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215  Chapter Fifteen The Cameroonian Character Non-Cameroonians as well as Cameroonians must often be baffled at the Cameroonian spirit of contradictory tendencies, accommodation and compromise, discord and diversity, bitterness and rancour and yet understanding and humanity, all bundled together. Indeed, few would have believed that in less than two months from our bitter plebiscite days, Southern Cameroonians across the parties would be seen drinking and laughing together cracking jokes like “when will your ship be ready to ferry our 98.000 men to Nigeria”? Indeed who would have believed that only eight weeks after the plebiscite, one would see the picture of Mbile holding an umbrella over the head of Foncha lecturing in the rain at the Buea market. This is exactly what happened after a joint meeting of the KNDP and CPNC on our return from the UNO, New York, in 1961. Together, we were addressing the population and learning to accommodate unification. At the Foumban Conference we sweated together for days, trying to salvage what we could of our Anglophone values in the impending setup. During a visit to Buea soon after the plebiscite, President Ahidjo sprang all a huge surprise by inviting the leaders of the “defeated” CPNC to the Schloss7 to assure us that despite the views we had held, he harboured no bitterness against us and that in the task of nation building which lay ahead, all Cameroonians would be welcome. Such was magnanimity in victory. Indeed, a catalogue of certain In January 1953 during the “Eastern crisis” in the House of Assembly at Enugu, the thirteen Cameroonian members earned the title of the “Cameroon Bloc” owing to their solid stand by the NCNC in the midst of numerous carpet crossings on the Assembly floor. Only weeks later, in Lagos, they split into two camps when the controversial policy of “Benevolent Neutrality” was pronounced by Dr. Endeley. The KNC and KPP were formed out of the KUNC and later the KNC split into part: KNDP and part to its original self. In 1958,  7 Schloss: from German to mean the Prime Minister’s residence in Buea. It was the residence of the German Governors of Kamerun when Buea was capital. 216  pressed to the wall, the KNC formed an alliance with the KPP, but at the 1959 elections, the allies unable to field joint candidates in the constituencies especially in Victoria East and Mamfe East, lost power to the KNDP by a close 14:12 in the Southern Cameroons House of Assembly. Expulsions from the KNDP in the sixties led to the formation of the CUC. Meanwhile the KNC and KPP seeing the folly of discord in their 1958 alliance, forged the CPNC perhaps belatedly in June 1960. Then came the unprecedented carpet crossing from the CPNC to the KNDP following the elections to the House of Assembly in 1961, until it became painfully clear that Southern Cameroonians were either not ripe to operate the multiparty system, or that their politicians and leaders had not the will and courage to endure the cold benches of an opposition, till their turn come round to win power. Hence the rush to the shielding recourse of a national party under the CNU The protection which Foncha was incapable of offering the opposition by his repressive regime seemed better assured under the umbrella of the CNU, within a partnership in which Foncha himself dwindled to only a “petit frère”8 to the “grand camarade”9 . This catalogue leaves even the ablest student of human nature in the air, hardly able to lay his mind firmly on what constitutes the real character of the Cameroonian in politics, As subsequent events were to show, even the seeming patriotic character displayed in the postplebiscite truce hardly stood the test of time and was soon trampled under foot by the ever warring and ever fragmenting Southern Cameroonian politicians. So, this final act only served to confound the more, students in search of the core of the Cameroonian character. To have embraced so challenging a cause as unification in bitter discord has never done credit to the Southern Cameroonian sense of vision. Indeed, in their endless splits and feuds, even the idea of unification has, to men like Mr. Ndeh Ntumazah, continued only as a dream. From the UPC, Ntumazah had formed the One Kamerun (OK). Ideas do not implement themselves; men implement ideas. Mr. Ntumazah still owes the Cameroon nation an explanation why in twenty years he had not come home...

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