Conflict in Africa has historically always been painted as “tribal” or something that comes inherently with being one of the many African countries on the continent. Much of the war that exists in Africa stems from western powers coming together to carve up the continent to steal its resources and land in order to fatten the bourgeois in their country. In doing so, many people found themselves together with completely different ethnic groups or divided from their own people by artificial borders. It was this situation alongside neocolonial western activities in Africa that would push many regions across the continent into conflict.

The Anglophone Crisis is one primary example of an African conflict born from colonialism. A war that has been in motion for years and yet has been seldom reported by the biggest media outlets. We spoke with a correspondent on Amba Leaks, a media platform that is on the ground in the Southern Cameroons region where the struggle for Ambazonian liberation and the main battleground for the Anglophone Crisis exist.

Give us a quick introduction to yourself and Amba Leaks.

Amba Leaks: I am the founder of Amba Leaks.  I can say I am a born Southern Cameroonian or Ambazonian. The usage of “Amba Leaks” and not my own name is for security purposes. I don’t just work alone, there is a team of us that decided to create something like this to counter misinformation being spread and to expose human rights violations in this region. Here, just a comment on Facebook can get you killed. I am not talking about prison, I am talking about losing your life. There can be points in time that you won’t see Amba Leaks function as it could be and it could be possible that they (the Cameroonian government) has gotten us. 

We face a lot of friction but there is no way we can stay silent and get slaughtered without us crying for help. I cannot go deep about myself as once the interview is public it can pose security risks but what I can say is that I am a public figure within the Ambazonian movement. I am on ground zero or the homefront of where the conflict is happening. My security is not guaranteed if I go public with a lot of details. 

We hope to expose the reality of the struggle of the Ambazonian people to the public especially with the non-Ambazonian audience because among us Ambazonians we know exactly what’s going on but the public watching from a distance don’t really understand. What really inspired us to leave from media isolation was having an outsider point of view that can ensure information isn’t mixed up. Most Ambazonians have become partisan, you don’t see a neutral Ambazonian who doesn’t cling to one group or another which is why Amba Leaks hopes to bring information that isn’t tied to a party and bring leaks that give secret information from each of these parties in the movement. 

We all want this crisis to end. I can guarantee you there is no accurate reporting on the amount of death that occurs on a daily basis. It has been so frequent and regular that a five year old child can identify the type of gun from its sound. It is horrible.

Thank you for coming on today. Can you give a history of the Ambazonian struggle? 

Amba Leaks: The Ambazonian struggle dates back to the colonial era when the British and the French had the German Cameroon colony split after the First World War. The area later known as Southern Cameroon or Ambazonia was colonized by the British and was added into the Nigerian territory. We had the British customs and rule of law which was different from the other part of Cameroon that was ruled by the French. There was also Northern Cameroon which would become a part of modern Nigeria. 

When the decolonization process started and the UN began to vote on granting the countries of Africa independence, the subject of Southern Cameroon came into play. The UN voted to grant Southern Cameroon independence but Britain and France had a backdoor deal to exchange Southern Cameroons for an island territory near Europe. Britain gave Southern Cameroons to France through combining the two Cameroon colonies with Francophone Cameroon still under French influence today. The UN referendum removed the option for Southern Cameroonian independence and gave us only two options: Remain with Nigeria or join Cameroon. 

At that time, we were treated badly by the Nigerian government and saw us as outcasts. There were already grievances and movements for separation to the point our leaders have walked out of the Nigerian parliament resulting in no Ambazonian representation in the Nigerian national assembly. This is what prompted the UN to consider granting us independence. With these two options, our ancestors voted to join Cameroon under a federal state of two equal parties. They prepared a constitution in Foumban in 1960 to arrange everything. 

Upon signing this agreement which was under the UN charter on decolonization, representatives from both Britain and France had to be present. They didn’t want us to have equal status with French Cameroon and had a hidden agenda to just cling us onto Cameroon so that it can become a unitary state with us being assimilated to Francophone Cameroon. On the day the agreement was supposed to be signed at the Foumban Conference, our leaders and representatives were in their hotel and suddenly heard the news from the Cameroonian representative that everything had been signed. None of the Amabzonian representatives have ever signed any document making this one of the most illegal unions in the whole world. 

At this point it should be noted that the Republic of Cameroon has already gained their independence in 1960. The discussion on Southern Cameroon’s union with Cameroon came one year after the independence of French Cameroon. No treaty was signed to date between both Cameroons. Our leaders rectified a proposed constitution with their own but it wasn’t signed. That constitution considered the abolition of federation as treason and had laws that protected our sovereignty. From there, the government deployed the French gendarmes and put out propaganda that the Nigerians were trying to attack us. They came in and said they were going to work with the regional mobile wing (a Southern Cameroonian police force that was trained by the colonialists) but as of today the mobile wing no longer exists with all of them being removed out of service with those who tried to resist being brutalized and thrown to jail. 

When our leaders found out about the announcement regarding the treaty, they attempted to protest but were invited to Yaoundé by President Ahidjo and were promised that everything would be intact and made John Ngu Foncha (who was one of the Southern Cameroonian leaders) Prime Minister of the country. Our leaders continued to protest and were threatened and arrested. Several movements formed which were brutally suppressed by the government resulting in these groups becoming isolated. This is how we were forced to live in an unholy union where we were never seen as equal. Everything that we had was destroyed. 

The Southern Cameroons were one of the highest exporters of Arabian coffee in West Africa but today the entire infrastructure that protected the production of coffee no longer exists. When the Francophones took over production the industry saw poor management and corruption resulting in its destruction. I can go on and on. We had two international airports but we don’t even have one today. The only airports in Southern Cameroon are military ones that are used to move our brothers and sisters to jails. 

This union was planned by France and Britain. The assimilation process started right when the union started. This is not an issue with language which the media tends to portray in a manipulation of facts. This is a planned assimilation. After being forced to adopt the plan for a federal state, we had autonomy for a few years. President Ahidjo was proud of the unique composition of Cameroon’s diversity and bilingual nature. A few years later, another letter came from France that discussed the plan to assimilate Southern Cameroons. It started with the abolition of the federal state in 1972 which was ten years after the unification of the Cameroons becoming the Republic of Cameroon without any mention of the existence of Southern Cameroon as an existing entity. They fraudulently included the future of 8 million people in the union. 

They started to kill our identity. Anytime there was a protest about this, the government would say it is because of language differences and that we are insane. Behind the scenes they would continue their assimilations through infiltrating the schools, courts, and every single institution that made us who we are and tried to frenchify it with a much worse system under a regime that is controlled by only one tribe. People have been arrested with 25 years of prison. 

We have taken cases up to several international courts including the International Abuja High Court in which we won a case there. The representatives at the case were known as the SCNC or the Southern Cameroonian National Council which have existed since the federal state was abolished and was founded by the youth who have protested since 1972. Most of the founding fathers are dead and the few that are alive are over 70. Many members have been arrested. The case we won was in 2003 which resulted in the court asking the Cameroonian government to remove the troops from Southern Cameroon and free up the borders which was something the government never respected. Some of the courts have told us they haven’t seen the files on the Southern Cameroons but we have always provided them. The case for Southern Cameroons has even been taken up to European courts and the UN but French Cameroon and its allies have blocked every single attempt to bring justice to the people of Southern Cameroons. 

France has been in the backbone of all of this and have been pushing for assimilation of the Anglophones. They have paid lobby firms to whitewash crimes and genocide on our people. This has been going on even before the popular uprising in 2015. Since 1981, our people have been very peaceful and have always used peaceful protest and the courts for the struggle. 

In 2015, the Republic of Cameroons announced that our common law would be illegal resulting in thousands of lawyers protesting since they have been educated under the Anglo-Saxon education system. Common law is all they know. This was also combined with a strike from teachers. Can you believe in an English speaking zone where a majority of us who don’t have an understanding of the French language would have a government that would send teachers who speak French to teach children who can’t even say “good morning” in English?

The teachers would join with the lawyers in an organized protest in 2015  but the government would ignore them. Another reason for the protest was the presence of Francophone judges in the Anglophone region. Laws and proceedings were in French while the victims and accused would be Anglophones. The government would brutalize these mass protests. Students who joined the protests were robbed and raped by special forces. These are things you expect from terrorist organizations, not the state. 

As unbeatable as the government felt, the student protests at the University of Buea was the largest. The government would continue to brutalize the protesters and special forces would even rape girls including the niece of the parliamentarian called Honorable Joseph Wiba who would go on to speak against it in the parliament. This brutality, arbitrary arrest, and illegal detention provoked the people into widespread protest. The government started to use live ammunition with Akum Julius being the first person to be shot and killed on the 8th of December 2016. Several others were slaughtered across Southern Cameroons for protesting because the movement evolved from a teacher and lawyer protest and it became the people’s movement. 

The popular opinion was still a demand to return to a federal state without assimilation from the French section. Many teachers and lawyers would go on strike and the government would respond by arresting them as well with the head of the Teachers Trade Union, Mr. Tassang Wilfred, still in jail today. He has been held in prison since 2017. The head of the lawyer’s trade union has been in exile since 2017 in the US. By June 2017, the exiled teachers and lawyers would join up in Nigeria to form a new interim government for Ambazonia and would declare independence on the 1st of October 2017. The government would respond by killing more than 800 Ambazonians that day with many still unaccounted for. The worst carnage this crisis has seen. People got killed for waving the Ambazonian flag. People got killed for having pictures of killed civilians on their Whatsapp. By December, the separatists  picked up arms to defend themselves from brutality from the Cameroonian government. This is how it has escalated to a full armed struggle today.

Can you give more insight to the more modern day responses of the Cameroonian government to the Ambazonian struggle?

Amba Leaks: Before the protests, the government had ignored all letters sent to them by lawyers and teacher’s unions. The worst part of all of this is the recent 2019 “solution” the government has offered to end this current crisis. What they did was call and hold a dialogue with their own allied political parties and civil institutions, basically discussing with themselves.

The most recent drama (The “Grand National Dialogue”) was held in October 2019 to end the crisis. They called it a dialogue but none of the separatists were present and they would have people that they just hired off the street posing as active separatists. What was interesting was at the end of the meeting, they said they gave special status coupled with already existing decentralization to solve the crisis. This decentralization idea has existed for 20 years and it has not changed anything. This was the only solution that the Cameroonian government has found acceptable. 

When they are hit with international pressure, they would go out and slaughter people and claim they were armed separatists. The government has not taken any genuine route to end this conflict and only attempted to manipulate their way out of it with evil strategies such as bribes. When the teachers and the lawyers had a meeting with the Prime Minister, he came with a box of money asking them to take the money and forget about their desire for change. They don’t care about genuinely resolving the conflict.

How has the relationship between France and Francophone Cameroon impacted the Anglophone Crisis?

Amba Leaks: The French don’t just have a relationship with the Cameroonian government, they have direct control over the current regime. The relationship between France and this crisis is one of France acting as the master planners of this crisis. In 2020, President Paul Biya went to France to give an account to Macron about the crisis. He told him that they have failed to assimilate the Anglophones. Power was transferred from the previous regime to the current through vis-a-vie and not elections. Paul Biya didn’t get power from a vote, Ahidjo handed him power which Biya would have for 39 years. Everything Biya does, he asks permission from France. He even does this publicly and boasts to be the greatest student of France. This is what I can say about France’s influence in this crisis.

The current Ambazonian movement seems to have multiple different factions within it. How do these groups work with each other to fight against the Cameroonian government?

Amba Leaks: In regards to the multiple factions, this is a natural thing. The Ambazonian revolution is different from other organized revolutions with several different factors. By 2017, nobody knew that the revolution would change their lives to this extent. Nobody thought people would pick up arms for their families. 

All of these factions are born from isolated people and groups picking up arms to take action without nationwide coordination. Maybe one person from Jakiri heard from his friends back home that they started to pick up arms and they started to finance them. There were also people who were thieves who used the flow of arms to their own benefit. 

The people would also form a government led by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe who was voted in power by several different Southern Cameroonian organizations. He became the first President of Ambazonia. Even though the Nigerian government arrested him and handed him over to the Cameroonian authorities, the people and organizations would vote for a replacement  president named Samuel Ikome Sako. Since then, he has commanded 90% of the forces on the ground and set up many institutions that did things like supply arms to separatists as well as offer help to refugees escaping the territory in conflict. 

The Interim government is known by the international community and was invited to participate in a mediation process initiated by the Swiss government in an attempt to resolve the conflict and in return the Interim Government invited all opposing groups to the table and they all formed what we call Team Ambazonia (a coalition of all Ambazonian groups). The Swiss government have offered their mediation service to facilitate negotiations between the Southern Cameroonians and the Cameroonian government however the Cameroonian government is yet to present themselves on the table. 

This isn’t an organized revolution because most people would start isolated resistance without any central coordination with other isolated people funding them. Some boys would just pick up arms with their relatives funding them so it is completely normal to see these groups pop up. In the past few years though, these many isolated groups have been reduced to three active groups in the region. There is the Unity Warriors which doesn’t have an allegiance to any political group or faction and receives support from every Southern Cameroonian. They are led by General No Pity who a famous Ambazonian general. The other group is the Ambazonian Restoration Forces. They are the military wing of the Ambazonian interim government led by Sako. Then there is the Southern Cameroons Defense Forces or SOCADEF led by Ebenezer Akwanga. These are the three main opposition militant groups against the Cameroonian government.

Meanwhile, there are alleged state-sponsored groups who peddle state propaganda. They bribe fighters to turn against others or would send in boys to pretend to be fighters. This has been confirmed in recent years. For example there was an alleged Ambazonian general who was accused in 2020 for being a member of the Republic of Cameroon’s military because the Cameroonian government gave him a state burial when he died. Those boys would go to isolated villages and kidnap civilians for ransom money and try to provoke Ambazonians to create conflict between civilians and genuine Ambazonian fighters. There are factions who claim to fight for Ambazonians but since the start of the fight they would kill Ambazonian generals and do more good for the Cameroonian government than for the Ambazonian people. While they secretly receive funding from the Cameroonian government, such groups focus only on committing atrocities to civilians to provoke them to stop supporting the idea of a sovereign Ambazonia.

For instance in 2020, a prison warder was brutally assassinated by alleged Ambazonian soldiers. When this information came to public, true Ambazonians came out in an attempt to arrest them. The funny part is that Ambazonian forces known as the ADF found and arrested the perpetrators and today they are nowhere to be found. The Cameroonian government would go and pick up displaced Ambazonian citizens and say they were the ones who committed the crime. 

Oftentimes when true Ambazonians face opposing forces from Cameroon, they will see those who wave Ambazonian flags and those who have Cameroonian flags. Disunity doesn’t actually exist with all Ambazonian forces, they are  united by purpose despite not being based in one location or walking together, they all face invaders and protect civilians. Due to infiltration of the government and non-separatist groups who extort money and are used as displays by the Cameroonian government, disunity appears to exist to people looking outside. 

The complexity is far beyond just infighting in the Ambazonian revolution. All the Ambazonians who are actually fighting are mobilized on the ground and fighting the enemy without brutalizing civilians. Even if they kidnap government officials they never ask for  ransom. We can go on and on and name each group but every single Ambazonian knows who is . All these fighters are known in the various towns and villages. These divisions are expected by a revolution that wasn’t coordinated by a third party. Revolutions can be difficult to organize, especially one that is not financed by a third party. This revolution is not done to destabilize Cameroon, this is happening because people have genuine grievances and are actually being killed, it is a fighter for existence.

Thank you for that. What is the finalized goal of the Ambazonian struggle and what does the future hold for a future Ambazonian state?

Amba Leaks: I want to add something regarding the nature of the multiple factions. All these factions have come under the Ambazonian Coalition Team. This is the group in the Swiss lead process. All of them came onto this collaborative platform to discuss diplomacy. Another thing that should be added is the many factions have different goals and ideas as to what must be done. Some believe that all Francophones should be driven out but most believe this is counterproductive. Some believe economic sabotage is the way while others believe in military confrontation. Some believe in guerrilla warfare as the best strategy while others want open confrontation. There are those who believe in just protesting without guns. These factions all have different strategies but they all are united in purpose. Those who are federalists and pro-regime supporters have their own coalition group called the CDN which is based in Canada. 

All the factions believe in the interim government and it is this government that will likely lead a new Ambazonia. They have already drafted a constitution that already has laws. For example, any leader who has a leadership position in the revolution will not be allowed to be president after the transition to independence. They have also already divided Ambazonia into 14 regional states. In addition, there will be the restoration of the common law and the creation of the house of chiefs in which the chiefs will have some level of legislative power under the new constitution.

There are plans of the reconstruction of roads and setting up a capital city. We already have our own flag which is sky blue and white with 14 stars representing 14 states. We even have dress codes for our students. We also have plans to rebuild our lost institutions with some of the plans being radical. All of these plans are available online. All of these things will happen once we regain our land with these drafts and plans being made to shorten the transition period. We are all ready to lay down our lives to achieve our dreams.

Any final thoughts before we end the interview?

Amba Leaks: To every single human being that comes across this interview, we would like for you to know that there is a small country called Ambazonia that has been assimilated in an illegal way. Its citizens have been marginalized for decades. We have put up a fight without any support from any country. The west has closed their eyes on our suffering because the perpetrator is France. Freedom has no price. We are going to fight to the end. If the world is not prepared to give us our freedom and if France is not prepared to give up our resources, then they must be prepared to kill every single Ambazonian because we are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice. If we cannot exist then the land will be barren.

Thank you.

The Ambazonian struggle is one that was born out of the evils of colonialism and neocolonialism. If the French weren’t actively manipulating politics in Cameroon then we would have seen an already independent Ambazonia. As socialists, it is important to support legitimate self-determination movements where they occur in order to push back against imperialism all over the world. Solidarity to the Ambazonian revolution!