Citizens of the British Southern Cameroons:
This year marks 150 years of continuing colonisation of our Homeland: British from 1858 to 1887; German from 1888 to 1914; British again from 1915 to 1961; Cameroun Republic from October 1961 to date. Few peoples in the world have had such a chequered and cruel fate. And so we fight to be free. We fight to have full control over our lives and our land. We fight for our future. We fight for our God-given territory. We fight to manage our own affairs. We fight to live a life of dignity as human beings free from fear and want. We fight not for the past. We fight for the future. We fight for the future of our children. Our children deserve a place they can legitimately, proudly, truly and freely call home. It is quite unimportant whether we ourselves as individuals live. But it is essential that, like other people, we as a people live. It is essential that the British Southern Cameroons, by whatever name we eventually choose to baptise it, shall live; and that even as a small nation, it has every right to exist.
Fellow Southern Cameroonians, the use of the term "British" at this point in our struggle must be explained. We are not trying to become British, but we respect the rules. In 1984, the Cameroun Republic reverted to its original identity before its union with the Southern Cameroons. In so doing, Cameroun Republic seceded from the pretended union, but has illegally held on to us as a colony. We had no choice but to revert to our pre-union identity and to resume our decolonisation efforts. The issue of our name has been a cause of much argument in this struggle. One of the first acts of this government will be to obtain through a fair and open process a suitable and final name for ourselves from the genius of our people. That name would in all likelihood be neither "British" or "Cameroons".
