The language of President Paul Biya’s Reunification speech

It was easy to imagine the expectation and excitement awaiting President Paul Biya’s Reunification speech in Buea. If you are a social media presence like I am, you would have fallen on posts anticipatorily gauging Cameroonians’ take on the issue. Even a cursory look at Cameroonian TV stations would have proven this as they quizzed many intellectuals about the language which the President should use to address the nation on this momentous national rendezvous. So it is no surprise that hours after the speech was uttered it is trending on social media.

Be you a Cameroon or a foreign national dare not take lightly the pre- speech anticipation, the concurrent excitement and the significant post-speech residue, worse still if you are a policy maker or should I say a patriot. Better take the effervescence around the language of President Paul Biya’s speech as a renewed reminder that one of the greatest hindrances to our attainment of the utopia of unity is uncannily crystallised by language. Indulge this explanation.

What is a language?

I am not a linguist or grammarian or one of those nerds interested in and capable of gutting language to expose and explain its entrails. So I will rather start from this premise; language is the warehouse of a people’s hopes, aspirations, beliefs, phobias and much more. From this angle then speakers of different languages should have disagreeing aspirations, right?

Language in Cameroon

With Reunification in 1961, Cameroon became a bilingual country with two official languages, international for that matter, English and French. This choice has consistently been perpetuated by the various constitutions. Section 1 sub 3 of the current constitution unequivocally states “The official languages of the Republic of Cameroon shall be English and French, both languages having the same status. The State shall guarantee the promotion of bilingualism throughout the country. It shall endeavour to protect and promote national languages.”  Despite this provision, practice has made this constitutional edict resoundingly hollow as English-speaking Cameroons opine that English practically does not have the same status as French. They point most especially to the absence of English translations for information from government offices as some legislative texts often appear first in French and then later, very much later in some instances, in English. This absence has created room for the preponderance and predominance of French which has in turn bred feelings of the marginalisation of English and so them amongst the English – speaking Cameroons.

Simply put, language, its use, the preponderance of its use in Cameroon is a reliable tool for measuring the road travelled so far in the unity quest.

 The language of President Biya’s Speech

Before yesterday’s bilingual speech, the President of the Republic’s English vocabulary was thought to be limited to the phrase “I do so swear”, generally heard only when he is being sworn in after getting another presidential seat. As a living embodiment of a bilingual State, delivering the speech in both English and French was a welcome move although the accompanying sounds of applause from many English – speaking Cameroonian should not be seen as victory for the president or a 100% approval rating from English-speaking Cameroonians. If for anything, the President should personally see this insultingly and as his belated righting of a wrong since as the expected most bilingual Cameroon he should have much much much earlier than February 20, 2014 incarnated the ideal Cameroonian when language is concerned. His delivering a speech should be a given, usual and not unprecented, groundbreaking, famous and grounds for ululations from an educated crowd. As early as 1983 when he came to power he should have been giving his speeches alternately in English and French during occasions like the Youth and National Days. He should not have waited for the 50^th anniversary of our Reunification to do this given that in the midst of the unity fanfare and secessionist grumbling, this act considered more introspectively seems to be a rabbit he has pulled out of his political hat. In fact it can rightly be considered a flash in the pan if on National Day 2014 he does not repeat this performance.

This is the unfortunacy of President Biya delivering the Reunification speech bilingually: it is belated, too belated to put it lightly. What if common Cameroonians had like him chosen not to express themselves oftenly and publicly in English and French. We would be in an existential stalemate as a people.

The real language of President Biya’s speech

Since  national unity is the background to all the celebration, one question that Cameroonians must ask themselves is which language best represents them today as one people; a people that have been through German  and Anglo/French colonisation, a people with the diverse realities of their past, the complexity of their present and the prospects of their future. When they get the answer, they should ask themselves whether the President also delivered his speech in that language. Let’s face it, from a language perspective English and French do not unit us. From a historical perspective, these languages and our insistence on them as the prisms through which we define ourselves are an indication of the long road we still have to travel to consolidate our independence and unity.