April: 2-3 1993, anyone who is someone in the Anglophone community in Cameron trudged to the Mount Mary Hospital – Buea for a constitutional therapy.
Since the Foumban talks of July 1961, Cameroonians of English expression had not had an opportunity to discuss what political pundits call ‘’the unfinished business’’ of the Anglophone – Francophone relationship in Cameroon. So when President Paul BIYA rejected the Sovereign National Conference and opted for a Tripartite meeting of representatives of Government, political parties and Independent personalities from 30 October -18 November 1991, to examine two draft documents – one, laying down conditions for the election of members of the National Assembly and the other, a draft decree governing the access of political parties to the public media - the need to widen the terms of reference was felt and expressed as soon as the meeting went into session.
In the event, the meeting’s agenda was extended so as to include the examination of ways of adapting the constitution of Cameroon to the process of liberalisation and democratisation that was taking place (Munzu, 1992). That was the stimulus of the All Anglophone Conference (AAC I) of April 2-3, 1993.
But maybe when as a college teacher in Mundemba, I wrote the book The Mungo Bridge (1990), I was inadvertently jumpstarting the constitutional engineering conferred on the Tripartite Technical committee. The Mungo Bridge is my most profound inspiration to Cameroon’s state behaviour. At one moment, specifically March 10-24 1990, my fountain of inspiration was delayed following my incarceration in the Brigade Mixte Mobile (BMM)- Ekondotiti. Three teachers (Njong, Ebini and Mengot) and I were accused of ‘’writing subversive articles against constituted authority’’. I remember the day these four huge ‘’commandos’’ came for me. They kicked open the parlour door with reckless ferocity; asked my late mother to lie prostrate, then broke the door of our bedroom and with a gun pointed at my eight- and- a -half month pregnant wife they asked her to show them where I had been hiding my ‘’subversive’’ articles.
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