FROM ARKANSAS TO AMBAZONIA: WHY SELF-DETERMINATION MUST NEVER MEAN ETHNIC EXCLUSION

The objective should not be another flag over another weak African state. It should be a republic in which freedom, property, enterprise, religious liberty, minority rights, public accountability and peaceful political succession belong equally to every citizen. That is the difference between ethnonational exclusion and genuine self-determination. And that should become one of the clearest promises Ambazonia makes to the world

By Martin S. Mungwa, PhD, Fellow ASCE. Contributor The Independentist News

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A Story From Arkansas That Ambazonians Should Study

A controversial experiment unfolding in rural Arkansas offers an unexpected but important lesson for Southern Cameroons–Ambazonia. The organization Return to the Land has established what its founders describe as a whites-only intentional community organized around European ancestry and cultural identity. The project has generated national controversy and legal challenges over whether private association and property rights can be used to exclude people on racial or ancestry grounds.

Whatever American courts ultimately decide about the legal boundaries of that experiment, the controversy raises a much larger question that Ambazonians should confront directly: what is the difference between exclusionary ethnonationalism and legitimate constitutional self-determination?

That distinction matters because the strongest Ambazonian case cannot be based on race, tribe, religion or ancestry. Southern Cameroons–Ambazonia must never seek independence because everyone within its borders supposedly belongs to the same ethnic family, looks alike, worships alike or descends from a preferred bloodline. We do not.

Southern Cameroons contains many communities, languages, traditions and historical identities. A future republic worthy of independence cannot therefore become a tribal state, a religious state or an ethnic club in which citizenship depends upon ancestry or ancestral village. If that were our project, the international community would be right to question it.

The stronger Ambazonian proposition is precisely the opposite: the creation of a civic republic in which citizenship rests upon constitutional allegiance, lawful membership and equality before the law. The ambition should not be to create a country where everyone comes from the same background. It should be to create a country where everyone stands beneath the same Constitution.

Southern Cameroons Is a Constitutional and Territorial Question

Southern Cameroons did not originate as an ethnic separatist project. It existed as a defined United Nations Trust Territory under British administration. Its political future was addressed through the 1961 plebiscite and the subsequent termination of the trusteeship under United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1608.

People can disagree strongly about the constitutional consequences of what followed. The Republic of Cameroon regards the present territorial arrangement as internationally settled. Ambazonian independentists argue that the federal understanding associated with the 1961 transition was later dismantled and that the constitutional question therefore remains unresolved.

Those competing interpretations deserve serious historical and legal examination. But neither interpretation turns Southern Cameroons into a racial question. The dispute concerns a historically defined territory, political consent, constitutional arrangements and the nature of the government under which its people should live. That is fundamentally different from asking who possesses the correct ancestry to live next door.

Independence Must Mean Equal Citizenship

The Arkansas controversy should therefore encourage Ambazonians to establish one principle beyond dispute before independence ever arrives: No ethnic group should own Ambazonia. No county should own it. No tribe should own it. No language group should own it. No traditional authority should own it. No political organization should own it. And no liberation leader should ever be permitted to convert wartime popularity into permanent ownership of the state. A republic belongs constitutionally to its citizens.

That principle has practical consequences. A person should not need the correct ancestry to own property. A Muslim should not possess fewer rights than a Christian. A Francophone resident should not be punished for speaking French. A lawful immigrant who becomes a citizen should not remain permanently inferior to someone whose family has lived in the territory for generations. A child from the smallest minority community should receive the same protection from the courts as a member of the largest group. If Ambazonia cannot guarantee those principles, then it is not ready for independence.

The quality of a future republic will ultimately be judged not only by how effectively it protects the majority seeking self-government, but by how it treats minorities, political opponents and citizens who may never have supported independence in the first place. A confident Ambazonian republic should even protect the citizen who publicly argues that independence was a mistake. A government proves the strength of its legitimacy not by silencing dissent, but by surviving it.

Ambazonia 2050 & Beyond Asks the Harder Question

This is one reason I wrote Ambazonia 2050 & Beyond. The independence movement has understandably spent enormous energy asking, “Why should Southern Cameroons be free?” That question matters. But another question may ultimately be more important: What will we do with freedom? A flag cannot answer that question. A declaration cannot answer it. Patriotic rhetoric cannot answer it.

Who writes the Constitution? Who protects minorities? Who appoints judges? Who can remove a president? Who controls the security services? Who signs contracts? Who pays? Who audits public money? Who protects property? Who owns productive assets? Who prevents political power from becoming tribal property? And what happens when those governing the country lose an election? These are not matters to be postponed until independence. They determine whether independence deserves international confidence before it occurs.

Ambazonia 2050 & Beyond therefore treats statehood as an institutional challenge. Constitutional legitimacy, administrative effectiveness, civilian protection, productive capacity and external relations must all be demonstrated. A future Ambazonia that cannot meet those tests risks replacing one dysfunctional political order with another.

Civic Nationalism Is the Stronger Nationalism

There are two very different ways of imagining a nation. One says: this country belongs primarily to people who look like us, worship like us or descend from the same ancestry. The other says: this republic belongs equally to citizens who accept a common constitutional order. Ambazonia should choose the second.

Civic nationalism does not require abandoning indigenous culture. A country can honor traditional institutions, ancestral communities, historical memory and indigenous languages while protecting citizens from different backgrounds. Indeed, constitutional equality may be the best guarantee that one indigenous community can never dominate another.

The United States itself demonstrates both the difficulty and the promise of this idea. America has repeatedly failed to live fully according to its founding ideals, but the constitutional aspiration has never been that every American must descend from one race or ethnic group. Its long struggle has instead involved expanding the practical meaning of equal citizenship.

That is why the Arkansas controversy is revealing. It places ancestry and exclusion at the center of belonging. Ambazonia should place constitutional equality at the center. Property Rights Must Protect Liberty, Not Tribal Privilege The Arkansas controversy also raises an important issue for those of us who believe strongly in property rights. Secure property ownership is indispensable to liberty, investment and prosperity. Citizens must be protected from arbitrary confiscation by government. Investors must know that contracts and ownership will survive political transitions. But property rights cannot become a mechanism through which the state distributes privilege according to ethnicity.

A future Ambazonian government should never distribute land, mineral concessions, contracts, public employment, licenses or development opportunities according to tribe. Replacing favoritism from Yaoundé with favoritism from an Ambazonian capital would not constitute liberation. It would merely change the beneficiaries.

The same principle applies to productive sovereignty. Who owns the productive source? Who controls capital? Who receives recurring economic returns? Who controls technology? Who maintains infrastructure after construction? These questions must be answered by transparent rules rather than ethnic networks or political relationships. The republic must become a system of institutions, not a system of connections.

Our Minorities Will Be the Test of Our Independence

Every nationalist movement naturally speaks about the rights of the people seeking self-government. But the quality of a republic is revealed by how it treats those without majority power. Will journalists be permitted to criticize an Ambazonian president? Will courts be independent enough to rule against the government? Will opposition parties remain legal? Will religious liberty be protected? Will traditional institutions remain subject to constitutional rights? Can an ordinary citizen sue the state and win? Will security agencies protect people who criticize independence leaders?

These questions matter because liberation capacity and governing capacity are not the same thing. The ability to resist another government does not automatically create the ability to govern fairly. A future Ambazonia should therefore not ask the international community to trust it merely because Southern Cameroons has suffered. It should demonstrate that the republic it proposes will protect everyone who lives within it.

What Americans Should Understand

The Arkansas controversy also gives Americans a useful way of understanding why not every form of separatism or self-determination is morally equivalent. Some movements are built around racial exclusion. Others around religion. Others around conquest or ethnic supremacy. ÖStill others arise from historically defined territories, constitutional arrangements, political consent and competing claims of legitimate statehood.

They should be judged according to their actual histories and the institutions they propose. The correct question for Americans is therefore not simply whether Ambazonians are “separatists.” The better questions are: What occurred in 1961? What political arrangement followed? What subsequently changed? What kind of republic does Southern Cameroons–Ambazonia propose to create? Will individual liberty be protected? Will property rights be secure? Will minorities possess equal citizenship? Will contracts be enforced? Will public finances be audited? Will presidents leave office peacefully? Will courts remain independent? Will foreign investment create productive domestic capacity rather than another extractive dependency? These are demanding questions. Ambazonia should welcome them.

Evaluate Ambazonia—Do Not Romanticize It

Southern Cameroons does not need Americans to romanticize the independence movement. Washington should not write a blank check merely because people carry an Ambazonian flag or invoke historical injustice. Evaluate us. Examine our history. Examine the constitutional architecture we propose. Examine how minorities would be protected. Examine the economic model. Examine our approach to corruption, contracts, property rights, strategic resources and public finance. Examine whether future leaders would themselves be subject to the institutions they create.

Then compare that prospective architecture with the alternatives. That is the larger argument of Ambazonia 2050 & Beyond. The case should not be: Give us independence because we have suffered. The stronger case is: Take our claim seriously because we intend to build a more accountable, productive and constitutional republic. That distinction transforms independence from an appeal for sympathy into a proposition for statehood.

Ambazonia Must Be the Opposite of Ethnic Exclusion

The greatest lesson from the Arkansas controversy is therefore not that America has established a universal right for communities to separate themselves from others. It has not. The deeper lesson is that not every desire for separation rests upon the same moral foundation. An exclusionary movement asks: Who must be kept out? A constitutional independence movement should ask: How will everyone inside be protected? That is the distinction Ambazonia must make unmistakable.

We should not seek a country where everyone looks alike. We should seek a country where everyone stands equally before the same law. We should not seek ethnic purity. We should seek constitutional legitimacy. We should not replace Cameroonian centralization with Ambazonian tribalism. We should replace arbitrary power with accountable government.

The objective should not be another flag over another weak African state. It should be a republic in which freedom, property, enterprise, religious liberty, minority rights, public accountability and peaceful political succession belong equally to every citizen. That is the difference between ethnonational exclusion and genuine self-determination. And that should become one of the clearest promises Ambazonia makes to the world: Ambazonia should never be defined by who it excludes, but by whether everyone within it stands equally before the same Constitution.

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Martin S. Mungwa, PhD, Fellow ASCE. Contributor The Independentist News