Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Canada is not the only country to have grappled with issues around official bilingualism over the decades.
In Africa, with its multitude of ethnic groups, most states include large numbers of peoples speaking different languages. As well, the language of the former colonial power – usually English, French or Portuguese – often has official status.
This becomes even more complex when a state is a union of two former colonies whose rulers were different European powers. In one case, the central African country known as Cameroun in French and Cameroon in English, this has caused much difficulty of late.
Once a German colony, the territory was divided between France and Great Britain after the First World War. Approximately 80 per cent of the country went to the French, with the remaining 20 per cent to the British.
In 1960, the French-administered part became independent as the Republic of Cameroun. A year later, following a referendum in the British territory, the southern part of British Cameroons voted to form a federal state with Cameroun, while the northern area became a region of neighbouring Nigeria.
Cameroun is a member of both the Commonwealth and La Francophonie, and French and English are the official languages, but the country is more closely bound to France, on which it relies for defence and guidance in foreign policy.
There are approximately 250 other languages spoken by the 24 million Cameroonians.
Because the two sections had been divided by language through colonial rule, it has had a negative effect on how the country is run today. It may be officially bilingual, but – as is the case in Canada – most of the population is not.
Cameroun has been plagued by constitutional disputes and complaints from English speakers who say the government gives them fewer resources and generally fails to represent their interests.
The language barrier has been one of the largest problems in regards to employment. With French predominating, it becomes much harder for an English speaking Cameroonian to be granted a government job if their proficiency in French is not good enough.
Ndang Azang-Njaah, a first-generation American whose parents are anglophone Cameroonians, feels that bilingualism “only serves to divide and cause greater rifts between the anglophone Cameroonian and francophone Cameroonians alike.”
This has recently come to a head. Lawyers have long put up with laws that aren’t translated into their native English.
Last fall, after another new law, regarding business transactions, was not translated, lawyers in Bamenda, a city in the northwest, organized a demonstration to protest to the government in the capital, Yaoundé.
It is dominated by the French-speaking majority that has long slighted their English-speaking region. Paul Biya, a francophone, has been president since 1982, regularly winning elections in which the opposition has alleged voting irregularities and fraud.
By December, the protests had turned violent. Security forces used live ammunition to disperse demonstrations in Bamenda. The unrest, the worst in almost a decade, comes as Biya appears intent on trying to extend his rule, the fourth-longest on the continent, in elections next year.
The secret to Biya’s ability to stay in power is a divide-and-rule policy that has split Cameroun along ethnic and regional lines.
Cameroun ranks 145 out of 176 countries on Transparency International’s corruption index, with the judicial system, government and the education and health sectors all severely affected by graft, according to the Berlin-based organization.
In recent weeks, dozens of protesters have been arrested and moved to Yaoundé. Nkongho Felix Agbor-Balla, the president of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, and Fontem Neba, the group’s secretary general, were arrested, and the group declared illegal, on Jan. 17.
The government’s heavy-handed response, which includes shutting down access to the internet in anglophone areas, has revived calls in the English-speaking area to break away from the rest of the country.
In English-speaking towns recently the population seems to disappear on some days, as life is suspended, in a form of protest called Operation Ghost Town.
Is it possible to establish a stable representative democracy in a truly multilingual society? John Stuart Mill, the eminent British political philosopher, thought not.
“Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist,” he contended in his 1861 book Considerations on Representative Government. Only a few countries, like Canada and Switzerland, have managed it.
No comments:
Post a Comment