When Britain and France violated that covenant, they did not “reunite” two peoples; they recolonized one through deceit. Southern Cameroons and La République du Cameroun were born of two different empires, under two distinct trusteeships, with two separate legal and constitutional destinies. We did not share a cradle; we were forced into the same coffin.
By The Independentist political desk
Editor’s Note:
The following article continues an ongoing intellectual exchange between Bobo Mavalse, a Francophone federalist and moral reform advocate, and Dr. Martin Mungwa, the Commissioned Secretary for Communication of the Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.
The discussion began with Mavalse’s essay, “When Intelligence Closes, Dialogue Dies,” published earlier this week, in which he accused Ambazonian leaders of dogmatism and historical blindness. In this response, Dr. Mungwa engages his arguments — with law, memory, and moral clarity.
WHEN INTELLIGENCE CLOSES, TRUTH STILL SPEAKS
My dear Bobo Mavalse,
You wrote with eloquence and finality, saying you were replying for the last time because my mind was “locked inside its own certainties.” You said I no longer listened, that I recited rather than reasoned — and that when a man replaces thought with repetition, he no longer does history, he does dogma.
It was a refined statement, and I appreciate your effort to lift our national conversation above noise.
But sincerity without truth is still error dressed in eloquence. Before you close your door on dialogue, allow me to open one window of clarity.
- MEMORY IS A COMPASS, NOT A CONFESSION
You accuse me of clinging to UN resolutions as if they were holy verses. But those texts are not relics — they are records. UN Resolution 1608 (Article 15) is not poetry; it is law. It defined the international status and destiny of British Southern Cameroons.
When Britain and France violated that covenant, they did not “reunite” two peoples; they recolonized one through deceit. Southern Cameroons and La République du Cameroun were born of two different empires, under two distinct trusteeships, with two separate legal and constitutional destinies. We did not share a cradle; we were forced into the same coffin.
- ABANDONMENT WITHOUT HONOUR
You evoke the courage of your fathers who fought in the mountains for a united Kamerun. I honour their sacrifice. But even Pa Ndeh Tumazah, one of those early patriots, later admitted that what he once called “reunification” became nothing more than recolonization under a French accent.
Ambazonians were not cowards for trusting law; they believed that international agreements carried meaning. If that trust was betrayed, the guilt lies not with those who hoped — but with those who deceived.
- NATIONALISM WITHOUT JUSTICE IS CAMOUFLAGED TYRANNY
You preach humanism while defending a system that punishes difference. You accuse Ambazonians of dictatorship — yet who jailed lawyers, tortured teachers, and silenced clergy simply for demanding that the law of their land be respected? Ambazonia does not seek dignity against anyone; it seeks dignity without permission. There is a difference between arrogance and assertion — one enslaves, the other awakens.
And let us be candid: many Anglophones are puzzled by the persistent ignorance among Francophones whose deepest instinct is to dominate — just as France has always tried to dominate her former colonies. That attitude is not born of intellect but of inheritance — a lingering Napoleonic DNA that confuses command with competence.
Throughout my time teaching undergraduate and graduate Francophone students at the École Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique de Yaoundé, I witnessed this repeatedly. There is a certain air of intellectualism they carry — proud, confident, but fragile. And it collapses the moment they encounter an Anglophone of superior intellect wrapped in humility.
This, I have found, is the quiet crisis of the Francophone mind — not only in Cameroon, but across the world, especially in North America. They strive passionately to belong in the Anglo-Saxon intellectual community, yet from time to time drift out of their lane — like a sleepy driver at the wheel, forgetting that true mastery requires self-awareness, not imitation. True leadership begins with humility, not hierarchy. History rewards those who learn, not those who lecture.
- THE MYTH OF “REFOUNDATION”
Your Stand Up for Cameroon movement preaches moral renewal from within. But how do you rebuild a house whose foundation itself was theft? You can repaint a prison, but it remains a prison. Refoundation without repentance is nothing more than the renovation of oppression. No democracy grows under occupation, and no moral order emerges from denial.
- THE UN YOU MOCK STILL DEFINES YOUR LEGITIMACY
You advise me not to trust the UN’s Fourth Committee after 1958 — yet your own republic owes its very independence to that process. If the Committee was corrupt, then your independence is void. If it was valid, then Resolution 1608 remains binding — and La République’s military presence in Southern Cameroons remains illegal. You cannot feast at a table and call the food unclean when others sit to eat.
- THE REAL IGNORANCE IS ARROGANCE
You say ignorance is a crime. Indeed — but arrogance is the weapon that commits it.
Ambazonians are not prisoners of slogans; they are students of evidence. We live not by bitterness but by conviction. Our minds remain alert, disciplined, and uncolonized. We understand that our struggle is not against people, but against a system that mistakes uniformity for unity and submission for patriotism.
- TRUTH BEFORE UNITY
You dream of a new Kamerun. That dream is noble — but incomplete. No true unity grows from injustice. No phoenix rises from a stolen nest. Before brotherhood, there must be truth. Before unity, there must be justice.
Ambazonia is not your enemy, Bobo. She is your mirror — showing what courage looks like when fear loses its accent. We are not two hostile tribes, but two consciences wrestling with the same colonial ghost: one that chose comfort, the other that chose conscience.
So, Bobo Mavalse, I close this exchange not with anger, but with clarity. When intelligence closes, truth reopens — and it speaks in every tongue that refuses silence. For in the end, freedom is not a favour; it is a fact. That, my brother, is how nations — and souls — are reborn.
By The Independentist political desk
