a strong tradition in the post-colonial state in Cameroon, the current wave of democratisation in the 1990s has compelled the Biya regime to re-conceptualise "belonging". Finding it hard to win free and fair elections in the new multiparty system, the Biya government has tried to perpetuate itself in power by encouraging the resurgence of local identities which were likely to support the regime, notwithstanding the fact that this strategy obviously undermined its professed policy of national integration. It has also stretched the conventional idea of minorities to such ambiguous proportions that historical minorities like the Anglophones have seen themselves denied the status of minority in the 1996 constitution, while every small ethnic grouping which appears to distance itself from the opposition has met with government support. This paper examines the systematic efforts of the government to deconstruct the Anglophone identity - an identity which has its historical foundation in the British colonisation of the ex-Southern Cameroons and has been reactivated during the current democratisation process, posing serious problems to the Francophone-dominated state. One major government strategy has been to fuel the existing tensions between South Westerners and North Westerners in the Anglophone territory, tensions largely based in large-scale north-western settlement in the coastal plantation area and in the perceived domination of the South West by the North West economically and politically since the end of the 1950s, and to stimulate new alignments like SAWA. The paper argues that the national government has been quite successful in this endeavour, evidenced by the decline or inertia of initially powerful political opposition movements based on Anglophone alliances. ANGLOPHONES AND THE POLITICS OF BELONGING
When in May 1990 the Anglophones dared to challenge and embarrass the one-party state by launching the Social Democratic Front (SDF) in Bamenda, they were, perhaps without knowing, providing the Biya regime with a more compelling reason than ever not only to consider Anglophones as "les ennemis dans la maison", but also and more importantly to intensify strategies for neutralising Anglophone identity. The fact that the SDF rapidly rose to prominence and credibility as an opposition party in Anglophone Cameroon, coupled with the fact that its slogans and the charisma of its leader John Fru Ndi commanded nation-wide appeal, heightened the panic in government circles and hardened attitudes towards Anglophones and Anglophone identity. At first, the government did not quite know how to react nor whom to scapegoat. A study of pro-establishment anonymous tracts, pamphlets and declarations in the media between 1990 and 1992 shows that initial government attempts to contain the spread of the SDF and opposition politics in general, were not well thought out.
While the first government strategy was to lump all Anglophones together, and to play up the idea of Anglophone ingratitude to all the state had done for them and their region, subsequent reactions sought to apply a divide-and-rule strategy by making a distinction between the supposedly conciliatory coastals of the South West Province and the unpatriotic, ungrateful, power-monger grassfielders of the North West Province whom the state identified with their equally troublesome cultural kin - the Bamileke of the Francophone Western Province. Thus, the official rhetoric shifted from the collective condemnation of "les Anglo-Bami" to simply condemning "les Bamendo-Bami". Subsequent developments would show that the government found it increasingly rewarding and politically expedient to tempt the South West elite away from Anglophone solidarity with strategic appointments and the idea that their real enemy was the North West elite and not the state or the central administration. Infiltrating and hijacking the South West Elite Association (SWELA), then subsequently encouraging a merger with the elite association of the native Douala to form the Grand SAWA movement, was part of government's strategy to weaken Anglophone solidarity through divide and rule championed by elite associations (Nyamnjoh and Rowlands 1998) and the politics of the belly (Bayart 1993).
All of this contributed to the promulgation of the January 1996 constitution(1), which promised protection for minorities at the same time that the state was clamping down on the activities of the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), mouthpiece of the critical wing of the Anglophone minority. Such double standards would leave few in doubt as to why the new constitution was deliberately vague on the notion of "minority", or the fact that the notion has since been manipulated to discourage solidarity on the basis of shared interests and predicaments. In his analysis of similar constitutions elsewhere in colonial and contemporary Africa, Mamdani (1996) has noted that such constitutions limit the population not to a civic but to an ethnic space. They also define identity for the populations concerned not by where individuals are born or live, but by their ethnic ancestral area. Such constitutions thus oblige everyone to follow the customs of their ethnic group and to emphasise culture, not rights. Also, by recognising "social identity exclusively through the line of the father", states with such constitutions, ensure that no degree of inter-marriage or integration could ever put together ethnic groups that the state is determined to have asunder (Mamdani 1998). The Cameroonian state insists on patriarchal identification by ethnic area, district and province of origin in national identity cards, birth, marriage and other civic certificates. Its constitution, like the others, enables ethnic areas to make the distinction between what Mamdani has termed "ethnic citizens and ethnic strangers". A point with which Mono Ndjana, one of the most faithful ideologues of the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), agrees when he defines "l'autochtone" as "un citoyen ethnique de l'ethnie locale" and "l'allogène" as "un citoyen ethnique de l'ethnie d'ailleurs", stressing that in every African country "chacun est à la fois autochtone et allogène, selon sa position dans l'espace" (Mono Ndjana 1997b: 102-103).
The 18 January 1996 constitution (preamble and article 57, paragraph 3) states unequivocally that:
The State shall ensure the protection of minorities and shall preserve the rights of indigenous populations in accordance with the law.
The Regional Council shall be headed by an indigene of the Region elected from among its members for the life of the Council .... The Regional Bureau shall reflect the sociological components of the Region. Its timing and release were hardly an accident. The ruling Beti being a minority ethnic group under threat of losing power in a genuine democracy, the Anglophones and Bamileke having proved themselves the most threatening opposition in the first five years of multipartyism, and the regime having rejected a "one man one vote" democracy (Mono Ndjana 1997b: 102-103) through repeated riggings, the 1996 constitution was a foregone conclusion. It would serve the government perfectly in neutralising both the Anglophone and Bamileke opposition, while at the same time diverting attention from failed economic and social policies by scapegoating grassfielders as ruthless land-grabbing, tax-evading settlers, who were making it impossible for government to deliver. Its promulgation preceded the municipal elections that the opposition SDF party won in some key urban constituencies, including Douala. The fact that it immediately occasioned government-condoned demonstrations by the native Douala, the SAWA(2), was even more telling. The protests led to the creation of the SAWA movement of the coastal peoples, presenting themselves as an "autochtonous" minority that had suffered political and economic marginalization from dominant and hegemonic "settlers" or "allogènes" from the Grassfields (Tatah Mentan 1996; Wang Sonnè 1997; Zognong 1997; Jua 1997; Yenshu 1998; Nyamnjoh and Rowlands 1998); yet also playing into the hands of political opportunists keen to stretch their movement to include groupings as remote from the coast as the Bayang of Manyu Division. Their aim was to fight exploitation by "unscrupulous" and "ungrateful" grassfields settlers, and to play up the idea that as minorities, they needed peace, protection, social order and development. The SAWA demonstrated against the Bamileke in particular, who alone accounted for 70 per cent of the Douala population, and who had provided for only one indigenous mayor out of the five councils in which the SDF had won the municipal elections. This was seen as evidence that the Bamileke were ready to use their numbers to exclude the indigenous minorities in a multiparty context (Wang Sonnè 1997)(3) .
In the South West Province, the pro-CPDM governor Oben Peter Ashu blamed the settler population, which outnumbered the indigenes in most urban areas of the province, for the poor performance of the CPDM in some key municipalities, and intensified his crackdown on the SCNC and any event organised to celebrate Anglophone identity by scholars and activists. A scheduled launching of Francis Nyamnjoh's The Cameroon GCE Crisis: A Test of Anglophone Solidarity was banned at the last minute, and the author, Asong Wara (organiser) and Christian Cardinal Tumi (chief launcher) threatened with detention, for 15 days renewable, should they proceed despite the ban. Subsequent bannings were brought to bear on the launching of Charles Taku's For Dame Lynda Chalker & Other Anglophone Cameroonian Notes, and of Christopher Nsalai's Look Up to the Mountain Top: Beyond Party Politics. Grassfielders in the South West Province were likened to scabies, a stubborn skin affliction commonly referred to in Pidgin-English as "Cam-no-go" [meaning an illness that wouldn't be cured or a visitor that wouldn't leave]. In Kumba for example, Chief Mukete organised thugs of Bafaw youths to defend the regime against the "settler vote" in an election the SDF opposition was set to win. His action would be hailed subsequently by Nerius Nemaso Mbile, an old and experienced politician, at a joint conference of South West chiefs and elites in July 1999, and other traditional leaders urged to emulate him(4) .
Although its preamble still pays respect to the age-old ideology of nation-building, the constitution appears to place more premium on ethnic identities and to allow for an interpretation by government that promises reward to all elite ready to sacrifice the quest for national citizenship or power in favour of ethnic citizenship and power. Indeed, from the way politics has been practised since the promulgation of the constitution, it would appear that civic identity and inter-ethnic or national constituency, are limited to the CPDM president, the only person with a meaningful right to seek power at a central or national level. Challengers who are not discouraged by an unfavourable electoral code (Tolen 1997) and the invidious manipulation of electoral rolls, are eventually vanquished by a post-election rigging machinery perfected over the years, since 1992. This, in part, explains how from a modest score of 39.976 % in the first multiparty presidential elections in 1992, Paul Biya would in the 1997 election score 92.57%, reminding one strongly of the one-party era when elections were a mere formality for the incumbent and such scores as 99.99% commonplace. Also, by opting for ten regions along the lines of existing provinces, the constitution proved the Biya government's committed disregard for federalism and its determination to keep Anglophones divided (1996 Constitution, Article 61, paragraph 3), in addition, of course, to living up to the French-inspired aversion for decentralised government among Francophone Cameroonians.
Unsurprisingly, the constitution has been much criticised, especially by radical Anglophones and the Bamileke. Both the constitution and the advantage taken by the SAWA of it, have been interpreted differently by various groups, using media that were either for or against (Tatah Mentan 1996). While the SAWA and the Beti, supported by Cameroon Tribune, Le Patriote and L'Anecdote, hailed it as a necessary and timely step to protect minority groups from the asphyxiating grip of expansionist and dominant migrants such as the Bamileke and groups from the Bamenda Grassfields, others, articulating their case through the critical anti-government press of mainly Bamileke and Anglophone origin, saw it as a recipe for national disintegration (Tatah Mentan 1996; Nkwi and Nyamnjoh 1997; Zognong 1997; Jua 1997). Indeed, since 1996, various groups have taken advantage of its ambiguous promise of protection for minorities to fan the flames of division and differences with others as a pretext for access to power and resources at national and regional levels (Konings and Nyamnjoh 1997; Nyamnjoh and Rowlands 1998; Eyoh 1998a and b; Nyamnjoh 1999; Geschiere and Nyamnjoh forthcoming). And critical Anglophones have seen in this outcome a trivialization of the notion of "a minority", and blamed the CPDM government for championing the politics of divide-and-rule to the detriment of the Anglophone cause and nationhood. Some have interpreted the new constitution as a conspiracy by the state to marginalize the Anglophones even further (Tatah Mentan 1996: 186-194; Jua, 1997), a concern which John Ngu Foncha had already voiced in his letter of resignation from the CPDM in 1990, when he wrote: "The Anglophone Cameroonians whom I brought into the union have been ridiculed and referred to as "les Biafrais", "les ennemies dans la maison", "les traîtres", etc., and the constitutional provisions which protected this Anglophone minority have been suppressed, their voice drowned ..."(5) .
The 1996 constitution thus denies the Anglophone claim to minority status by stressing ethnic purity and indigenous cultural traditions, while downplaying the community's colonial heritage. It re-discovers the colonial practice of seeing ethnic communities as "permanent crystalline structures" (Ardener 1967: 297-299), and thus can afford to question the idea of an Anglophone identity that unites people beyond so-called tribal boundaries. The constitution has also often been used by the regime and its allies to endorse the idea of democracy as an ethnic or group right rather than as an empowerment of the individual (and the guaranteeing of his/her civic rights regardless of ethnic origin) as stipulated in its preamble. For, as Mono Ndjana, the CPDM ideologue argues, every ethnic group is entitled to "sa place au soleil, sans chercher à ôter les autres du même soleil" (Mono Ndjana 1997b: 103). This view effectively denies the idea of a Cameroonian citizenship, since even metropolitan areas like Douala and Yaounde, created by colonialists and cosmopolitan from the outset, have under the new constitution been claimed by this or that autochtonous group to a degree quite unprecedented. Little wonder therefore, that the appointment of André Wouking, a Bamileke, as Archbishop of Yaounde in July 1999 (to succeed Jean Zoa, a Beti, who died in 1998), should be greeted with indignation by Beti elite, clergy and christians, at the same time that it was hailed by the Bamileke press as a good lesson in national integration by the Pope to President Biya, champion of the rhetoric of national integration(6) .
To those who sought protection as minorities, the price to pay would increasingly be stated in no uncertain terms: Vote the CPDM, the only party, according to Mono Ndjana (1997b: 96), with "une assise assez importante ou un pouvoir d'attraction suffisant". Which is exactly what the Prime Minister, Peter Mafany Musonge, himself a SAWA, told SAWA chiefs at a meeting in Kumba on 8 March 1997. In fact, since his appointment in September 1996, Musonge and the pro-CPDM SWELA and SAWA elite have constantly admonished the coastal people to throw their weight behind President Biya and the CPDM. As Musonge put it during a reception in Buea following his appointment, "President Biya has scratched our back, and we shall certainly scratch the Head of State's back thoroughly when time comes", meaning that the SAWA should, together with him, resolve to manifest their total support and allegiance to the President who appointed him(7) . A promise they were shown to have kept at the 1997 presidential elections, after which Biya would again reward him with a re-appointment as PM. The fact that political parties created by SAWA indigenes at the beginning of the 1990s had all failed to take root by 1996(8) , meant that SAWA opposition politicians who had failed to make it at a national level through party politics found in the SAWA movement a singular opportunity to stage a political comeback. In his paper on this movement, Wang Sonnè (1997: 187-195) draws attention to the example of Jean-Jacques Ekindi of the Mouvement Progressiste (MP), who, after 4 years in political wilderness, enthusiastically accepted to coordinate the SAWA movement, supported by the very CPDM from which he had resigned in 1991 and the leader of which he had challenged resolutely at the October 1992 presidential elections. This perspective by no means denies the SAWA movement a cultural content or legitimacy, but it draws attention to how a political elite could seek to manipulate a cultural movement for political ends. For more on elite associations and politics in Cameroon, see Nyamnjoh and Rowlands (1998). CONTAINING ANGLOPHONE IDENTITY IN CAMEROON
The 1996 constitution and the politics of belonging in the 1990s might have institutionalised and intensified the sense of divisions among Anglophones, but this by no means implies that the Machiavellian designs of the Francophone-dominated state for asphyxiating Anglophone identity started then. Indeed, the manipulation of ethnic and regional rivalries to divide and rule the Anglophones, among others, is a long-standing strategy in national politics (Bayart 1979). As we have argued elsewhere (Konings and Nyamnjoh 1997), contrary to Anglophone ex-pec-tations upon re-unification, federalism, far from providing for equal partnership between Anglophones and Francophon









------------------>THE TRIAD PRINCIPLE<-------------------------
**Only when we acknowledge and remain steadfast to the TRUTH**
**Only when we recognize and never negotiate away our RIGHTS**
**Only when we accept the realities of our one and unique IDENTITY**

Only by adopting these TRIAD principles of survival and propagation
Can we expect to harness and maintain the power that belong to us as the people, the
nation, the state and as the REPUBLIC OF AMBAZONIA(ex-British Southern Cameroons)

THIS IS OUR INALIENABLE RIGHT WHICH MUST BE RESTORED BY EVERY MEANS POSSIBLE!