“The colonial pact left Africans with crumbs; only Africans can broke this pact”

Gaby Ambo – Human Rights Activist, Executive Director Finders Group Initiative (FGI) –Cameroon

Sillon Panafricain: What is your reading of the present African leadership?

ANSWER: The African leadership is disheartening. From a general stand point I say it’s disheartening because I expect African leaders to stand up and be true leaders in the real sense of the word. I expect the African leadership to grow above, to be the kind of deep-ocean leadership that you can build to grow above just a manager level and to be able to reach all others with their power in tact because their powers our incumbent. Your powers emanate from the people you lead. Your powers are what you have around you that surround you. The peculiarity of your person and people you command is what makes you the leader. But when you slip out of this instead of listening to your own people and their prescriptions you rather dance per the rhythm of another foreign person, you actually loose grip. You lose grip of what a true leadership means and that is exactly the problem Cameroon’s leadership like those of other African countries is having.

In the general, the exceptionally African leaders who we look up to as role models like we can call Paul Kagame of Rwanda, who though has ruled for 10 years or more, his actions on ground tells a lot about what Rwanda was before he came to power. Okay, I am not in no way commending him or recommending him to stay for as long in power, for alternation is key and success to every good development endeavor. And so if we have to introduce alternation for leadership, I think that is the best think, because it will enable each and every other person see how much capacity or ability he or she has to bring to their own people. It was not meant for one individual.

Sillon Panafricain:  Now 50 to 60 years after most African countries gained their independence, how can you compare the leadership of the pioneer leaders of African countries and those nowadays?

ANSWER: Relatively we will want to say that the likes of Nkwame Nkruma of Ghana, the likes of Njomo Kenyata of Kenya, the likes of the former president of Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe they were freedom fighters. You can raise a good number of them. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, you can name them. They stood for a pan African spirit. They were all devoted to it. And that is what they had in mind before going for what we call the Organization for African Unity. That was what they intended. Actually they were not interested in boundaries. They were working towards wiping those boundaries that were created by colonial masters to make sure that Africa becomes one become much stronger. But the resistance they had from the colonial masters, because they were definitely not buying into what they were standing for,  because they wanted them to be answerable to them so to be able to use Africa as a farm on which they can harvest. You know exactly the scramble for Africa in 1884, you know exactly the action that followed from that angle, from that moment up to the moment were we had to be given independence like Ghana had independence in 1957, and you can name the others that came up in that line, in those circumstances. South Africa had been drowning in war for as long as we can imagine until, recently in the 1990s when Mandela was elected from prison to president.

What we are saying exactly here is that, the old leaders who took over or who introduce the independence from colonial masters had a good sense of direction. But now it’s being diverted by the new leadership that Africa is having now. Instead, when we expect them to have been able to help us they have become more sell outs, more stooges, because have lost touch with the reality on. And so  we are thinking now that if I were to be asked the question that what should we do in this circumstance, permit me now call names; because Cameroon leadership stirs a glaring example for what I am referring to here and going down memory lane to the others. Equatorial Guinea, I can name them. In Angola, situations have change. You know they are all intelligent, they all went to school, they are well educated, but they decided to auction that intelligence for something else. for their own personal comfort. at the expense of their own citizens.

That is why we end up saying that the leadership in Africa, wow, it’s unfortunate, it’s regrettable and that we know most especially colonies that actually had independence from the French; theirs is sad.

Sillon Panafricain: When you look at African countries do you perceive leadership differences in English speaking countries and French speaking countries?

ANSWER: In as much as I am not satisfied with all but to be very critical and to be very real, there is a great difference between the two. You know the English ruled through the indirect rule. What is the indirect rule? When the English colonize the colonies in Africa, they were passing through the chiefs to reach out to the people. In other words they were recognizing the authority of the people so no matter whatever they were doing, they were using the same authorities of the people to be able to reach out to them which was acceptable and it was actually giving the people their recognition, and the right to be able to do their own things their own way.

Look at the French it was basically the opposite. You needed to evolve into a “citoyen”. You needed to evolve as a French citizen. There was pride to be a French man, to be called a French man. An African to be called a French man! So that principle of assimilation actually was put in place and that you must go to Paris, you must go to France generally speaking, to be able to be a man of weight, a man of importance; even if it means that it will be measured only by the French and not even by your own people. You understand the circumstances, so, many of the leadership in the French colonies in Africa actually saw reasons to actually lean towards France irrespective of the hardship and challenges that it had for its own people.

I am not even going to end here. The saddest and worst thing is about its “pact”. There is a French pact. The case of Cameroon which I very well know in 1957, which has 6 clauses, has 6 articles in it, spelling out conditions. Even though you are independent, but the business of education, this that and that, economic, military must be determined by the colonial master, France. And in the aspect were the colonial master is not interested, can you then now reach out to someone else. It means now that you are conditioned to stay with the crumbs. And away from that, the worst thing is even still to come. The debt reliefs, the foreign reserves of these colonial countries are stored in the French treasury. That was the condition. It began with about 90% or 80% and according to them they are doing good that they brought down 50% or 60% of it in a foreign treasury. And you sit back and you say you are independent? You sit back and you claim you have a country that you are ruling. Yet you cannot determine what your foreign reserves are. You don’t even know. A president doesn’t even know what he has as foreign reserves in a foreign country. How does it go? Why can’t you stop it?

And you realize what happens to the former African Union ambassador or representative to the United States who raise some of this actions against the French and because of the link the African Union leadership has with France, she was remove from her position. I think am adding my voice to hers to say that enough is enough! You can’t be fooled all through your time. No one tells you what to do.

Sillon Panafricain: Who should take the lead for veritable African independence?

ANSWER: Africans themselves, the citizens themselves, you can seize all of this. The very persons you call the leader or presidents are put there by you. You can stop them by using alternation. Power alternation warrants you to be able to seat back and say no! Go back to the editorial board. Look at the dash board. I mean how many years? What are the achievements? What have we had? How is it improving our situation on ground? Do we need to keep you there? Because the power as per Article 123 (3) of the United Nations Declaration on the Human Right states clearly that during elections, the people have the mandate to elect who should be their leader and when elected that leader should be accountable to the people. And when the people at some point realize that the leader has fallen short of their expectations, they just have to use the same settings. Go back to the same ballot box and vote him out and get in who you think will be able to deliver and let the term of service be short in such a way that each and every citizen should be fair to be able to give his or her own contribution to some people. And that when we build leadership, it’s not about one individual getting stuck in a position; it doesn’t work that way.

Sillon Panafricain: So the future of Africa is in the hands of Africans?

ANSWER: The future of Africa is in the hands of Africans, most especially the younger generations. Look at what happened in Burkina Faso with the change of leadership. It’s the people who did that change not the other way round. So, I mean in Cameroon, the people are waiting for some manna to come from heaven. Well it’s how they think about it but I don’t think that way. I don’t even know if I am a Cameroonian. I still need to find a lot more about where I am coming from and definitely were my destination is. But for now I am working here, in this area called Cameroon. I just have to find out if I belong here. What is important here is that Cameroonians, whoever they are, were ever they are should start reflecting on this moment and seeing how they should take what belongs to them and the only way you can do that is to know who you are, were you are coming from and where your destination. When you have a mastery of all these, you will have to take all what belongs to you and definitely would engage in some actions at one moment and before you know it, victory is in your hands.

Interviewed by Mokun Njouny Nelson
sillonpanafricain.net