The Anglophone Trap: A Linguistic Error That Is Disarming Ambazonia

If an author uses the term Anglophone, he must define exactly who he means. Is he referring to English-speaking populations inside Cameroon, Anglophones globally, or Ambazonians specifically? These are not interchangeable categories. Treating them as such is not stylistic choice; it is analytical failure.

By Mankah Rosa Parks

There is a quiet but fatal mistake many Ambazonians continue to make, and it is not accidental. It is linguistic, political, and deeply corrosive to the liberation cause. That mistake is the careless use of the word “Anglophone” to define Ambazonians. This is not semantics. It is not harmless shorthand. It is not intellectual flexibility. It is self-erasure.

Anglophone Is a Language Category. Ambazonian Is a People.

“Anglophone” is not a people, a nation, or a legal subject. It is a colonial linguistic label, designed to manage populations, not to recognize sovereignty. To call Ambazonians “Anglophones” is to reduce an indigenous people with a defined territory, history, and international legal claim into nothing more than English-speaking Cameroonians. That reduction is not neutral. It is the ideological foundation of the French Cameroon narrative. Language disputes are managed with reforms. Territorial occupations are resolved through decolonization.

Every time Ambazonians choose “Anglophone,” they downgrade their struggle from an international case of illegal annexation into a domestic minority grievance. That is not resistance. That is surrender dressed up as convenience.

The Regime’s Word Is Not a Tool of Liberation

French Cameroon does not call Ambazonia a country. It calls it “the Anglophone problem.” Why? Because problems can be managed. Peoples must be reckoned with. When Ambazonians adopt this language, they perform the regime’s propaganda work for free. They launder occupation into vocabulary and make genocide sound like administrative failure.

No liberation movement in history defined itself by the colonizer’s linguistic categories. Algerians were not Francophones. Ghanaians were not Anglophones. Nations are not born from grammar; they are born from consent, territory, and history.

Demand for Precision: Ambiguity Is Incompetence

If an author uses the term Anglophone, he must define exactly who he means. Is he referring to English-speaking populations inside Cameroon, Anglophones globally, or Ambazonians specifically? These are not interchangeable categories. Treating them as such is not stylistic choice; it is analytical failure.

If the subject is Ambazonians, then say Ambazonians. If the subject is Anglophone Cameroonians, say Anglophone Cameroonians. Anything else is intellectual laziness masquerading as insight. Specificity is not optional. It is a foundational principle taught in English composition, journalism, and political analysis. One cannot claim seriousness while refusing to name the subject accurately.

Final Crashdown

Calling Ambazonians “Anglophones” is the linguistic equivalent of calling Ukrainians “Russian speakers” or Palestinians “Arabic speakers.” It empties the struggle of legal force, comforts the occupier, and confuses the world. If Ambazonia is to be born, it must first speak its own name correctly. Anything less is not resistance. It is miseducation in revolutionary clothing.

Mankah Rosa Parks