From the suit of Writam-Pen
February 11, 2014 is at hand and as
usual the sugar cane festival is gathering momentum in villages nationwide. As
a tradition, the speech of President Biya will be broadcaster to the listening
of the officials at the various grandstands while the youths who are concern are being battered under the hot sun in lines waiting for their turn to march, sing and pour panegyrics on President Biya. By the
end of the day, children will be going back to their homes with everyone
holding a log of sugar cane. Ask them the content of the message from the head
of state and none will tell you. With the coming into the scene of the new
group of covenant (I mean a government creation to control youthful minds) popularly
known as the Cameroon National Youth Council this year's 48th Youth Day
celebration will be another feast of personality cult to applaud President Biya. Banners will be exhibited to thank government and especially Paul Biya for the empty promises. Hypocrisy, indeed!! Whenever I look back at this day which was instituted in 1966 by former late
President Ahmadou Ahidjo it takes my memories to the story of the fascinating South
African-American film “Sarafina” which combines the typical traditional African
sensibilities with the bad fate fancy promises that a free society offers to youths
such as “Leaders of Tomorrow, Freedom is
Coming Tomorrow, etc”. Even though this celebration was initiated in 1966,
President Paul Biya for example has addressed youths for the past 31 years. And
for the 31 years he has always said that better days are coming tomorrow. Yet many
tomorrows have come and gone with no better tomorrow. Implicitly, many have
died without seeing that promised better tomorrow or tasted the position of
leadership that was promised yesteryears. In the funeral sermon to youths in “Sarafina”,
the preacher tells disgruntled youths that “they
fear you because you are young; they fear you because you are the future. How powerful
you must be that they fear you so much. You are powerful because you are the
generation that will be free of violence, the beatings, the tortures, the
killings, all these is the bad fate of our free nation. Please grow up and live
with it but if I don’t, I see now on your faces like the light of the rising
sun that might have lived within me if I too was young again. And I know that
freedom is coming tomorrow”. It is therefore very obvious that a nation
that doesn’t take the future of youths into consideration is building a
foundation on sand.
Youth Day nowadays in my humble opinion could
be likened to “Sarafina” because it brings land from afar to close range, traces
not only the great injustice in Cameroon but above all, the moral dilemma of generations
with distorted history. Indeed, many
Cameroonians do not understand why the Youth Day is
celebrated on February 11, just like me too. The question is whether it is out
of fear that this day was dedicated for youths because if I am not deadly
wrong, 11 February was the date a plebiscite, a day during which the former British Cameroons and Northern
Cameroons were to decide their fate to either gain independence by joining the Federal Republic of Nigeria or La
Republique of Cameroon.
The approved history syllabus
for school teaches us that on February 11, 1961, the Southern British Cameroons
opted to join French Cameroon while their counterparts in the North cast their
votes in favour of joining the Nigerian. This is a fact. But how many youths
know this fact.
I was also told by my
father that Youth Day was a special day in the then West Cameroon and it was
celebrated every October 26. He said before they use to celebrate Empire Day
but barely a year after the Plebiscite, John Ngu Foncha, West Cameroon's Prime
Minister at the time, recommended that it was befitting to dedicate West
Cameroon's national day to its youth on whom the future State depended. It is
not clear if this recommendation was debated in the assembly but it was
enforced that same year.
On 26 October 1962, the
first "Youth and Sport" day was organised in West Cameroon. There is
no doubt that at its initiation, gargantuan significance was ascribed to the
Youth Day by West Cameroonian politicians, traditional leaders, civil servants
and the public. Yet in today’s Cameroon, the
activities of Youth Day are all reduce to march-passes and sporting activities.
Hardly do we hear of round-table
discussions, debates and historical talks on the trends of the history of this
nation. Yes, the politician dictate and the youths listen to clap. Can we then
conclude that all this is the bad fate of our free nation?
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. Minute by Minute Report on Cameroon and Africa
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