By Kanute Tangwa aka K(C)anute Tangwa
John Fru Ndi, apparently, was not cast in the mould of most top-notch immediate pre and post-independence Anglophone politicians: he was neither a medic, a teacher, nor a lawyer but an intermediate.
His schooling was basic but profound considering his grasp of the English language and his ability to break down complex social democratic concepts into pidgin English for the teeming mass of Cameroonians.
The rugged hills and valleys of Baba II where he was born on 7 July 1941 forged a trait and personality that would capture and enthral Cameroonians for over 30 years on the political soap box.
His Baba II background was modest from where he was baptised as John by protestant missionaries and named Ni Fru Ndi following tradition, norms and mores of his people though the current violent-political struggle in the former Southern Cameroons has watered down age-old traditional tenets, precepts and mores.
What is in a name, some may ask? John: like John Ngu Foncha or like John Fitzgerald Kennedy? As someone whose idol was Gowon (Go On With One Nigeria) he could only have been an advocate for one and indivisible Cameroon like his precursor John Ngu Foncha. However, he took on some of the traits and character of an Augustine Ngom Jua, the oratorical skills of an Emmanuel Tabi Egbe but less in stature and vision of an EML Endeley, who saw safe harbour in 1961, to plough his way through politics.
He started off wanting to be a pilot in neighbouring Nigeria! But unforeseen events, civil unrest leading up to the military coup and civil war in Nigeria, scuttled his ambition and compelled him to return home.
Though he never propelled an aircraft, he learnt how to steer and propel his primary business: book selling. EBIBI Bookshop became a Fru Ndi trade mark in the North West and South West Regions and beyond. Though he was less known for cultivating and selling vegetables as early as 1966, this activity enabled him to metamorphose into a well-established farmer with plantations and cattle ranches to boot.
At the social level, he was President of the Bamenda-based PWD Football Club from l979 to 1988. His tenure as President of PWD was seemingly a forerunner of his subsequent political battles: PWD Bamenda lost to Dynamo Douala in a memorable 1979 Cameroon Cup Finals. It was quite heart wrenching because before reaching the finals PWD had clipped the wings of giants like Canon of Yaounde and many a Cameroonian football watcher thought Dynamo will be a walkover. Secondly, Abakwa went up in flames following a hotly contested game between PWD Bamenda and Tonnerre Kalara Club of Yaounde. He was also chair of Lions Club International Bamenda Branch from 1987 to 1988.
John Fru Ndi, the family man, lost his first wife, Susan, in 1973 and thereafter took another wife, Rose, with whom he lived together for over twenty-five years bearing and nurturing several children, biological and non-biological. He raised up his children in accordance with Christian precepts and practice. Though a Presbyterian Christian he was a member of the Catholic Focolare Movement and was received by the Pope when he once visited Rome.
Politics, they say, is more obtuse than molecular biology. Politics is ‘serious business.’ As a business that deals primarily with an ever changing human nature and conduct, those who master the game of politics like John Fru Ndi inevitably have a good reading of their environments and actors therein.
John Fru Ndi was known as a politician, a consummate politician who embodied feline courage, chameleonic camouflage as well as the wiliness of the fox. He used these traits in good measure to stay at the helm of the Social Democratic Front party (SDF), to stand and peak for the marginalized Anglophone community, to espouse his idea of a one Cameroon (federal in character), to demand for power to the people, and to protect his vested interests.
Before 1990, John Fru Ndi was an active member of the Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement, CPDM. His constituency was Mezam. When the Chairman of the CPDM, Paul Biya, introduced pluralism within the one-party monolith, John Fru Ndi stood against the late Simon Achidi Achu and lost in 1988. Mr Achidi Achu thereon became an MP and later Prime Minister and Head of Government.
Further to a series of closed door meetings grouping some Anglophone Cameroonians, the Social Democratic Front party was created and launched in May 26, 1990 in Bamenda, precisely at City Chemist Roundabout (Liberty Square) that was heavily militarised. When John Fru Ndi stepped on a makeshift rostrum on that day, he declared urbi et orbi:
Fellow Cameroonians!
Today is the most significant day in the struggle for DEMOCRACY in Cameroon. You are here in your numbers because you do not only have faith in democracy but more so because you are determined to ensure that it works in Cameroon.
Thank you for that faith and determination. Make no mistake and do not allow yourself to be misled or misguided by anyone, no matter his station in life. Democracy has never been handed over to a people on a platter of gold!
For long you have heard several meanings attributed to democracy. Some of these have tended to justify tyrannies. Whether we go back to Aristotle's Athens or we remain in the present with Abraham Lincoln's America, we find ourselves with viable definition; that democracy is about people and the laws that they enact to govern themselves.
And that you should know that the struggle for democracy is not easier today than it was in Greece 2500 years ago. In this context, we share the views of Archbishop Abel Muzorewa when he wonders aloud:
"Why is it that we Africans can go to Britain and I here add Europe and the United States of America and be free to criticise their governments and heads of state without any fear of disappearing the following night or fear of being deported. Why are we afraid of doing it in Africa?
It is a heinous crime in black Africa to open your mouth freely and talk about the doings of the government or head of state. You will get thrown into prison, accused of treason, or simply disappear in such states. Political leaders do not trust their own people. They are tyrannical in the sense that they will not allow criticism."
And yet they were elected by these same people whom they now oppress. We say that democracy is about people because we believe that failure to respect the fundamental freedoms, namely, freedom of conscience and religion, freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, deprive the people of their basic rights, which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as human beings.
The fact that we have had to put up a hard struggle to hold this rally is abundant evidence that we have a long way to go in achieving the democratic process.
Today, we call on you to yell for DEMOCRACY.
For as someone has rightly said, "…unless people yell a lot, they get ignored. You can't afford to get ignored. You must yell because even if you are ignored, your children and your children's children will not get ignored tomorrow".
Whether those who govern us accept it or not, we believe, as others before us have believed and asserted, that the essence of democracy is about local people controlling their day-to-day affairs.
Let us make this clear to all those who are hearing us today that in the view of the Social Democratic Front, the struggle will continue, not only here, but anywhere in the world as long there is someone who is governing and someone who is governed. This struggle can only stop when all the people participate in their own government.
But what we see today is that African leaders have cultivated the tendency of using the vocabulary of democracy to conceal modern forms of dictatorship. It is against this dictatorship and oppression that we join the battle with anyone, and we assure you today that we shall emerge victorious.
The SDF has included DEMOCRACY in its motto because of its fervent belief and conviction that the essence of the democratic process in any society means the denial of JUSTICE and the retardation of DEVELOPMENT. Because where the people are not free to go about their daily chores without undue molestation, they cannot exhibit their skills and talents.
As we have just pointed out, we eschew any form of dictatorship because, in contrast to a true democracy where the people decide what is good for them, dictatorship produces the following results in the words of Argentina's great blind writer Jorge Luis Borges: "…oppression, servility, cruelty and more abominable is the fact that it breeds stupidity."
We have set as one of our goals to rid the Cameroonian society of a system that deprives people from being free men or otherwise punishing them for daring to think freely, associate freely, assemble peacefully and freely.
Let us assure everyone here present that our own view of democracy is one where the people will retain their own society. We are searching ways and means to secure the future for the generation that will follow us. And therefore to be democratic is to disagree about what democracy is."
Finally, we call upon you to stand up and be counted among those who share our democratic ideal. You have nothing to lose but the straight jacket in which, you, as freeborn citizens, have been cast.
Long live the SDF!
Long live Cameroon
Whether the SDF and the Chairman lived up to these expectations thirty years down the road should be an exercise for keen Cameroon political watchers.
However, when he stepped down from the rickety rostrum, hell broke loose. The army machine gunned six Cameroonians, teargassed and wounded several persons. The official government position via its media outlets was that the six death were trampled upon!
Fru Ndi would then take centre stage as chairman of the SDF party. The high water mark of John Fru Ndi’s political career was in October 1992 when he led the Union of Change, a loose coalition of political parties and civil rights organizations, in the presidential elections of that year. His score of 36% as against 40% for incumbent President Paul Biya has never been matched till date in the Cameroon political landscape.
Another high point of Fru Ndi’s political stewardship was the famous meeting with President Paul Biya in Bamenda on December 10, 2010 during the Centenary Celebrations of the Cameroon Armed Forces.
Though an acerbic critic of the CPDM government and an avowed spokesperson for the marginalized Anglophone minority, he was nevertheless a proponent of a one and indivisible Cameroon within a federal structure. His stance regarding the constitutional framework of Cameroon did not go down well with Anglophone separatists who viewed Fru Ndi as a collabo and a sell-out leading to his abduction twice by separatist fighters and his subsequent release.
However, as a peace mendicant such acts did not dampen Fru Ndi’s resolve to see a peaceful resolution of the Anglophone crisis viz he attended the Grand National Dialogue that held from 30 September to 4 October 2019 in Yaounde and bought in toto the late Christian Cardinal Tumi’s call for an All Anglophone Conference as a prelude to the search for sustainable peace.
Chairman John Fru Ndi was an atypical politician: he was never an MP, a Councillor or a Senator. The only elective office he held was that of Chairman of the SDF. He was also an iconoclast and precursor as far as patriarchal succession is concerned; his succession was not the usual father to son but rather father to daughter!
The fortune of a political party does not depend on one person; however strong the person might be. The nosedive of the SDF following its strong showing in 1992 and in subsequent parliamentary and local elections are due to internal and external factors.
However, for over thirty years Fru Ndi was the SDF and the SDF was Fru Ndi for this that he understood that for political things to be added unto you aplenty, in our environment, you must take your message to the masses. This he did in a language understood by all!
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