John Fru I amone of the historic opponents of President Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist for more than 40 years, died at the age of 81 “following a long illness”. This was announced by his party.

The president and founder of the Social Democratic Front (SDF, or Social-Democratic Front in French), the first opposition party represented in the National Assembly, died Monday shortly before midnight, the SDF said in a statement.

Candidate three times once morest Paul Biya

John Fru I am had been an unsuccessful candidate three times once morest Paul Biya in the presidential elections of 1992, 2004 and 2011, each time coming in second position.

The SDF is the first opposition party represented in the National Assembly elected in 2020, with five seats, but it had 18 in the previous legislature. It has lost its influence in recent years once morest the all-powerful Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais (RDPC) of Paul Biya, 90 and president of Cameroon since 1982.

The SDF is regularly plagued by internal crises. John Fru Ndi, nicknamed “the Chairman”, was much contested there by a fringe of his executives in recent years, who accused him in particular, without providing any proof, of having enriched himself personally thanks to the public financing of the parties represented in The national assembly.

By “Chairman”

During the last presidential election of 2018, John Fru Ndi, already ill, had pushed his second Joshua Osih, vice-president of the party, to present himself in his place but it was Maurice Kamto, leader of the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon ( MRC) who came in second, relegating the SDF candidate far behind, in fourth position.

Since then, Maurice Kamto, imprisoned nine months without trial in 2019 for peaceful demonstrations once morest the power of Paul Biya, has become the main Cameroonian opponent. The MRC has no elected members of the Assembly because it boycotted the 2018 legislative elections.

John Fru Ndi had started in politics in the 1980s within the CPDM of Paul Biya before founding the SDF in 1990 when Cameroon legalized the multiparty system.

He had first been a fruit and vegetable merchant and then a bookseller. He was born in 1941 in Baba II, a commune bordering Bamenda, then located in the heart of the part of Cameroon under British and English-speaking mandate which will be integrated, in part, in 1961, into Cameroon, which became independent from France a year earlier. .

Bamenda is the capital of the North West region. With the Southwest, it is one of the two regions bloodied for more than six years by a war between English-speaking separatist armed groups and the army. The soldiers were dispatched massively by Paul Biya, intractable in the face of the desire for independence of part of the English-speaking minority, who considers himself ostracized by the French-speaking majority.

Caught between the power and the separatists of the English-speaking regions

John Fru Ndi, in particular by having his party participate in all the elections, never supported the idea of ​​independence, which notably earned him to be designated as a “enemy” in his region by the most radical separatists.

His house was burned down and he was even briefly kidnapped in 2019 by an armed group who claimed they wanted to convince him to remove SDF deputies from the National Assembly.

In 2019, John Fru Ndi supported the idea of ​​a federalist solution put forward by the most moderate separatists but rejected by those in power.

Armed groups such as law enforcement are regularly accused by the UN and international NGOs of abuses and crimes once morest civilians in English-speaking areas.