Ambazonia: Moja Moja?

The character Moja Moja has gained notoriety for his crimes in Fako.
There have been cries against the humiliation and torture he has wrought on random youth, filming the evidence for his future trial. Obviously he is not filming it for his future trial but it will be useful for that too! We attempt to draw some lessons and ironic reassurance from his seeming impunity.

What does Moja Moja achieve?
His biggest achievement is to consolidate the proof, if any were needed, for Ambazonians that they are not citizens of La Republique du Cameroun. That they should line up with the Restoration Forces and take their dignity in their own hands. The civilians of Ambazonia have quietly seized their dignity and been tentatively asserting it through the Country Sunday they observe weekly. Initially this observation could have been explained away [by LRC] as a result of threats but it is clearer and clearer that even while Ambazonia was flooded with LRC militias burning villages and shooting at school children and claiming to be “protecting lives and property” the civilians interpreted the evidence they could see. That evidence only proved their previous suffering under LRC was real and widespread. The hope of a better tomorrow would not materialise as second-class citizens of LRC. It showed that their suffering had not been because of a mistake that would soon be realised and corrected but had been a deliberate campaign to keep them as second-class plebeians with no hope of advancement.
Since the advent of Country Sunday dignity has returned. Though LRC is still extorting on check points and collecting other taxes a few window dressings have been offered and that is more than any Ambazonian ever expected. It has become crystal that Ambazonians can live separately, and must.

Now back to Moja Moja and his scheme to collect evidence for his future trial.
Apart from the evidence collection duty Moja Moja is performing another reinforcement.
He is demonstrating to the Ambazonian civilians that LRC has withdrawn and accepted defeat and that the shadows they cast are empty and would vanish at the earliest provocation. LRC is no longer trying to pretend to the international community that they have law and order in Ambazonia. If they had not set up Moja Moja in business they would, as “the government” in their duty of “protecting lives and property”, have quickly arrested him on the basis of the evidence he is collecting for his future trial.
On the other hand, if they have set him up, they are admitting defeat and Ambazonia’s righteous victory in the Liberation struggle.

We are not asking anyone who is not in the RF’s to tackle Moja Moja but just to stay calm and know that he will soon become irrelevant whether he is arrested on not. Civilians should side-step him and get on with the normal Ambazonian life collaborating with the Restoration Forces to complete our Liberation.

Why is LRC not “interferring”?
They have no legal authority in Ambazonia as explained in the previous blog with Chief Barrister Charles Taku’s responses to a couple of questions about the status of then Southern Cameroons. LRC has had de facto authority in Ambazonia only because the people of Ambazonia “consented by accepting” that “authority” by submitting to it. Now that the people object LRC could only enforce that authority militarily by crushing the uprising. They could not negotiate in the presence of any neutral parties who could examine the profound causes. If that neutral party did, they would “come upon” the absence of a union due to the fact that it was not signed, and then, even the de facto one was “violated”, setting up a track record of why Ambazonia has a reason, if one were needed, to “change” her mind about associating in a Federation with LRC. In any case even if the union had been signed, Ambazonia would still have been entitled to call the union into question and seek to withdraw from it on the basis of the violations, viz transforming to a unitary state, and then renaming it to expunge Southern Cameroons from history. Even if the union had been signed and not violated, Ambazonians individually would still be entitled to express their identity though it would be vastly more difficult.

What of the international community?
Many of the failings lie with the international community in a way. The international processes were bungled leading to the lack of a treaty and the 61 years of de facto rather than legal union. If we think about it, the international community has no interest [economic] to solve other people’s problems! The lack of union and “the violations” are not news to the international community who are rightly, or wrongly, in their interest, content to let sleeping dogs lie as long as the system is stable and they can carry on their economies. In the final analysis, the lack of union treaty need not, and would not have stopped the peoples of Ambazonia and LRC living together, had they experienced a safe and fair state. We don’t need to dwell on the meaning of “safe and fair state”. The problem only arose when injustice and corruption caused discontent , which raised grievances. Maybe the “governing” miscalculated in their idea for “solving the crisis” by crushing it. Maybe they were aware they hadn’t legal leg to stand on in a negotiation! Their chosen method has only managed over the last six years to demonstrate why Ambazonia cannot associate with LRC in any form of state, never mind that the apparent solution seems to imply LRC “granting favours” to Ambazonia! If the international community wants to help they need to make it clear to LRC that the negotiation is between two states of equal status and cannot begin with any notion that LRC “has offered” anything to Ambazonia [Southern Cameroons]. In particular reference to the kind, and ignored, advice of M Macron to Mr Biya of LRC, Ambazonia is not a de jure region of La Republique du Cameroun, which France knows existed well before the then Southern Cameroons gained independence.

In conclusion, the amazement in seeing Moja Moja apparently get away with it is because LRC may finally be aware that they will not “win” and that negotiation will only lead to separation in view of the “lack of treaty and theoretical violations”. They are reduced to out-waiting the Restoration and that is why we, the Ambazonians, must take our dignity in hand and behave free even if other agents rise to attempt to dissuade us.

Of course on our side, our Restoration forces will be working on a solution for Moja Moja’s humiliation of our people. It has to be acknowledged that our “behaving free” will be easier in the absence of such LRC militias, even if they are wrongly regarded as “part of ours”.