Doctrine of Freedom in the Cameroons Crisis

At the end of each day, for every citizen, whether they realize it or not, the Doctrine of Freedom is rooted in self-rule.

Once citizens understand that no one, not even the government, is coming to:

• sweep their yard,
• cut the grass on their farms,
• protect or preserve their sources of food and water,
• design or build their homes,
• make comfortable beds for their children…

once they grasp that it is their right to make decisions for themselves as a:

• family,
• community,
• district,
• state, nation, tribe or kingdom,

it becomes clear that what really matters is self-rule.

This understanding renders many other arguments in the Cameroons crisis moot:

• English vs French divisions,
• accusations of marginalization,
• appointments to government posts.

These issues pale beside the fundamental need to regain the power of self-rule, starting from each citizen's doorstep and extending into the community and national spaces. Real freedom begins at home. That's why politics, at its core, is local.

Of course, some people might be seeking something different. That's their concern. It does not change the essential truth about self-rule: citizens taking responsibility for their own welfare and deciding how they want to govern themselves.

If this doesn't happen, then expect to be ruled by others. That reflects a lack of confidence in citizens' ability to manage their own "business". When a people cannot manage their own affairs, others (who can) will. That's exactly what happened during colonization, and it continues today.

It is unfortunate that some communities still have self-governing systems that are now mere skeletons, weakened because colonial systems dismantled them, pillaged resources and replaced them with foreign institutions. These colonial structures have prolonged colonization, physically and mentally, to the point where the Doctrine of Freedom seems like something to import from overseas.

Breaking news: freedom is at every citizen's doorstep. We simply need to pick it up, dust off the colonial years, and move forward.

Colonization is not a charitable act; colonization is slavery.

The antidote to all forms of colonial tendency is self-rule: real self-rule, not a pretend post-colonial fanfare of sandcastle projects. Every human is capable of self-rule. It's not as complicated as some might make it seem. It comes down to a family, a people or a community enabling themselves to live as decently as they see fit, within their own means.

The idea that a benefactor will descend from the sky and magically solve a community's problems is a pipe dream. It won't happen.

In conclusion, the struggles of the people of the formerly colonized British Southern Cameroons, now under the French system of the former French Cameroun government, present different realities for different people. Some explain the fighting, killing, looting, stealing, rape, arrests and imprisonments by pointing to issues like French vs English, or the marginalization of Anglophones.

But these are distractions: smokescreens hiding the true power that citizens need to reclaim from the remnants of colonial control. Many African countries have not yet moved away from the systems and institutions that colonized them.

This leads to the question: who is ruling whom, again?

Refrain: the Doctrine of Freedom begins at the doorstep, with self-rule. Most local communities already have the framework in place. They just need to nourish it, and it will thrive.

Before you leave home in the morning, ask yourself: are you free? Are you self-governing? Is your community ruling itself?

If not, why not?

The Doctrine of Freedom is a state of mind.

— Wanaku Verdzekov