France hides behind sovereignty. Britain hides behind process. One gives the political cover; the other gives the technical polish. Together, they preserve the appearance of innocence while Ambazonians carry the burden of history. Until that dignity is respected everywhere, the struggle remains unfinished.
By Ali Dan Ismael in Atlanta Georgia
A Football Controversy That Exposed a Global Wound
The racism row involving Kylian Mbappé and Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla is not merely a football controversy. It is a mirror held up to a world that still struggles to accept Black excellence when it stands confidently on a global stage. After France defeated Paraguay, Amarilla’s reported racial attack on Mbappé’s African origins provoked condemnation from the French Football Federation, the French presidency, and the Paraguayan government, which distanced itself from her remarks and reaffirmed its opposition to racism and xenophobia.
But the deeper lesson is not only about Paraguay, France, or football. It is about the hypocrisy of societies that celebrate Black talent when it wins trophies, entertains crowds, or brings national glory, but question its belonging when it asserts dignity. Mbappé was French enough to score for France, French enough to carry French hopes, and French enough to be celebrated by presidents and fans. Yet, in the racist imagination, his African roots could still be weaponized against him. That is the contradiction many Africans in Europe know too well.
When Africans Are Claimed for Glory but Rejected in Dignity
For many French Cameroonians living in France and elsewhere, racism is not an abstract debate. It is encountered in housing, employment, policing, public insult, social suspicion, and the silent message that no amount of assimilation fully erases African origin. The African is welcomed as labor, athlete, artist, caregiver, cleaner, soldier, student, or consumer, but too often treated as a guest whose dignity remains conditional. When he succeeds, he is claimed. When he speaks, he is reminded of his origins. When he protests, he is told to be grateful.
France’s Selective Morality and the Silence on Cameroun
There is also a larger French hypocrisy that must be confronted. France is quick to condemn racism when it injures the image of France, its football stars, or its republican slogans of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But the same France rarely shows the same moral urgency when its vassal state called Cameroun brutalizes, marginalizes, humiliates, and dehumanizes Ambazonians. Paris can speak loudly when Mbappé is racially insulted abroad, but it becomes cautious, diplomatic, and evasive when the French-backed order in Yaoundé uses state power against English-speaking communities. This silence is not neutrality. It is complicity dressed in diplomacy. A country that claims to stand against racism cannot ignore Anglophobia, state violence, and colonial-era domination when they are practiced by an ally sustained within its sphere of influence.
Britain’s Symbolic Presence and the Pain of Abandonment
The wound becomes even more painful when Britain’s presence in Ambazonia is reduced to ceremony without responsibility. Too often, British engagement appears not as a serious reckoning with history, justice, or the consequences of its colonial decisions, but as symbolic performance: speaking pidgin English, wearing traditional regalia, exchanging courtesies with local authorities, and offering financial incentives in the form of grants to chiefs, Fons, and traditional structures that may already be vulnerable to corruption and political capture. Such gestures may look respectful on the surface, but they can also become a substitute for moral accountability. They can turn culture into decoration while avoiding the harder question of what Britain owes to a people whose constitutional fate was shaped by British policy.
For Ambazonians, the issue is not whether British officials can wear traditional clothing, greet communities in pidgin, or fund local projects. The issue is whether these gestures are being used to avoid the deeper historical responsibility that Britain carries. A people cannot be reduced to dance, regalia, pidgin greetings, and small grants while their political grievance remains unresolved. Cultural respect without political honesty becomes another form of insult. It says: we will celebrate your identity as folklore, but we will not defend your dignity as a people.
This is why both France and Britain must be examined in the same moral frame. France cannot condemn racism abroad while remaining silent about the conduct of its client state in Cameroun. Britain cannot enjoy symbolic friendship with Ambazonians while evading the consequences of the historical arrangements that left them exposed to domination. One power hides behind diplomacy. The other hides behind ceremony. But for the Ambazonian people, the result is the same: dignity delayed, justice postponed, and history treated as if it has no victims.
The Entente Cordiale and the Politics of Shared Innocence
The situation becomes even more troubling during elections, when France and Britain often appear to play complementary roles while both maintain public innocence. France becomes the political voice, defending stability, continuity, diplomacy, and the so-called sovereignty of Cameroun. Britain becomes the technical arm, speaking the language of process, training, observation, governance support, election management, civil society funding, and institutional capacity. One appears political. The other appears procedural. One protects the outcome. The other sanitizes the method. In the end, no one is blamed, and both powers present themselves as friends of democracy.
This pattern did not emerge by accident. Since the Entente Cordiale of 1904, Britain and France learned how to avoid open confrontation by dividing influence, managing colonial disputes, and protecting their strategic interests through diplomatic coordination rather than direct conflict. That arrangement may have been presented as peace between European powers, but for many African peoples, it also became a framework through which colonial questions could be managed without justice. In the case of Ambazonia, France and Britain appear to stand on different sides of the stage, but the performance often serves the same outcome: preserving the political order while avoiding accountability.
France speaks when political legitimacy must be defended. Britain appears when technical credibility must be manufactured. France protects the vassal state called Cameroun through diplomatic language. Britain softens the wound through cultural gestures, election assistance, grants, workshops, pidgin greetings, and ceremonial engagement with chiefs and Fons. Together, they create the appearance of concern without the burden of responsibility. One supplies the political shield. The other supplies the procedural cover.
For Ambazonians, this is why the wound is so deep. The problem is not only that France remains silent when Cameroun brutalizes Ambazonians. It is also that Britain, the former administering power, often behaves as if its role ended with ceremony, technical advice, and carefully worded neutrality. France hides behind sovereignty. Britain hides behind process. Both appear innocent. Yet the Ambazonian people continue to live with the consequences of a colonial settlement they did not freely design and a postcolonial order that refuses to hear them.
The Painful Irony at Home
Yet there is a painful irony. The same French Camerounian society whose sons and daughters complain of racism in France has often tolerated, minimized, or actively practiced Anglophobia against Ambazonians at home. The Anglophone problem in Cameroon did not begin as an armed conflict. It grew from long-standing grievances over language, courts, schools, administration, political exclusion, cultural contempt, and the treatment of English-speaking citizens as a subordinate people within a Francophone-dominated state.
This is the double wound. Abroad, the French Camerounian may suffer racism from Europeans who see him as African before they see his humanity. At home, the Ambazonian has suffered Anglophobia from a state and society that often see him as inconvenient, rebellious, foreign-influenced, or less national because he speaks English and inherited a different legal, educational, and administrative tradition. The victim of racism abroad must not become the agent of cultural domination at home.
The Anglophone Crisis Is a Crisis of Dignity
The crisis in the North-West and South-West regions is not simply a security issue. It is a crisis of dignity. Since late 2016, civilians have been trapped between militarization, insecurity, displacement, school closures, burned villages, economic collapse, and fear. Behind every statistic are families, churches, farms, markets, students, teachers, lawyers, traders, and communities whose lives have been shattered because a historical grievance was treated as a nuisance rather than a national question.
Racism and Anglophobia Are Cousins
Racism and Anglophobia are not identical, but they are cousins. Both begin with contempt. Both reduce human beings to labels. Both deny people equal dignity. Both say: your language, origin, culture, or identity makes you less worthy of respect. The racist tells the African in Europe, “You do not fully belong here.” The Anglophobe tells the Ambazonian at home, “Your history, language, courts, schools, and political memory do not matter.” The vocabulary may differ, but the poison is familiar.
Justice Cannot Be Selective
That is why Africans must be careful when reacting to racism abroad. It is not enough to condemn Europe, South America, or the West when they insult Africans. We must also examine the hierarchies we reproduce among ourselves. We cannot demand dignity in Paris while denying dignity in Buea, Bamenda, Kumba, Mamfe, Victoria, Kumbo, Ndop, or Muyuka. We cannot denounce racism against Cameroonians in France while remaining silent about the contempt directed at Ambazonians in French Cameroun. Justice cannot be selective and still remain justice.
Institutions Must Defend Dignity
The Mbappé episode also teaches another lesson: dignity must answer insult, not by becoming hateful, but by refusing humiliation. Mbappé’s response was forceful because racism thrives when victims are expected to stay polite. The French Football Federation’s decision to pursue legal action shows that institutions matter when they defend citizens against racial abuse. But Ambazonians have long asked a similar question: where were the institutions when their lawyers protested, when teachers complained, when students were beaten, when communities were militarized, and when civilians cried for protection?
Unity Without Respect Is Domination
A state that wants unity must first practice respect. Unity cannot be built by force, ridicule, denial, or assimilation. It cannot be built by telling one people to forget their history while another people impose theirs as the national standard. True unity requires equality before the law, respect for identity, accountability for abuses, and a political settlement that recognizes the depth of the Anglophone question. Anything less is not unity; it is domination wearing national colors.
France Must Decide What Its Anti-Racism Means
France, too, must decide whether its anti-racism is a principle or a public relations slogan. If France can condemn racist abuse against a French footballer, it can also condemn the structures of repression and contempt that have sustained the suffering of Ambazonians. If France can defend dignity when one of its stars is insulted, it can defend dignity when civilians are displaced, villages are destroyed, schools are paralyzed, and communities are punished for asserting their identity. Selective morality is not morality. It is strategy.
A Single Principle for All Africans
The world must condemn racism against Africans wherever it appears. But Africans must also condemn internal colonial attitudes among themselves. French Cameroonians in France deserve protection from racism. Ambazonians at home deserve protection from Anglophobia. The same moral principle applies: no people should be insulted, excluded, dehumanized, or politically reduced because of origin, language, history, or identity.
Africa Cannot Rise on Internal Contempt
If the twenty-first century is to become Africa’s century, Africans must stop reproducing the very contempt they condemn abroad. The continent cannot rise on imported slogans while practicing internal exclusion. It cannot ask Europe to respect African dignity while African states crush minority identities at home. The fight against racism must begin with a broader fight against all forms of human degradation, including Anglophobia, xenophobia, tribal arrogance, linguistic domination, and state-sponsored contempt.
The Unfinished Struggle for Dignity
The lesson is clear. The African abroad and the Ambazonian at home are both asking for the same thing: dignity. Not pity. Not token inclusion. Not public relations. Dignity.
France hides behind sovereignty. Britain hides behind process. One gives the political cover; the other gives the technical polish. Together, they preserve the appearance of innocence while Ambazonians carry the burden of history. Until that dignity is respected everywhere, the struggle remains unfinished.
Ali Dan Ismael Editor-in-chief The Independentist News
