God the Politician

Introduction

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Introduction his book consists of 24 chapters in which the author covers a variety of issues on blood and terror in Cameroonian democracy. Titled ‘A Political Messiah is Born’, Chapter One recounts the launch of the SDF on 26 May 1990 in Bamenda, the capital of the North West Province of Cameroon. In a desperate attempt to prevent it, six youth were shot dead during Fru Ndi’s speech to launch the party in which he called on fellow Cameroonians to stand up and shake off what he saw as the yoke of dictatorship imposed on them by the Biya regime. Chapter Two on ‘Unwise Men from the East’ recounts the attempts by the Biya regime first to bribe and then to intimidate Fru Ndi and force him escape to Nigeria but these attempts instead drew national and international attention and sympathy for him. Chapter Three, titled ‘Murdering the Insurgents’, recounts the fierce political battles between Biya and the CPDM on the one hand and the opposition on the other. The opposition formed an alliance called the National Coordination of Opposition Parties and Associations and launched ‘Operation Ghost Town’ and civil disobedience campaigns that paralyzed economic activities in nearly three-quarters of the country. Biya retaliated by dispatching security operatives to engage in taxi driving and intimidation to break the operation. This is followed by a discussion on the Ndu Genocide in Chapter Four, which recounts how gendarmes invaded the opposition stronghold of the Ndu, massacred the people and raped women. They were acting on the instructions of the ruling party’s barons and the administration. Called ‘Electors and Cheaters’ Chapter Five recounts how the 1992 presidential elections were won by Fru Ndi, but the Supreme Court said it was not given the power to cancel the results. Chapter Six deals with the post-election violence that resulted in the killing of a political party leader and the massive destruction of homes belonging to supporters of the ruling party in the Northwest. Chapter Seven discusses what happened during the state of emergency imposed in the North West Province following the 1992 elections, putting Ni John Fru Ndi of the Social Democratic Front under house arrest and the killing and rape of opposition supporters. Chapter Eight discusses ‘Patriots and Gangsters’ and narrates how Fru Ndi and his supporters staged demonstrations to recover his ‘stolen’ election victory and how this led to clashes with gendarmes and the killing of two SDF vanguards. At the T 2 same time, armed robbers targeted French installations in Bamenda. In ‘Recollections of a Faked Coup’, Chapter Nine recalls the 1984 coup attempt on 6 April against Biya, how it was crushed and the reprisals that followed. Chapter Ten titled ‘Constitutional Acrobats’ shows how Biya announced a constitutional conference but then manipulated it in such a way that the opposition boycotted it and Anglophones became angry and held a conference in Buea, the headquarters of their former government. The fight for an autonomous board for Anglophone exams began and was accomplished in the period when the constitutional conference was being held. Chapter Eleven called ‘Home Bred Terrorist’ narrates the story of how a gang of supposed brigands launched and sustained a hit-and-run attack for three consecutive days on military installations in the north. Stations were targeted, more than ten people were killed and a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on the province. Chapter Twelve titled ‘State Persecutors’ recounts the trial of the supposed terrorists in which the Francophone judges who were involved in it were more persecutors than prosecutors. Chapter Thirteen ‘Terror Suspects Narrate Harrowing Tales’ is an account of the torture and rape of the Anglophone terror suspects while they were in detention. Chapter Fourteen deals with ‘Electoral Gymnastics and the Military Option’ and recounts how the SDF planned a military offensive but later dropped the idea. Chapter Fifteen ‘Tribute to Machiavelli’ recounts the beating up of a Fru Ndi challenger who wanted to hold a convention because the party and its chairman were not doing things the right way. Chapter Sixteen ‘The Law of Karma’ focuses on Fru Ndi’s illness which many, including the chairman, attributed to poison and how after his recovery he authorized the brutalization of some of his opponents. Chapter Seventeen called ‘The Cardinal Political Parties and State Terror’ throws light on the activities of the Operational Command, a squad created to fight banditry in Douala, Cameroon’s political capital, but which ended up being used to...