February edition

Martin Luther and Ethiopian Christianity: historical traces — Page 20

PATHFINDER International

Lifting up a standard for the Global African Community VOL. 2, NO. 1

Coming revolutions in Black Africa — Page 21

$2

ISSN 2573-6523

www.thepathfinderinternational.com

FEBRUARY 15 – MARCH 15, 2018

China Inside Africa ...

— Back Page 24

Inside Africa’s Confucius Institutes

Yorùbá World

Fágúnwà: homeland – diaspora synergy and development — Page 7

2017 Elections: Kenya grappling to find its feet

Mauritius: Tax haven — Page 14 Yorùbá and the burden of their history in the politics of Nigeria

— Page 3

Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis at crossroads — Page 8

— Page 17

This is who you are calling ‘Akata’ — Page 3

2 | PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018

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3 | PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018

NEWS

2017 Elections: Kenya grappling to find its feet

By Emmaculate AsigeLiaga Scholar, Southern Voices African Research – African Programme

I

t is now a little more than 3 months since the Kenyan second elections held on the 26th of October 2017. Yet, Kenya is still grappling to get back to its feet. Since the 2007 election violence, that led to the death of 1200 Kenyans and internally displaced thousands of people, the period surrounding elections in the country has always held a sense of tense ombré around them. The 2017 elections did not prove to be any different.

The Elections Elections have generally been used and seen as an important yardstick to measure democracy. Kenya was therefore under a watchful eye of the international community who expected not only a peaceful election, but also an improvement from the previous patterns of elections in Kenya — often painted as not clean and not fair. Ten years since that 2007 election violence, Kenya was under a microscope scrutiny on the procedure of the election.2017 marked such an event for Kenya.

The 2017 elections were such a time. The pressure was on, this was especially so for the key figures of the election. This included the presidential candidates, the voters and the independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission of Kenya (an independent regulatory agency responsible for conducting or supervising referenda and elections to public office in Kenya).

This year’s August 8th elections did not disappoint, the results were met with a reported death of about 28 people (especially around the opposition stronghold) and accusations of alleged electoral fraud, rigging and manipulation of votes.

These accusations stemmed largely from members of the National Super Alliance (NASA) –a coalition of a number of

political parties, led by Mr. RailaOdinga as their political candidate. The series of unexplainable gaps were identified due to the unreliability of the technology use during the election to deliver accountable result and made it impossible to determine who actually won the elections. The manual papers were counted to sum to different numbers as those reported through the new electronic system used.

Contested Election Just like the 2003 election results, the opposition took it to court. The case presented to Raila in the Supreme Court alleged that the IEBC computerized system had been hacked and as a result favored K e n y a t t a ’s w i n . H i s lawyers also presented evidence on wide spread discrepancies the official physical recordings from the 40 000 tally centres and the results from the all the electronic results announced by IEBC. The evidence for this was presented as the death and torture of the senior IT expert, Chris Msando, at the IEBC as a way to facilitate the tampering.

This evidence got the elections annulled and a fresh election called upon.

This raises the question of why the international observers, especially the western champions of democracy failed to detect and raise the in the August 8th election rigging.

The second elections, that took place on the 26th of October did, however, not go as smoothly as expected.

NASA and Raila decided to boycott the new elections, despite his name remaining on the ballot papers. He sighted the shortcomings of the August 8 election had not been addressed by the IEBC. This was also a sentiment that was expressed byGeorge Kegoro, thehead of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, who submitted an affidavit as

dimming.

It remains true that the events surrounding this election have created a confusing limbo that has very many asking what all this means for Kenyans.

The future of how Kenyans will conduct elections in the future remains unpredict-able given the last few months. The frustration and the seemingly lack of progress for both govern-ment supporters and the opposition has seemingly exhausted Kenyans and part of the petition sighting voter turnout. The hopes there is a sense of the need that “This election failed in for the third election are of life to move on. The need exactly the same way as the t h u s c o n t i n u o u s l y for economic progress that previous election” and that the role of technology has been muddled in failures of accountability by the IEBC. Some reasons that have been sighted for Raila y world came crashing boycott, was his belief and down on Ash aim to stall or disqualify the Wednesday, February 18, s e c o n d e l e c t i o n , h i s 2015, when I got laid off from a decision to boycott left an great job that I also hated. Two open room for a guaranteed years after graduating with my with of Kenyatta, which MBA, I finally found a job that was later accepted by the I could establish my life courts. However, this did around. I fell into a deep depression because I realize not happen, and Kenyatta that my entire identity was was declared as the winner, wrapped around a job and even by the courts. career that I no longer had. I From the events of the started asking myself: What do last few months in Kenya, I do? Who am I? Why am I there a few things that stand even here? out however. The first is Five months before I got laid my position, God showed that that Kenyan elections off me who I was in a vision. I saw will still be a point of myself as a filmmaker, contestation. The question searching for my ancestors and always remains whether e v e n t u a l l y v i s i t i n g t h e the con tes tatio n w as continent of Africa. This always there due to the journey became a film and specific players, who have eventually shared with the consequently remained world. I snapped out of this vision and immediately relatively constant since dismissed it because A) I was the 2002 election that un- not a filmmaker and B) I did sat president Arap Moi and not care about Africa. Like brought a change of regime most Black Americans, our towards a more democratic history was stolen from us, therefore many do not have an Kenya.

T h e s e c o n d i s t h e emotional connection with the Victoria Gregg realisation of another continent.

After that vision, I saw signs i m p o r t a n t f a c t o r o f everywhere confirming God’s American relations in the U.S., democracy which lies on vision for my life and my so when it came time to pick a title for my movie, I knew it judicial independence and workplace environment began was going to be called “Akata rule of law. Kenyan to suffer. One day I heard the documentary”.

Judicial system has really Spirit of the Lord say, “Quit This film is a story about one demonstrated their muscles your job, and follow the vision Akata, trying to find her and the role of courts in I showed you and I will provide ancestral roots. I chose this everything you need.” Fear democratic consolidation gripped me and unfortunately, I o f f e n s i v e , d e r o g a t o r y, by reaffirming that there’s had no intentions of quitting controversial title because I want to show my African no one above the law. Both my good-paying job. God took brothers and sisters that this, these signals will serve to matters into His own divine me, is who you were calling an s t r e n g t h e n K e n y a n hands and got me fired on that Akata; An educated Black fateful Ash Wednesday. My woman from a good family and democracy.

was set back by the seemingly long electoral period need to be recovered. For the common citizen there is a continuum of life after the day that the ballot papers are counted.

Business are being conducted as normal, there is also less talk of the election and the focus has shifted to the productivity of the current government to bring Kenyans together and their role in growing the economy of Kenya. Life is slowly but surely getting back to normal, almost as a way Kenyans are choosing to place this tense period behind them. n

This is who you are calling ‘Akata’ M

What next for Kenya?

The events following the announcement of Kenyatta’s second win as the president of Kenya has led Raila to the formation of the “National Resistance Movement” (NRM). His goals for this decision nevertheless appears rather confusing as he intended to not form an armed resistance but rather to postpone the elections for ninety days so that they can be credible. This however did not come to fruition as Kenyatta was declared president despite a 30%

journey begins here.

Around the time I had the vision, I met with my Ghanaian friend for happy hour. Before exiting her vehicle, I took off my heels and switched into more comfortable shoes. She looked at me in shock and said “Oh my gosh, Vicky, you are such an Akata.” My Black American ears have never heard that word spoken until now. I initially thought it was a pleasant term, so I smiled said “Thank you.” My Ghanaian friend said “No, it means ghetto, but we typically call African-Americans that.” I felt bamboozled, I had no idea that Africans had secret negative term for Black Americans. This realization caused me to reflect on African and Black

trying to find her way back to the continent.

I am the Akata who had to take a DNA test in order to pinpoint where my people are from.

I am the Akata who had to read through slave records, where I saw my not-so-distant relatives referred to as property.

I am the Akata who hugged the granddaughter of my ancestors’ slave master and forgave him for what he did to them.

I am the Akata who visited the slave plantation where my ancestors were held captive.

I am the Akata who is trying to acknowledge and reconnect with my roots.

I don’t use this term “Akata”

with pride, I use it to highlight the shame attached to it and to show the world that the African Diaspora can and will do better.

The lack of unity within the African Diaspora does not fall on the shoulders of our African brothers and sisters alone but the blame is shared between Black Americans, Caribbeans, the rest of the African Diaspora and our colonizers. There is equal blame to go around on all sides. With this film, I want to start a dialogue between Millennial Africans and Black Americans to bridge the gap, because there is plenty of ignorance amongst both communities. I want this film to be used as a blueprint for BlackAmericans, so they know how to find their own ancestors. I want Africans to view this film to see what African-Americans have to go through in order to reconnect with the continent and hopefully this will inspire Africans to help aid Black Americans to do that. If you would like more information about this film, you can visit www.Akata Docu.com. If you would like to help us to complete this film you can donate to our gofundme page at w w w. g o f u n d m e . c o m / AkataDocu. n

4 | PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018

NEWS Rebuilding after the dictator: New Gambia’s slow road to reform

By James Courtright, a freelance journalist based in Dakar, Senegal.

P

resident Jammeh spent over two decades centralizing power and sowing distrust.

How do you rebuild a nation after that?

How do you dismantle over two decades of repressive and corrupt governance in order to build a fresh democratic system? That’s the challenge currently facing The Gambia.

Since Yahya Jammeh lost the 2016 elections and finally relinquished power under regional pressure in January 2017, the new government of President Adama Barrow has been trying to heal the deep scars left by the former dictator ’s 23-year-long dictatorial rule and establish a “new” Gambia.

The administration has a lot to do. Under Jammeh, a series of constitutional amendments made criticism of the government essen-tially illegal. In the judi-ciary, the president chased talented officials from the Ministry of

Justice and appointed foreign “merce-nary judges”. The National Assembly became a rubber stamp parliament that approved anything the president put before it.

At the same time, Jammeh wielded the much-feared National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and paramilitary force known as the Jungulers to sow fear through unlawful killings, torture and arbitrary detention. To protect against possible challenges, he divided the Armed Forces by constantly moving soldiers around and filling the top ranks with loyalists.

“He knew that if the security sector was well organized, it could be a force against him,” says DrIsmaila Ceesay, a professor of political science at the University of The Gambia.

“It was better to divide the security sector to foster mistrust amongst everyone.”

Reform and reconciliation Since it came to office in

January 2017 then, the government of President Barrow has had myriad challenges with which to contend.

On the one hand, the government is trying to forge

We want Okura State, not regionalism – Igala leaders

T

he Igala people of Kogi East district have called for the creation of Okura State from the current Kogi State and said they do not want Nigeria to restructure or return to regionalism. The people stated this at a press conference they held in Abuja to articulate their position on the clamour for political restructuring in Nigeria. The call came against the backdrop of the process to amend the Nigerian Constitution which is at pace at the NationalAssembly.

Speaking under the aegis of Uk’omuIgala, the umbrella body for sociocultural organizations in Kogi East, the people said they want Nigeria to remain a federal polity with states as federating units.

The National Leader of Uk'omuIgala, Patrick Akpa, a retired major-general, told journalists at the event in Ibro Hotel, Abuja that Okura State should be created in the interest of equity, justice and fairness in the country.

“We reject any proposal for restructuring Nigeria which takes us back to the idea of regionalism as if we are so forgetful about the

ugly experiences of the First Republic,” Mr.Akpa stated.

“Regional governments in the First Republic squeezed and emasculated the minority ethnic nationalities in the North, West and East, and the bitterness associated with the r e p o r t o f t h e Wi l l i n k Commission which rejected the quest of minorities for separate states did not die until the premature collapse of the Republic.”

He said the Igala support the unity of Nigeria because “the blood of hundreds of Igala sons was sacrificed in the fratricidal war to keep Nigeria's unity during the 1967-1970 civil war.”

He called for the creation of Okura State “in recognition of the persistent struggle for it since the Second Republic in 1981.”

Mr. Akpa said the “Igala Nation rejects the proposal by the North-Central Caucus at the 2014 National Political Conference which called for the creation of Kainji State from Niger and Kebbi States instead of recommending the creation of Okura State that has been on the front burner of political discourse since 1981.

He said, “Insisting on the creation of Kainji State out of Niger State (North-Central)

and Kebbi State (NorthWest) will definitely alter the geopolitical configuration of Nigeria,” He described the creation of Okura state as “the natural equitable expression of political balance in the state creation exercise.” “The Igala Nation therefore declares its support for the retention of federalism and the recognition of the rights of ethnic groups within the states to express their right to self-determination. “It also called for the devolution of power as the “overconcentration of power at the center is to the detriment of the federating units.”

Mr. Akpa further advised government to review “the percentage of revenue allocation to states producing oil, the reconstruction and rehabilitation of areas affected by insurgency and other conflicts and the diversification of the Nigerian economy by fasttracking the development of the solid minerals sector.”

The press conference was attended by executive members of the group, drawn from all the socio-political groups in Kogi East and in other parts of the country. n

forwards in building a new o r d e r. T h e N a t i o n a l Assembly is working to establish a team to consult the public and draft a new constitution to be put to a referendum. Foreign judges have been replaced with qualified Gambians in the judiciary. And at the justice ministry, staff are being trained up, while additional qualified and experienced lawyers are being sought.

On the other hand, however, the government also needs to grapple with the past before it can go f o r w a r d s . “ We m u s t understand what happened under Jammeh so we never slide back,” says Abubacarr Ta m b a d o u , G a m b i a ’ s Minister of Justice and Attorney General.

In order to investigate how Jammeh amassed a fortune as president, a Commission of Inquiry was established this July. It has been investigating the financial relations between government ministries, companies and the former president. Its public hearings are being closely followed by the public and its mandate was recently extended by another six months.

The government is also preparing to establish a Truth, Reparations and Reconciliation Commis-sion (TRRC) to shed light on human rights abuses committed under Jammeh.

The TRRC is slated to start touring the country early next year to record testimony from victims and perpetrators.

Many are eager for justice as soon as possible, but some have raised concerns over what they see as a rapid time frame for rolling out the commission. Others have pointed out that the TRRC has not yet been allotted funding.

Anna Roccatello, an expert at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) warns that truth commissions can be tricky to handle.

“They are resource intensive and politically explosive,” she says. “It’s a very complica-ted process so if they really want to do it they need to be prepared to do a good job because otherwise it can be counter-productive.”

Gambia’s Security Services Another key part of the

government’s plans to build a new Gambia lies in reforming the security services. As Tambadou puts it, “if the judicial and legal sector was the brains of the old regime, then the hand used to perpetrate the atrocities was the security services”.

As part of this strategy, President Barrow rebran-ded the NIA as the State Intelligence Services (SIS) within weeks of taking office, while nine former NIA officers are currently on trial.

It is hoped this will lead to new revelations and accountability, but many complain that most perpetrators are still walking free and that little has changed in the agency itself beyond its name. “The structures are still there and the process still remains the same,” says Ceesay. “They are still in the same building where they were torturing people.”

Ceesay and others have suggested that the agency could be disbanded altogether, but Maggie Dwyer, a researcher at the Centre of African Studies at University of Edinburgh, warns against hasty action.

“If you simply fire all of the NIA, it sets a bad precedent,” she says. “If there are no trials then people will say ‘they just fired 500 people and they didn’t prove that those people did anything wrong. Is this really a just system?’”

Dealing with the military The Gambian Armed Forces (GAF) also requires significant reform from Jammeh’s days. On that front, public relations officer LamineSanyang claims the military is embracing change u n d e r t h e n e w administration. “We are subservient to civilian authority,” he says. “In the previous system, the military was seen as untouchable, but now we’re trying to change that narrative.”

Sait Matty Jaw, director of Gambia Watch, acknowledges this but says trust is still lacking. “They’re being pushed back to the barracks, but they still need a lot of education. Their understanding of security is more about using force. If this remains they cannot build relations with civilians.”

Challenges in reforming the military are exacerbated

by frictions within the army.

In July, at least five soldiers were detained in relation to allegedly “mutinous” WhatsApp messages.

According to Gambian press, at least two of the accused were alleged to be involved in an assassination attempt of high ranking officers. In early October, an additional seven soldiers were discharged without a stated reason. Late last week, 12 soldiers alleged to support Jammeh were charged behind closed doors with a range of unknown offences.

Dwyer says it’s to be expected that some members of the armed forces might still be loyal to Jammeh. “The idea that everyone would suddenly switch allegiance right away is not realistic,” she says. But the problem, she explains, lies in a lack of transparency in how these soldiers were removed.

Some of those who were discharged say it was because they come from the same region as former President Jammeh, a region where he remains popular. Among the former president’s supporters, these discharges have only added to a building narrative of political, and increasingly ethnic, discrimination.

ALong Road Transitioning from 23 years of tyranny is a fraught and painful process. Uncovering the truth, righting past wrongs, and rebuilding corrupt institutions are all essential, but can lead to greater instability in the short-term.

Since the start of the year, the government in Banjul has made some missteps and suffered from poor communication. But despite setbacks, observers suggest that it is pursuing the necessary reforms to avoid a return to the dark days of dictatorship, even if progress has been slow. “ I t ’s c l e a r t h e n e w government is genuinely resolved to make a clear and unequivocal break from the dictatorial past,” says Jeffery Smith, director of Vanguard Africa, a pro-democracy outfit that works across the continent. “But the perception is that much of that goodwill has yet to be translated to on-the-ground results. n

PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018 | 5

EDITORIAL

The Future in the Present W

hen references are made as to the role of youths in the society, it is usually forgotten that “youths” are not a political category driving a change process by and in itself; the youth, to engage in this task must be embedded in the process just as any other demographic, more so when, in Africa, the reality is that overseers of African economic underdevelopment were youths at the time they took up the assignment. The list is very long but suffice it to mention a few like Mobutu SeseSeko, who came to power at the age of 35 years; Yakubu Gowon of Nigeria at 30 years; Eyadema the Elder in Togo at the age of 29 years; Joseph Kabila the Younger at 30 years; Ibrahim Babangida at 44 years and Olusegun Obasanjo's first coming at 39 years. They were all youths when they assumed power just as they were also military officers in the service of their various colonial powers, that is, Britain, France, Belgium and, although not a direct colonial power, the US. In contrast, other youths confronted colonialism and built the decolonization movement; thus, an Obafemi Awolowo, early in his life captured the Decolonization moment and committed himself to it; just as others like Nnamidi Azikiwe, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Ahmed Ben Bella et al. And the Diaspora had the likes of W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Martin Luther King et al as examples of youths capturing their moments within the context of the anti-racism struggles.

The defining difference between these two sets of youths, even as they existed within the same historical epoch, was their understanding of their future being in their present. On the one hand, the de-Colonizers envisioned a future of freedom from all the effects of colonialism, and on the other, their military opponents' future rested on sustaining the colonial project. There was thus a quest for a future within an extant historical epoch within the young generation at the time. Despite this, neither set itself apart as “youth” category but saw themselves and their roles within the necessities of the historical moment they were in: colonization and decolonization.

Youths of today want to create a special category for themselves, as harbingers of the future and anchored on a false generational dichotomy, when, to a large extent, they have no idea of their past, or at best, discountenance it as of no consequence, as it becomes merely an appendix in history hence the future is to be determined by a society that was instrumental in creating our present via negating our past in the first

EDITORIAL BOARD Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Femi Odedeyi Managing Editor Gbenga Gbesan Production Editor Soji Amosu Graphics / Design Mikaiil Akinlawon Photo Editor Babatunde Sampson Published by Pathfinder Media LLC P. O. Box 1256, Greenbelt, MD20768, USA Tel: 240-838-4466 1-240-602-3802 Website:

www.thepathfinderinter national.com www.ooduapathfinder.com E-mail: editor@ooduapathfinder.com advertising@ ooduapathfinder.com

International Lifting up a standard for the Global African Community

instance. Early African purveyors of “Globalization”, also youths of their time, are now finding out that the entrenchment of “Western” economic paradigms and therefore continuous exploitation of Africa, lie at the heart of “globalization” and not the universal route to economic development it was touted to be.

Nowhere is this more profound than the “Arab Spring” whose youths merely followed on the precepts created outside their existential realities thereby falling victim to the expectations of their “foreign” influence whose foundation was in recreating a Western paradigm of social organization, the limitation of which was manifested by the fact that the Arab Nation-State being the creation of this Western paradigm could not serve their own purposes; that a State that will address their problematic must arise from their own existential experiences, which, by definition involves a synergy between the “old” and the “young”.

When it is thus said that “youths are leaders of tomorrow”, it begs the question of today—for the future which these youths are to lead are anchored on what they experience today. When the Yoruba say “omode gbon, agba gbon la fi da ile Ife” (the synergy between the young and the old created social balance), it is in recognition of the future in the present, for the transition from today creates the tomorrow. Thus, a dichotomy between the “old” and the “young” refuses to recognize this synergy; for such a recognition transforms the present into what it ought to be, a template for tomorrow. We are therefore always engaged in transforming the present as an engagement of the past and an affirmation of the synergy thus manifesting the future in the present.

For the Christian youth, Rehoboam's rule best illustrates the need for this synergy. He chose to follow the advice of the youth, in defiance of the elders, subsequently leading to the split in Shechem and the downward spiral of the Kingdom.

When our “future” is dependent on this false dichotomy, the best we could hope for is what we have now, to wit, many Rehoboams calling the shots in Africa, serving as overseers of further economic despoliation of Africa under an economic philosophy of engaging “foreign investors” supposedly in furtherance of a developmental paradigm hiding behind a democratic façade.

Jesus Christ “was, is and is to come” captures the essence of the future being the present; for He epitomized the past (was), the present (is), that is, being born again and the future (to come) the new creation, which is also to be lived in the present in a continuous manner until He comes. Therefore, our future is defined by our present, for we cannot meet Him when He comes if we are not only not born again but also become a new creation.

Jesus Christ, “yesterday, today and forever” implies a recognition of Him in the present, such present also being continuous, for it is a reminder of our future in Christ in our today. Jesus Christ, the hope of our Glory, is to manifest in us in the present—that hope, which is a future is to be seen with and within us, in the present.

God is “history” manifested. When He identified Himself as “I AM” to Moses, he emphasized His historical nature; for “I AM” implies being in existence before the present and a restatement of its continuity, the future. The Alpha and Omega—the beginning implies history just as the End also does, for there will be no end without a beginning—the present reflects a past and the expectation of a future.

The Apostles did not relegate the roles and importance of the fathers (of faith)—hence various references to “our fathers” such that they became the starting point of any exposition about the Holy Spirit or the life of Christ, evident from Peter at Pentecost to Stephen to Paul. Likewise, Ezra describes the attitude of the “old men who had seen the first temple” at the time of the restoration of the Temple just as Mordecai reminded Esther as to their “past” and the implication of her present on that “past” in pursuit of their future.

All of which show the necessity for the synergy between the “old” and the “new” such that if the “young” did not create their experience of today but are only its mere receptors; if they are not part of its

creation, the future they represent can only be detrimental to our real future.

When today's African youths are besotted with the western developmental paradigm without considering its continuity on further underdevelopment of the continent; when today's youths (skilled or unskilled) have a ready-made society in the West which they only migrate into, the replication of their present becomes the future; a present existing in the manifestation of the underdevelopment of the post-colonial State and translated as a future. When such a future is placed in the hands of those who have no input into its creation, such a future is in jeopardy.

When the missionaries vernacularized and criminalized our Language, placing theirs over ours, our acceptance of it, through any means, is a rejection of God in our lives and accepting the dominion of the European hence substituting the European for God and which is why there appears to be lack of development in Africa and Europe continues its dominance.

Language implies Culture, it defines culture—thus God spoke the world/earth into being; He spoke everything into being, into becoming. And, later, before doing anything, He speaks through His prophets. He divided the nations by their languages.

Without language there is no culture. The Great Commission to go “and make disciples, ….teaching them …” is also language-driven. The Holy Spirit spoke in various languages a Pentecost; Nations bow down in worship and coupled with the Lord's Prayer--“Thy will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven”.

In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God…. The word is expressed in a spoken Language—a spoken thought.

The Word of God, when internalized, becomes human. Jesus Christ, as the Word (And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us) took on the human form so His message would be understood by man, hence, a believer must also internalize those teachings such that it becomes internalized in the person whose expression becomes his/her philosophy, as it were. The question now is not the “human philosophy” but its root—the root of one's beliefs, where the source of “human philosophy” is attributed to man. But where such a source is from God it is still human because it is expressed in human form while being acknowledged as from God. Thus, Ecclesiastes concludes by saying “fear God” which is the application of God's thought to human existence.

What then is the starting point for the African, Christian youth, on the Continent and in the Diaspora? Language.

Language can either be utilitarian, without existential consequence, in that it can be recognized as being the “international language of communication or diplomacy” or existential, with inherent utility.

However, we exist not only to communicate; we are products of our existential reality which we can either transform or relegate into oblivion, which, were this to be the case, would put a question mark on God's purpose for us. Language as the purveyor of culture is an existential issue and denying this is to deny our existence because the case can always be made as to the necessity of the English Language as a “common factor” in any multiLingual society, meaning that our society's material condition will be defined by the exigencies of the English Language or any of the non-African languages prevalent on the continent and not our God-given Languages.

For Nigeria, this can be further strengthened when a Peoples' Language becomes the Language of production and reproduction of knowledge in their territories. This will not only ensure continuous development of the Language, it will also promote economic, social and cultural development of the Peoples as a function of their coming into being in and for themselves.

The practical implication of this would be that “smaller” Nations may end up utilizing their Languages only up to secondary (high) schools while those that may want to go beyond that level would find placement in other Regions just as Nigerians go all over the world to continue their studies. What the Nations and Peoples of Nigeria should focus on, now that Restructuring is back on the agenda, is for all the Nations to promote the a Lingual-Territorial Union of the Peoples/Nations as the only way we can all come into our God-given beings. n

6 | PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018

CARTOONS

7

Magazine Vol. 2, No. 1, Feb. 15 - Mar. 15, 2018

International Lifting up a standard for the Global African Community

Yorùbá World: Fagunwa: homeland-diaspora synergy and development

By Ropo Sekoni, a retired Professor of Communications at HBCU Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania, USA.

University of Ibadan served a few months ago as a site for discussion of many issues pertaining to development—aesthetic, cultural, social, political, and economic. A presentation of a book: Celebrating D. O. Fagunwa: Aspects of African and World Literary History provided a graphic illustration of the huge potential inherent in formalized collaboration between Yoruba diaspora and the homeland in Nigeria. Apart from launching the book, the event raised many issues that should be of interest to readers of this column and those responsible for governing the Yoruba region.

The book presentation celebrated major Deliverable from an intellectual journey started four years ago in Akure, at the instance of Fagunwa Study Group (FSG), a consortium of scholars teaching in “Ivy League, Big Ten, and Pacific Eight” universities in the United States, where these institutions are synonymous with academic excellence in teaching and research and a small group of public intellectuals at home who also share with the FSG a commitment to research on the role of art and culture in development. The event also highlighted the need for further collaboration between the Yoruba diaspora and people of old Western Nigeria in particular and of Nigeria in general.

Given the peripheral attention given by government to mother tongue education in the Yoruba region for the past few decades, it will not be a surprise if many of the readers of this column do not have an idea of who Fagunwa is (or was). Fagunwa was an educationist in pre-independence Western Nigeria and the first writer of full-length novels in Yoruba language: Igbo Irunmale, Igbo Olodumare, Ireke Onibudo, Adiitu Olodumare and other writings. His novels examine, among other issues, two recurrent themes: human progress and love. Readers of this column who want to know more about Fagunwa and why he should be celebrated more than half a century after his death should get their hands on some of Fagunwa’s books and the latest research on his works by some of the world’s finest writers, culture scholars, and public intellectuals too many to list in this piece.

A book event that focused on a man who made a career of creating fiction that examines the universal theme of human progress through the local motif of transition to modernity, transition from Animist to Christian religion and wrote in a language that was pronounced a vernacular by the principal agents of transition from orality to literacy must have reasons to look at the man from plural

perspectives. Did he write in Yoruba to make money from younger readers under a pedagogical regime that aggressively de-programmed them from communicating in Yoruba while learning English? Did he write to subvert such pedagogy, or did he write to see beyond the tunnel vision of the imperialist design of colonial education in Nigeria, to predict an emerging new reality of double consciousness not so obvious to those creating and consuming an education that appeared concerned largely with upward mobility at that time? Was he a spirit because of the way he died or was he just a man of stellar achievement, turned material for mythification? There were many stated and unstated questions at the book launch, but one answer that emerged from the celebration is the consensus that Fagunwa as man or human deserves to be transformed into a monument.

Attendance of representatives of many Yoruba governors at the event further underscored the growing belief that D. O. Fagunwa is ripe to become a monument to the future of promotion of art and culture in the Yoruba region of Nigeria. Former governor of Fagunwa’s state of origin, Ondo and the current governor emphasized the need to use celebration of Fagunwa’s literary success story to inspire new creatives and to incentivize new readers. It is not just through construction of physical monument (such as museum) in Oke-Igbo in Fagunwa’s honor but also through attention to intangible monuments that include commitment to a new pedagogy that will increase the market for artistic and cultural production that can add value to aesthetic and economic experience of fans of Fagunwa’s works. Celebrators of Fagunwa came from far and wide, the Southwest and the old Western Nigeria which Fagunwa served as educator, civil servant and knowledge promoter before his sudden death, which Mama Fagunwa referred to as “the death of a man and not the disappearance of a spirit.”

To return to a key word in the title of today’s piece, Homeland-Diaspora Synergy, the Yoruba diaspora scholars who made substantial intellectual and material contributions to the Fagunwa Project, like all other community-oriented diaspora groups, did not see their project as over with public presentation of the book. They made references to increasing collaboration between Nigerians in diaspora and those concerned with development initiatives in their communities of origin. Of course, there has been for decades, especially since the exodus of professionals to Europe and the Americas in the

wake of Structural Adjustment Program and other forms of harsh military rule, cooperation between Nigerians in diaspora and their kith and kin at home in Nigeria. Home remittance has been the most cited in the media. For example, in the last year, about $20 billion entered Nigeria in the form of home remittance.

(BOX)Undoubtedly, about one-third of that must have entered Western Nigeria for obvious reasons. Western Nigeria started the first free primary education scheme in Sub-Sahara Africa through government’s investment in education and access to education, thus leading to production of one of the largest manpower groups per kilometre in the world. The region during Nigeria’s Second Republic also initiated the first free secondary education program in Nigeria. Unfortunately, many of those who benefited from these public education program under Awolowo, Akintola, Ajasin, Bola Ige, Ambrose Ali, BisiOnabanjo, and Lateef Jakande had to go abroad to look for new means of livelihood when it was clear that the governance of Nigeria was no longer conducive to their livelihood, and the rest is history. (BOX) But what is not history, which became evident during the celebration of Fagunwa in Ibadan, is the desire of many of those who emigrated to look back and give back to their homes of origin, not only by taking up an important function of government in modern societies but by creating platform for knowledge transfer or exchange between the two Nigerian communities. Various Nigerian communities in diaspora have generously performed informally the function of social security for their relations left behind for decades, but the Fagunwa Study Group has also added the responsibility of stimulating ideas that can revitalize a region and even a country that have potential to become a site for home remittances to other countries.

Some of such ideas, expressed on and off the floor, include a new vision of governance in the region that valorizes safeguarding and promoting arts and culture through investment of public funds in cultural infrastructure. It is people with proper education about their culture that have the capacity to become producers and consumers of cultural products. The more sensitive formal and informal education is to art and culture, the higher the possibility of emergence of talented people to reflect and refract that culture in objects that are pleasant to experience by consumers of such products. Fagunwa, Soyinka, Tutuola, Osofisan, Ofeimum, and many others too numerous to mention had benefited from governments (in and out of Nigeria) that invested generously in art and culture for budding artists.

The vision that art and culture do not pertain to only creation of beautiful objects pleasant to experience but also to economic production was not alien to governments when many of Nigeria’s talented producers of culture were growing up. Understanding of the role of investment in the art and culture value chain, to use today’s vocabulary, was integral to education planning in Western Nigeria, even in the years before independence. The template used by Action Group and later Unity Party of Nigeria to nurture art and culture through a holistic approach: access to education, creation of agencies for cultural production (such as Book Council), and provision of grants to budding artists can be retrieved (for renewal) from the archives.

Diversification of the economy to include, as in other countries, growth of the region’s creative industry requires, more than before, readiness of governments in the region to invest in education as building blocks for culture industry to stimulate production and consumption of art and culture. Currently, many Nigerian communities have their legs in two civilizations as a result of postindependence emigration to other societies that care for art and culture and in a homeland rich in talented citizens and a huge market to sustain a thriving cultural economy.

Nigeria and Western Nigeria in particular have no excuse for not becoming viable for cultural and eco-tourism. It will be a welcome idea of Yoruba in science and technology currently in diaspora replicates the efforts of their humanities counterparts. The region direly needs their intervention too. n

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Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads T

he Anglophone area consists of two of the country’s ten regions, the Northwest and the Southwest. It covers 16,364 sq km of the country’s total area of 475,442 sq km and has about 5 million of Cameroon’s 24 million inhabitants. It is the stronghold of the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF) and plays an important role in the economy, especially its dynamic agricultural and commercial sectors. Most of Cameroon’s oil, which accounts for one twelfth of t h e c o u n t r y ’s g r o s s domestic product (GDP), is located off the coast of the Anglophone region.

The politicization of the crisis and the radicalization of its protagonists is mainly due to the government’s response (denial, disregard, intimidation and repression), the diminishing trust between the Anglophone population and the government and the exploitation of the identity question by political actors who have aggravated the population’s resentment to the point that probably most Anglophones now see a return to federalism or even secession as the only feasible ways out of the crisis.

What is the Anglophone crisis about? Who are the protagonists? How is it p e r c e i v e d b y Francophones? What is the government’s response?

How has the international community reacted? What role are the Anglophone diaspora and religious actors playing?

In order to reply to these

Since October 2016, protests around sectoral demands have degenerated into a political crisis in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. This crisis has led to the reemergence of the Anglophone question and highlighted the limits of the Cameroonian governance model, based on centralization and co-optation of elites. questions, Crisis Group has relied on documentary research and conducted around a hundred interviews during several visits to the Anglophone regions, Yaoundé and Douala, between December 2016 and May 2017. The report analyses the structural factors that caused the crisis in the Anglophone regions, the strategies and motivations of the actors, and the political and economic consequences.

The Roots of the Anglophone Problem: Colonial Legacy and Failure of the Centralized Model The Colonial Legacy The German government and the traditional Douala chiefs signed a treaty in July 1884, establishing a protectorate called Kamerun. Its territories were shared out after the German defeat at the end of the First World War. The League of Nations

appointed France and the UK as joint trustees of Kamerun. The Anglophone problem and a number of other weaknesses in present-day Cameroon have their roots in the colonial period.

During the period of the mandate and the trusteeship, each colonial power shaped their territories in their own image. This resulted in m a j o r d i ff e r e n c e s i n political culture. English was the official language in the territory under British administration. The justice system (Common Law), the education system, the currency and social norms followed the British model.

The system of indirect rule allowed traditional chiefdoms to remain in place and promoted the emergence of a form of selfgovernment to the extent that freedom of the press, political pluralism and democratic change in power existed in Anglophone

Cameroon prior to independence. The territory was administered as though it were part of Nigeria and several members of British Cameroon’s Anglophone elite were ministers in the Nigerian government in the 1950s.

In contrast, the Francophone territory was directly administered by France following the assimilationist model, although colonizers and the traditional elites also practiced a form of indirect government, especially in the north of the country.

French was spoken and France’s social, legal and political norms shaped the centralist political system of successive regimes.

Bogged down in a total war against the nationalist movement (Union des populations du Cameroun – UPC), which challenged French presence, the Francophone territory was less democratic.

Independences and Reunification: Different

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Dreams in the Same Bed The process leading to the reunification of the two Cameroons is at the heart of the Anglophone problem.

The Francophone territory gained independence on 1 January 1960, becoming the Republic of Cameroon. The British territory comprised Southern Cameroons and Northern Cameroon. In the referendum held on 11 February 1961, Northern Cameroon chose to join Nigeria and Southern Cameroons chose to join the Republic of Cameroon.

Southern Cameroons became independent on 1 October 1961 when it joined the Republic of Cameroon.

At the time of the 1961 referendum, the political landscape in Southern Cameroons was already dynamic. According to reputed historians, the majority of the population aspired to independence.

But the UK and some developing countries were against it on the grounds that Southern Cameroons

The politicization of the crisis and the radicalization of its protagonists is mainly due to the government’s response (denial, disregard, intimidation and repression), the diminishing trust between the Anglophone population and the government and the exploitation of the identity question by political actors who have aggravated the population’s resentment to the point that probably most Anglophones now see a return to federalism or even secession as the only feasible ways out of the crisis.

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would not be economically viable and that it was best to avoid the creation of microstates. They advocated a vote in favor of joining Nigeria. The UN therefore excluded the independence option and limited the referendum to a choice between joining Nigeria and reunification with the Republic of Cameroon.

The main figures among the Anglophone political elites, Emmanuel MbellaLifafaEndeley, John NguFoncha, Solomon Ta n d e n g M u n a a n d AgustineNgomJua, pleaded at the UN for an independent state of Southern Cameroons, or alternatively for temporary independence during which time it would negotiate the terms of unification from a better position. The UN’s rejection of the independence option left two opposing camps during the referendum.

Endeley, the leader of the Kamerun National Congress (KNC), campaigned in favor of joining Nigeria. Foncha, the leader of the Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP), who left the KNC in 1955, Muna and Jua campaigned in favor of reunification with the Republic of Cameroon.

Influenced by these prominent political leaders and by a certain fear of being absorbed by the Nigerian giant, the vote went in favor of reunification.

Representatives of Southern Cameroons and the president of the Republic of Cameroon, Turn to page 9

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Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads Contd. from page 8 AmadouAhidjo, met at Foumban in the west of Francophone territory from 17 until 21 July 1961 to negotiate the terms of reunification. Even today, the failure to keep the promises made at the Foumban conference, which did not produce a written agreement, is among the grievances of Anglophone militants. The A n g l o p h o n e representatives thought they were participating in a constituent assembly that would draft a constitution guaranteeing an egalitarian federalism and a large degree of autonomy to federated states, but Ahidjo imposed a ready-made constitution that gave broad powers to the executive of the federal state to the detriment of the two federated states (West Cameroon and East Cameroon). The Anglophones, who were in a weak position, accepted Ahidjo’s constitution and only obtained a blocking minority by way of concession.

The National Assembly of the Republic of Cameroon approved the federal constitution in August 1961 and Ahidjo promulgated it on 1 September, while Southern Cameroons was still under British trusteeship. The constitutional process for reunification and abandonment by the British left Anglophones with the impression of having been deceived by the Francophones, and also explains the bitterness of Anglophone militants toward the UK. The Centralist Model and the Emergence of Anglophone Grievances Since 1961, unification and centralization have been the political dogmas of the Ahidjo (1960-1982) and Paul Biya (1982-) regimes.

After reunification on 1 October 1961, Cameroon became a federal republic, but in practice inherited a shaky federalism with an unequal distribution of power between the two federated states in the federal assembly and in the government.

Amadou Ahidjo was the federal president and John NguFoncha was both vice president of the country and prime minister of West Cameroon, in line with the constitutional provision according to which the vice president must be from West Cameroon if the federal president comes from East Cameroon, and vice versa. At the time of reunification, Ahidjo already had a near political monopoly in East Cameroon. Only West Cameroon represented a serious obstacle to his hegemonic ambitions.

In 1961, he set about bringing West Cameroon

under control through a mixture of repression and exploitation of divisions among Anglophones. At the federal level, despite the constitutional guarantee that English and French would both be official languages, French was the administration’s language of preference.

On 20 October 1961, Ahidjo signed a decree reorganizing federal territory into six administrative regions, including West Cameroon, and appointed a federal inspector for each region, who was to report to the federal president. That provoked discontent among Anglophones, because West Cameroon could not at the same time be a federated state according to the constitution and an administrative region by decree. The federal inspector had more power than the elected prime minister of West Cameroon and showed it on a daily basis by humiliating members of the federated government and parliament.

In 1962, Ahidjo signed several orders limiting public freedoms. With the war against the UPC still at its height in East Cameroon,

the arbitrary arrest and detention of opponents and trade unionists accused of subversion became common. Although these arrests took place mainly in the Francophone part of the c o u n t r y , Anglophoneleaders became concerned about the repressive direction that the federal executive was taking. Other measures, such as the introduction of driving on the right-hand side of the road, the imposition of the metric system and the FCFA as currency took place during the 1960s. The change in currency entailed a reduction in the purchasing power of the Anglophone population by at least 10 per cent. Ahidjo also demanded that West Cameroon cut all links with the UK with the result that it lost several export duty advantages afforded to Commonwealth countries. The federated states did not have financial autonomy and depended on grants from the federal state.

Understanding where the real power was located, the Anglophone elites competed with each other for positions in the federal government, spending more time trying to please Ahidjo

than defending the Anglophone population.

Ahidjo took advantage and manipulated the rivalries among the elites and the ethnic and cultural divisions between Grassfields in the north, which had cultural and linguistic links with the Bamilékés of the west Francophone region, and the Sawa in the south, who had cultural and linguistic links with the Francophone coast.

The result was political chaos in West Cameroon, including a split between Foncha and Muna, who left the Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP) in 1965 to form the Cameroon United Congress (CUC). In 1965, in order to further weaken Foncha, who he believed to be less accommodating on the Anglophone question, Ahidjo tried to use his constitutional powers to appoint Muna as prime minister rather than NgomJua, Foncha’s heir apparent in the KNDP, the majority party in the West Cameroon parliament. He was unsuccessfulin this because of strong opposition from the federated parliament. But one year later, taking advantage of divisions

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among the Anglophones, Ahidjo called for the creation of a single party in the two Cameroons, in the name of national unity.

Strengthened by the support of some Anglophone leaders, such as Endeley and Muna, who saw an opportunity to dethrone Foncha, he succeeded in his objective.

The Cameroon National Union (CNU) was formed in 1966 and the other parties were dissolved. Foncha, Jua and Bernard Fonlon (assistant general secretary at the presidency) were initially opposed but changed their views for fear of losing their positions in the federal government. The single party resulted in the Anglophones losing all their institutional leverage to plead their cause. In 1968, Ahidjo was able to appoint his new ally, Muna, as prime minister, replacing Jua. Once the single party was formed, Ahidjo intensified centralization, going so far as to suppress federalism on 20 May 1972, when Cameroon became the United Republic of Cameroon, following a referendum. Anglophones continued to challenge the legality of this change on

During the period of the mandate and the trusteeship, each colonial power shaped their territories in their own image. This resulted in major differences in political culture. English was the official language in the territory under British administration. The justice system (Common Law), the education system, the currency and social norms followed the British model. The system of indirect rule allowed traditional chiefdoms to remain in place and promoted the emergence of a form of selfgovernment to the extent that freedom of the press, political pluralism and democratic change in power existed in Anglophone Cameroon prior to independence. The territory was administered as though it were part of Nigeria and several members of British Cameroon’s Anglophone elite were ministers in the Nigerian government in the 1950s.

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the grounds that the 1961 constitution did not providefor any alteration in the form of state and stipulated that only parliament could amend the constitution. Anglophone militants also consider that the referendum should not have taken place throughout the country and should have been limited to West Cameroon, which had the most to lose. Finally, they claim that it was notpossible to hold a free and transparent referendum in the context of the time and that the ballot was marred by serious irregularities. It was also in 1972 that Anglophones really began to challenge their marginalization.

At the CNU National Congress in 1972, Bernard Fonlon publicly criticized the creation of the unitary republic. Other prominent Anglophones, such as Albert Mukong and Gorji Dinka were also fiercely opposed. Foncha and Jua wrote privately to Ahidjo and expressed their opposition in the official media.

When Paul Biya succeeded Ahidjo in November 1982, he further centralized power. On 22 August 1983, he divided the Anglophone region into two provinces: Northwest and Southwest. In 1984, he changed the country’s o ff i c i a l n a m e t o t h e Republic of Cameroon (the name of the former Francophone territory) and removed the second star from the flag, which represented the Anglophone part of the country.

Anglophones formed movements and associations to resist their assimilation. In 1994, they protested in vain when the government, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), announced the privatization of the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), which played a major economic and social role in the Anglophone part of the country. In that same year, the government’s move to standardize the Anglophone and Francophone education systems provoked strong resistance from teachers’ unions and the parents of pupils and it finally had to create an independent General Certificate of Education (GCE) Board by presidential decree.

Unification left Anglophones with a sense that their territory was in economic decline, because it entailed the centralization and/or dismantling of West Cameroon’s economic structures, such as the West Cameroon Marketing Board, the Cameroon Bank and Powercam, as well as the abandonment of several projects, including the port of Limbé, and airports at Turn to page 10

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Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads Contd. from page 9 Bamenda and Tiko, with investments in the Francophone part of the country winning out.

In particular, unification left the impression of a democratic setback, cultural assimilation and a downgrading of political status. Many Anglophones are convinced that the Francophone part of the country followed a strategy to marginalize Southern Cameroons and are still not sufficiently aware of the disastrous impact the economic crisis of the 1980s also had on several Francophone regions.

When the multiparty system was restored in the 1990s, the Anglophones seized the opportunity to make their grievances heard. On 26 May 1990, the Social Democratic Front, a new pro-federalism opposition party, with a national vocation but with a strong contingent of Anglophones, was formed in Bamenda. It gained ground in the Anglophone part of the country before extending its influence into Francophone provinces. It then participated in the October 1992 presidential elections and came close to winning it.

With the prospect of a review of the constitution to adapt it to the multiparty system, the Anglophones organized the All Anglophone Conference (AAC) in 1993 and called for a return to federalism.

The Consultative Committee for Review of the Constitution rejected this option in favor of decentralization.

Meanwhile, afterresigning in 1990 from the Cameroon P e o p l e ’s D e m o c r a t i c Movement (CPDM), the name adopted by the single party in 1985, Foncha and Muna, yesterday’s rivals, resigned from the consultative committee in 1994 and openly criticized the assimilation of Anglophones.25 In that same year, a second All Anglophone Conference (AAC2) was organized in Bamenda and some of the participants called for a two-state federal system or secession.

During this period, Muna and Foncha launched diplomatic offensives at the U N t o d e m a n d independence for Southern Cameroons. The position of the Social Democratic Front, which rejected secession and proposed, in the context of Francophone opposition to a two-state federal system, a four-state federal system, was judged tobe ambiguous by some Anglophone militants, who in 1995, formed movements calling for two-state federalism or secession: the most well-known was the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), the youth wing of which,

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At the time of the 1961 referendum, the political landscape in Southern Cameroons was already dynamic. According to reputed historians, the majority of the population aspired to independence. But the UK and some developing countries were against it on the grounds that Southern Cameroons would not be economically viable and that it was best to avoid the creation of microstates. They advocated a vote in favor of joining Nigeria. The UN therefore excluded the independence option and limited the referendum to a choice between joining Nigeria and reunification with the Republic of Cameroon.

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Southern Cameroons Youth League (SCYL), resorted to low-intensity violence.

Since 1996, the SCNC has taken further diplomatic initiatives at the UN, the African Court of Banjul, the Commonwealth and national embassies.

After the golden age of the 1990s, dissent weakened, and the focus switched to the Anglophone diaspora’s advocacy in the international community and the creation of an Anglophone consciousness through the education system, writings of Anglophone intellectuals, the churches, associations and the local media.

However, SCNC militants continued to organize protests in the Anglophone regions every 1 October and spectacular actions such as the proclamation of independence by the Ambazonia Republic on radio Buea in 1999 and in 2009. Despite the emergence of Anglophone movements, centralization continued, and Anglophones lost even more political strength at the national level. In 2017, there was only one Anglophone among 36 ministers with portfolio.

The roots of the Anglophone problem lie in a badly-organized reunification that was based on centralization and assimilation, and in e c o n o m i c a n d a d m i n i s t r a t i v e marginalization. Personal and ethnic ambitions and rivalries among the elites did not help matters. They have not always been able to present a common front to defend an increasingly heterogeneous Anglophone cause. Since the 2000s, the

Anglophone question has deeply divided society. It finds expression in the mutually negative perceptions of the Anglophone and Francophone populations and the occasional reciprocal stigmatization’s current crisis represents an especially worrying resurgence of this old problem. Never before has the Anglophone question manifested itself with such intensity.

F ro m S e c t o r a l Mobilizations to the Resurgence of the Anglophone Problem From the Strike to the Crisis The current crisis began on 11 October 2016 in Bamenda when lawyers from the Northwest and the Southwest went on strike.

Their demands, ignored until then by the justice ministry, were related to the justice system’s failure to use the Common Law in the two regions. The lawyers demanded the translation into English of theCode of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) and other legal texts. They c r i t i c i z e d t h e “francophonization” of Common Law jurisdictions, with the appointment to the Anglophone zone of Francophone magistrates who did not understand English or the Common Law, and the appointment of notaries, to do work done by lawyers under the Common Law system. A lack of trust in the government and the brutality of the security forces aggravated the problem and radicalized the public.

On 8 November 2016, the lawyers mobilized

hundreds of people for a march in Bamenda and reiterated their demand for the full restoration of the Common Law system as it was at the time of the federal system. They added a demand for federalism.

While the march was taking place peacefully, gendarmes violently dispersed the crowd, manhandled some lawyers and arrested some motorbike taxi drivers (“Okada boys”). In response, some youth and Okada boys set up barricades at several crossroads and clashes between demonstrators and gendarmes left several wounded.

On 21 November, teachers went on strike as well. They organized a rally against the lack of Anglophone teachers, the appointment of teachers who did not have a good command of English and the failure to respect the “Anglo-Saxon” character of schools and universities in theAnglophone zone.At the rally, several thousand people joined teachers to express grievances ranging from the lack of roads in the Northw e s t t o t h e marginalization of Anglophones. The police and the army violently d i s p e r s e d t h e demonstrators. Several people were severely beaten, dozens of others were arrested and at least two people were shot dead, according to a report by the

National Commission on Human Rights and Freedoms the (Commission nationaledes droits de l’Homme et des libertés, CNDHL). Several other incidents took place in Bamenda at the end of November, leading to riots.

On 28 November, the crisis, which had until then been limited to the Northwest, spread to the Southwest. Students at Buea University organized a peaceful march on the campus to call for the payment to students of the president’s achievement bonus, denounce the banning of the University of Buea Student Union (UBSU) in 2012 and protest at the introduction of a penalty for late payment of education fees and the additional fee charged for accessing examination results. The university rector’s response was to call the police onto the campus.

They brutally repressed the students and arrested some of them in their homes.

Female students were beaten, undressed, rolled in the mud and one was allegedly raped.

The most violent confrontation took place on 8 December in Bamenda when the CPDM tried to organize a pro-government rally in the Anglophone regions. The angry crowd prevented the rally from taking place. In violent clashes, four died, several were wounded and around 50 arrested. Demonstrators set fire to a police station,

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The Anglophone protest movement also caused division among Francophones and Anglophones within the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC).

In January 2017, at a meeting in Mamfé, Francophone bishops criticized their counterparts for not opening their schools, while the latter regretted the Francophone c l e r g y ’s i g n o r a n c e o f t h e Anglophone problem and the threats to which they had been subjected. In April, the archbishop of Douala and NECC president published a statement deploring the legal proceedings against the bishops but calling on them to open their schools. This statement, criticized by Anglophone militants, undermined the legitimacy of the archbishop, who had been mentioned in January as a possible mediator.

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government buildings and vehicles. The prime m i n i s t e r, t h e C P D M secretary general, the governor of the Northwest region and the national security adviser, who were due to attend the rally, had to hide all day in the governor’s residence to escape the violence. The government responded to these demonstrations by militarizing the region, causing the social climate to deteriorate even further.

The violence in Buea on 28 November and in Bamenda on 8 December aggravated the crisis and led to extensive media coverage. Images of abuses by the security forces quickly spread on the internet and on to international television channels. They had a decisive impact on public opinion and opened the Pandora’s box of the Anglophone problem.

Further incidents took place in January and February 2017 in Bamenda and other towns such as Ndop. They led to riots that left at least three dead, while government buildings and vehicles were set on fire.

From October 2016 to February 2017, at least nine people were killed and more sustained gunshot wounds.

There were 82 arrests, including of journalists and lawyers, according to the communications minister and about 150 according to the SDF. They appeared before a military court under the terrorism law. The security forces also arrested and intimidated prominent Anglophones. For example, Paul Abine Ayah, a judge at the Supreme Court, was arrested without a warrant in March on charges of funding the Anglophone campaign. He has since remained behind bars.

The Government and Anglophone Actors: Strategies and Motivations Faced with the Anglophone crisis, the government tried to maintain the status quo.

However, realizing there were limits to what it could achieve with repression, it began talks with the striking unions. At the end of November, the prime minister formed an ad hoc inter-ministerial committee c h a rg e d w i t h l e a d i n g negotiations. It comprised four Francophone ministers and was placed under the supervision of the prime ministry’s cabinet director.

At the start of December, the lawyers and teachers formed the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC, “the Consortium”). It was initially formed by four lawyers’ associations and several teachers trade unions, with Félix KhongoAgborBalla as president, FontemNeba as secretary general and Turn to page 11

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W i l f r e d Ta s s a n g a s treasurer.

On 25-26 November, the prime minister unsuccessfully conducted a first mission to Bamenda to open negotiations. He arrived without concrete proposals, perhaps expecting that the promise of dialogue and his presence would be enough to end the strike. This visit was an early sign of the divisions within the Anglophone elites working within government institutions in Yaoundé. While the prime minister recognized the existence of theAnglophone problem and invited the trade unions for talks in Bamenda, other prominent Anglophones, such as the minister and permanent secretary at the National Security Council told the media in Yaoundé that there was no Anglophone problem. This inflamed opinion in the region, making the prime minister’s mission impossible and, especially, confirming the Anglophone belief that the prime minister, a post occupied since 1996 by an Anglophone, had no real power.

From December 2016 to January 2017, the ad hoc committee conducted several missions to Bamenda. The list of union demands increased from eleven to 25 between November and January but negotiations nearly reached an agreement, with the government saying it was ready to meet 21 of the 25 demands. However, on 13 January, police abuses, against a backdrop of rumors, provoked riots in Bamenda and the negotiations collapsed. On 14 January, the Consortium cancelled a meeting with the committee, condemned the violence perpetrated by the security forces and declared a two-day Operation Ghost Town in the Northwest and the Southwest. The government responded by shutting down the internet in the two regions on 17 J a n u a r y, b a n n i n g t h e Consortium and the SCNC and arresting Consortium leaders and several activists such as ManchoBibixy, claiming that the Consortium had conditioned agreement on the introduction of federalism. Crisis Group has gathered many witness statements, some contradictory of the 13 January 2017 events, which marked a decisive break in attempts at dialogue.

Some said that the security forces opened fire at pointblank range on motorbike taxis. Others said that Anglophone movement radicals tried to introduce the issue of secession into the debate, with the result that both sides hardened their positions. Although

these incidents contributed to the failure of negotiations, they were not the only reason. In fact, the tension in the two regions, the repression by the securityforces and the radicalization of public opinion had put Consortium leaders in a difficult position. They were forced to go beyond their own sectoral demands – especially as the 21 points accepted by the government only included the teachers’ demands, not the lawyers’ demands – and to deal more broadly with the Anglophone problem.

According to a Consortium leader, “repression by the regime has opened a Pandora’s box and the public has forced us to put the Southern Cameroons issue on the table”. Negotiations were difficult because of the deep distrust between the government and representatives of the Anglophone community.

The ad hoc committee did not inspire much confidence, because most of its members were Francophones. Consortium members did not believe that the government would keep its promise to meet 21 of its 25 demands. So they proposed federalism in order to guarantee implementation of reforms and achieve a more general solution. Meanwhile, the government believed that the trade unions had a hidden agenda involving secession and that this was why they continually added to their list of demands.

Probably to avoid the crisis spreading to the Francophone part, the

government brandished the specter of secession by conflating Anglophone grievances and the division of the country. Some Francophone intellectuals said that federalism was only a step on the road to secession. There were some indications, such as the positions taken during the negotiations and confirmed in several interviews, that some members of the regime in Yaoundé tried to strengthen the position of the more radical Anglophones with the aim of presenting the Anglophone contestation as a dangerous attempt to divide the country. The government also claimed there was a plot, presenting the Anglophone strike as an initiative funded by the diaspora and supported by groupswho were trying to destabilize Cameroon.

After the arrest of Consortium leaders on 17 January, continued school closures and an intensification of Operation G h o s t To w n , t h e government took measures in the justice and education sectors to try to calm the situation. In December 2016, it had already announced the recruitment of 1,000 bilingual teachers, a FCFA2 billion (€3 million) grant to private schools and the redeployment of Francophone teachers away from Anglophone regions.

On 23 January 2017, the president of the Republic created a National Commission for Bilingualism and Multiculturalism.

But Anglophone militants

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Second, the crisis is prolonging restrictions on civil liberties which have become more pronounced since 2013: a ban on demonstrations, the arrest and beating up of political party militants, journalists and researchers. It has even served as a pretext for greater repression, with the use of antiterrorist legislation for political ends, greater control over social media and threats against journalists. Finally, t h e r e g i m e ’s r e f u s a l t o negotiate on fundamental questions and its sometimesbrutal response highlight its authoritarian nature.

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The government of neighboring Nigeria has not got involved in the current crisis. Moreover, it is wary of the Anglophone protest movement, because it fears that an independent Anglophone Cameroon could act as a base for separatist Nigerian movements.

Nevertheless, some inhabitants of south-eastern Nigeria sympathize with Cameroonian Anglophone activists, although this probably does not amount to any substantial support.

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criticized this as too little too late and regretted that nine of the commission’s fifteen members were Francophones, that most of them belonged to the older generation and that several were members of the CPDM. The commission is handicapped by its remit, which gives it no power to impose punitive measures, and restricts it to preparing reports and advocating for bilingualism and multiculturalism. Some of its members have recognized this weakness.

The government announced other measures on 30 March, including the creation of new benches for Common Law at the Supreme Court and new departments at the National School of Administration and Magistracy (Ecole nationaled’administration et de magistrature, ENAM), an increase in the number of English language teachers at ENAM, the recruitment of Anglophone magistrates, the creation of a Common Law department at Francophone universities and provisional authorization for Anglophone lawyers to act as notaries in the Northwest and the Southwest regions.

On 20 April, the government turned the internet back on after a 92day cut. Although these measures were a significant first step, they did not meet the concerns of the trade unions or resolve the political component of the Anglophone question. They were made rather late in the day, when the public were already calling for the release of detainees and negotiations on constitutional reform with the aim of introducing federalism.

Anglophones continued to take action. When the internet was cut, protesters used text messages and phone calls to organize protests. When it was restored they reverted to mainly using WhatsApp. M o r e r e c e n t l y, t h e campaign has nevertheless weakened, especially in the Southwest, partly because the economic consequences have become hard to bear for the public and also because of government pressure. New radical groups are using intimidation, threats and violence to maintain support for the movement.

The public, elected representatives, parliamentarians and religious leaders regularly receive text messages and calls from Cameroon and abroad, informing them of Ghost Town days, now called Country Sundays.

For example, a Francophone teacher at the University of Buea received eleven text messages and six telephone calls in a single day after ignoring a call to take part in Operation Ghost Town.

Country Sundays take place every Monday and every national holiday or c o m m e m o r a t i o n d a y.

Anyone not adhering to the movement faces harassment and threats.

Threats are sometimes carried out. Between January and June 2017, dozens of shops in markets at Bamenda, Buea and Limbé, about fifteen government buildingsand vehicles and a dozen schools were set on fire for not observing Country Sundays.

These violent incidents have fueled the government’s strategy of

demonizing the Anglophone campaign, all the more so as exiled Consortium representatives distanced themselves late and rather timidly. The authorities and the security forces also used tough methods to break the movement, intimidating the public and printing companies that produced pamphlets, and threatening heads of schools and business owners with revoking their licenses if they took part in the strikes.

The security forces worked with telephone companies and money transfer agencies to identify and arrest the local contacts of secessionists in exile and block the transfer of funds from abroad to the Anglophone regions.

The two sides have made abundant use of propaganda. The government as well as Anglophone militants have circulated false information on the internet and in text messages and pamphlets. In particular, the government has exploited the idea of false news to sow doubt and avoid responsibility for human rights violations by castingdoubt on their veracity, even in confirmed cases.

The Anglophone diaspora did not initiate this crisis, contrary to previous challenges to the government. It only took a dominant role after the 17 January arrest of Consortium leaders.

Internet-based campaigns contributed to mounting public anger and increased the popularity of secessionist ideas. The diaspora helped to givethe crisis a higher profile at the international level by organizing demonstrations outside the parliaments of Western countries and through diplomatic initiatives, such as commissioning the American law firm Foley Hoag to call for the independence of Southern Cameroons. This crisis also marked a generational renewal within the Anglophone movement and the diaspora. The historic standard-bearers of the Anglophone question who members of the SCNC were, the Cameroon Anglophone Movement or the AAC were not center stage. Militants of the 1990s from Cameroon University, who emigrated in the period after 1995, were succeeded by young people from Buea University and the University of Buea Student Union, who left Cameroon more recently.

Although the great majority of the Anglophone diaspora probably supports the current protest movement, a minority has reacted in a hostile manner to calls for secession and to Turn to page 12

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Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads Contd. from page 11 the movement as a whole, to the extent of sometimes writing to the authorities of the countries where the leading exponents of the secessionist currentare living to call for their expulsion.

The movement is also weakening because of internal divisions over ideology, strategy and actions. Some Consortium leaders, such as Wilfred Ta s s a n g a n d H a r m o n y Bobga, respectively in exile in Nigeria and the U.S., broke with the official federalist line and formed the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front(SCACUF), which advocates secession.

Even the Consortium’s interim leaders in the diaspora, such as Mark Bareta and Tapang Ivo, now support secession.

Within the secessionist movement, divergences persist about strategy and operational methods. Some want to prioritize diplomatic offensives, while others put the emphasis on supporting Operation Ghost Town.

There are also differences about whether to use violence, which are intensified by rivalries and the struggle for power.

Since March, several small violent groups have been formed. On social networks, they circulate contact details of people and organizations failing to o b s e r v e G h o s t To w n operations, as well as those of local authorities and senior Anglophone officials hostile to the strike. They call on the public to burn down their properties.

Thesegroups also call on citizens not to pay tax and encourage attacks on Francophones.

Christian denominations supervise most schools and universities in the Anglophone regions. At the beginning of 2016, the Catholic bishops of the two regions wrote to President Biya and travelled to Yaoundé to meet him, but he did not receive them. On 22 December, they published their letter in the form of a

memorandum listingmost of the Anglophone grievances.

The government accused them of fueling the crisis and began to intimidate members of the clergy and the heads of schools, calling on them to open their schools, which had been closed since the beginning of the crisis.

In April, a fictitious association of parents lodged a complaint against the bishops and ministers, making the government more unpopular in this zone where religious leaders are respected. However, though the latter back the Anglophone cause, the fear of reprisals from the instigators of Operation Ghost Town rather than support for the strike explains the decision of Catholic and Protestant institutions to not resume their courses.

The Anglophone protest movement also caused division among Francophones and Anglophones within the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon (NECC). In January 2017, at a meeting in Mamfé, Francophone bishops criticized their counterparts for not opening their schools, while the latter regretted the Francophone clergy’s ignorance of the Anglophone problem and the threats to which they had been subjected. In April, the archbishop of Douala and NECC president published a statement deploring the legal proceedings against the bishops but calling on them to open their schools.

This statement, criticized by Anglophone militants, undermined the legitimacy of the archbishop, who had been mentioned in January as a possiblemediator.

One year from the next presidential elections, the governing elites in Yaoundé fear that the crisis will spread to Francophone regions, which share some of the socioeconomic difficulties experienced by Anglophones and where frustration took a violent turn in 2008. As the government perceives the

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Anglophones and Southerners in particular often complain about the low proportion of Anglophones in the workforce and in decision-making posts in state oil companies, such as the National Refining Company (Société nationale de raffinage, Sonara), based in the Southwest, and the National Hydrocarbons Corporation (Société nationaledes hydrocarbures, SNH). The crisis has hit all sectors of the local economy, except for hydrocarbons and forestry, which has had an impact on some commercial sectors and industries in the Francophone regions. Several estimates put the direct cost of cutting access to internet alone at CFA2 billion (€3 million). crisis as a threat to its survival, it considers intimidation, violent repression and the internet shutdown as a risk worth taking, despite possible pressure from the international community. It feels the economic consequences and the possible electoral slump of the CPDM in the Anglophone regions at the next elections are a reasonable price to pay, because they are limited from a national point of view.

The International Community’s Response The international response has been led by the U.S., multilateral organizations and international civil society. On 28 November 2016, the U.S. State Department published a communiqué calling for dialogue in the Anglophone regions and calling on the government of Cameroon to respect fundamental freedoms. In December, the UN Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Central Africa condemned the violence and asked Cameroon to respect minorities. On 18 January 2017, the president of the African Union Commission expressed concerns about acts of violence, arbitrary arrests and detentions and called on the government to

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seek dialogue. The UN Special Representative for Central Africa visited Yaoundé in February and April. He met Consortium leaders in prison and signed a communiqué calling for the release of prisoners, the restoration of internet and dialogue.

On 23 March, during President Biya’s visit to the Vatican, the Pope invited him to pursue dialogue and respect minorities. These statements helped to secure an end to internet shutdown in March but did not result in any moves toward the structural and constitutional reforms requested by Anglophones. Bilateral responses and the European Union (EU)’s response has been the weakest. Except for the U.S., Cameroon’s Western partners, such as France, the UK, Germany, Canada and the EU have not made any public statement, saying they are exercising discreet diplomatic pressure on Yaoundé. The strongest reactions have come from international civil society, especially from the UK Bar and organizations like Amnesty International.

The lack of coordination of the international response has undermined new initiatives. Several European countries planned to publish statements but, in the end, remained silent,

However, the crisis has also raised awareness. Some Anglophones said that public services in Yaoundé treat them better and that official communications pay greater attention to bilingualism. The crisis has highlighted the economic resilience of the Anglophones, which is essentially based on the solidarity of Anglophones living in the Francophone zone and abroad. However, it has also caused social problems that were not anticipated by the strikers: for example, the boycott of schools has entailed extra childcare demands, which falls mainly on women, and increases in juvenile delinquency, teenage pregnancies and school dropout.

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clearly for fear of finding themselves isolated. Other partners with economic interests in Cameroon probably preferred to tacitly support the regime, which protects them against Chinese competition. In February, some European countries wanted the European Union to issue a joint statement on the Anglophone question, but the initiative was blocked by other member states anxious to avoid criticizing Cameroon too openly because of its role in the fight against Boko Haram.

This relatively timid reaction can be partly explained by diplomats’ hesitation to intervene in a crisis whose consequences are limited to the country in question, without repercussions in the subregion, and which remains less acute than other crises in Africa. Although limited, the gains made by discreet pressure confirm them in their opinion that private diplomacy is the best strategy. More generally, Western countries have tended to deal with Cameroon in the context of its relative stability compared to other Central African countries and the low risk that the Anglophone crisis will lead to partition of the country.

Cameroon’s role in the fight against Boko Haram reinforces this attitude.

The government of neighboring Nigeria has not got involved in the current crisis. Moreover, it is wary of the Anglophone protest movement, because it fears that an independent Anglophone Cameroon could act as a base for separatist Nigerian movements. Nevertheless, some inhabitants of southeastern Nigeria sympathize with Cameroonian Anglophone activists, although this probably does not amount to any substantial support.

A Political, Economic and Social Crisis The Political Consequences The current crisis has increased support to

federalism among the Anglophones population – which most probably was already high – and reinforced support for secessionism. This new configuration shows the depth of the Anglophone problem. Ghost Town operations and school closures could not have continued for nine months without the adherence of a large proportion of the population.

As the population becomes more frustrated and disappointed, its desire for fair integration and willingness to coexist with Francophones is eclipsed by aspirations for autonomy.

Although most Anglophones want federalism, there is no consensus about the number of states in a future federation. A two-state federation, as before unification, or a four or sixstate federation to better reflect the sociological composition of the country and make the idea of federalism acceptable to Francophones, or ten states to copy the current pattern of Cameroon’s ten regions?

Some people insist that however many federated states are created, the federal capital Yaoundé should not be included in any of them. For some Anglophone activists, federalism seems to be a maximalist negotiating strategy. They raise the bar high in order to obtain at least an effective decentralization, with genuine autonomy for the country’s ten regions, starting with improvements to and the full application of current laws on decentralization.

The debate on the shape of the federation also reveals divisions that often undermine the Anglophone movement – between the Northwest where the “Grassfields” ethnic groups, close to the Bamiléké, are in the m a j o r i t y, a n d t h e Southwest, dominated by Sawa ethnic groups. Most Turn to page 13

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Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis at the Crossroads Contd. from page 12 Anglophones in the Northwest favor a two-state federation, as in 1961. The southern elites and indigenous groups have always denounced the demographic, political and economic domination and monopolization of their lands by Northern migrants, and therefore tend to prefer a ten-state federation in order to preserve their autonomy. Some of them, notably the Bakweri minority, would even form a federated state with the coastal Sawas (the Douala) rather than with the Grafis of the Northwest. Other southerners propose a federation with several states or a two-state federation with genuine decentralization within the two regions of the Anglophone federated state.

The Anglophone protest movement has tried, with some success, to go beyond these old divisions, partly because several members of the Consortium are southerners. However, when, at the end of January, the traditional chiefs of the Northwest wrote to the president of the republic to ask him to release prisoners as a goodwill gesture, the traditional chiefs of the Southwest responded by sending a motion of support to the government and calling on the youth of the Southwest to break with the disorder caused by northerners. However, the public has not shown itself to be very divided.

Although Ghost Town operations are reducing in intensity, they are also observed in the Southwest and are sometimes stronger in towns like Kumba, where young people have denounced the ethnic rhetoric of their elites.

The crisis has revealed the gap between the concerns of the Anglophone population and the Anglophone elite, which has for a very long time tried to mediate between them and Yaoundé and sometimes even supported a firmer repressive position. In fact, the prime minister and the Anglophone elite, which tried to mediate at the start of the crisis, have been jeered by crowds.

The lack of legitimacy of Anglophone leaders is also true, to a lesser degree, of opposition leaders. In November 2016, the president of the Social Democratic Front was booed in Bamenda when he tried to calm an angry crowd. The crisis caused tension in the SDF between a more radical group that, like the deputy Wirba, calls for a two-state federation or for secession, and a more traditional group that wants a four-state federation or, for the most moderates, effective decentralization.

To better reflect opinion in its electoral base, the SDF

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Partisans of armed violence have not yet put their ideas into practice because they do not have either the resources or enough support from abroad. They are still a small minority, even among those in favor of secession. But questioning of the central principle of non-violence, inherited from the SCNC, gives cause for concern. The reason why the crisis has not descended into armed violence is also that the main actors have not wanted it to.

Neither did they expect a crisis of such scale and duration.

(Interna-tional Crisis Group). strengthened its commitment to a four-state federation in 2017, while also taking symbolic steps such as not attending the 20 May march in solidarity with Anglophone detainees.

Even in the governing party, the CPDM, Anglophone deputies have expressed their concerns to the government. In March 2017, they begged the head of state to at least restore internet access and release Anglophone political detainees.

The Anglophone crisis is a classic case of a dissatisfied minority while at the same time the result of structural problems. First, it reveals major governance failures, with a lack of decisionmaking capacity accentuated by the allp o w e r f u l p r e s i d e n t ’s prolonged absences from t h e c o u n t r y, a f a l s e decentralization, the lack of legitimacy of local elites, tension between generations, a political system that relies on coopting traditional chiefs and local elites, and a policy of regional balance that has been hijacked to their own advantage by families close to the regime.

Second, the crisis is prolonging restrictions on civil liberties which have become more pronounced since 2013: a ban on demonstrations, the arrest and beating up of political party militants, journalists and researchers. It has even served as a pretext for greater repression, with the use of anti-terrorist legislation for political ends, greater control over social media and threats against journalists. Finally, the regime’s refusal to negotiate on fundamental questions and its sometimes-brutal response highlight its authoritarian nature.

The crisis could have an impact on the 2018 elections and even on the African Cup of Nations football competition in 2019. If the present situation persists, it will be d i ff i c u l t t o o rg a n i z e peaceful elections in the two Anglophone regions.

But when elections take place, the stance of Anglophone militants who have gained in popularity

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during this crisis will be crucial. Anything seems possible at the moment: a boycott, support for the SDF or the emergence of new movements. In 2016, the SDF appointed a Francophone secretary general for the first time in an attempt to start rebuilding a national base, but then immediately radicalized and moved closer to the Anglophone position because of the c r i s i s . Wi l l i t a g a i n moderate its positions and try to gain support among Francophones, which it has not managed to do since 1997, or will it prioritize the Anglophone zone, in the hope of improving on its performance in the last elections? Whatever happens to the SDF, the C P D M a n d t h e Francophone parties are henceforth in a weak position in the Anglophone regions.

The Economic Consequences Economic marginalization has played a major role in provoking discontent among Anglophones. Even though the two Anglophone regions are suffering no more than some Francophone regions from the prolonged economic crisis, Anglophones feel their potential is not being realized (or is being deliberately wasted) and feel abandoned.

No serious economic study has been published on the economic impact of the crisis, but there is no doubt that the isolation for several months of these two regions, which contribute around 20 per cent of Cameroon’s GDP, has had an impact on them as well as on the national economy. In 2016, the Anglophone regions were amongthe most digitally connected in Cameroon, just behind Douala and Yaoundé.

Shutting down the internet paralyzed several sectors of the local economy, notably banking and microfinance.

The local economy is based on the oil sector (9 per cent of GDP), timber (4.5 per cent), intensive agriculture, including large plantations owned by the Cameroon Development Corporation and other smaller

plantations that supply Douala and the countries of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, as well as cocoa, rubber, etc.

Anglophones and Southerners in particular often complain about the low proportion of Anglophones in the workforce and in decisionmaking posts in state oil companies, such as the National Refining Company (Société nationale de raffinage, Sonara), based in the Southwest, and the National Hydrocarbons Corporation (Société n a t i o n a l e d e s hydrocarbures, SNH). The crisis has hit all sectors of the local economy, except for hydrocarbons and forestry, which has had an impact on some commercial sectors and industries in the Francophone regions.

Several estimates put the direct cost of cutting access to internet alone at CFA2 billion (€3 million).

The Social Consequences The crisis has revealed the divisions between Francophones and Anglophones in Cameroon. Francophones are generally unaware of the reasons for the Anglophone problem and view Anglophones who are calling for federalism or secession with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion and even make fun of them.

Anglophones arecritical of Francophones for their lack of solidarity. While many Francophones say they support the Anglophones’ demands, the latter believe that this support is in word o n l y a n d t h a t Francophones do not really understand the problems that stem from being a minority. In fact, very few representatives of Francophone civil society organizations and political parties have visited the Northwest and the Southwest since October 2016. Francophone teachers did not come out in support for their illtreated Anglophone colleagues. When Anglophone lawyers were beaten up and illegally arrested, support from the Bar was tardy and limited,

leading some Anglophone lawyers to call for the creation of their own Bar. Another stumbling block is that most Francophones are opposed to federalism and prefer effective decentralization.

Some Francophones also criticize Anglophones for “tribalizing” issues and making it sound like they are the only ones affected by problems that are, in fact, national. They point out that some Francophone regions are less well off than Anglophone regions.

Francophone teachers in the Anglophone zone complain about discrimination in the universities, while Francophone citizens complain about their stigmatization and the calls for violence against them issued since January 2017.

Some Francophones make fun of Anglophones and support government repression. There are of course exceptions, such as AbouemAtchoyi,former higher education minister and former governor of the Southwest and the Northwest, who published a long article in January 2017 asserting the legitimacy of Anglophone demands.

However, the crisis has also raised awareness.

Some Anglophones said that public services in Yaoundé treat them better and that official communications pay greater attention to bilingualism. The crisis has highlighted the economic resilience of the Anglophones, which is essentially based on the solidarity of Anglophones living in the Francophone zone and abroad. However, it has also caused social problems that were not anticipated by the strikers: for example, the boycott of schools has entailed extra childcare demands, which falls mainly on women, and increases in juvenile d e l i n q u e n c y, t e e n a g e pregnancies and school dropout.

Ending the Crisis: Resume Dialogue and Deal with the Real Problems Even though the violence, which raged from November 2016 to January 2017, has come to a halt, aspects of the crisis remain: radicalization of the

diaspora and a segment of the population, a loss of confidence in the government and targeted social violence. The trial of Anglophone militants is flawed in ways that illustrate persistent problems: it has been repeatedly postponed and conducted in French, with only rough translations provided if at all, and this for offences committed by Anglophones in Anglophone regions. If a lasting solution is not found, the next resurgence of the Anglophone problem could be violent. The haughty attitude and cynicism of senior government officials, notably when they say that “as long as the Anglophones do not take up arms, the current strike does not worry [us] unduly”, could promote instability. “What can the Anglophones do? If they don’t want to go to school, so much the worse for them”, added a senior official. They are mistakenly relying on the strike losing impetus and the emergence of divisions among strikers, because although the campaign has weakened since May and even if it fizzles out, the fundamental problem will remain, and people will continue to feel dissatisfied.

Within the secessionist movement, although the official objective remains independence through nonviolence, there are growing calls for violence. Messages calling for the armed struggle circulate among WhatsApp groups and instances of targeted social violence have been recorded (intimidations, arson, beatings). On Facebook and YouTube, the Southern Cameroons Defense Forces regularly announce their imminent arrival to liberate Ambazonia. In July 2017, an Ambazonia Governing Council made its appearance online and Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was elected prime minister in an online vote. All this needs to be taken seriously, all the more so as some secessionist groups have circulated videos encouraging violence, for example, explaining how to make Molotov cocktails.

Partisans of armed violence have not yet put their ideas into practice because they do not have either the resources or enough support from abroad. They are still a small minority, even among those in favor of secession.

But questioning of the central principle of nonviolence, inherited from the SCNC, gives cause for concern. The reason why the crisis has not descended into armed violence is also that the main actors have not wanted it to. Neither did they expect a crisis of such scale and duration. (International Crisis Group). n

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Mauritius: Tax haven Mauritius’ rise comes at the rest of Africa’s expense, companies are rushing to the island nation to benefit from secrecy and tax benefits.

By Will Fitzgibbon

J

ean-Claude Bastos de Morais was trying to invest offshore but was having a hard time finding a place to put his money.

The 50-year-old SwissAngolan financier turned to Appleby, an elite law firm with offices in tax havens around the globe.

First, Bastos tried Appleby’s office on the island of Jersey, a popular offshore financial center in the English Channel. But Appleby employees there balked at his 2011 request to set up a shell company without being told why it was needed or what assets it would hold. One thing that concerned Appleby’s Jersey lawyers was the possibility that the shell company would own a shipping port in corruption-proneAngola.

Next Bastos, an amateur tennis player who runs an asset-management firm, Quantum Global Group, tried Appleby’s office on the Isle of Man, in the Irish Sea. Appleby’s management there decided that Appleby would require a seat on the offshore company’s board of directors to exercise some supervision over what they described as his highrisk business. The arrangement did not go ahead.

Finally, in 2013, after Angola’s sovereign wealth fund entrusted Bastos with $5 billion, he turned to another Appleby outpost: Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, 1,200 miles off the east coast of southernAfrica.

“We are pleased to be able to act on your behalf,” Appleby’s top lawyer in Mauritius, Malcolm Moller, wrote to Bastos’ Quantum Global in October 2013.

Awindow onto a tax haven The warm email welcome for Bastos’ business is one of more than half a million secret records from Appleby’s Mauritius office that were obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 94 media partners around the world. The Paradise Papers come from the offshore law firm Appleby and corporate services provider Estera, two businesses that operated together under the Appleby name until Estera became independent in 2016.

Some of the most important ways of stripping profits from African countries are done through

offshore jurisdictions, including Mauritius — Alexander Ezenagu The emails, bank account applications, PowerPoint presentations on tax avoidance, and other confidential documents open a window into the operations of Appleby’s 40plus-employee operation in Mauritius; By extension, they illuminate the surprising importance of Mauritius, an island nation with a multiethnic population of 1.3 million, as a hub in the secretive offshore financial network that enables legitimate, humdrum business to thrive but also helps wealthy people and profitable businesses shield their assets and profits from taxation.

Using an array of complex schemes and companies that are little more than addresses on a piece of paper, this global system has helped corporations shift $100 billion to $300 billion a year in tax revenue away from developing countries, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Offshore business transactions and the use of tax havens are often legal, but governments and representatives of civil society have increasingly criticized such behavior, which helps impoverish African governments and widen wealth inequality between the region and the rest of the world.

Research shows that companies are more likely to use questionable tax avoidance maneuvers when operating in developing countries than in wealthier countries where tax enforcement is stronger.

African countries are vulnerable to tax avoidance and evasion because corporate taxes contribute

more to Africa’s overall tax revenue, on a relative basis, than such taxes do for other countries.

“Some of the most important ways of stripping profits from African countries are done through offshore jurisdictions, including Mauritius,” said Alexander Ezenagu, an international tax researcher at the International Centre for Tax and Development.

Bastos and the Angolan fund The Angolan sovereign wealth fund, Fundo Soberano de Angola, or FSDEA, manages $5 billion on behalf of a country where, despite its considerable oil wealth, one in three people lives in poverty and where corruption among government elites is perceived to be widespread.

Since its launch in 2012, the FSDEA has come under scrutiny because of its structure and concerns about how it is managed.

Its chairman, José Filomeno dos Santos, was

appointed by his father, then president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, who led the country from 1979 until this year. The younger Dos Santos’ appointment of Bastos, a personal friend, to manage the fund – which included billions of dollars set aside for investment in Africa and that would use companies in Mauritius – drew the attention of journalists.

In a statement to ICIJ, the FSDEA said, “Quantum Global was selected because of its exemplary performance on previous mandates with the Angolan authorities, its availability to carry out capacity building programs and commitment to develop a regional private equity management partnership with FSDEA.” In a separate statement, Quantum Global denied that the relationship between Bastos and the Angolan president’s son influenced the FSDEA’s selection. Quantum Global told ICIJ that its selection

‘

Research shows that companies are more likely to use questionable tax avoidance maneuvers when operating in developing countries than in wealthier countries where tax enforcement is stronger. African countries are vulnerable to tax avoidance and evasion because corporate taxes contribute more to Africa’s overall tax revenue, on a relative basis, than such taxes do for other countries.

’

was due to its “expertise investing in the continent” and its having outperformed other fund managers.

Appleby vets Bastos The Appleby records show that the law firm did its own research on its new client. A compilation of internet search results compiled in January 2014 by an employee at Appleby’s Mauritius office included media references to lingering “questions” about how the fund would operate. The Appleby employee highlighted in yellow an article included in the search results that noted the “close personal” friendship between Bastos and dos Santos.

Appleby’s customerscreening process also flagged media accounts of Bastos’ past legal problems in Switzerland.

Records show that Appleby’s Mauritius office had classified Bastos as a “risky client” but moved forward with its new business.

The first step was getting a coveted Mauritius business license. In a letter accompanying Quantum Global’s license application, Appleby’s Mauritius office told regulators that it had “made all reasonable enquiries” into Bastos, Quantum Global and their plans to manage the Angolan money.

On the application form – supplementing a question about whether any company director had been convicted, penalized or sanctioned in court – a summary was appended in which his personal lawyer disclosed that Bastos had paid a $5,390 fine after a Swiss court convicted him in 2011 of approving loans that he shouldn’t have.

Bastos’ lawyer, however, failed to mention that the Swiss court had also

imposed a suspended fine of nearly $188,646. The application form also didn’t mention that the Swiss court also found Bastos guilty of withdrawing about $100,000 from a company account without authorization, according to a copy of the judgment obtained by ICIJ media partner SonntagsZeitung.

Bastos acknowledged the suspended fine but told ICIJ that the larger of the two fines did not have to be paid under a good conduct probation provision. Bastos said the suspended fine and convictions have since been e x p u n g e d f r o m Switzerland’s register of convictions. “The authorities were informed correctly,” Bastos said.

‘Please do not share’ With the license a p p r o v e d , A p p l e b y ’s Mauritius office helped Bastos and his company move some Angolan public funds slated for the management of investments in African hotels and infrastructure. The money moved through offshore companies in three jurisdictions – including some incorporated in Mauritius, known for its low taxes and high tolerance for secrecy.

Infrastructure Africa Ltd.’s structure as setup by Appleby.

In an email sent to A p p l e b y ’s M a u r i t i u s employees to remind them of the sensitivity of their new client, Quantum Global’s lawyer wrote – in boldface type – that a British Virgin Islands company called Red Sahara Ltd. (later renamed QG Investments Ltd.), which would later receive tens of millions of dollars in dividends, was ultimately owned by Bastos. The information was “highly confidential,” the lawyer wrote. “That is to say, please do not share any information.”

The Angola fund once paid $20 million for shares in a company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, Capoinvest, which was helping to finance the development of a major port in northern Angola. In its 2014 annual report, Angola’s sovereign wealth fund twice mentions Capoinvest, which also owns the Angolan company that is developing the port.

There is no mention, however, of the additional offshore companies that own Capoinvest. Appleby’s files reveal it is owned by a chain of three companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and two more Turn to page 15

PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018 | 15

MAGAZINE Contd. from page ... in the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, all of them ultimately owned by Bastos. In his statement, Bastos said Quantum Global complies “in all countries with legal, tax and regulatory standards.”

He said, “I have routinely disclosed my shareholding in Capoinvest.”

Mauritius also provided a low-tax haven for substantial fees the Angolan fund paid Bastos’ operation.

The financial statements of QG Investments Africa Management Ltd., Bastos’ Mauritius company, show it received $63.2 million in management fees throughout 2015, of which $21.9 million was sent to a Quantum Global company in Switzerland.

“The fees seem extraordinarily high,” said Andrew Bauer, an economic analyst and sovereign wealth fund expert who reviewed the fee payments.

Records show one Bastosowned company paying dividends to another. In 2014 and 2015, QG Investments Africa Management paid $41 million in dividends to his QG Investments, based in the British Virgin Islands.

Bastos told ICIJ that Quantum Global was paid advisory fees “according to standard industry practices, all of which have been and continue to be fully disclosed.”

He said that “as any other shareholder, I am earning dividends out of the distributions of my companies.”

He said his ownership of QG Investments Africa Management is taxefficient.

Bastos declined to comment on “confidential business matters” that led him to approach Appleby offices in Jersey and the Isle of Man. Bastos said Quantum Global chose Mauritius because of its its low taxes, “excellent infrastructure, relaxed reforms” and advantageous tax treaties, known as “double taxation agreements,” with most African countries.

An island on the rise Mauritius is an island of white coral beaches and low mountains in the Indian Ocean. Colonized first by the Dutch, then the French and the English, Mauritius was for centuries used mostly to grow sugar cane, originally cultivated by slaves from the African region and Asia. The island diversified into textiles and tourism, but sugar held sway even after Mauritius, which is considered part of Africa, gained independence in 1968.

“Sugar was king,” said Hassen Auleear, 58, a cane farmer in northern Mauritius.

Auleear represents the third generation of his family to grow sugar cane – and his generation will be the last. Financial support for sugar farmers has

dwindled, and every year, hundreds of them pack up and walk off land they have owned for decades.

Today, sugar accounts for just over 1 percent of the e c o n o m y. G l a s s - c l a d towers in a suburb of the capital, Port Louis, house banks, accounting firms and law firms. The high-rises sit on what were once some of the country’s most fertile cane fields. And none of Auleear’s children intend to follow him into farming.

Two of his daughters are accountants, one in Ebene CyberCity, the financial center.

Auleear said that the Mauritius government has abandoned sugar cane farmers and that the country looks down on those with dirt under their fingernails.

“They think that people wearing a neck tie, a good shirt and shoes, sitting in an air-conditioned office is just fine,”Auleear said.

In 1989 the government embarked on a plan to turn the island into a hub for investment from all corners of the world. The island positioned itself as the “gateway to Africa” for foreign corporations, touting Africa as “an unfathomed mine of opportunities next door.”

The 1992 Mauritius Offshore Business Activities Act created corporate vehicles known as global business companies, which enabled non-Mauritians to incorporate there with little fuss and limited public disclosure.

The island slashed its taxes and entered into tax treaties with neighboring African nations and others. The double taxation agreements (DTAs) were sold to treaty partners as a development tool that would encourage investment in those countries by the growing number of global companies incorporating in Mauritius.

In theory, DTAs are supposed to help companies avoid being taxed twice on the same economic activity.

In practice, however, signing a DTA with a low or no-tax country such as Mauritius means that some taxes may not be applied at all. Businesses rushed to set up subsidiary companies in Mauritius and began to take advantage of tax treaties between Mauritius and other countries by channeling revenue through the island haven, a practice that has come to be known as “treaty shopping.”

By 2000, the country’s offshore financial industry had become, as described by the International Monetary Fund, “enormous.”

Global businesses based on the island have assets valued at more than $630 billion, 50 times the amount of Mauritius’ gross domestic product. “Only Luxembourg has a bigger stock of foreign direct investment relative to the size of its economy,” according to the Financial

Times.

In recent years, Mauritius’ African neighbors have complained that the island’s gains have come at their expense, and they have taken their case to the international community. In 2013, the U.N. Economic Commission on Africa criticized the island as “a relatively financially secretive conduit” that contributes to poverty on the continent. In 2015, the European Commission temporarily placed Mauritius on a top 30 blacklist of tax havens. Last year, Mauritius made nonprofit Oxfam’s list of the world’s 15 worst tax havens.

“While the full scale of tax losses from treaty shopping are shrouded in secrecy, countries in Africa are potentially losing a fortune,” said Attiya Waris, a tax law expert at the University of Nairobi.

Mauritius’s tax treaties withstood a landmark challenge in 2012 when India’s Supreme Court ruled that the Indian government couldn’t collect $2.2 billion from cell phone giant Vodafone’s purchase of an Indian operating company through offshore firms, including one in Mauritius. The way the purchase was structured had the effect of sidestepping Indian taxes.

Government agencies in Mauritius responded to ICIJ questions with an 11-page statement that denied that the island is a tax haven or secretive.

Where necessary, the agencies said, Mauritius will continue to enhance the country’s transparency and strengthen rules against tax evasion, terrorist financing, money laundering and corruption.

The agencies also said that no party to a treaty can impose conditions on the other and that a treaty is a “win-win situation” for both sides. Mauritius does not intentionally deny taxing rights to other African countries, the agencies said; some countries choose to forgo taxes to attract foreign investment.

Appleby’s ‘Africa Team’ Appleby opened its doors in downtown Port Louis in 2007. The law firm occupies the top floors of a prominent building, above the busy shopfronts of modest clothing stores selling such items as Superman and Homer Simpson boxer shorts.

Secrecy on Mauritius is one of the office’s selling points. The Mauritius government maintains a corporate registry of more than 20,000 companies chartered on the island and keeps most information about them strictly confidential.

The leaked Appleby records show that the firm administered a trust fund worth more than $100 million for a European

princess who told the firm that she would not send any emails and would keep calls to a minimum because, an internal memo said, “she did not want any trail.”

In April 2014, a South African-based investor, Luca Bechis, asked Appleby to create a Mauritius company that would buy mineral concentrate from mines in Mozambique. The plan was to send “any positive balance” offshore in the form of “consulting fees,” he said. Bechis told Appleby that he wanted to make sure that no tax would be paid in Mauritius – and that his name would not appear on corporate records. “I don’t want my involvement to be disclosed for privacy reasons,” Bechis wrote.

In an email, Bechis told ICIJ that Mauritius was one offshore alternative considered to hold mines across Africa and that it was legally vetted to comply with tax rules. Bechis said that the kidnapping risk faced by wealthy people and their families was behind his request for privacy.

From the start, Appleby’s M a u r i t i u s o ff i c e h a s emphasized the services it offers to companies seeking to reduce or eliminate the tax burdens on their operations in Africa.

Potential clients receive a full-color 50-page guide that extols Mauritius’ tax treaties. Thirteen of the 36 treaties on Appleby’s list are with African partners.

Mauritius offers “an effective tax rate of 3% or… a tax liability of up to nil,” reads a typical marketing email Appleby sent to prospective clients. The office’s “Africa Team” has served corporate clients with business in S o u t h A f r i c a , To g o , Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Liberia.

In 2013, Appleby shared with another law firm a PowerPoint presentation about a hypothetical company operating in Mozambique with $10 million in interest payments due to be paid to its parent company in Singapore. If the money went from Mozambique directly to Singapore, the presentation explained, Mozambique would take $2 million in taxes. With the payments shunted through a company incorporated in Mauritius, however, a treaty between the two countries would slash the tax owed Mozambique by more than half. Mozambique receives $800,000, and the company, assuming the operation in Mauritius costs $30,000, saves $1.17 million.

Countries are giving up “5, 10 or 15 percent of revenue from a deal. That’s a very significant amount of money,” said Catherine Ngina Mutava, associate director of the Strathmore Tax Research Centre at

Strathmore Law School in Nairobi, Kenya. For officials in Mauritius, Mutava said, “ultimately … their state comes first, even if it means that otherAfrican countries suffer in the process.

ANamibian fish tale In 2012, Pacific Andes Resources Development Ltd., one of the world’s biggest producers of fish oil and fish meal, moved into the lucrative Namibian horse mackerel market. The bluish-green or gray fish is so important to Namibia’s identity and economy that the country’s 5-cent coin features an engraving of one over the injunction: “HORSE MACKEREL: EAT MORE FISH.” The company had come under scrutiny before arriving in Namibia. Since the early 2000s, reports by experts, international organizations and tribunals had alleged that Pacific Andes was operating an illegal fishing ring in the Pacific Ocean. A 2002 report by members of the fishing industry alleged that Pacific Andes used unlicensed boats to poach fish near Antarctica “on a scale never seen before.”

Pacific Andes denied wrongdoing. The company told ICIJ that it improved internal controls to comply with sustainability and health requirements.

Pacific Andes had made powerful friends inside Namibia and partnered with a local operation, Atlantic Pacific Fishing (Pty) Ltd. to catch the mackerel. Atlantic Pacific Fishing was no ordinary company; documents obtained by The Namibian newspaper and shared with ICIJ reveal that its directors included Namibia’s deputy minister of lands, deputy secretary of higher education, a former capital city mayor, as well as advisers to Namibia’s prime minister and president.

Mauritius has taken some steps to reform its offshore sector.

In 2012, Appleby did its part by helping Pacific Andes, headquartered in Bermuda, set up a subsidiary in Mauritius. The new company, Brandberg (Mauritius) Investment Holdings Ltd., received a government-issued tax certificate the same year that would allow the company to benefit from the two countries’ double taxation agreement. Under the treaty, the company could potentially cut some future tax payments in half.

Pacific Andes conducted much of its business in Mauritius and Namibia through a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, China Fishery Group Ltd. Files from Appleby’s Mauritius office and court documents obtained by ICIJ show that Pacific Andes used several offshore companies, including a Mauritius company – Brandberg, which had no

employees – to direct fees and payments from high-tax Namibia into low-tax jurisdictions.

In August 2013, for instance, a company in the British Virgin Islands leased a fishing boat to Brandberg in Mauritius for $31,700 a d a y. B r a n d b e r g t h e n chartered the boat, named Sheriff, to Atlantic Pacific Fishing in Namibia. Later that year, Brandberg and Atlantic Pacific Fishing signed a contract under which Brandberg managed the Namibian company’s ships, employees and mackerel trade in exchange for a management fee of 4 percent of the value of fish sales.

Atlantic Pacific Fishing paid $1.25 million in boat chartering fees to Brandberg in Mauritius over more than two years, according to Atlantic Pacific Fishing’s 2015 annual report, obtained by The Namibian newspaper.

Annual reports also show that the Namibian company paid nearly $2 million in management fees to Brandberg between 2013 and 2014 and owed the Mauritius company outstanding bills totaling more than $8 million. All of it was purportedly earned by a Mauritius company with no office of its own.

Alexander Ezenagu, an international tax researcher, said payments to a shell company in Mauritius could significantly reduce the amount of money that a company like Atlantic Pacific Fishing has to pay taxes on in Namibia. “The structures are geared at stripping profits” from high-tax jurisdictions, he said.

In response to ICIJ questions, Pacific Andes said Namibian shareholders received more than four times the value of management fees paid to the Mauritius company and the majority of fees stayed in Namibia as working capital.

Atlantic Pacific Fishing also employed more than 100 Namibians, Pacific Andes said.

In 2016, the Pacific Andes subsidiary, and Brandberg’s owner, China Fishery, filed for bankruptcy protection in N e w Yo r k . A c o u r t appointed trustee is trying to collect millions of dollars to restructure the company and repay China Fishery’s debts.

This year, the trustee told the court that he had a “high degree of concern” about the company’s accounting practices. The trustee found one entry of $18.8 million listed in a subsidiary company’s accounts but could find no evidence that the purported sale accounting for the entry ever took place.

The trustee put Sheriff, the fishing boat, up for sale.

Pacific Andes said it had clarified and resolved the $18.8 million accounting entry with the trustee.

Turn to page 16

16 | PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018

NEWS FEATURE

Burundi’s newest, biggest rebel group

By Jordan Anderson, an Africa Analyst at IHS M a r k i t ( a f r i c a n a rg u ments.org)

O

n 27 August, Burundian rebel leader Major General Jérémie Ntiranyibagira announced the reorganization of the militant group, the Republican Forces of Burundi (Forebu). Via a recorded statement, he declared a name change to the Popular Forces of Burundi (FPB) and called on other rebels opposed to the government of President Pierre Nkurunziza to join them.

The FPB’s leadership retains Ntiranyibagira and Lt. Col. Edouard Nshimirimana, who continues as second-incommand and de facto dayto-day leader. But notably a b s e n t i s GodefroidNiyombare, the general who led the May 2015 coup attempt against Nkurunziza and was previously claimed to be F o r e b u ’s l e a d e r b y Nshimirimana.

What does this development mean for Burundi and its rebel movements?

Forebu’s origins Forebu was founded following the failed coup in 2015 and was largely comprised of defectors from the Burundian military. Establishing itself in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in December 2015, it also recruited from amongst Burundian refugees, particularly at the Lusenda refugee camp in South Kivu.

In the wake of the failed 2015 coup, President

Nkurunzizapurged the a r m y. T h i s p o l i c y disproportionately targeted those who had served on the government side in the Burundian civil war (19932006). In that conflict, a primarily Tutsi government f o u g h t a g a i n s t predominantly Hutu insurgent groups, one of which became Burundi’s current ruling party, the C N D D – F D D .

Consequently, most of those expelled, and who joined Forebu’s ranks, were ethnic Tutsi, though the group remains ethnically mixed.

F o r e b u ’s i n t e r n a l struggles and the birth of the FPB Forebu’sreorganization into the FPB likely reflects the group’s internal political machinations.

Since May 2015, Niyombare has not been seen or heard, apart from in a sole telephone interview with JeuneAfrique this May. In that conversation, he claimed to regularly carry out clandestine visits to Burundi and the DRC. But in reality, Niyombare has probably been in exile – and possibly under de facto house arrest – in Rwanda or Uganda since late-2015.

FSB’s new hierarchy indicates a shift of power away from Niyombare and other alleged “absentee” leaders such as Hussein Radjabu, ex-chairman of the CNDD-FDD turned opposition leader. It marks a shift towards the commanders actually based with their fighters.

Indeed, in an interview with JeuneAfrique FPB spokesperson Adolphe Manirakiza claimed that “at least three personalities were disputing over the

Who are the Popular Forces of Burundi?

? Burundian fighters leadership”: Nshimirimana, Radjabu, and Niyombare.

“Those who were around Nshimirimana and those who challenged the leadership of Niyombare came together…to form the new FPB movement,” he said.

Manirakiza’s claim that Ntiranyibagira was appointed to lead the FPB as “the most senior of the group” suggests that Niyombare is not affiliated with the new outfit. It also seems that the FPB sought to distance itself from Radjabu, possibly over allegations he was involved in the arrest and torture of former Vice President Alphonse Marie Kadege in 2006. This was likely a source of resentment among

Mauritius: Tax haven Contd. from page 15 Band-aid solutions After years of bad publicity and some behind-the-scenes diplomacy, Mauritius has taken steps to reform its o ff s h o r e s e c t o r. To discourage misuse of offshore companies, authorities introduced requirements that such companies become more active in Mauritius – which would include having employees and meetings there. In July, Mauritius signed a global anti-tax-avoidance treatyand agreed to review half of its double taxation agreements.

Jean-Claude Bastos and his company were aware of African countries’ growing intolerance of Mauritius’ letterbox companies and sensed the shift in the public mood in Africa.

When Bastos’ Swiss asset-management

company was considering options to avoid taxes in countries where the sovereign wealth fund might invest, a lawyer for Quantum Global wrote to a tax accountant in 2014 about where one of the employees would work.

“We understand that it certainly looks better to have the Manager in Mauritius,” the lawyer wrote. “But, we are pushing back here.”

The email suggested that the company was willing to take its chances. If other countries objected to Quantum Global’s use of Mauritius to reduce its tax bills across Africa, the letter said, it would deal with the problem “when the time comes.”

Critics remain skeptical of Mauritius’ reform efforts. The country rejected major elements of the global anti-taxavoidance treaty, including an amendment that would

have allowed African countries to collect more taxes when corporations bought and sold land through Mauritian companies. Mauritius chose to renegotiate some double taxation agreements, particularly those with other African countries, on a one-onone basis instead of through the global treaty.

The new global rules might “kill a few of the problematic elements, but it won’t really change anything in the near future for most African countries,” the Strathmore Tax Research C e n t r e ’s C a t h e r i n e Mutava said. “It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a huge leak. I don’t see anything changing soon.”

By Will Fitzgibbon, and contributions from Christian Brönnimann and Shinovene Immanuel. n

Forebu’s Tutsi fighters.

FSB also includes Hutu fighters, however, and Ntiranyibagira’s appointment as overall FPB leader was probably intended to provide continued balance. Like Niyombare, Ntiranyibagira is a Hutu and former CNDD-FDD fighter.

Forebu elements that continue to follow Niyombare and not the FPB are probably in a distinct minority.

FPB and RED-Tabara On 29 August, an unconfirmed statement by another Burundian militant group, Resistance for the Rule of Law-Tabara (REDTabara), praised the FPB’s struggle. However, it indicated that it would continue as a separate group and denied that its fighters had defected.

This denial was directed against claims “circulating on RFI and certain social media”. However, it may also have been made in response to claims made in a UN Group of Experts report published in August.

That document cited several Forebu ex-combatants who said they were involved with RED-Tabara but left because they disagreed with the group’s ideology.

RED-Tabara’s political leader is believed to be Alexis Sinduhije, though he denies this. Sinduhije belongs to the opposition Movement for Solidarity and Democracy (MSD), a group heclaims has been “demonized” for being “radicals”. Many in Burundi see the MSD as being dominated by Tutsis.

This may be additional context for FPB spokesman Manirakiza stressing F o r e b u ’s “ p o l i t i c a l neutrality”.

R E D - Ta b a r a ’s r i s e , decline, and eclipse by FPB Several Burundian

combatants captured in South Kivu during 20152016 told the UN Group of Experts that they were going to fight for Sinduhije and the MSD. These fighters claimed to have been recruited in Rwanda’s Mahama refugee camp in May-June 2015 and given two months of military training by individuals wearing Rwandan military uniforms. This implies that in mid-to-late 2015 REDTabara was a recipient of Rwandan logistical support.

This backing seems to have decreased sharply by early-2016 though, probably as a result of public allegations against Rwanda. The fighting capacity of RED-Tabara in Bujumbura was also reduced by the deaths of a significant number of fighters in the reprisal killings that followed the 11 December 2015 attacks on three military camps. One well-placed Burundian source described the group as having been “crushed” in the city. Defections to Forebu will also have thinned RED-Tabara’s ranks.

Forebu appears to have received some external support too. The UN Group of Experts reported that the rebels usually purchase their food from local Congolese and bring in other supplies across Lake Tanganyika. This suggests a level of collaboration with the Congolese military and President Joseph Kabila, who the Congolese opposition accuse of formentinginsecurity in order to excuse further delaying elections.

The Group of Experts also claimed Forebu “emerged as the most relevant Burundian armed group operating in the [DRC] by mid-2017” with 300-500 fighters. This strength has probably been largely

inherited by the new FPB. FPB’s future Rwanda’s sensitivity to international allegations of militarizing Burundian refugees was likely accentuated ahead of its presidential election this August. With Kagame now re-elected – with 98.8% of the vote – the Rwandan government is now in a stronger position to ramp up assistance to antiNkurunziza militants again if it wished to. If so, FPB would probably be the main recipient.

Niyombare’s striking claim that Rwanda had neither interfered in Burundi nor supported his forces has also provided some plausible deniability against possible future accusations. Rwanda would also probably be able to count on tacit cooperation from the DRC as President Kabila seeks to maintain friendly relations. In response to this possible threat, Burundian security forces – as documented by the UN Group of Experts – have begun to supply weapons to Congolese MaiMai groups as proxies.

In early-2017, significant elements of Forebu reportedly relocated from South Kivu towards Uvira territory, closer to the B u r u n d i a n b o r d e r.

Combined with increasing Rwandan facilitation, this would place the FPB in a position to stage increasingly frequent small arms and light weapons raids in Burundi’s north-west and Bujumbura’s outskirts.

With President Nkurunziza probably already working to change the constitution – not just to remove term limits, but also possibly to alter Hutu-Tutsi ethnic quotas and powersharing arrangements – the FPB is not likely to find itself short of sympathizers and recruits for its cause. n

PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018 | 17

FOR THE RECORD

l

Governors of South West Nigeria

The Yoruba and the Burden of their

History in the Politics of Nigeria T

he Yoruba numbers about 40 million people located in Nigeria in the following States: Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Kwara, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Kogi, Edo and Delta (not just the Itshekiri of Warri but the Olukumi of Oshimili LGA). They are also in Benin and Togo Republics and their descendants are found in Brazil, other Countries in South America Cuba, Trinidad, Tobago and other Caribbean Islands as well as in Sierra Leone. Their culture has survived in the Yoruba diaspora perhaps because of their late coming into the transatlantic slave trade, following the collapse of the Oyo Empire towards the end of the 18th century, or because of the strength of the Yoruba culture particularly their religion, which is widely practiced in the Caribbean and South America even by people of European descent.

The Yoruba claim Oduduwa/ Olofin as their eponymous ancestor. Oduduwa is variously said to have descended from heaven and landed in Ile-Ife. Other variant, more sensible and credible myth of the Oduduwa story says he came from the East, Baghdad or somewhere in Arabia.

He is said to have been the son of Lamurudu (Nimrod) who left his homeland following dispute over religious worship and succession to the throne.

These are myths and myth is not the subject of history. What we can deduce from the myth is that a people of advanced civilization with working knowledge of iron, displaced possibly Stone Age people living in Ile-Ife, seized the throne and dominated the people.

From Ile-Ife, sons of Oduduwa fanned out to found new kingdoms or to overthrow existing rulers in Yorubaland, Bini and related peoples like the Aja and Ga of present day Benin and Ghana

By Professor Jide Osuntokun, at a lecture delivered under the auspices of DAWN at Cocoa House, Ibadan.

Republics respectively. This has led to the fact that many rulers in Yorubaland claim descent from Oduduwa. The pre-existing rulers became shadowy kings and priests ministering to the new Oduduwa descendants. We know from the study of archaeology, that Meroe in the present-day Sudan was the Centre of the diffusion of iron technology to Africa, and perhaps these myths of origin of West African rulers may well be referring to the coming of those who knew how to make iron implements for agriculture and for offense and defense.

The Bayijjidah legend of the Hausa also possibly refers to the same phenomenon of outsiders serving as change agents in Africa's ancient history. The myth of Oduduwa as the progenitor of the rulers of Yorubaland is however not universally subscribed to by all Yoruba people. Awujale, the paramount ruler of the Ijebu people, claim their people came from Waddai which is in present day Chad but was part of the Kanuri dominated Kanem-Borno Empire. This is not as fanciful as it may appear because there is an extant myth among the Kanuri, who say the Yoruba are their cousins who because of their love of money left for the coast in search of the Golden Fleece. Might this myth be referring to the Ijebu who with the Ijesha share the same facial marks with the Kanuri? We know of a certainty that the dynasty in Benin is descended from Oduduwa through his grandson Oranmiyan.

The story is well known and it suffices to say that the Benin people sent to Ile-Ife for a ruler,

after having gotten rid of their Ogiso kings and finding republicanism unworkable. Ife obliged them and sent the youngest of the grand sons of Oduduwa. After a while, Oranmiyan fathered a son Eweka but left Benin disillusioned that his subjects were too difficult to control and returned to Ile-Ife. From Ile-Ife, he proceeded to Oyo to establish a new kingdom. In this way, the great kingdoms of Ife, Bini and Oyo that were to play important roles in the history of West Africa were historically linked. The Bini now claim that in fact Oduduwa was a Bini prince who was expelled from Bini, got lost in the bush and later found his way to Ile-Ife and because of his knowledge of herbal medicine was made King by the Ife people.

Oranyan therefore was more or less their grandson who returned home.

This interpretation sounds rather convenient. The reason for this new revisionism in Bini is the assertion of independence and non-subservience to a foreign ruler in the past. What is however important up till today is that the cult/court language in the Bini palace is some kind of old Yoruba and the standard greetings in the palace is “How goes Ife (Uhe)”?

The mystery surrounding Ife was further complicated by the late Professor Ade Obayemi, a distinguished Professor of Archaeology, when he said the present Ife may not have been the Ife of historical antiquity. He said he had identified seven existing Ifes and that the Ife of antiquity may well be near the rivers Niger and Benue confluence.

Furthermore, and in recent times, the hilly town of Idanre in Ondo state, but which its people call IFEOKE, claims it is the original Ife and that their Oba is acknowledged by the Bini as an elder to Oranmiyan, the founder of their dynasty and they have ancient artifacts to support their claim. Usen which play a prominent role in the coronation of the Obas of Benin share identical dialect with Idanre which further shows that there is a need to examine the role of Idanre (Ireke) in Ife-Benin relation in the past. Professor Alan Ryder in his book Benin and the Europeans, using mostly Portuguese sources claimed that when the Portuguese came to Benin in the 15th century, they were told Benin paid homage to the "OgheneLuhe" North east of Benin. This he felt might be in the same direction suggested by Obayemi. Of course, the Portuguese may not have reported correctly what they were told. Ife Olukotun, located near the area suggested has not yielded any artifacts that could be dated older than those found in Ife that were produced between the ninth and the twelfth centuries. The moat around Ile-Ife, even though most of it has disappeared and the various ancient artifacts found there suggest that the present Ife is the Ife of antiquity. There is much that we do not know and there is room for serious research, because a serious question of the provenance of the founder of ancient Yoruba kingdoms is too important to leave to guess work.

I want to emphasize that the history of dynasties should not be confused with the history of peoples. For example, we all know that the current Hanoverian dynasty in England is from Germany, yet this does not mean English people are descended from Germans. Although, I know

that the Saxons, a Germanic tribe, had with the Angles over run the Celtic people of England in historic times. Oduduwa may be the ancestor of the rulers of Yoruba kingdoms; it does not mean Oduduwa is the ancestor of all Yoruba people. There were people in Ile-Ife and Yorubaland before the coming of Oduduwa.

This is why we have chieftaincies like Obalufe, Obatala, which apparently preceded the coming of Oduduwa. Recent disputes in several kingdoms in Akure, Ekiti land and Akoko where there exist two "Kings" in one kingdom, one active, the other passive until recent times, indicate there were autochthonous people in Yorubaland before the coming of the Oduduwa party. The struggle between Olukere and Ogoga, Alakure and Deji, Owa Ale and Olukare and to a certain extent Odio and Ewi and the struggle between the Oba of Benin and a chief Ogiamien claiming his ancestors were the rulers of the kingdom before Oranmiyan, are manifestations of the fact that there were not only people but rulers who have now been eclipsed and displaced by much more formidable new comer.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the government of western Nigeria knew the importance of history in nation building and therefore established the Yoruba Historical Scheme under the late Professor Saburi Biobaku, who was sometimes Registrar of University of Ibadan, Secretary to the government of western Nigeria, before becoming Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos. Those involved in the Yoruba Historical Scheme included late Professors J.F. Ade Ajayi, Adeagbo Akinjogbin and others. Much has been done in Turn to page 18

18 | PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018

FOR THE RECORD Contd. from page 17 researching the Yoruba past but more needs to be done.

Unfortunately, the governments we have had since the military intervention in Nigeria in 1966 abandoned the study of history. It seems they were determined to build a future on an historical void. Or perhaps, they wanted to have no comparative yardstick against which their regimes could be judged. Thankfully the Buhari administration has in 2016 taken a decision to ensure that history is taught at all levels of education in Nigeria.

The military regime’s apologia was anchored on the need to build a technological and scientific foundation for the future. They were ignorant of the fact that the most technologically advanced countries like the USA, China, Germany, Japan, Great Britain and France have scrupulously preserved their history through preservation of their past in wellendowed galleries and museums, as well as funding continuous research into the past and compulsory historical education to build confidence in their people. Knowledge of a glorious past can provide a platform or spring board for takeoff for the future. Technological innovation does not depend on the multitude of scientists a country produces, but the effort of a solitary researcher or a group of geniuses, making breakthroughs in inventions or producing knowledge which can be applied to solve problems or to dominate the environment. It is sad that most Nigerians know very little about their past and young people suffer from cultural disconnect, disorientation and disorder. Those of us who teach young people are worried that our language and culture are dying, and we may in the future have to seek foreign assistance as usual in solving problems that are within our reach. We need to restore the teaching of history and Yoruba language to all primary and secondary schools in all states in the Yoruba area. All schools including private schools must be involved.

Ironically, history still plays a big part in Yoruba modern politics. The struggle for preeminence among Yoruba Obas in recent times is a variant of how history is alive in Yorubaland. The Oyo Yoruba up to the 19th century were the dominant power in Yorubaland. In fact, the Ekiti, Ijesha, Akoko, Owu, Igbomina, Egba and Ife witnessed a period of Oyo over lordship in their parts of Yorubaland. For a long time, this past history of domination was resented, and this played a significant role in their political association. This was particularly the case in the rural areas even though urbanization to a certain extent undermined the hold of history on the people. The fact that the Yoruba people are the most urbanized people on the African continent is not unconnected with the desire to congregate in fortified and easily defensible commu-nities, believing that there is safety in numbers during the incessant wars that lasted a century from about 1793 to 1893.

When the British came and following their desire to practice the indirect rule system of colonial administration and control which had been hugely successful in the

l

Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, The Ooni of Ife, Nigeria.

north, they looked for suzerainty comparable with the Sokoto Caliphate. They felt they found it in Oyo and its ruler and they tried to build a new Oyo Empire. They gave the Alaafin more power than he was traditionally used to. The Alaafin might have had power in the past; this was however limited and constrained by delicate checks and balances. Raising of taxes in the name of the Alaafin in Oke Ogun in 1916 for example, precipitated rebellion which exposed the British lack of knowledge of the intricate and complex politics of Yorubaland.

For long, the Alaafins of Oyo enjoyed primacy in Yorubaland, yet the same British consulted the Ooni when there were disputes about succession to the throne in some parts of Yorubaland.

Throughout the period of British colonial rule in Nigeria, the British dealt with the Obas in Yorubaland in terms of their order of importance to the colonial administration. The Alaafin took the preeminent position as traditional head of the Oyo speaking people which included Oyo itself, okeogun, Ibadan, Ibarapa, Osun division including Oshogbo, Ede, Iwo, Gbongan and larger part of Ife division (origbo towns and villages). Important rulers of Ijebu, Egba, Ijesha/Ekiti which included Akure and Igbomina were prominently recognised. Bini was treated as a separate but related kingdom.

Apart from their utility value, there was no attempt to rank them in any hierarchical order which would have brought them into conflict with traditional politics and history, because what was apparent was not necessarily real and the importance of a ruler was not directly related to the size and economy of its kingdom.

For most part of colonial rule, the British ruled largely by force with little or no consultation with the Africans. This was not surprising as it was the nature of imperialism.

The majority of the Nigerian people were uneducated. The gentlemen of Lagos who had benefied from colonial education through access to mission schools in Lagos, the most important of which was CMS Grammar School founded in 1859 were few.

When Sir Fredrick Lugard came to amalgamate the Northern and Southern protectorates and the colony of Lagos, he derided the Yoruba educated elite in Lagos as “trousered niggers” who sent their laundry every week to Bond Street in London for dry cleaning. The antagonism between him and the educated elite was mutual because they accused him of what they

l

Gani Adams, The Aare-Ona Kakanfo of Yoruba Land, Nigeria

called "rancorous negrophobism" and authoritarianism. The disconnect and chasm between the ruled and the ruler was unbridgeable.

Events outside Nigeria, particularly the First and the Second World Wars, undermined the colonial regime and the socalled superiority of the white man, with the effect that Nigerians starting from the Yoruba of Lagos, began to demand in the beginning participation in government and later home rule. Nationalist awakening dates back in Yorubaland to the 1880s when Lagos people organized themselves to protest against water rate. Newspapers and broad sheets had proliferated Lagos agitating against one thing or the other. It was therefore not difficult for the educated elite of Lagos after the First World War to demand for selfdetermination, as was being applied to the subject nationalities of the dissolved AustroHungarian and Ottoman Empires.

Various political parties, the most important of which were the NNDP (Nigerian National Democratic Party) and the NYM (Nigerian Youth Movement), straddled the period 1919 and 1944 when the biggest and most vibrant nationalist movementthe NCNC (National Convention of Nigeria and the Cameroons) was formed in 1944 and headed

by Herbert Macaulay, the grandson of Bishop Ajayi Crowther, the Yoruba boy from Oshoogun enslaved and later educated in Freetown and London before becoming the first black African bishop of the Niger CMS mission. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the American educated Igbo man was the secretary of this nascent political organization. The Ibo state Union was formed the same year and later became a corporate body in the NCNC and began to play significant roles in the party.

Obafemi Awolowo, in reaction to this formed the Egbe Omo Oduduwa in 1947 to rally the Yoruba and to protect their interest. This was in response to the Arthur Richards constitution which divided Nigeria into three regions: namely North with Kaduna as its capital, East with its capital in Enugu and West with Ibadan as its capital.

Obafemi Awolowo founded the Action Group in 1951, which immediately became the ruling party in the west after an indirect election based on limited franchise. He was later to

become premier of the region and to run one of the most successful and forward-looking governments in tropical Africa, until he resigned in 1959 with the hope of becoming the prime minister of Nigeria after the preindependence election of 1959.

Unfortunately for him this was not to be. His failure was to have ramifications not only for Yorubaland but the entire country.

The prominent role of the Yoruba in the political life of Nigeria was second to none at least up to 1944, and this was because since 1886, there were Yoruba lawyers and doctors beginning with the Ijesha Sapara Williamses. Thus, it was natural for them to assume the role of leaders until the whole country began to come together into the main stream of politics in the 1950s. But as it is commonly said, politics is first local before it becomes national. This was so in Yorubaland.

During the struggle for power in western Nigeria before independence, political affiliation reflected the fault line of the civil wars in Yorubaland. The Oyo people mostly followed the lead of Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu into the NCNC (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons), while non-Oyo people in rural Ekiti, Ijesha, Igbomina and Ife voted with the Action Group. In fact, the aggressive boisterousness of Adelabu (penkelemesi), sometimes reminded people of the hurly burly days of Oyo domination of Yorubaland. There were however urban areas like Ilesha, Akure, Ondo, Ado-Ekiti and Ikare which largely voted for the NCNC. This may of course be because since 1944, the NCNC had already been planted into the consciousness of the urbanized Yoruba in these towns. The urban areas were also where educational institutions were located, and missionary enterprise was at its highest in its impact. Hence, the control and influence of the Obas and traditional institutions were on the wane. This point is important because the Action Group was heavily dependent on the Obas as guardians of the home of Oduduwa. The party itself had sprung out of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa.

CRISIS AND DIVISION IN YORUBA POLITICS Crisis seems to be a second nature in politics Earlier in the politics of Lagos, the NYM had broken up when in 1941 there was a vacancy in the then legislative council of Nigeria and Earnest Ikoli, an Ijaw wanted to contest, and he was backed by

most of the important Yoruba leaders in Lagos, including the up and coming Obafemi Awolowo based in Ibadan. Nnamdi Azikiwe and others supported Samuel Akisanya who later became Odemo of Ishara. Azikiwe ironically branded supporters of Ikoli as tribalists. It was a complicated story in which Awolowo would end up being branded a tribalist for supporting an Ijaw man against an Ijebu man who was seen as a proxy of an Ibo man.

This was to be the harbinger of future political divisions in Yorubaland. When the crisis in the Action Group broke out in 1962, it invariably took the form of the Oyo against non-Oyo. This was of course due to the exploitation of history by Chief S. L. Akintola, an Ogbomosho man, who used everything he had to survive a bitter political battle with an Ijebu man. The Ijebu generally attracted hostility to themselves because of their history of blocking for economic reasons the route to the coast against the Ibadan in the 19th century. Thus, all Ijebu people were seen as closet opponents of the Oyo speaking people. In spite of Awolowo having lived most of his life in Ibadan, he was never totally accepted as an Ibadan man. The same tendency was witnessed during the second republic, when the Titans of Ibadan politics like chief AdisaAkinloye and R. A. Akinjide went against the general trend in Yorubaland of supporting Awolowo and his UPN. This was the continuation of the antagonism between the Awolowo and Akintola factions of Yoruba politics.

This division seems to have continued until recently. Leading figures of the previous ruling party in Nigeria, the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party), in the south west were mostly remnants of the Akintola tradition in Yoruba politics. In the current dispensation of the fourth republic, those who found their political home in the PDP could be traced to the NPC and NPN, while those in the AD/ACN/APC, can be traced largely to the Action Group and the Unity party of Nigeria (UPN). The political division and tendency in Yorubaland appears frozen for all times.

THE ÌLORIN AND FULANI FA C T O R S I N Y O R Ù B Á POLITICS The Akintola tendency is seen in terms of a replay of Yoruba politics of Afonja's betrayal of the Alaafin, and his own betrayal by Alimi and his son Abdul Salaam.

Association with the Fulani regarded as Yoruba's traditional enemies is seen as betrayal of Yoruba cause and interest. This is because of the 19th century seizure of Ilorin by Abdul Salaam, the son of Sheikh Alimi the Fulani cleric, who came to Ilorin as an itinerant preacher and was tolerated by Afonja the Are Ona Kakanfo of Oyo. Afonja was betrayed when the Muslim ummah in Ilorin, led by Abdul Salaam raised the flag of revolt against Afonja and Oyo, during which Afonja was killed and Ilorin became independent of Oyo and became an emirate under the Sokoto caliphate. The Ilorin episode has not been completely appreciated by historians.

Turn to page 19

PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018 | 19

FOR THE RECORD Contd. from page 18 First of all, the coming of Muslims to Ilorin and Oyo itself d u r i n g t h e 1 8 t h c e n t u r y, introduced Islam into the empire which undermined the imperial religion of Sango, which was a deification of the 15th century Alaafin. Many people in the empire were converted to Islam thus releasing them from loyalty to theAlaafin.

The Are Ona Kakanfo Afonja himself, may have been a closet Muslim or perhaps he wanted to use the Muslims to bid for the throne himself. He was therefore riding the tiger only to find himself inside it. Some of those who fought with Abdul Salaam were Yoruba generals like Solagberu, who was a Muslim and saw the conflict as a jihad against non-believers. The upshot of the Ilorin episode was that Oyo was destroyed from within by the coming of Islam. Modern Yoruba people, however, see the Ilorin seizure as a humiliation of the Yoruba and any political leader associating with the north was immediately branded another Afonja who allied with foreigners to betray the Alaafin and the Yoruba. This is in spite of the fact that for sixteen years, virtually the whole of non-Oyo speaking Yoruba people were fighting against Oyo/Ibadan imperialism in the 19th century. In that fight, the Ekiti Parapo confederacy of the Ekiti, Ijesha, Igbomina, Akoko, and Ife allied themselves with the Ilorin in their resistance against the Oyo/Ibadan forces which were also fighting Ilorin.

The sense of pan Yoruba feeling was not there yet and it did not really develop until the late 1940s.

This had to be deliberately nurtured by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, through the founding of the Egbe Omo Oduduwa in 1947 which metamorphosed into the Action Group in 1951. Before that time the ethnic horizon of most Yoruba did not go beyond being Ekiti, Ijesha or Ijebu, Owu, Oyo, Igbomina and so on. We can therefore say politics created the pan Yoruba feeling, but ironically, the living history of the Yoruba undermined that pan Yoruba feeling. The result is that until the brief near unanimity of Yoruba support for chief Awolowo's Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) in 1979, Yoruba people have always spoken with several political

‘

Under the current political dispensation in Nigeria, in which political forces in Yorubaland and the north are allied, questions have been asked whether this constitutes a break with the past. What is the difference between the opportunistic politics of Akintola, allying himself with the north to survive and Bola Ahmed Tinubu, allying with Muhammadu Buhari now? They ask.

’

tongues, thus, reminding one of General Charles de Gaulle's dismissive description of the French people that if you lock up two of them in a room to form a political party they will come up with three. This is what some have called the curse of politics in Yorubaland. But is it really something to be deprecated in a plural society like Nigeria? Will it not be good for Yoruba people and Nigeria as a whole if we encourage the blooming of a million political flowers in our country? If we all sleep facing the same place how will we be able to see other directions? There is nothing wrong with Yoruba people coming up with several ideas, options and directions about who to associate with. What we should plead against is violence arising from political differences.

The sore point of Ilorin's political and administrative but not cultural separation from Yoruba land need not divide people of the same culture and language. Ilorin province, including the great town of Offa, is however still part of Nigeria and whatever boundary separating it from the rest of Yorubaland is mere administrative convenience.

It is not as bad as that separating Sabe, Ajase, and Ketu now in the Republic of Benin from the rest of Yorubaland. In recent times the people of Yoruba tongue there have found it important to visit and associate with the wider Yoruba world of Ogun State. It is surprising that in spite of French colonial assimilationist policy to obliterate the African culture, the Yorubas in Benin have survived and the institution of Obaship has thrived.

Under the current political dispensation in Nigeria, in which political forces in Yorubaland and the north are allied, questions have been asked whether this constitutes a break with the past.

What is the difference between the opportunistic politics of Akintola, allying himself with the north to survive and Bola Ahmed Tinubu, allying with Muhammadu Buhari now? They ask. The answer is of course that this alliance was presumably negotiated between apparently equal factions of the political elite. Although, the parochialism if not nepotism, characterizing most of President Muhammad Buhari's appointments gives one concern. The Yoruba should deprecate this tendency and refuse to participate in it, but only demanding what justly belongs to it. Yoruba peoples concept of "Omoluabi" is a belief in fairness and equity. This will not allow them to collude with the Hausas and Fulanis to corner all appointments and resources, without equitable sharing of them with other ethnic groups in Nigeria.

RESTRUCTURING OF NIGERIA It is this feeling that makes the Tinubu faction of the APC to be favorably disposed to some form of restructuring of the country and designing a new political, administrative and financial architecture, including fiscal federalism to remove the bogey of domination of one group by the others.

The modern political history of the Yoruba, starting appropriately with Awolowo is known for its contribution of the federal idea to political discourse in Nigeria.

Implicit in this is that no one group, or state should be big enough to dominate or overwhelm all others put together. This is basic to Professor John Wheare's ‘Principle of Federalism’. The federal principle has now been bought even by some segments of the northern political leadership.

The Igbos who were previously deluded about national unity and unitary government, have now bought into the federal idea and the minorities, especially those in the Niger delta, seem to be on board for selfish economic reasons.

The force of our history in Yorubaland compels us to lead the way of restructuring along proper federal lines, because it is good for the Federal Republic of Nigeria and it is good for Yorubaland.

Chief Awolowo, while pushing the federal idea during the struggle for independence, said one can be a Yoruba patriot and Nigerian nationalist at the same time. I agree that there should be no conflict between patriotism and nationalism. What shape the restructuring should take, will have to be negotiated. Awolowo wanted all Yorubas including those in Kwara, Kogi and Edo to be in one state. It is a good idea, but it is apparently unrealizable.

What is possible is not reversion to the old three or four regions, but a restructure based on economic viability and not the present states of misery and beggary, where salaries are not paid and all resources are gulped up by administrative excesses and political extravaganza. Perhaps we should go back to Gowon's twelve state structure with a heavy dose of economic viability and superimposed on it should be the principle of fiscal federalism where each state would survive on its own economic bootstrap.The present situation of the Centre, creating states and local governments is not only absurd but an anomaly which contradicts the essence of federalism. In normal federations like Canada, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States, it is the states that create and fund the federal government and not the other way around. When we embraced the federal idea in Nigeria in 1957, the states funded the federal government, and this was so until the military took over government and shaped the country in its own military-unitary way of command. Peace has eluded us since then and we must go back to the period of correct relations between the Centre and the periphery in terms of viable state structure. This is the challenge facing Yoruba and Nigerian politics now and in the future. All stake holders, including traditional rulers like our Obas must be engaged in finding a path for the Yoruba in the politics of Nigeria.

THE ROLE OF OBAS AND T R A D I T I O N A L INSTITUTIONS I want to conclude this lecture by focusing on the institution of the Oba in Yoruba politics.

I have once described Nigeria as a republic of a thousand kings which sounds contradictory, because monarchies ordinarily should not co-exist with a republic. When faced with this problem, India simply abolished the various kingdoms ruled by

powerful Maharajahs but left them with their considerable wealth. No one can do the same and survive in Nigeria. In the past, politicians have removed powerful rulers like Alaafin Adeyemi 1, by the Awolowo government in western Nigeria in 1954. Sarkin Kano Muhammad Sanusi was in 1962 removed by the Sir Ahmadu Bello government and General Sanni Abacha's government removed the Sultan of Sokoto, Ibrahim Dasuki in 1994. Some of the Obas suffered their salaries being withheld or reduced to pennies during the time of Chief S.L Akintolas government in western Nigeria. It is however unlikely that any Nigerian ruler at the Centre or the state will be strong enough to abolish an institution which the people still support and venerate.

In fact, many of the new rulers are eager to bid for the traditional thrones whenever there are vacancies.

Traditional rulers still provide rallying points for the people's mobilization especially in the rural areas. They also provide channels of communication between governments and citizens. They are also in some cases religious leaders of their communities. This is more apparent in the Islamic Emirates of the north. But it is no less obvious in Yorubaland, where in spite of whatever monotheistic religion an Oba may profess, he still has to carry out religious obligations binding him to the land, the people and the ancestors.

In Ife in particular, no single day goes without the Ooni or his priests propitiating the local gods for one thing or the other. In times of danger, people are more likely to look towards the palace than to an elected politician. The Oba's position is so formidable that politicians know that their support is necessary for electoral success.

Obas are regarded as vice-regal to the Almighty. They are not to be argued with or questioned, “Kábiókòsí” Or Kábíyèsí. They are in the case of Oyo, supposed to have power of life and death (Iku Baba Yeye). This awesomeness of power and influence are most noticeable and glaring in modern Bini, where the Oba is virtually worshiped. Even in an apparently republican Ìbàdàn, the influence of the Olúbàdàn is growing incrementally. The considerable power wielded by Obas in Yorubaland must also come with responsibility.

POWER GOES WITH RESPONSIBILITY !

This is going to be the greatest challenge to the institution of Obaship in these days of modernization. Some of the young Obas coming to the throne must learn to keep intact the mystic and mystery surrounding the institution. They must avoid being seen at every party and social events behaving like ordinary people. Once this becomes the pattern, they will lose all respect and loyalty of the people. This behooves on them to maintain a reasonable distance from the Hoi polloi of the land and stay away from the corrupting influence of money and republican ethics of trade and commerce. Obas, no matter how young are regarded as fathers of the people in Yorubaland. This is why older people must bow, prostrate and kneel down before rulers young

‘

Traditional rulers still provide rallying points for the people's mobilization especially in the rural areas. They also provide channels of communication between governments and citizens. They are also in some cases religious leaders of their communities. This is more apparent in the Islamic Emirates of the north. But it is no less obvious in Yorubaland, where in spite of whatever monotheistic religion an Oba may profess, he still has to carry out religious obligations binding him to the land, the people and the ancestors.

’

enough to be their children.

Respect is not to the person of the ruler but to the institution. I remember visiting my cousin, the Oba of our town and prostrating for someone who was a friend, cousin and school mate of mine but who in return wanted to hug me, I however told him he could no longer do that. He asked me why? and I promptly told him he carried all the power of our ancestors the moment he went through the process of coronation.

He smiled and understood me.

In conclusion, I have pointed out how the history of Yorubaland has affected and is affecting Yoruba politics internally among the people, and externally with the rest of Nigeria, especially the North. It is suggested that the excision of Ilorin from the rest of Yorubaland has been a sore point, but that we should let bye gone be bye gone and realistically deal with the issue politically by forging links with the Kwara and Kogi modern political leaders, instead of harking back to the past.

We must not allow the burden of history to wear us out and weigh us down and to determine the trajectory of our future politics and political alignment at the Centre. We have also suggested that the ideology of progressivism should help in breaking down north/south dichotomy in Nigeria, as is the case in the current APC party imperfect as it may appear.

We are also suggesting that no matter the political differences in Yoruba land we must conduct our politics with tact, civility and decorum characteristic of an ‘Omoluabi’. We have also suggested that for a long time to come, traditional Political leaders, as constituted by the Obas will continue to have a role to play in Yoruba politics and that for the institution to endure, those occupying the traditional thrones must preserve the mystic and the mystery of their posts, lest familiarity breeds contempt.

I thank you. n

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PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 –

FAITH Martin Luther and Ethiopian Christianity: Historical Traces

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f scholars answer these questions in the affirmative, then the standard narrative of the Reformation as a solely European event will need to be revised.

Narratives more open to global exchanges will need to be crafted.

Historians can glean insights into such an alternative narrative from a small cadre of researchers. The renowned German scholar Martin Brecht, George Posfay, Tom G. A. Hardt, Mark Ellingsen, and Martin Wittenberg have all acknow-ledged the presence of Ethiopian Christianity in Luther's thought, even if in a limited manner.

European interest in Ethiopian Christianity already existed in Luther's era. Before and after 1517, Erasmus, Thomas More, Pope Clement VII, and others mentioned the Church in Ethiopia. Ethiopian expatriate communities existed in R o m e , Ve n i c e , C y p r u s , a n d Jerusalem. Luther himself mentions Ethiopia at least 85 times. Among these are references to ancient places and issues, while at least 15 refer to the then-contemporary empire of Christian Ethiopia. From these scattered comments, an historical arc and outline of Luther's understanding of Ethiopian Christianity can be reconstructed.

A few selected quotes offer a sample of Luther's perspective on Ethiopian Christians: “… most of the time when mention is made of the nations that are to be converted to Christ, the Ethiopians are singled out for mention.” (LW 10:349) “For the Ethiopians denote those who have the ardent faith.” (LW 10:412) “… the people of the Ethiopians are said to be the church of the Gentiles …” (LW 10:44) “And thus Ethiopia denotes the church of the Gentiles …” (LW 10:349) “But the church is symbolized and called by the name ‘Ethiopia’…” (LW 10:350) While these statements all have theological implications, it is Luther’s narrative of Ethiopia and his purposes in invoking Ethiopia that should most attract the attention of researchers. For Luther to say that the Christian Church “is symbolized and called by the name ‘Ethiopia’” apparently reflects his belief that the first gentile to convert to Christianity was the Ethiopian profiled in Acts 8 whom tradition, advanced by Eusebius and others, credited with converting the Ethiopian kingdom to Christ, making Ethiopia the first Christian kingdom in history. Though Luther can be excused, of course, for not knowing modern historians’ dating of the emergence of Christianity in Ethiopia to the fourth century, scholars should explore how Luther’s historical narrative of Ethiopia, and the image of Ethiopia as the Church, informed his ecclesiology.

As these few quotes indicate, Luther held the Ethiopian Church in great esteem. Uncorrupted by the Roman papacy, Ethiopian Christianity, according to Luther, possessed apostolic practices which were absent in Roman Catholicism and which Protestants would “adopt” through their own reading of Scripture: communion in both kinds, vernacular Scripture, and married clergy. Absent, mean-while, within the Church in Ethiopia were European practices then under critique by various Protestant reformers: the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, indulgences, purgatory, and marriage as a sacrament.

By 1534 Luther, well established in Wittenberg, had engaged in dialogue with other Protestant reformers and Roman Catholic leaders. In that year Luther welcomed a new voice into his ecumenical dialogue: Michael the Deacon, an Ethiopian cleric.

Recalling his dialogue with Michael, Luther stated: “We have also learned from him, that the rite which we

How might Ethiopian Christianity have influenced the Protestant Reformation? Did Martin Luther make connections between his reforms and the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia, and could Ethiopian Christianity, as understood by Luther, be considered a “forerunner” of the Reformation? These are intriguing questions to ponder as we commemorate the Reformation's 500th anniversary, David D. Daniels writes.

? Caption observe in the use of administration of the Lord's Supper and the Mass, agrees with the Eastern Church.”

Luther expressed his approval of the Church of Ethiopia along with his embrace of Deacon Michael in a letter dated July 4, 1534: “For this reason we ask that good people demonstrate Christian love also to this [Ethiopian] visitor.” According to Luther, Michael responded positively to his articles of the Christian faith, proclaiming: “This is a good creed, that is, faith” (see Martin Luther, Table-Talk, November 17, 1538 [WA, TR 4:152-153, no.

4126]).

George Posfay concludes: “Both Luther and Melanchthon were anxious to talk to this man [Deacon Michael] to get information about the doctrines which were held as Christian truths in his home Church.”

Luther, as Tom Hardt notes, extended full communion to Deacon Michael and the Ethiopian Church, an invitation that Luther notably withheld from the Bohemian Brethren (Hussites) and Reformed Churches connected to Huldrych Zwingli.

Luther acknowledged theological “equivalency” with Ethiopian Christianity, and in his 1534 dialogue with Michael, Luther finally had the opportunity to find out whether his attractive theological portrait of Ethiopian Christianity was historically credible.

For Luther, the Church of Ethiopia had more fidelity to the Christian tradition, and the practices mentioned above were marks of this fidelity.

Thus, the Church in Europe needed to be reformed in the direction of the Church of Ethiopia. Possibly for Luther the Church of Ethiopia was proof that his reform of the Church in Europe had both a biblical and a historical basis.

What seems clear is that Ethiopian Christianity played an important role within Luther's writings. I also believe that the dialogue between Luther and Michael the Deacon is historically significant. In historical terms, it might be on par with the colloquy between Luther and Zwingli. This ecumenical dialogue between Christian Africa and Europe challenges narratives that cast the Reformation as totally the product of “western” civilization. It also counters other narratives that place Europeans in Africa during this era, without studying African Christians in sixteenth-century Europe.

From this discussion, it appears that Luther did make connections between his Protestant reforms and the

Orthodox Church in Ethiopia. For scholars widening their views on Luther's horizon, they can experiment with narratives that incorporate Luther's Ethiopia into the story of the Reformation, with Ethiopian Christianity as its forerunner.

Resources - Brecht, Martin. Martin Luther, Volume 3: The Preservation of the Church, 1532-1546 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993): 59.

- Daniels, David D. “Will African Christians Become A Subject in

Reformation Studies?” In Subject to None, Servant of All: Essays in Christian Scholarship in Honor of Kurt Karl Hendel, ed. Peter Vethanayagamony and Kenneth Sawyer (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2016).

- Ellingsen, Mark. Reclaiming Our Roots: An Inclusive Introduction to Church History, Volume 2: From Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, Jr. (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999): 46, 110.

- H a r d t , To m G . A . “ T h e

Confessional Principle: Church Fellowship in the Ancient and in the Lutheran Church,” Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1999): 27.

- Luther, Martin. D. Martin Luthers Werke (WA) [121 volumes] (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883-2009).

- —. Luther's Works (LW) [55 volumes] (Fortress Press and Concordia Publishing House, 19571986).

- Posfay, George. “The Whole Christian Church on Earth—Luther's Conception of the Universality of the Church,” Lutheran Theological Seminary (Gettysburg) Bulletin, Vol. 72 (1992): 20-43.

- Salvadore, Matteo. The African Prester John and the Birth of Ethiopian-European Relations, 14021555 (New York: Routledge, 2017).

- Webber, David Jay. “'A Person's Informal Confession of Faith Must Also Be Considered': Reflections on the Use of Pastoral Discretion in the Administration of Holy Communion, with Special Reference to the Practice of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod.”

Redeemer Lutheran Church.

Accessed October 30, 2017.

- “Quotable Quotes (on the Scriptures, Confessions, and the Lutheran Church).” Redeemer Lutheran Church. Accessed October 30, 2017.

— Wittenberg, Martin. “Church Fellowship and the Altar Fellowship in the Light of Church History,” trans.

John Bruss, Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1961; reprinted., 1992): 32.

Tribute to an Unsung hero and Life Achiever Politicians and celebrities steal the headlines, whereas there are many others out there who have impacted on humanity in their own modest ways. Their contributions as law-abiding citizens, as well as impacts they have made on the lives of other human beings, mark them out as the unsung heroes of the universe. One of such unsung hero is my late brother, Nathaniel Victor Ajayi Akinola, whose contributions went beyond what he did for his immediate family but also for what he did for those who met him during his life time. He touched very many lives. Dr. Michael Akinola wrote this tribute from Maryland, USA

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athaniel Akinola was born in April 24,1949 to the family of the late Chief Josiah Akinola Oisa and Madam Mary Oja Akinola (nee Alabi). He attended the Local Authority Primary School and had his high school certificate in 1970 from Annunciation School, all at IkereEkiti. He had his National Certificate of Education from College of Education, also at Ikere-Ekiti where he obtained diploma in Mathematics and Physics, then obtained a university degree from the University of Ilorin in 1995. He later went for his Masters in Guidance and Counselling from the same University in 1999.His job experience spanned many areas which include some time with the British-American Insurance Company where he distinguished himself very well, and teaching at various secondary schools. However, the real essence of his life was in his devotion to God and the teachings of Jesus Christ in his capacity as a committed member of The Apostolic Faith Church.

Someone wrote that a productive life does not come by accident, but one must deliberately work it out to make it happen. To really exercise the power of God, one must start emphasizing the great power of His that transcends beyond human understanding. Winning has been described as one that does not start around you but one that begins inside you. So, a winner is someone with that inner joy that nothing,

whatsoever, can take away. As painful as it was for me to write this tribute, I found the needed relief that my brother, Nathaniel Victor Ajayi Akinola was a life achiever. His given and chosen names showed his personality. As a gift of God (Nathaniel), he was an over comer (Victor), and when he was born at Ikere-Ekiti, he was in the more favorable face-down position as if he was praying (Ajayi).

The greatest treasure in life is found in the Lord and my brother found that in his life. His most memorable phrase embraced all his focus in the belief that ‘God’s mercy never dims as it is always at its brightness’. Someone from our own generation has gone to glory but I have seen this as a transition to that glorious life that everyone would want to experience. Death might be a defeat, but it is a stepping-stone to a better life.

Never thought this would come at this time, but God loves you and I could hear you are saying it would be okay; that you are in a better place now.

Nevertheless, you are still here in our minds and in our hearts. We all love you in our thoughts and we can feel you and all these give us the courage and the necessary strength to carry on your legacy, a scriptural legacy that nothing will take away. You taught me different things that have made positive impacts in my life. I could remember when you taught me the different ways of tying a tie. How can I forget that?

You taught me to honor people irrespective of where they come from?

How can I forget that? You taught me

how to write good compositions and essays. I will never forget that. You taught me how to be happy in order to make others happy. That has always been my lifestyle. You showed me that anger is just one letter short of danger. That has made me to avoid being prone to anger.

You showed me that excellence would never come by accident, that there will also be a better way of doing something better. That really helped me in my studies.

Most importantly, you introduced me to the Lord Jesus Christ, and I accepted Him as my Lord and Savior. That, I will ever be grateful to you because you showed me the Light from my early age. That has given me the assurance that one day we shall meet again and never part.

Being Godly and being prayerful do not exclude one from the challenges of life but being Godly and prayerfully -minded give us the assurance that God is behind us, to support us and give us success in life.

Your lifestyle was a great one.

Thank God that you came to my life.

We will surely miss your elegance Mr. President, the only president of immeasurable influence on my humanity. You were born great and you established that.

Survived by his wife and four children, Nathaniel Victor Akinola transitioned into glory on December 09, 2017. n

PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018 | 21

BOOK REVIEW Excerpt from S. AdebanjiAkintoye's“Coming Revolutions In Black Africa”

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he fruits of all these manner and styles of colonial governance came to manifest as soon as independence was achieved in every country. As a result of the largely irrational borders created by imperialist agents, practically all Sub-Saharan African countries were faced immediately at independence by serious border problems. Just any African country amply illustrates this picture of border confusions, but we will start with Nigeria, Africa’s largest country in population and third largest in territorial size at independence. Hardly any one mile of Nigeria’s thousands of miles of borders stands free of serious, and potentially explosive, border conflicts. In its southwestern length it cuts through the homeland of the Yoruba; further north from there, it cuts through the homeland of the Bariba; in the northwest, through the country of the Hausa; in the northeast through the country of the Kanuri and related peoples; in the southeast through the homelands of peoples who straddle the Nigerian-Cameroons border in the Adamawa Mountains and the Cross River swamps. Naturally, since independence, Nigeria has more or less regularly had one border problem or other. The most publicized of such problems has been the dispute with the Cameroons over the Bakassi Peninsula. This dispute started soon after independence, was occasionally marked by armed conflicts, and sometimes threatened outright war between the two countries. It was resolved in 2006 as a result of intensive mediation by the United Nations. Even after that, significant residues of the bad blood have continued to linger. Even as recently as the first months of 2010, there were reports that Nigeria might send, or was sending, troops to the area because of seriously deteriorating security conditions for Nigerians living there.

Though the Bakassi situation has attracted the most attention in the world, it has by no means been the only cause of dispute between Nigeria and the Cameroons. All along their 1,600 miles of border from Lake Chad in the north to the Gulf of Guinea in the south, Nigeria and the Cameroons have been locked in disputes since the 1960’s. Indeed, but for Nigeria’s intimidating size and influence in African affairs, the comparative weakness of the countries that are her neighbors, and her own cautious restraint in her attitudes to border uncertainties, Nigeria should be perpetually engulfed in destabilizing border storms.

Most other African countries have not been that fortunate.

In fact, border conflicts became such a great potential threat to peace in the new Africa in the first years of independence that the OAU had to pass a resolution in 1964 binding all African countries to agree to maintain the borders bequeathed to them by the colonial powers. Even though most members of the OAU subscribed to that resolution, many neighbors have never been able specifically to settle their border disputes.

In eastern Africa, Somalia and Kenya have suffered from serious border difficulties since independence. In fact, the great crisis that destroyed all order and government in Somalia started with multiple border problems – especially with Kenya and with Ethiopia. With a substantial ethnic Somali population inside the Kenyan border provinces, independent Somalia has never recognized the border with Kenya. As soon as Somalia became independent, she began actively to encourage ethnic Somali insurgency inside Kenya and Ethiopia. Her quest for military help for these border situations pushed her into an alliance with the Soviet Union.

Receiving substantial military help from the Soviet Union, Somalia became deeply involved in the Cold War, and that meant very influential enemies from among the Western powers. When a revolution came in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian revolutionary government became Soviet allies, Somalia more or less found herself abandoned by the Soviets – and the fragile political system of Somalia (of clans and clan leaders) fractured under the pressure, and then in 1991 totally collapsed. With the collapse of orderly government in Somalia, her border conflicts became more tense and more confused, producing serious complications with Kenya and then with Ethiopia, and forcing Ethiopia to send troops into Somalia in order to keep peace there.

While battling border troubles with Somalia, Kenya has also had to face border problems with Uganda and, to some extent, with Ethiopia and Sudan. The British took some trouble to demarcate the Kenyan-Ugandan border in 1926, and the two countries subscribed to the 1964 OAU resolution on the preservation of colonial borders. Even so, their border remains unsettled. On their land borders, conflicts are caused by irregular crossings from either side, especially by livestock herders. In the area known as Migingo, the dispute has been particularly intense. The border through Lake Victoria, where no agreed demarcations exist, is even more problematic. And so also is the uncertainty of the border in the Bukwa and Morumeri area where the three countries, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, have conflicting claims. The Kenyan-Ethiopian border has been comparatively peaceful, but it too is occasionally disturbed by conflicting claims of pastoralist communities from both sides. A stretch of territory known as the Elemi Triangle, administered by Kenya, is claimed by Sudan and partly also by Ethiopia. This region of Africa is also the scene of one of the worst inter-state wars on the continent – the war over a disputed borders between Ethiopia and Eritrea. For two years, 1998-2000, this border war reached a peak. In 2000, negotiations produced a settlement, but in spite of that, tension has continued between the two countries. An estimated 70,000 people have lost their lives in these hostilities.

‘

Almost as soon as the independence celebrations ended in Ghana, Kwameh Nkrumah, the hero who had led Ghana into independence, was heard to run against those whom he called “tribalists,” “balkanizers,” “imperialist stooges” — meaning the political elite of the proud kingdom of Ashanti and others. The principal crime of these tribalists and balkanizers was that they happened to believe that a federal constitution, or some sort of arrangement that ensured some local autonomy to the component peoples of their new country, would better serve the interests of all in their new country than the strongly centralized arrangement favoured by Dr. Nkrumah.

It needs to be added, in fairness to Dr. Nkrumah and some other leaders of his generation, that Dr. Nkrumah’s efforts to acquire maximum power for the government of his new country was almost unanimously welcomed by the younger generation of educated Africans of the time ....

’

An even more destabilizing effect of the chaotic seizures of territory by European imperialist agents is that every country created by them in Sub-Saharan Africa is a ‘ramshackle state”. Each is a country comprising many peoples who, if they had been free to choose, are very unlikely to have chosen to belong together in the same country. Since African peoples in many parts of Africa are small in population and territory, it seems inevitable (as earlier pointed out) that, if Africa had had the chance to enter into the 20th century in its own way, many countries that would have evolved in Africa would have been made up of various peoples. However, the circumstances would have been different, and so would the resulting countries. The important fact of history here is that people from another continent came and, without caring about the peoples before them, or about the future of each country they were forcibly creating, or about the future of the peoples they were forcing together into that country, drew up an unthinking map for Africa. The scenario was more or less the same in most cases. Agents of a European nation came to an African ruler and solicited for preferential trade relations for their nationals to the exclusion of other European nationals; a treaty was entered into; when, later, representatives of the said European nation began to assume some authority over the African ruler’s country, the ruler rejected their claims; the European nation declared war and launched an invasion.

Various territories acquired in this way in a contiguous swathe were then given one colonial administration and, ultimately, a name – all in order to minimize the human and financial expenses of colonial administration. And so, a country was born. Each eclectic agglomeration of peoples and territories which was thus created and given a common administration and a name could only be, and has been, a panacea for

instability and troubles.

As should be obvious from these modes of structuring and managing of the various European possessions in the colonial years, it is not merely the combination of many nationalities in each country that has generated the conflicts experienced since independence in the countries of tropical Africa. While the mere act of grouping various nationalities together in a country has some potential for conflicts, conflicts are not necessarily inevitable in multi-nation countries. It is also naturally tempting to make the assumption that most of the conflicts have their roots in pre-colonial patterns of hostility among neighboring peoples. Certainly, there would be conflict situations that can be so traced, but in most cases, it is the discriminations and manipulations perpetrated by the colonial administrations that have set most of the stage for troubles and conflicts. In fact, the inter-ethnic conflicts are a very significant part of the heritage of colonialism in tropical Africa.

Another heritage of colonialism is the lack of stable value systems in the politics and governance of tropical African countries. For members of the new literate elite who had to rule each African country at independence, there was, in all essence, nothing of a solid value system to work with. They were not being called upon to rule according to the norms and values that any of their peoples had evolved and lived by in their history. In their own indigenous systems, Africans and their indigenous rulers had known what rulers might or might not do. That is the essence of legitimacy. Under European colonial rule, there had been essentially nothing that the European colonial ruler might not do. Now that the new leaders of independent Africa were taking over, who knew what value system would, or should, guide their conduct as rulers? As the citizens of every country were being told by their new rulers to feast and dance to welcome independence in, they faced a very uncertain, a very precarious future indeed. Uprooted from their indigenous political and value systems, these new rulers had only the values of the colonizers to hold on to – and that was, to put it mildly, a very shaky pillar indeed. Since the heart of the legitimacy of each European state’s sovereignty over its African possessions had been its power to hold and coerce, the African indigenous successors of the European rulers came to consider the power to hold and coerce as sufficient legitimacy for their own positions as rulers of those possessions. It was blissfully assumed by the new rulers of Africa that each ruler, in order to hold his new country together, only needed to maintain the strength and rigor of the institutions and coercive powers of the new state.

Beyond that, the new rulers had been allowed by the colonial authorities to participate in some veneer of Western democratic political practice in the final years of European colonial rule, but their grafting onto that system was fickle and shoddy in extreme – not only because their apprenticeship had been flighty and chaotic, but also because the system as shown to them was crooked and heavily corrupted. Under the African colonial versions of Western democracy, rigid limits to association and expression were enforced, and those Africans who dared to test those boundaries by criticizing certain aspects of colonial rule invariably ended up in prison.

For instance, the Irish, Welsh or Scottish citizen of Britain enjoyed, throughout the 20th century, the protection of British law to voice Irish, Welsh or Scottish nationalist demands for separation from Britain; but it was a crime for the Yoruba traditional ruler in French Dahomey to make contacts with his traditional subjects beyond the border in British Nigeria – a crime, as would be remembered, punishable by imprisonment and banishment. And the more outspoken African nationalists (like Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Kamuzu Banda, etc.) served prison terms. In Nigeria, it was acceptable to the British that Yoruba people who were consigned to northern Nigeria, separate from the large body of their people who were in southern Nigeria, if they demanded to be regrouped with southern Nigeria, could be treated as criminal insurrectionists. For the men who became the new rulers of African countries after independence, listening to, or discussing with, their subjects was out of the question, and the more outspoken or more irreconcilable critics deserved imprisonment or even detention without trial. Before European colonial rule, indigenous African governments had generally been based on consensus and conciliation, and had been free of all the hash pressures on the citizen that came to be characteristic of colonial and post-colonial rule in Africa.

Yet another kind of corruption of the so-called democratic system of the last years of colonial rule was the falsification of national data and the rigging of elections – all of which the imperial rulers, as will be explained a little more hereunder, commonly engaged in – and passed on to their successors.

Moreover, as a direct consequence of the colonizer’s policies of divide and rule, as well as of repression of all dissent, the men who found themselves standing under the new national flag of every newly independent country and haranguing the citizens were, essentially, strangers to one another. Among them, the task of mutual discovery would soon prove daunting. They had spun about the same rhetoric while demanding liberation from foreign rule. But when that noise was over, did they know or understand one another?

Could they trust one another? The answer was swift to come in many countries.

(BOX)Almost as soon as the independence celebrations ended in Ghana, Kwameh Nkrumah, the hero who had led Ghana into independence, was heard to run against those whom he called “tribalists,” “balkanizers,” “imperialist stooges” — meaning the political elite of the proud kingdom of Ashanti and others. The principal crime of these tribalists

Turn to page 22

22 | PATHFINDER International, Feb. 15 – March 15, 2018

BOOK REVIEW Contd. from page 21 and balkanizers was that they happened to believe that a federal constitution, or some sort of arrangement that ensured some local autonomy to the component peoples of their new country, would better serve the interests of all in their new country than the strongly centralized arrangement favoured

by Dr. Nkrumah. It needs to be added, in fairness to Dr. Nkrumah and some other leaders of his generation, that Dr. Nkrumah’s efforts to acquire maximum power for the government of his new country was almost unanimously welcomed by the younger generation of educated Africans of the time (the youth generation to which this author belonged) as the very best course for Ghana and the rest of Africa. The great pity is that, even today, after decades of experiencing the pitfalls and pains of that manner of leadership and nationbuilding, our leading politicians all over Africa still cling to it.

(BOX) In Congo (Kinshasa), an enormous country with some of the world’s thickest forests and biggest rivers, and with concentrations of human population far removed by vast forests from one another, the hurried alliance which led the country to independence disintegrated within days after independence. Widespread chaos ensued, including secessionist demands by the elite (the handful of men who constituted the literate elite) of some of the provinces. The first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, unrepentantly passionate about his new country and its unity, and about a strongly unifying government for it, quickly fell out with virtually all prominent politicians from other regions of his country. His acceptance of help from the Soviet Union greatly compounded the confusion into which he thus plunged, because it pushed him into the eye of an international storm that he did not know much about. Those who had access to him knew that he was no communist, and that he did not have much clear knowledge or understanding about communism – and that his thinking was apparently to use Soviet help to survive and then, later, to ask the Soviets to go away. But he did not survive the intensified confusion.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, and the most promising African country at independence, trouble started almost immediately after independence. In less than fifteen months after independence, the country began to unravel.

Thus, developments were essentially the same in every country after independence, though troubles were less dramatic in some and slower to come in others.

Each African country confronted at independence then, and has continued to confront, a potpourri of destabilizing problems. On the morning of the day after the independence celebrations in each country, in fact, the attributes of a state were more assumed than real – even though they were assumed exuberantly. The borders were uncertain, shaky, and potentially explosive. Many of the men who were supposed to be in control, the literate elite of various patches of each country, were nervous, uncertain what would be their peoples’ shares in the new dispensation and how it was all going to affect them and their peoples. The traditional political elite, even in the few countries where the masses of the people were still attached to their traditional institutions, had been suppressed and repressed, and could see that they were not going to be consulted or even respected in the new dispensation. Consequently, huge question marks hung over every country and its so-called Independence Constitution.

In the historiography of European colonial rule in Africa, one often encounters the suggestion that each country’s colonial army, comprising persons drawn from various ethnic backgrounds and trained together to defend their common country, represented a nucleus of national unity at independence. In reality, however, ethnic cleavages were very real in the so-called national army of every country; and the pressures exerted on all by the rivalries common in politics tended in every country to affect the cohesion of the military – thus posing strong potential threats to national security. Quite commonly, hostile actions against the government of an African country from the army of the country are not by the army as an establishment, but by some faction within the army. And such actions are often not just against the civilian rulers, but also against some other faction within the army itself. Moreover, the sorts of men commonly recruited into colonial armies were usually the semi-literate (men with, at best, a couple of years of elementary schooling), sometimes even illiterate – men whose capacity to understand country, or duty to country, in the new context, was minimal. Even worse, many a national army, having been created by the colonial administration as a tool for controlling the colony, had in fact been trained and orientated to despise the rising political elite. European colonial officials all over Africa despised the rising African literate elite, and those colonial officials who trained and commanded the colonial armies usually passed such attitudes to their soldiers. Not infrequently, after independence, the indigenous soldiers who became the new commanders were only waiting for the slightest signs of political pitfalls to boot out the ones whom they were used to calling “bloody civilians”. Finally, in any case in which the army boss happened to belong to a nationality different from, and rival to, that of the political bosses, trouble lurked only a little below the surface. In every country, the new leader of government was unknown or unacceptable in large parts of his country.

In most countries, rulers cast around for some slogan, some claptrap, some battle cry, that could ignite “national unity” – Nkrumah’s “African Socialism” or “Pan-Africanism” in Ghana, Leopold Sedar Senghor’s “Negritude” in Senegal, Nigerian leaders’ “Unity in Diversity”, Jomo Kenyatta’s

‘

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, and the most promising African country at independence, trouble started almost immediately after independence. In less than fifteen months after independence, the country began to unravel.

Thus, developments were essentially the same in every country after independence, though troubles were less dramatic in some and slower to come in others.

’

“Harambee” in Kenya, etc. All proved unavailing – and were soon forgotten.

Decades after independence, and in spite of military coups, civil wars, ethnic cleansing and genocide in nearly all countries, the variegated ethnic and cultural composition of each country still loads its political system with extremely heavy burdens. The refusal of the leadership of every country to seek appropriately to find political and constitutional arrangements based on consensus among its various peoples results in endless, willful, constitutional experimentations by the leadership – usually without seeking any inputs from the broad mass of citizens or from the various peoples that make up the country. In virtually every country, therefore, no sooner is a new constitution written than the need for another, a “better” one, becomes pressing.

While growing literacy may appear to foster, to some extent and for some occasions, an acceptance of the new country by some members of its various peoples, the stronger tendency has been that, in the context of bruising inter-ethnic rivalries and hostilities inherited from colonial times, literacy strengthens each people’s awareness of itself as a distinct cultural entity in the world, with the result that it tends to become more conscious of its cultural heritage, more emphatic about the differences between itself and other groups, more defensive of its interests, and more desirous to control its own affairs and determine its own future.

Consequently, relationships between nationalities in each country, rather than mellowing out, tend to grow sharper. The common experience is that, under the pressure of rivalry with other nations in the same country, nations are highlighting and rediscovering their history and, in the context of the rivalries, are employing the new knowledge to argue some superiority or better claim over their rivals. Dominant nationalities in each country seek to sustain their dominance or even to hold on to a monopoly control of their country’s government; and the other nationalities mount various types of resistance.

Nationalities that had had little or no contacts with each other in pre-colonial times, and therefore no historical reason to be hostile to each other, nevertheless become bitter political rivals, or even enemies, in the modern country. For instance, the highly literate Yoruba and Igbo of Nigeria (two of Africa’s most literate peoples and, incidentally, two of Africa’s largest peoples in population and territory), though they have no record of contacts or mutual hostility in their pre-colonial history, today harbor deep, virtually irresoluble suspicions of each other, even while both solidly oppose, and would do anything to resist, Hausa-Fulani pretensions of domination over Nigeria. As Sudan and Rwanda, and later South Sudan, have shown, in the hands of two peoples with some history of conflicts or of subordination of one to the other under European colonial rule, competition for political positioning in the new country can be unimaginably bitter and produce the darkest of horrors.

Furthermore, in the midst of the sometimes nebulous promotion of “national unity” by rulers or dominant groups, component nationalities that evince some distinctive strengths or capabilities often risk becoming suspect or even odious. In Nigeria since independence, the large Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria, who had evolved Black Africa’s most advanced urban civilization centuries before the advent of British colonialism, who adopted Western education more quickly in the mid-19th century, and more seriously, than all the other peoples of the later country of Nigeria, and whose homeland has remained consistently in the forefront of development and modernization in Nigeria, have usually lived under hostility from every federal administration of the Nigerian federation. Any nationality that is split between neighboring countries and manifests strong feelings of attachment with the other part of itself in the other country also risks being odious in the country to which it belongs. In

the worst of cases, such suspect or odious groups risk actual danger of attack from other groups or from even their country’s government. Among the worst cases, Idi Amin as ruler of Uganda seemed dead set on exterminating the Acholi people of his country. The world hears little or nothing of the nationalism of the Bakongo of west-central Africa, the large people of the once considerable kingdom of the Kongo who are today estimated to constitute about 14% of the population of Angola, about 16% of Congo (Kinshasa), and about 48% of Congo (Brazzaville) – a total population variously estimated at as low as five million and as high as about eleven million.

Bakongo nationalism is a persistent feature of the politics of these countries. Its shape tends to differ from country to country, sometimes with a tendency towards secessionism.

Increasingly since the 1960s, one of its strong manifestation has been a Bakongo fundamentalist movement for the unification of all Bakongo into one country with the name Kongo DiaNtotela (Kongo United States) – in order to revive the historic glory of their Bakongo nation of the time of 15th century Kongo Kingdom. Not surprisingly, while the Bakongo are influential in some of the countries to which they belong, they are suspect in others. ABAKO, the party founded by the Bakongo literate elite of the Belgian Congo in the last years of Belgian rule, was a major member of the alliance of parties that led the Congo to independence. Its leader, Joseph Kasavubu, served as the country’s first president — with Patrice Lumumba from another part of the country and another party serving as Prime Minister. In Angola, in contrast, the Portuguese came down particularly heavily on the Bakongo following the Angolan anti-Portuguese revolt of 1961, displacing hundreds of thousands of them, who then took refuge in Congo (Kinshasa). In the Angolan civil war, Bakongo nationalism played a considerable role in the groups fighting against the MPLA, whose leaders were mostly men of mestizo origin (people of mixed African and Portuguese blood living mostly in and around the capital city and on the coast). Bakongo solidarity also played some part in the Mobutu support for such Angolan groups as the FLNA of Holden Roberto, a member of the Bakongo nationality. With Angolan rulers, therefore, the Bakongo have been sometimes suspect, and that has earned them repression and mass killings. In a 1993 Angolan incident now known as “Bloody Friday”, some 4,000 to 6,000 Bakongo were killed in one day.

In many African countries, some national groups dare not freely express their true desires, out of fear of having latent hostilities whipped up against them by the powerful agencies of government.

A strong, pervasive, culture of democracy, if introduced early by the European founders of these African countries and operated honestly, might probably have enabled each country to chart a more stable political path. In response to this, the former imperial overlords often claim, with much of the world believing them, that before they gave up Africa, they taught democracy to their African subjects. Their claims are not true.

European rule in Africa was, as earlier pointed out, always ultimately a dictatorship by a few white officials, upheld by police and military force, with absolute powers to limit or prevent freedom of expression and association. Its most outspoken critics invariably ended up in prison, so that many of the first rulers of independent African countries were alumni of colonial prisons. As independence became inevitable after the Second World War, most imperial overlords began to introduce some aspects of representative government, resulting in political parties and elections, as preparation for post-independence governments. Almost in every country, however, these developments came too late. In Congo (Kinshasa) the only election before independence came on the eve of independence.

But even worse, the imperial authorities did not let the nascent political development operate freely and fairly. The imperial policy of promoting a favoured group to power usually resulted in official tampering with the political process. The pre-independence elections in many countries were rigged by the colonial governments. The lessons from the widespread official fraud sank and were to become the vogue among African rulers after independence. The wellknown technique is to speak the mellifluous language of popular politics; acknowledge the people as source of political power; do the electioneering campaign rounds; then, at election, use the power of position as ruler to manufacture the election results. And if voices of protest arise, the African ruler knows what the colonial administration used to do in such situations – namely, manipulate the courts to uphold the fraud, face the world with a fait accompli, and go on. At any point in this whole process, the ultimate answer exists in reserve - to unleash the coercive agencies of government to intimidate and repress opponents and silence the press and other organizations like labor unions, students’ bodies, etc.

That, for Africa by and large, is democracy as it was taught by former imperialist rulers.

For these reasons, loyalty to the true purposes and intentions of democracy, and faith in democracy and in elections, rather than growing, have both steadily declined in independent African countries. According to the Guinea Bissau economist, Carlos Lopes, who was for some time the resident United Nations representative in independent Zimbabwe, Africans would perhaps fare better if they gave more priority to the concept of “tolerance” over that of “democracy”, because elections have commonly been used on the continent to “legitimize authoritarian governments”, often to annihilate the opposition, often to exclude those who are “different” ethnically or linguistically – as a result of which election has tended to become “a recipe for using democracy perversely, for obtaining a result opposite to democracy’s real aims.” n

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China Inside Africa l Evening classes at the University of Zimbabwe’s CI are open to the public

Contd. from the back page scholarship, he saw opportunity everywhere. Seven years later he came back to Zimbabwe with a PhD in Chinese linguistics and coauthored the first Shona-Chinese dictionary.

In him, the University of Zimbabwe also gained a very proChina member of staff who selfcensors as a matter of course, and whose classes on Chinese culture never touch on politics, he said – even when politics would actually provide some useful context for students who are getting part of their education in China. Like the teachers who come from China to work in Confucius Institutes around the world, he is aware of the spoken and unspoken rules, and of which lines not to cross.

That’s a pretty good return on the Chinese Scholarship Council’s investment, I’d say.

Several other staff members have followed in Professor Mushangwe’s footsteps, and their CI now has seven Zimbabweans in a team of about 18 Mandarin teachers. Other CIs also hope to train enough teachers to run their CIs’ Chinese courses, but Zimbabwe’s is the only one I visited where it’s already happening. It’s a model CI, and has won “CI of the year” twice.

And then to Zambia Soft power and Confucius Institutes As I said at the beginning of this presentation, CIs are central to China’s global soft power

campaign. For the first time, China is directly competing with the West for influence, and in the education sector, it’s winning.

China is now the world’s most popular destination for Anglophone African students studying abroad, having overtaken the US and UK. I don’t have figures on exactly how much China is spending on scholarships or initiatives like CIs in particular, but overall China spends around $10bn a year on building its image abroad. This varies from boosting aid outflows, to developing an international media network, and initiatives like the CIs which promote a certain version of China’s values, traditions, culture, and language.

Kung Fu is one example of how Chinese culture is improving China’s image. Zambia’s CI offers free Kung Fu classes four days a week, and now it has a troupe of martial artists who perform at CI and Chinese embassy events.

Meanwhile, in Tanzania Tanzania’s two CIs are only three years old, but demand for Chinese language courses is growing fast. CI teachers already run courses in six other universities and four secondary schools. And, just like at universities, opportunities to visit China are regularly dangled in front of children and their parents as motivation for taking Chinese classes.

Exposing students to Chinese culture and language – particularly at a young age – has to

l This is the University of Zambia’s brand-new CI premises, built by the

Chinese government, completed last year.

‘

Professor Mushangwe was the first Zimbabwean to get a PhD in Chinese Linguistics, and he came across as an excellent teacher. This must be at least partly because he’s been through a similar language learning process, and can relate to Zimbabweans’ experience of it.

’

be the most effective way of shaping people’s perceptions of China from the ground up.

Trouble in paradise Of course, the opinions I’ve formed during my research aren’t shared by everyone. My concerns about the negative impact that CIs can have on academic freedom at universities and schools is just one example.

Earlier this year, the National Association of Scholars in the US called on universities to close their Confucius Institutes. The University of Chicago’s CI was closed in 2014 after more than 100 faculty members signed a petition

that expressed concerns about Hanban’s role in the hiring and training of teachers, which “ s u b j e c t s t h e u n i v e r s i t y ’s academic program to the political constraints on free speech and belief that are specific to the People’s Republic of China.” In 2014, organizers of a Chinese studies conference in Europe accused Hanban, a sponsor of the conference, of outright censorship after the Chief Executive of the world’s CIs had all the pages relating to Taiwan torn out of conference materials.

Although each university has different terms and conditions for partnership, Hanban typically commits to providing around $150,000 in start-up funding for the institutes in the US, which is followed by annual grants, plus textbooks and teaching materials.

Hanban also pays for the salaries and airfares of the Chinese language teachers it sends, in many cases. The host universities are expected to offer support on one way or another, which may be in the form of office and classroom space, or staff’s time.

The recommendation to close CIs is specific to the US, but it also highlights the fact that an amount similar to $150,000 cannot be as easily forgone by a university in Zambia or Zimbabwe or Tanzania.

And if you’ve just been presented with a brand-new CI building, you’re obliged – and possibly legally required – to maintain the partnership.

Anew lingua franca?

I believe that, within a couple of decades, China will succeed in making Mandarin one of several lingua franca in some parts of Africa. Whether you choose to see this as cultural hegemony, a “new world order”, or just an apolitical development or a practical response to the increase in Africa’s Chinese population is up to you.

In both Zambia and Tanzania, I randomly overheard locals speaking to one another in Mandarin on a couple of occasions. I heard two young Zambian women chatting in Chinese in Lusaka airport (which they were presumably treating as a “secret language”), I heard two men in Zanzibar calling out to one another in the street in Chinese, and I saw a group of Tanzanian teenagers on a ferry trying to get a reaction out of a pair of Chinese tourists by speaking loudly in Mandarin.

Then one afternoon in a playground in Dar Es Salaam, a group of children were passing me on their way home from school.

They stared at me, some giggled, some waved, but one child saw my foreign face and called out “Nihao!” Is foreignness synonymous with Chineseness in some parts of Africa? With Chinese investment, Chinese businesses, and Chinese immigrants all over the continent, in the next couple of decades, could the English “Hello” – which also comes from far away – be gradually replaced by “Nihao”?

Several other staff members have followed i n P r o f e s s o r Mushangwe’s footsteps, and their CI now has seven Zimbabweans in a team of about 18 Mandarin teachers. Other CIs also hope to train enough teachers to run their CIs’ Chinese c o u r s e s , b u t Zimbabwe’s is the only one I visited where it’s already happening. It’s a model CI, and has won “CI of the year” twice. l The University of Cape Town’s Upper Campus, where the CI is housed

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China Inside Africa Inside Africa’s Confucius Institutes I

By Claire van den Heever

’ll start by saying a bit about what exactly Confucius Institutes are, in case we’re not all equally familiar with them.

Confucius Institutes – or CIs –are language and culture centers that are funded by Hanban, a Chinese state-run non-profit organization that falls under the Ministry of Education.

They are often compared – by Hanban, and by outsiders – to the UK’s British Council, Germany’s Goethe Institute or France’s Alliance Francaise, which all teach and promote their own country’s languages, and receive government funding to do so. But one crucial difference is that CIs are based on university campuses.

In cases where universities don’t have their own Chinese courses in place, the CI will often double as the Chinese department. That means that the Chinese government is making decisions about those universities’ Chinese curriculum.

So, why am I mentioning that, or why does it matter? “They’re just teaching language,” people often say. But language doesn’t exist in a vacuum. I’d argue that language is inextricable from culture, and that the languages we speak (and think in) shape how we see and interact with the world.

As you would expect – and like Alliance Francaise and the others, to some extent – CIs teach a certain selective and rather shinily-packaged version of Chinese culture. Beginner students who can barely string a sentence together are required to memorize a list of China’s “great inventions”: the compass, gunpowder, and so on, just to give a quick example. The fact that they have a physical presence on campuses has been known to influence academic proceedings and on-campus activities, which has also led some US and Canadian universities to suspend their contracts with Hanban and close their CIs. CIs are central to China’s global soft power campaign, which I’ll say more about a bit later. The first CI was set up in Seoul in 2004, and since then 516 have opened in 142 countries. Over 40 of those countries are inAfrica.

All of this convinced me that it was important to find out what goes on inside CIs. What’s being taught, what’s not being taught?

To what extent are CIs a m i c r o c o s m o f C h i n a ’s relationship with its host country?

And, most importantly – I think – how are CIs shaping ordinary Africans’ perceptions of China from the ground up? I didn’t get straightforward answers to all these questions of course, but I’ll share some of my observations,

This is a presentation I made on 20th November at the annual AfricaChina Journalists Forum at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. It describes the investigation that took me to Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania to be a fly on the wall in the classrooms where China’s Ministry of Education is helping to shape the way people think about the world’s next superpower.

and the opinions I formed in the process.

I live in Cape Town, so I started my fieldwork by taking a couple of evening classes at the CI at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Being a student in a classroom really was the best vantage point for my research, I feel: it allowed me to be a fly on the wall, which is an enviable position. My Chinese skills meant that I could blend in during the classes, I could take as many notes as I wanted – and, often, I found that the content of the classes was as worth noting down as some of the subtler dynamics at play.

Going undercover is a grey area that I’ve since discussed with several other media practitioners.

Did I lie about being a student?

Not exactly. I’ve spent several years being a Chinese student, I still take private lessons and, when I eventually take another HSK proficiency exam, I will formally be a Mandarin student again. I’ll more than likely enroll at one of SouthAfrica’s CIs to do that, too.

Another advantage to this approach was that I was invited into CI teacher’s conversations – and, sometimes, their homes – by simple virtue of the fact that I spoke their language. To some extent, it gave me the benefit of both an insider’s and an outsider’s perspective. It did also mean that later, I had to get consent to attach people’s names to quotes but, as I

wasn’t writing an overly negative piece, it hasn’t been a problem so far.

To Zimbabwe From UCT, I visited Harare’s CI, hosted at the University of Zimbabwe. Technically, I was a student visiting from UCT’s CI, which made it slightly easier to get permission to sit in on a few classes.

In the lobby, I was greeted by a well-polished bust of Confucius himself. I asked two students where I’d find the university

administrator who had confirmed my visit, but they didn’t know.

“Maybe she’s the South African,” one student said to the o t h e r, a n d I a w k w a r d l y interrupted, “Yup, that’s me”.

Their class was the first I was scheduled to sit in on, so they showed me to the classroom.

I wasn’t expecting one Professor Mushangwe to be the Chinese teacher, but he gave me a very friendly Nihao, and quickly sized me and my Chinese skills up.

Professor Mushangwe was the

first Zimbabwean to get a Ph.D. in Chinese Linguistics, and he came across as an excellent teacher.

This must be at least partly because he’s been through a similar language learning process, and can relate to Zimbabweans’ experience of it.

He asked me to introduce myself to the class in Chinese and, to my dismay, they clapped at the end. “Tamen gang kaishi”, he said – they’ve just started studying, which explained the applause.

Like some of the other CIs I visited, the University of Zimbabwe’s CI doubles as the Chinese department and offers credit-bearing courses. These were first year students taking Chinese as a major.

He called on the students to read Chinese sentences aloud from a screen as revision for their exams.

One young woman in the front row raised her hand to answer almost every question.

Nancy Mufudza was one of several students I met who had her sights set on getting a scholarship to study in China. A few months later when she told me her parents couldn’t pay her fees anymore, I realized how much of an impact a scholarship would have on her and her family, and how that would influence their view of China too.

Evening classes at the University of Zimbabwe’s CI are open to the public Nancy, and virtually all of the students I spoke to in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania, see Chinese language skills as a bridge to opportunity. Learning Chinese was the first step to working and doing business with China, they said. Several of them also said that the Look East Policy had been a factor in their decision to study Chinese.

The “Look East” Policy was originally a Zimbabwean government response to westernimposed sanctions, but it’s evolved to represent a broader trend within Africa to try and emulate the economic model which lifted perhaps as many as 800 million Chinese out of poverty. For people from African countries who consider themselves as part of this process, it’s only logical that they’d see special appeal in studying at the same Chinese universities that educated the engineers and surveyors and economists who transformed China.

Professor Mushangwe’s very last-minute decision to accept a scholarship from the Chinese Scholarship Council ended up changing the course of his career.

He went to China to do his Master’s in Theatre Arts and, after a one-year Chinese course which he took as a condition of the Turn to page 23

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