Cameroonian government shuts down farmers’ protest
Bernard Njonga rallies marchers whose May protest of farm policy and government corruption was shut down by police in Cameroon before it began. Photo by François Bimogo.
A newly formed coalition of Cameroonian farmers say that this Central African nation will continue to struggle to feed itself unless corrupt agricultural officials are fired, imports are curbed and increased support is allocated for farms.
The government shutdown a May 30 demonstration to go public with the demands and arrested a string of the organization’s members, including Bernard Njonga, who has led the Cameroonian Food Sovereignty Coalition and who is part of a new movement that was born following the suppressed protest.
Farmers’ Action, according to Njonga, will function like a union to advocate and lobby for improved production and living conditions for farmers. Njonga is a prominent campaigner for farmers in a country that exploded into rioting in 2008 to protest the high cost of imported food.
In mid-September, farmers will present invited politicians with a list of demands to help recover the country’s agricultural economy during a forum before Cameroon’s pending presidential election.
“Cameroon is very much an agrarian economy; we have a culture of agriculture. Therefore, we should (invest) a lot of resources in the agricultural sector … That only makes sense,” says Njonga, whose 11,000-member organization, Citizens Association for the Defense of Collective Interests (ACDIC) is one of the organizations that works within the umbrella of RELUFA, the Joining Hands partner in Cameroon.
“The government should respect farmers and what farmers are demanding. The farmers are not just trying to feed their families, but Cameroon as well.”
One of the first actions of Farmers’ Action was to draft what it calls an agricultural pact, alongside ACDIC and the Coalition for Food Sovereignty. Ten farmers from each of Cameroon’s 10 provinces will meet with invited political leaders and presidential candidates with the goal of securing the endorsement of leaders. It will be used afterward to evaluate the progress of government within the agricultural sector.
According to reports, priorities within the document include farming subsidies, a reduction in imports, as well as support within the farming sector for conservation and irrigation.
Roughly 60 percent of Cameroon’s population depends on agriculture to sustain their families; but the country imports the bulk of its staple products. In August, 2010, AlterNet reported that 70 percent of Cameroon’s rice is imported, as well as 100 percent of the wheat flour consumed.
Njonga has argued that Cameroon can turn its food crisis around if consumers buy locally and if agriculture is better supported and corruption abolished. “It is a big political problem,” Njonga says, adding that without subsidies, imported foods will perpetually undercut local production.
The May 30 protest in Yaounde was scheduled to include farmers from wide sectors of Cameroon’s remote rural areas, many carrying chickens and leading goats or pigs, whose noises would supplement the generalized din of the protest itself.
Police picked up farmers, traditional rulers and others headed to the ACDIC office in the early morning hours before the protest even got under way. Barricades were set up along roadways leading to the office.
Thirty-seven people were detained by police without charges for roughly 24 hours; others were put under house arrest at the ACDIC offices.
Njonga said that the government blocked an earlier protest, as well, which locals attribute to curtailing unrest before a national holiday in late May. Farmers apparently agreed to delay the first event. News outlets also say that upheaval in North Africa and the upcoming presidential election are driving the government’s efforts to repress public speech and gatherings, even though both rights are constitutionally guaranteed.
Cameroon is very much an agrarian economy; we have a culture of agriculture. Therefore, we should put a lot of resources into agriculture … That only makes sense
—Bernard Njonga
Farmers in Cameroon have previously called for improvements in Cameroon’s roads, access to credit to buy vehicles and other modernizing equipment, subsidies to compete against imports and for the firing of a network of alleged embezzlers in the nation’s ministries of agriculture and livestock.
The May arrests were not the first for ACDIC officials were arrested.
In fact, the 29-year-old government of President Paul Biya — one of Africa’s remaining strongmen — has repressed the rights to free speech and assembly of the ACDIC on multiple occasions, in 2008 charging members of the group with “organizing an illegal meeting” shortly after the organization released a report detailing corruption within the government, most notably within the Ministry of Agriculture.
Njonga was then sentenced to probation for two years and three months during a trial that, according to some accounts, was repeatedly interrupted by applause when lawyers for the defense introduced evidence into the court record citing corruption and embezzlement within the government.
In 2008, ACDIC charged that officials in the agricultural ministry siphoned off the bulk of government subsidies to farmers. It charged that officials created fictitious farmers’ groups who received 62 percent of the subsidies, leaving only 38 percent for Cameroon’s desperate farmers.
Although the accused denied the charges, Cameroon’s anti-corruption commission (CONAC) confirmed the findings; but CONAC has no legal prerogatives so no legal action was taken.
Also, ACDIC published the names of government and army officials who allegedly pilfered tractors that were gived by the Indian government to Cameroonian farmers in 2006. The tractors were given as test models to determine whether to set up a tractor assembly plant in Cameroon. ACDiC ‘s 15-month investigation charged that 49 of the 60 tractors never got to farmers and are stored in the residences of regime officials in Yaounde.
Njonga, 56, is an agronomist who grew up on a farm in western Cameroon and runs a newspaper called The Farmer’s Voice, which focuses on farmers and rural development. It advocates self-sustainability on the African continent rather than reliance on aid. He left the government-operated Institute for Agriculture Research in 1986 to create Action Service for Development of Local Initiatives (SALID) and then ACDIC.
The ACDIC’s first successful campaign was to curb the import of frozen chicken into Cameroon from Europe and selling it a price cheaper than fresh local chicken. The competition sunk 92 percent of small Cameroonian chicken farmers between 1996 and 2003, when the Marakeesh Agreement—signed in Morocco in 1994 creating the World Trade Organization -- reduced tariff protections for small farmers while allowing imports from subsidized farmers in richer countries.
Now, Cameroon imports only 10 percent of the chickens it did in 2003 because of new taxes the Cameroonian government imposed following ACDIC’s public campaign, according to an IPS story published in 2007, What Comes First, Chicken or Africa?
The article reports that frozen chicken is still dumped in Congo-Brazza ville, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and Gabon. Nigeria and Mali forbid the import.
The farmers’ organizations are cancelling a scheduled Aug. 30 protest as a response to the agricultural pact conversations.
Njonga says opposition isn’t unusual. “It happens all the time,” he says. “It is habitual with the government.
“They want to block people from organizing.”