He was the historical opponent of Paul Biya. Three times unsuccessful candidate for the presidential election, John Fru Ndi, 81, will have tried, without success, to impose himself against the irremovable president of Cameroon, in power for 40 years. The president of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), died on the night of Monday June 12 to Tuesday 13 in Yaoundé, the country’s capital, “following a long illness”, announced Joshua Osih, the first vice-president party in a statement.
“The story of the return to multi-party politics in Cameroon cannot be written without his name in letters of gold. His life is a lesson that leadership is about serving, not being served,” tweeted lawyer and politician Akere Muna, a former presidential candidate who has known the “Chairman” for more than five years. decades.
The missed turn of the multiparty system
The political career of John Fru Ndi, a former bookseller born in 1941 in Bamenda, in the English-speaking North West, is closely linked to the return of multiparty politics in Cameroon, then dominated by a single party, the Democratic Rally of the Cameroonian People (RDPC, in the power).
“Whether those who govern us accept it or not, we firmly believe, as many others have done and affirmed before us, that the very essence of democracy is the management of the affairs of the city by the peoples concerned themselves”, insists the opponent, during the launch of the training in May 1990.
Two years later, in 1992, during the very first presidential election bringing together several political parties in Cameroon, he ran as a candidate and came second (35.97%), behind Paul Biya (39.98%), according to the official results. While many observers give him the winner, John Fru Ndi, supported by a large part of the population, disputes the results, without ever winning his case. The Supreme Court validates the election and he is placed under house arrest for several months.
In 1997, the man who embodied the possibility of alternation in Cameroon while leading his party with an iron fist decided to boycott the presidential election. Paul Biya was then re-elected with 92% of the vote. “The policy of the empty chair and the boycott of the elections meant for the SDF the abandonment of the opportunities available to it, notes Cameroonian researcher Théophile Mirabeau Nchare Nom in the collective work Socialismes en Afrique, published in 2021. For example, the party’s refusal to participate in the 1992 legislative elections was a political mistake, because its presidential results (35%) gave it a better chance of controlling Parliament by forming a coalition with the other opposition parties.
War in the West
During the presidential elections of 2004 and 2011 where he was a candidate, the “Chairman” failed to repeat the feat of 1992. He was even beaten in his stronghold in the North-West, in the senatorial elections of 2013. In 2018, he creates the surprise by not running for president. Joshua Osih, nominated candidate, collects 3.35% of the vote.
The party declines. For some, John Fru Ndi, weakened by age and illness, would have been corrupted by the power in place. A charge he has always denied. In 2017, in an interview with Le Monde, he claimed that “Paul Biya [should] be brought before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity”, for the multiple abuses committed in the context of the conflict which has opposed since 2017, the Cameroonian army to the separatists who are fighting for the independence of the South West and North West, the two English-speaking regions of the country.
Despite these positions, John Fru Ndi was perceived as a “traitor” by the secessionists. In 2019, the president of the SDF was briefly kidnapped by the latter who ordered him to boycott the 2020 legislative elections. He refused. The party won only five seats out of 180. A drastic fall, accentuated by the internal divisions which shook the Social Democratic Front.
The succession struggle between Joshua Osih and deputy Jean-Michel Nintcheu is making headlines in the press. The latter and his followers were finally expelled from the party, before taking legal action against John Fru Ndi for their reinstatement. “We can be disappointed by its internal activities, explains to World Jean Robert Wafo, former executive of the SDF, expelled from the party. But his disappearance leaves room for consternation and pain. I retain from the Chairman the exceptional politician in his richness and complexity”.
However, his political will is now contested. In the English-speaking regions, of which he was the leading representative for decades, the democratic struggle has given way to violence.