Contents:
Edwin Mellen Press, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Gender, Discourse and Power in the Cameroonian Parliament. The anglophone Cameroon predicament. How Unified Is the Republic of Cameroon?: The Unification of the Institutions of the Republic of Cameroon since Development Policy Management Forum, Banga, Regine Emene and Vinh V. Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo , edited by Richard A. Fourth Dimension Publishers, Le Politique par le bas en Afrique noire: Rechenschaftspflichten und kommunale Selbstverwaltung in Kamerun: Becker, Peter and Alexander Kopp.
Zivilgesellschaft und Dezentralisierung in Kamerun. Organizing Elections in Cameroon: Thesis, Bordeaux 4, Science politique, Imprimerie el Mhamid, Beti, Mongo and Odile Tobner.
Main basse sur le Cameroun: Le temps du foyisme politique: Local Government Elections in Cameroon. Human Rights Clinic and Education Centre, An African Perspective edited by Lioba J. Moshi and Abdulahi A. Adonis and Abbey Publishers, Property and Political Order in Africa: Land Rights and the Structure of Politics. A Bilingual Federation, a Promising Potential. ICG Africa report International Crisis Group, Impunity Underpins Persistent Abuse. Amnesty International Publications, Working towards a Greener Country.
Political regimes and health policy in Ghana and Cameroon. Insights from Chad and Sudan. African-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies The State of the Process of Decentralisation in Cameroon. Political Power and Elections in Cameroon. Chindji Kouleu, Ferdinand, ed.
La voix de la jeunesse de Bangam.
We should be writing and reading the Aghem and the English Language! Fondaments, enjeux et perspectives. Opportunities for Democratic Change. Ojienda, and Thuto Moratuoa Hlalele. Pretoria University Law Press, Ministry of Agriculture, Common core document forming part of the reports of states parties: French NGO efforts at democracy building in Cameroon.
Social Policy and Structural Inequalities , p. Dewbre, Joe and Adeline Borot de Battisti. Agricultural Progress in Cameroon, Ghana and Mali: Why it Happened and How to Sustain it.
Like Gandhi in India before him, Ruben Um Nyobe was of the conviction that his country would attain independence without having to resort to violence and armed struggle. Beginning from the s, it designates various efforts overt and covert of a former colonial power to continue to control a people in the domains of economy and politics after having granted them formal independence. Ahmadu Ahidjo was a Muslim. The lawyer would be arrested shortly after when he circulated a statement declaring the Paul Biya government to be unconstitutional calling for the independence of Southern Cameroon as the Republic of Ambazonia Enjeu Foncier et Participation Politique au Cameroun. The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Africa:
OECD food, agriculture and fisheries working papers 9. Comparative Perspectives on Civil Society. Considerations on Council Management in Cameroon. Genre, leadership et participation au Cameroun To Bake or to Share: The Political Impact of the Sino-U. Oil Competition in Africa: Adonis and Abbey, The Bastardization of Cameroon.
Les relations entre frontaliers: Non-Western Reflection on Politics. Duni, Jeidoh, et al. From Rights and Marginality to Citizenship and Justice. Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, Reforms Required in Cameroon Today. The Bakassi Case at the World Court: University of Calabar Press, The Truth about Bakassi Peninsula: Willyrose and Appleseed Pub. The Evolution of African Civil Services: Ela, Pierre and Abel Eyinga. Le calice et le glaive: Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Brilliant Mhlanga. Africa Institute of South Africa, Shielding Cameroon from Democratization.
Virtual activism on Cameroon: Langaa Research and Publishing, Presses universitaires du Littoral, Essary, Elizabeth Helen, and Elena Theisner. The Convention on the Rights of the Child in Cameroon. Lamentation for a Beloved Country: Reflections on the Life of the Nation and Its Course: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence. Falola, Toyin and Jamaine Abidogun.
France on the Black Continent. Gouvernance communale en Afrique et au Cameroun. African social studies series The Northwest Fons and the Decadence of Tradition. Knowledge, gender, and power in male-dominated Cameroon. Hope and Bornwell C. Regulatory Control, Tension, and Accommodation. Fonchingong, Charles Che and Pius T. The Stakes and Challenges of Governance and Development. The challenges of nongovernmental organisations in anglophone Cameroon. Nova Science Publishers, Essays on Rethinking Government and Reorganization.
Tamajong, and Catherine F. The Search for a New Vision. Forum sur la lutte contre la corruption dans le milieu des affaires au Cameroun: Democracy and Human Rights in Africa: Understanding Confusion in Africa: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, How to structure and manage a political party: Presses universitaires d'Afrique, Democratization and Ethnic Differentiation in Africa: What results and consequences of democratic elections in Cameroon from Cameroon Baptist Convention, Les camerounais contre les camerounais.
Le parlement au Cameroun. Farmer-herder Conflict and State Legitimacy in Cameroon. Auteurs du monde, Power and Uncertainty in Constitutional Design. Presses des Ateliers Graphiques du Cameroun, Ivo, Ngade and Elong Eric Ebolo. Political Integration in a Fragmentary Society. Princeton University Press, Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo.
Radical Nationalism in Cameroun: Social Origins of the U. Oxford University Press, Anglophone Nationalism in Cameroon. Ce pour quoi je me bats: La colonisation et le Cameroun contemporain: Kathyola, Janet and Oluwatoyin Job. Decentralisation in Commonwealth Africa: Using priming to assess the effects of world events on public opinion. Bakassi, or the Politics of Exclusion and Occupation? African Women and Politics: African Studies Centre, The politics of neoliberal reforms in Africa: Le conseil municipal au Cameroun: Lambi, Julius and Oussematou Dameni.
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Le Vine, Victor T. The Cameroon Federal Republic. Cornell University Press, The Cameroon-Nigeria Border Dispute: Management and Resolution, Les 50 nerfs de la honte: With Special Reference to Cameroon. Thesis, University of Wales, Cardiff, Portrait des gouvernements postcoloniaux, Le vade-mecum du chef de terre: Lutte contre la corruption et restauration morale au Cameroun: Guinness Mount Cameroon Race Special Political Changes and Challenges edited by Saliba G.
Sarsar and Julius Adekunle. Carolina Academic Press, Lessons for Africa's New Democrats. Mbaku, John Mukum and Joseph Takougang. The leadership challenge in Africa: Cameroon under Paul Biya. Africa World Press, Thesis, Boston University, Le drapeau du Cameroun: Paul Biya a peur de sa diaspora depuis 30 ans. Recherches en histoire contemporaine. Election Management in Cameroon. Lap Lambert Academic Publ, Civil Disobedience in Cameroon. Parliamentary and Municipal Elections in Cameroon: The colonial army used armoured tanks, automatic weapons, helicopter gunships and deadly chemical fire bombs and sprays against a handful of militants 5 We all, especially those who had been to Indochina, thought over on the device, and we knew a lot.
As a matter of fact the north of Cameroon, which has a majority of Muslim populations identified the Christian populations of the south with the UPC and thus with the demand for independence.
It has been suggested that for them, political emancipation preached by the UPC was an avenue to southern [Christian in the majority] domination and would have preferred [encouraged by the French] to have they region annexed to their neighbours [Chad and Ubangi-Shari] under French administration. The marching order was: It was a devastation and slaughter: Even forests were burned and habitation destroyed by fire. Dogs and flesh-eating birds were given great feasts for several months.
Entire villages were burned and the inhabitants all killed. It is interesting to consider the dreadfulness with which the repression of the UPC movement was undertaken. Outside of the camps would be found the wild beast and the criminal,8 French propaganda said, and at any time, anyone — men, women, children, fauna and flora which could or sometimes seemed to move — who was not within the reserved zones [zones de pacification] was tracked and killed. The population in the countryside continued to run away from the army to live in the territory known to be free.
One third of the south of the territory was thus free. Let us say that they were mere foot soldiers. In the colonies subjects were taught that they were colonised for their own good and that their societies would advance as a result. In the implicit discourse of the colonialists, Africans in their service could not be anything more than mere flesh animated from without for action towards specified objectives of their masters.
Should one expect more brains among foot soldiers when their political leaders [so-called intellectual] commanders would accept to be bribed and to be paraded as lovers of the colonial regime who are against decolonisation and independence, and later would actually and with no qualms, maintain in place, the system of their masters of yesterday? But for a Cameroonian who became a senior member of the colonial army to extol those methods of the French and have no qualms regarding his role in the massacres and desolation that they caused [mass and lasting trauma, hopelessness and ruin of a country] so many years after those episodes, this is a curiosity.
As a foot soldier at the time of the atrocities, it may be entertained that he could have been relatively ignorant and absolvable of personal responsibility. But he became a senior member of that army! It is of singular interest to say the least, that he is still not touched in his feelings by the methods and the extent of the killings. Even the French have since admitted that they struck too hard, and with other methods they could have obtained better 7 Submission credited to M.
Cameroon under Ahmadu Ahidjo. And they want everyone to know. Their attitude is rather different when it is other people who want their own past to be well-known and want anyone to talk about it. Africans, who do not want their past of slavery and colonial domination to be forgotten, are accused of victimisation; they should leave all that; they are just minutiae [trivia].
Africans are enjoined to forget. Colonial wars are very little known: There seem to be a complete blackout on what happened in Madagascar in and especially in Cameroon from to French politics regarding these issues is characterised by disinformation, distortion and especially deliberate oversight. French troops in Cameroon pose for show with their trophies When the forces of the colonial army arrested fugitives in the forest, [to kill them, their heads were cut off and for their effect, cut off heads were frequently taken to the market place] France denies that such things happened.
Until recently, the denial was only implicit — implied by French censorship of news reports in news papers and published works. All that is a pure lie. This was a man who was born in , who has done studies in journalism and in law, who once was an assistant in the French National Assembly before a career in politics which led him to become Minister for Higher Education and Research, and to become the Prime Minister of France. Perhaps he had never heard a single word of this history.
So, for him it was a fabrication. And yet it is of the recent history of his own country! Could he have lied as part of a scheme? Did he really not know? We can only speculate on what was the case. This caused uproar in Cameroon, but in France it was a silence of silence in silence. For the French in France, and also in Cameroon ruled by Cameroonians, the war in Cameroon did not take place. Officially, there are no ceremonies, no commemorations. It cannot be said that anything is being done in Cameroon — about ten students, this created a political problem when they tried to get to the tomb of Ruben Um Nyobe.
He was killed by poisoning: This was in This book was immediately banned by decree of the French Minister of Interior. After the book, French police went for the author and sought to rescind his French nationality. He would defeat the French State in court but he was definitively black listed by pseudo-cultural media which were completely devoted to the official French version on events on the former colonies. The book would be read only in secret by a small number of Cameroonians who learn the bloody history of their country.
Colonial wars were wars of hatred, wars of extermination; colonial peoples were supposed to be sub-humans, to be eliminated. The extermination of the nationalists was a five on five military success and was sealed by a censorship which suppressed the memory of the event — a perfect crime as some would qualify it. Political development and the struggle for independence Just before the World War II, in the face of German clamouring to regain its territories of before World War I, the French thought that they had to prepare Africans, especially Cameroonians, who among them were many who still had strong links with the former colonial power — it was not so long since Germany was ousted — sympathisers with even circles of friends in some towns who used to meet to dink together and speak German.
For the sake of prudence, it was thought that the population was to be prepared against German propaganda. On the instigation of the Governor General Richard Bruno JeuCaFra, an officious propaganda tool whose aim was to show that the people of Cameroon were not in favour of being reunited with Nazi Germany, was formed with Soppo Priso as leader. It was also an opportunity for the French to further ensure their authority on this territory which had a special status since it was not a colony like others but conferred by the League of Nations to Britain and France after the defeat of Germany in For Ruben Um Nyobe however, this movement was of interest to them not for the reasons of the colonialists.
In this regard, he wrote: General Charles de Gaulle came to Brazzaville in and launched a call for African territories under French control to support free France and the call was largely adhered to by Africans. In tens of thousands, they went to Europe to support French effort. After the Second World War, when servicemen returned from that war, things were bound to evolve. The awareness of servicemen had evolved as a result of exposure: Ordinarily, for most of them, they used to think that White people were some sort of super beings.
They were also aware of their contribution to the saving of France and that France owed them acknowledgement. Intellectuals too, nursed the hope that the collaboration in the war, the support of their people to enable the French to triumph over Nazism would lead the French to some humility, but especially, to widen their rights and to give then some liberty. If they had fought for the French to enable them regain their freedom, it was logical that the French accord to them their autonomy.
The French were conscious that in the face of the acquired awareness among the indigenes, they had to make concessions. This did not however mean that we were requesting to become a French colony as Soppo Priso was abusively affirming. It was a great moment for Africans. He excluded the prospects of autonomy and evolution outside the French empire, but he, in passing, alluded to the participation of natives in the management of their own affairs. The General also evoked the possibility of acting and organising themselves freely. The first decree of the provisional government of France under De Gaulle would authorise the formation of Trade Unions.
L'assemblée des peuples camerounais: Le Cameroun que nous voulons. 3 Aug Kindle Edition · £ Le totalitarianisme des États africains: Le cas du Cameroun (Études africaines). 1 Jan Language. French. L'assemblée des peuples camerounais: Le Cameroun que nous voulons (Études Le Cameroun que nous voulons (Études africaines) (French Edition).
On social and related issues, the French were willing to improve the conditions of the colonised. Daily life was a really bad case of disdain for a huge part of the masses. The colonial regime would be softened: Demands for separation from France, quitting the empire, however, were out of the question. Moukoko Priso relates a submission of one of his teachers at the time as follows: Influential intellectuals of the country rushed to belong, first, because these circles enabled them to acquire a systems perspective and to interpret and fight the economic and political aspects of colonialism, and then, it gave them the first opportunity to meet White people and to work with them as equals.
These circles had different names. Ruben Um Nyobe and his friend Jacques Ngom attended these circles with assiduity. The colonialists applauded and participated. It was great joy, great fraternity. The French [Europeans] are shocked, scandalised. They thought that so much of rights given to natives to form associations made their own position frail. To compare with their condition before and during the war, things were getting worse for them. Submission credited to Moukoko Priso. The militants are radicalised. In September workers of the railway corporation went on a strike for salaries and the strike would spread to all sectors.
The colonial administration shot at manifesting crowds and this led to riots and deaths of scores of persons. Depriving them of the white people among them, they would be lost. Ruben Um Nyobe became Secretary General of the movement. Increased confrontations with the white organisation led Ruben Um Nyobe and his colleagues to think that another organisation should be formed in which they would consider distinctively political questions.
The immediate reunification of Cameroon 2. The constitution of a governing council and an assembly with law-making powers 3. A stark parallel existed already in South Africa. Alerted by the action of the UPC which made its militants aware that Cameroon was not a French colony, and so would not be involved in the scheme the French proposed, the French undertook to create Cameroonians who would speak for Cameroonians who wanted the UN-Trusted territory of Cameroon to become a French colony and a certain Duala chief, Manga Bell was paraded at the United Nations Organisation to tell the world that Cameroonians loved France and demanded that the UN- Trusted territory of Cameroon become a French colony.
UPC action on political conscientisation had been in process since the creation of the movement in Its leadership had thought out explicit plans in respect to political governance upon independence. Already, in practice, the mode of organisation within the UPC itself and the effectiveness which characterised its masses education enterprise were indicative of the deliberateness with which it prepared for independence.
Our movement, arising from the people, nothing valid and constructive would be attained if we act from above as it is the case in the colonies: Specifically, the UPC was sponsoring and supervising the training of a sizable personnel to man the government when the country would be accorded independence. As a matter of fact, at the time when its activities were banned and its militants outlawed, it had more knowledgeable people among its following for this event within and out of Cameroon than the French among the scaremonger of political formations they sponsored within Cameroon.
It was very advanced in the preparation of the territory for self rule and independence. In the single person of the mpodol, the Secretary General, it has been acknowledged, was extraordinary as an organiser and as a masses educator: The spotlight of his public interventions were on the daily concerns of the people of the countryside and of urban areas regarding, the price of cocoa, the price of salt, the prices of items imported from France, increasing unemployment, the insufficiency of hospitals and the spotted disdain of the colonial administrators towards Cameroonians.
The colonial regime, by means of disinformation led the colonised to believe that he was inferior. The mpodol taught UPC masses that Cameroon belonged to Cameroonians; Cameroonians should be aware of who they are as humans; at all, that they are to no degree, lesser humans than the French who at that time, dominated in their land. The struggle of the UPC was for the attainment of the actualisation of two things: Independence would restore to the Cameroonian this loss of dignity through an affirmation of his identity. The attainment of independence meant that Cameroon would be governed by Cameroonians for Cameroonians.
The mpodol warned against independence which might not be genuine. Actually, he was warning against what was to come, namely, the neo-colonial regime. Independence was genuine only if in reality, it meant economic and social emancipation. With Ruben Um Nyobe, the workers were made aware of their rights. We are in To mobilise Cameroonian workers, Ruben Um Nyobe had this lesson for them. The capitalist he affirms, has the support of the colonial administration and this administration can carry out its policy of oppression in our land only by using economic weapons and technical means which on the main are in the possession of enterprises.
The UPC thinks, and trade union militants are also of the opinion, that, economic emancipation of our populations is impossible without the political victories necessary for economic, social and cultural progress. As with many other countries before colonisation, Cameroon is characterised by ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. It occurred that the movement the mpodol led was accused of tribalism. In response, it is in record that the mpodol alluded to the concept of the nation which is not shy to affirm its cultural plurality.
Ruben Um Nyobe is one of those African leaders who specifically thought out the construction of a nation. The leader of the UPC proposes a conception of the nation as having to be united without being unique. He makes a distinction between the unity of a nation and cultural oneness. He highlights the link between political unity of a nation and the cultural diversity of its peoples and recoils against the idea that the nation, under the pretext of unity may oppress or deny the rights of minorities.
For Ruben Um Nyobe, it did not suffice to unite the two parts of the territory divided by colonialism for there to be a nation. Cameroonians were to attain a sharp awareness of their culture which would enable a projection of their complete anchorage in their culture, but at the same time, in their resistance against the coloniser, people of different tribes, people of different religions which in history had been engaged in confrontation, faced the same danger of death Awareness of this would lead to a process of transcendence of the tribe, not with the objective of doing away with or looking on the tribe with disdain, but the process would usher unto a broader thing, on to a nation on the condition that that nation not turn out to be a negation of diversity.
The fact of the tribe is not derogatory but has a historical meaningfulness. The tribe corresponded to a need at some stage of the history of the people. Tribes could be instrumentalised — but this was not sufficient reason to undertake a nationwide detribalisation. The people should not be fooled, the mpodol intimated: The position of the UPC movement was that the people were to revisit the values of their cultures to reaffirm their cultural roots.
On the question of freedom for Cameroon, everyone, whatever his ethnic origin, whatever the religious group with which he identified himself, was in the same fight; emphases on differences in tribes and in religions while the colonial system lasted, was a distraction. Cameroon was in the category of the oppressed because it is divided; the single objective of the struggle was liberation from the colonial regime; Cameroon would attain victory over its oppressors only as a unified entity, the mpodol opined.
In a public submission in May in front of thousands of persons, in response to the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church [a cardinal had accused Ruben Um Nyobe of anti-White racism] this is what he said: The mpodol said that: This is the reason why, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, fetishists and non- believers, we should unite to hasten the reunification and independence of Cameroon. What were important were the attitudes of these entities and of persons within, with regard to the struggle against colonial domination and for freedom. Armed struggle On violence, the mpodol believed that after the defeat of Nazism in Europe, the situation of nations dominating other nations as it was the case of colonialism, was not going to continue.
This arose apparently from his analysis of the international situation: He believed that at the UN, colonised peoples had definite allies who were going to support them in their efforts to put an end to the colonial regime, and indeed they did. Like Gandhi in India before him, Ruben Um Nyobe was of the conviction that his country would attain independence without having to resort to violence and armed struggle.
It was at the extreme of moments of colonial action against its militants — arbitrary arrests, institutionalised torture, summary executions, and killing of its leaders — that the movement resorted to armed resistance. Shortly after, they surrendered their rights to the state of Germany. With its army Germany extended its control beyond the Delta, establishing a protectorate over what came to be called Kamerun [see maps above].
The German protectorate lasted up to the war of The German protectorate of Cameroon came under France and Britain. The French administered the section they occupied as a territory under League of Nations [which became the United Nations after the Second World War] tutelage, and the British dealt with the section of the territory they occupied as part of Nigeria but with its own administration apart. Its request to the international community was that the Cameroons [the British administered component and the French-administered component] were to be united, a governing council and an assembly with law-making powers constituted, and a timeline of events towards independence given.
Apparently this was a normal request; the two entities used to be one and for viability, the bigger the country at independence, the better. Cameroon was a UN-trusted territory administered under French and British tutelage. The political development of the territory was the concern of the United Nations: On this reminder, the French tried to change the status of the territory under Trusteeship but the UPC was a truly popular movement.
This was not going to go down its throat. So, the French went on to implement their own agenda. To maintain total control over the natural resources and the political development of the country, the French decided on, plan, and carry out a pogrom; nearly all Cameroonians who had come to know and believed that Cameroon was not a French colony and were not willing to change their beliefs were hunted down and killed, beginning from to When they thought that they had sufficiently weakened the movement for an independent Cameroon which would not be under French control, killing the mpodol, they granted internal autonomy to Cameroon and independence shortly after, installing a personnel of their choosing.
Still in affairs, they initiated what the UPC had presented to the United Nations Organisation in , namely, negotiated the reunification of Cameroon which led to a UN- organised plebiscite elections in the English-administered Trusted territory. The French would not grant freedom and independence to the territories which constituted their colonies. When their position on the issue became untenable, they were obligated to negotiate autonomy and formal independence.
This would later be christened neo-colonialism. Then there was the issue of the reunification of the country. In the political mathematics of the individual the French had picked to supervise their interests in Cameroon, the reunification was problematical: Ahmadu Ahidjo was a Muslim. The southern Cameroons of about inhabitants was Christian in the majority.
The other component of the Cameroons which according to the plebiscite decided to be integrated into Nigeria comprised a majority of Muslims in its about inhabitants.