It stands for the Southern Cameroons National Council formed in 1994 after the second All Anglophones Conference that held in Bamenda, North West Region. Its major goal is to ensure that the anglophones secede from the Republic of Cameroon and form their own country following colonial boundaries. Different names have been proposed for the would-be country, Republic of Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia Republic, etc. The Council mounts pressures of various kinds on the government, e.g. it sued the government of Cameroon to the United Nations, declared independence of Southern Cameroons, and organises meetings from time to time. The government, however, treats it as an illegal organisation and has been arresting and detaining its members.
Published in Chapter:
Constructing a Diaspora Anglophone Cameroonian Identity Online
Eric A. Anchimbe (University of Bayreuth, Germany)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 15
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-773-2.ch008
Abstract
The chapter illustrates how Cameroonians living in the diaspora discursively construct their identity as anglophones, i.e., as coming from the anglophone part of the country (the North West and South West Regions) in online interactions. In order to do so, they draw from several sources: the colonial history and heritage of the country, the geographical origins of the anglophones, and the linguistic factor: the use of English. Emphasising certain traits that make them different and superior, the anglophones create an in-group almost on par with ethnicity. This in-group is recreated discursively in the data used here. The data were collected from the interactive feature of The Post Newspaper, online version. The chapter concludes that virtual identity construction follows similar strategies as real identities in non-virtual communities albeit differences imposed by the medium.