By Mwalimu George Ngwane*
"One of the most important lessons I learnt in my life of struggle for freedom and peace is that in any conflict there comes a point when neither side can claim to be right and the other wrong, no matter how much that might have been the case at the start of the conflict.” Nelson Mandela
We all agree that Cameroon is presently facing an unprecedented Anglophone crisis. We also agree that there is need for dialogue. However what some are still to understand are those to be involved in the dialogue (people), what such a dialogue shall focus on (problem) and how the dialogue shall be carried out (process). In other words the key elements in dialogue are the people, problem, process, and to a great extent, the power relations of the conflicting parties before and after the dialogue.
The Anglophone crisis seems to have gone beyond conflict resolution because according to Sifiso Mbuyisa,
though conflict resolution aims to address the causes (single or multiple linear) of conflict, it does not necessarily change the relationship amongst the parties enjoined in conflict, nor the systems that are in place , and therefore is not addressing the factors underlying the conflict.
That leaves us with the concept of conflict transformation which according to Ronald Kraybill is an approach that ‘asserts the belief that conflict can be a catalyst for deep-rooted, enduring, positive change in individuals, relationships and the structures of the human community’.
Conflict persists when we insist on throwing stones at each other but it becomes transformed when those stones are used to build a new mansion (nation). Ours is a crisis that needs more of a citizen or stakeholder peace-making rather than inter-governmental diplomacy (African Union or United Nations), second-track peacemaking (using unofficial forums to strike peace deals) or retributive justice (using the judiciary). By proposing a citizen or stakeholder conflict transformation approach, I am aware that our country has substantial people (committed elite, traditional elders, the clergy, scholars in conflict, Independent personalities, government statespersons, etc.) who can claim a responsibility and an authority in relation to the conflicting parties; who can generate public pressure for the parties to listen to the people’s aspiration for peace; and who can formulate a long-term agenda for restorative justice, positive peace and sustainable co-existence in Cameroon.
In the light of the current crisis, I wish to suggest the following conflict transformation Actions that take cognisance of process, people, problem and power relations.
Action I: Stakeholders Meeting
The first scenario would require the Head of State to hold meetings in the South West (Buea) and North West (Bamenda) regions with identified stakeholders (not more than 20 in number) from the two regions to fully and frankly discuss the proximate (immediate) and root (underlying) causes of the Anglophone crisis. The second scenario would require the Head of state to grant audiences in Yaoundé or Mvomeka to identified stakeholders from the North West and South West regions, separately or collectively, for the same purpose. This is what Mwalimu Julius Nyerere calls the ‘Palaver tradition’.
The palaver tradition is the culture of talking and hearing things out, a kind of government by discussion where issues are agreed on while ‘sitting down under the tree’. The valid point about such an indigenous tradition of discussion is that talking things out was better than shooting them out. The time frame for this Action could be a week.
Action II: Stakeholders Meeting Outcome
This approach deals with outcomes that seek to normalise and encourage problem-solving. It is an action that deals with putting in place an enabling environment for broad-based discussions often with a national character. Therefore, some of the outcomes from Action I would in any order include:
- resumption and modification of the school calendar in the Anglophone regions;
- restoration of ‘media-regulated’ internet connections in the Anglophone regions;
- release (Amnesty) of all those involved in the current crisis;
- rehabilitation through community service and civic education of those involved in burning of state emblems and those guilty of gross human violations on armless citizens;
- rebranding Cameroon with a people’s constitution. Outcomes are not necessarily indicators of weakness or victory talk less of lack of state authority or hegemony control.
Outcomes are vital traits of open-mindedness, empathy, sensitivity and responsiveness or simply responses inherent in our indigenous value system like Professor Ali Mazrui’s epithet of ‘Africa’s short memory of hate’ (forgiveness and magnanimity); Paul Biya’s advocacy for ‘mbangsuma’ (duty of solidarity); Julius Nyerere’s vision of ‘ujamaa’ (family hood) and Southern Africans rally cry around ‘ubuntu’(society over individual interest). Indeed the Roman adage: salus populi suprema est lex (the salvation of the people must be the supreme law) summarises it all. The time frame for Action II can also be a week.
Action III: All-Stakeholder Dialogue Platform
This Action echoes the voices of many Cameroonians since the current Anglophone crisis became the epicentre of national and international media discussions.
We have heard ad nauseum, buzz phrases like ‘unitary decentralised state’, ‘one and indivisible country’ ‘united and peaceful living together’, ‘ten-state autonomy’, ‘immediate implementation of the 1996 constitution’, two-state federation’, ‘greater decentralisation and devolution of power’, ‘two by ten states system’ etc . All of these catch phrases point to one early action-the making or reviewing of the supreme law of the land. It is only within a stakeholder dialogue platform that decisions on whether the 1996 constitution should undergo a fast-forward implementation, whether the 1996 constitution needs further amendments to accommodate specific measures that would protect, guarantee and safeguard the Anglophone persona or whether we all need to go back to the drawing board to fashion a new law of the land that tailors our current crisis to the overarching vision of a binary rainbow nation.
Be it as it may, Obafemi Awolowo makes it clear that
the formulation of a constitution for a country is a solemn and grave undertaking. Those who are privileged to be charged with this solemn and grave responsibility need much more than mere emotional impulses (it is natural, in political discussions especially those relating to the discussion of a constitution during and after a crisis, that a good deal of emotion and sentiment should come to play) and unreflective patriotic sentiments as their equipment. They must as a matter of unavoidable necessity, see to it that objective reason takes the steering, in order that the safety of the country’s journey and of arrival at the desired destination may be fully and confidently guaranteed.
I wish to also add that the driving force in constitutional engineering is the knowledge that our country was not only given to us by our parents but it is also loaned to us by our children. Action III can be likened more or less to what the English call ‘Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission’, the Americans call a limited ‘Town hall meeting’, the Rwandans call ‘gacaca’,the South Africans call ‘Indaba’, and the Sotho people (from Lesotho) call ‘Lekgotla’. The common message embedded in all of these appellations is one of ‘a community parliament where matters of the nation are discussed collectively and wisdom is shared’. The time-frame for this Action could be a month.
Action IV: Stakeholder Transformative Dividend
The creation of commissions, the recognition of specific sector values (judiciary, bilingualism, education, etc.) and the fashioning of a constitution are lasting clues needed for horizontal harmony (power relations between citizens). But the implementation to the letter of every tenet of these institutions and the respect for these structures are everlasting glues needed for vertical harmony (power-relations between citizens and their country). Therefore the transformative dividend of any dialogue is the establishment of a social contract for physical and political reconstruction. It is the social compass for a new political order based on the lessons learnt from the crisis.
Although a transformative dividend does not exclude or preclude further crisis, it nonetheless includes mitigating mechanisms that can contain (conflict management) or nip the crisis in the bud (conflict prevention). A man’s strength is recognised not by how he fell but by how he got up. This is also true for a nation. Because this crisis is man-made it must be man-managed. Lest we forget, conflict or crisis is not all destructive or negative. Constructive or creative conflict tends to draw attention to problems that should be addressed to achieve a sustainable peace.
We have already spent valuable time, vibrant resources and volatile rhetoric on the path of paired contradictory metaphors like repression and resilience, expression and suppression, universal rights and group advocacy, rule of law and private justice, combative communication and pedestrian propaganda, praise and protest literature, human rights violation and affirmative action, state authority and people power, hate speech and hard talk, emotional arson and erratic arrests, diatribes and dogma, threats and resistance, hoax and honesty, facade and fact and finally psychological fear and physical exile. It was time we moved on.
Rather than being frightened by the human fear that this crisis can lead our country into the abyss of cataclysm, I am inspired by divine faith that a meticulous conflict transformation approach can relaunch the country to the pinnacle of creative governance. But timely Action is of the essence. For like the Somali people say ‘some of what has been lost in the fire can still be retrieved in the ashes’.
*Mwalimu George Ngwane is author of the book “Settling Disputes in Africa” (2001); Senior Chevening Fellow, Conflict Prevention and Resolution, University of York (UK) 2010; Rotary Peace Fellow, University of Chulalongkorn, Bangkok (Thailand) 2015; Commonwealth Professional Fellow, Minority Rights Group, London (UK) 2015; Bilingual Commission scholar, Cardiff, Wales 2015; United Nations Minority Rights Fellow, OHCHR, Geneva (Switzerland) 2016. He is the Executive Director of the civil society organisation in Cameroon called AFRICAphonie.
Sources
- Awolowo, Obafemi, 1966, Thoughts on Nigerian Constitution, Ibadan, Oxford University Press
- Biya, Paul, 1987, Communal Liberalism, London, MACMILLAN Publishers
- Kokole, Omari, 1996, Ethnic Conflicts versus Development in Africa, London, Macmillan Press
- Kraybill, Ronald; Robert A. Evans and Alice Frazer Evans 2005, Peace Skills manual for community mediators. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.
- Mandela, Nelson, 2011, Nelson Mandela by himself, Johannesburg, Pan Macmillan publishers
- Mbuyisa Sifiso, 2013, public participation as participatory conflict resolution, Durban, African Journal on Conflict Resolution, ACCORD
- Ngwane, George, 2001, Settling Disputes in Africa, (reprint) Colorado Spring, America, International Academic Publishers
- Nyerere, Julius, 1968, Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, Dar es Salaam, Oxford University Press
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