Interview
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| Distinguished Professor Emeritus,Ndiva Kofele Kale |
Ndiva
Kofele Kale is a patriotic Cameroonian who hails from Fako Division. This Barrister-at-Law,
author, politician and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus resides in Mokunda ,Buea-Cameroon since his retirement in 2017.But he visits the US from time to time. He is so commited to contributing in one way or the other
to nation-building.
Although not invited to participate at the
recent Southwest Peace and Development Forum in Buea,Prof Kale ,currently in
the USA, had the opportunity to read its
resolutions and media reports.
In an exclusive (online) interview with The Horizon’s
Contributing Editor, Christopher Ambe, Prof Kale, among other issues, gave his
views about the forum, the co-existence of natives of Southwest
and “settlers”, sale of Fako Land, the imprisonment of Ex-Minister Marafa
Hamidou Yaya and the SDF crisis.
--------------------------------------------------------------Excerpts:
As an elite of
the South West Region, your absence at the recently concluded SW Peace &
Development Forum in Buea was noticeable. Why were you absent?
My absence was noticeable in part, because I had no idea
such a forum had been planned and was not invited to attend. I did not receive
an invitation because I was not in the country. But I do not know.
How’s it
possible that in a list of 100 elites of Fako Division, your name didn’t
appear? We know that when the Major National Dialogue was announced in 2019 you
were not in the country but you still managed to come back and participate.
You are correct. Although I was not in Cameroon when the
date of the National Dialogue in 2019 was announced, someone thought highly
enough of me to invite my presence. So, my invitation came directly from
Yaounde. That was not the case with the Peace
& Development Forum. In any event, there is no point crying over
spilled milk!
But let me at least make this passing observation about the
politics of exclusion when it comes to discussing issues that concern us all.
It has no place in a society like ours in search of solutions to complex
national problems, requiring all-hands-on-deck. It should be condemned in the
strongest possible terms.
Even though you didn’t attend the Forum, I guess you must have
read its resolutions as well as press coverage. What’s your overall take?
The idea of a peace forum that brought together in one place
leaders of opinion in the region was a good one and should be applauded. The
choice of the theme “Peace and Development” was
equally appropriate given the circumstances the two Anglophone regions have
been thrust in since 2017. It is an open secret that the Northwest and Southwest
regions have not enjoyed much peace in the past six years and this absence of
peace has had an adverse effect on their development at all levels.
Yes, I have read the resolutions taken at the Forum and I cannot
find anything groundbreaking. When you read past the obligatory paean to the
Head of State, the rest of the resolutions are cast in hortatory language and have
no binding force, relying only on voluntary compliance. No surprise there.
Were the
objectives of the peace & development forum clearly stated?
I am not sure whether the Forum was intended to provide a blueprint
on how to set up an environment conducive to peaceful coexistence among the
various communities in the region while also kick-starting a stalled
development process. Or whether it was designed to address specifically the
armed conflict in the region?
Because so much was made of the “settler” problem in the
region, I would have expected the Forum to devote some time to explore and
arrive at a plan for horizontal peace.
By this, I mean the modalities for peaceful coexistence between settlers and indigenous
South Westerners.
Almost all the ingredients were present for a fruitful conversation
on the subject except that the Forum was limited to South Westerners. Non-South
Westerners were not allowed to participate even though their ubiquitous
presence in the region was evoked throughout the two days of conferencing.
How do people indigenous to the Southwest expect to address
the subject of peaceful coexistence with the settler population without
engaging them in meaningful discussions when the opportunity to do so is right
at their fingertips? This was clearly a missed opportunity.
Is this the
formula for the return of peace and normalcy in the Anglophone regions of
Cameroon?
No, the format was not suited for this task. No serious
discussion on resolving the Anglophone insurgency can realistically take place
with a gaggle of six hundred participants. Secondly, it will require more than
two days to hammer out a peace agreement between the belligerents. A Forum like
this one usually comes to consecrate agreements already hammered out in
protracted/preliminary talks involving far fewer people. And, most importantly,
representatives of the insurgent groups must be part of any peace equation, but
they did not take part in the Forum. I do not know if they were invited but
decided not to attend.
What is your
overall assessment of the Peace & Development Forum?
My overall assessment of the Forum is that while the IDEA behind
it was a good one, what came out of two days of conferencing struck me as a
waste of valuable time and the frittering of scarce national resources that
could have been deployed to resolve far more pressing problems.
For example, the regional commissioner for Education, who
chaired the Resolutions Committee, could have requested that a part of the
budget for Item Eleven be set aside to replace the roof at the Government High
School, Bokwaongo that was blown off by
the storm that swept through Buea a few weeks ago. Incidentally, that school is
just a stone’s throw from the posh Mountain Hotel where the Forum met!
This assessment may strike some as harsh but when the
euphoria has passed, many will come to the same conclusion.
In the course of
the proceedings, much was said of the relations between settlers and the
indigenous populations of the SWR; the issue of lands, settlers hijacking the
region, etc., what do you have to say on these burning and divisive issues? Can
the two communities coexist peacefully in this Region?
If Cameroon is Africa in miniature, the Southwest Region is
Cameroon in miniature. All the major ethno-cultural currents in the country
have in the last century or so converged here, giving the region a rich and
remarkable ethno-cultural diversity that should be the envy of other regions.
Forum participants it would appear focused less on this aspect and more on the
immigrants who came with their diverse cultural baggage to settle in the Southwest
region.
The ‘settler’ as the bogeyman is a red herring, a canard that
serves as a convenient excuse for many South Westerners to avoid coming to
terms with the demographic explosion within the settler community. “Settlers”
outnumber the Indigenous population by astronomical margins. They know this and
we do too. This poses a serious threat to the autonomy the minority Indigenous
population has always exercised over the political life of the region.
Settlers, so called, have come to stay in the Southwest and there
is precious little we can do about it except, perhaps, exhume the discredited
and long buried Apartheid policy of ‘Bantustanization’
to cage in their numerical superiority. It did not work in South Africa; it will
not work here either!
With the passage of time, the Settler communities will begin
to assert themselves and leverage their numerical strength to obtain their
share of political and economic spoils.
It will not be too long from now for a “Graffi”wing of the
CPDM to emerge from the shadows to challenge head-on the
Bakweri-wing of that party in Fako Division. And brace yourselves, in the not-too-distant
future, we should not be surprised to wake up the morning after a hotly
contested municipal council election to learn that the new Mayor of Buea or
Victoria or Tiko is a ‘bobe’, born and bred in one of these
cities, whose grandparents migrated from Njinikom to the coast two generations
back in search of a better life!
Can you speak directly to this isssue of land grabbing
settlers, particularly in Fako Division?
The fable that is being passed around that “settlers” have
hijacked the Southwest and gobbled up all the fertile lands in the region needs
to be critically examined before it takes on a life of its own.
I give you this example: ten/fifteen years ago the area
where my family farm is located was made up of mostly small family holdings. All
were owned by kinfolk and other Bakweri villagers. Today brand-new settlements
have sprouted where a decade or so ago farms were ubiquitous. Brand new
buildings are dotted all around, all owned by “settlers.” A momentous
transformation of space previously controlled by the Indigenous people but now
under settler domination. This in less than one generation!!
Who sold the land to these settlers where shining new homes
and businesses are now standing? Where did they obtain building permits to
construct their brand-new homes? It is painful to admit that Indigenous
landowners are the ones who voluntarily transferred their land to settlers, in
most cases, at arm’s length transactions.
The permits to build on those lands were all issued by
municipal authorities, all of whom are indigenous to Fako Division. Who then
should we hold responsible for the gobbling up of prime real estate in Fako
Division and other parts of the Southwest region?
What do you see as the likely long term effects of this feud
between settlers and locals on the future of the two Anglophone regions?
Truth be told, the highlighting of the settler/indigenous divide
could not have come at a troubled time. We are in the opening skirmishes of what
promises to be a long-drawn-out struggle to redesign a new Cameroon: new
direction, new leadership, and new institutions.
Now is not the time for the two Anglophone regions to be at
daggers drawn. Rather, we must close ranks, set aside our differences and
present a unified front as we confront a dominant and hegemonic Francophone
majority. All this finger pointing and blame assigning is counterproductive and
undermines Anglophone solidarity!
You’re one of the last surviving leaders of the Bakweri Land
Claims Committee (BLCC), you worked closely with Mola Njoh Litumbe, Chief Moky
Efange, Mola Mbua Mofoke, all of late. If they were alive today what do you
think they would say about the direction the land situation in Fako has taken?
I can only do justice to your question by sharing a quote
from the Tribute I penned for Mola Njoh Litumbe when he made the glorious
transition to the other world:
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| Prof. Ndiva Kofele Kale & Mola Njoh Litumbe(late),ardent defenders of Bakweri ancestral lands rights |
“I am persuaded that as Mola peers down from his celestial
resting place, he would be disappointed to note that the CDC continues to
occupy Bakweri ancestral lands rent-free and the Bakweri political elite, whose
implication could have made a major difference to the status quo, are still
reluctant to embrace the BLCC struggle for which he devoted the last quarter of
his life. Even more saddening, the
Traditional Rulers, in whom Mola placed so much faith and trust as the
Custodians, have turned out to be miserable failures, incapable of acquitting
themselves of their custodial and fiduciary responsibility to the Bakweri
people. Often acting more as enemies of the people than their protectors, these
Chiefs have approached land reclamation with one sole objective in mind, to
make a quick buck. In the process, they have reduced themselves to unscrupulous
land speculators ever-ready to dispose even the slivers of real estate CDC
routinely surrenders to their land-starved communities! Mola would be horrified
to see how these gatekeepers have become plunderers, causing him to ponder
Juvenal’s age-old question Quis
custodiet ipsos custodes (who will guard
the guardians themselves?). Who will protect Bakweri ancestral lands from their
self-proclaimed protectors?”
This excerpt
speaks to and for all the individuals referenced in your question.
You were also the lawyer who held brief
for the Bakweri before the African Human Rights Commission for the return of
their expropriated ancestral lands. Do you have any regrets for the sacrifices
you as well as others made in the struggle to get back Bakweri ancestral lands?
When the Call to
action was sounded, many among the Bakweri political elite—the very ones who today
are shouting from rooftops about the hucksters selling off prime Fako lands to
‘strangers’--; back then they chose to stand on the sidelines sniping, hurling
insults and criticizing the few who answered the Call. They did nothing, and I mean, absolutely
nothing. Instead, they were all too eager to deliver us to the Government as
opposition troublemakers. And as we know too well, in Cameroon’s convoluted approach
to politics, being in or of the opposition is to be considered a traitor! So,
you can begin to imagine what could have happened to us if these ‘great’ men
and women had their wish granted.
Anyway, to your
question, it was a tremendous honor for me to have been entrusted with the BLCC
brief, easily the most important one in my almost four decades at the bar! No,
I have no regrets.
What have you diagnosed as the
disturbing problem with the rapid infrastructural development of Buea and its
high rate of population growth?
I am not an
urbanologist, as you well know, so I hesitate to weigh in on matters outside my
sphere of expertise. Buea is not a planned city, and I blame that on the lack
of zoning. The recent heavy rains accompanied by unprecedented floods are
forcing municipal authorities to take the necessary steps to address this
problem of zoning. They will require enormous resources, political will as well
as the cooperation of the citizens of Buea to accomplish this mission.
You were the lead defense counsel of
Cameroon’s ex- Minister of Territorial Administration, Marafa Hamidou Yaya,who
was jailed for 25 years for embezzlement of public funds. When he was jailed
your client went on appeal and you described the judgment as a miscarriage of
justice. What has become of the appeal case and how healthy is your client?
I can
confidently report to your readers that my client, Mr. Marafa Hamidou Yaya, is
alive and well as he enters the 13th year of his imprisonment at the
Yaounde Secondary Prison (SED}. Although he has had some health challenges and
experienced some difficult moments like the loss of his beloved wife, he is in remarkably
good spirits.
As you rightly
noted, in September 2012 the Mfoundi High Court handed the former Minister of
State i/c Territorial Administration, Mr. Marafa Hamidou Yaya, a 25-year jail term,
subsequently reduced to 20 years on appeal.
In June 2015,
Mr. Marafa challenged his unlawful detention before the United Nations Working
Group on Arbitrary Detention. And in April 2016, the Working Group ruled that
Mr. Marafa’s detention was unlawful in violation of positive international law.
It further demanded Mr. Marafa’s immediate release and compensation for his unlawful
detention. It has been close to 7 years since that decision was handed down and
yet Mr. Marafa is still in incarceration.
The United
Nations Human Rights Committee has weighed in on this matter. All we can do for
now is wait for the Government to respect its international obligations and
release Mr. Marafa.
You were a member of Cameroon
opposition party, SDF and you served as its Shadow Minister of Justice for many
years .But recently you and other party officials opposed the Party Chairman,
Ni John Fru Ndi and you were reportedly dismissed from the party. What is your
take on this?
You are wrong, I
am still a member of the SDF until the High Court of Mfoundi says otherwise. In
questioning the authoritarian lurch the National Chairman had taken in running
party affairs, 27 senior officials of the party (among them two Vice National
Chairpersons, the National Coordinator of the Socialist Women, the National
Organizing Secretary, the National Treasurer, the National Financial Secretary,
the National Communications Secretary, the former Secretary General and several
members of the National Advisory Council of which I am one) met in Mbouda in
June 2022 and addressed a Memorandum to the National Chairman. Thereafter, efforts
were made to meet with him and his senior advisers to discuss and hopefully
resolve any differences amicably. All failed.
In reaction to
these good faith efforts, the National Chairman orchestrated a mass expulsion
from the Party of thirty-four senior officials in violation of the party
constitution, statutes, and regulations. That decision is under review in the
High Court of Mfoundi. It is that court’s final judgment that will decide whether
I am still a member of the SDF. Let us wait and see!
(NB:This interview, which was first published in The Horizon Newspaper ,Cameroon,of May 22,2023 has been updated)
