Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

Just (Re)Published: N.N Mbile's Memoir on Politics in (Southern) Cameroon(s)

N.N. Mbile. Cameroon Political Story: Memories of an Authentic Eye Witness | Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | 2011 | 310 pages. Available from Amazon.com

In a 2007 article titled "Individual Memory and Collective Amnesia: Where are the Political Memoirs?", I lamented about "a long list of prominent Cameroonians on both sides of the Mungo who never bothered to write their memoirs thereby depriving future generations of Cameroonians of the right to know and understand their past."

Commenting specifically about the British Southern Cameroons, I pointed out that "of the original 13 Southern Cameroons representatives who sat in Nigeria’s Eastern House of Assembly in Enugu in 1952 (the Cameroon bloc), only one, Nerius Namaso Mbile, wrote his memoirs which were published in 1999."

Rare British Cameroons Colonial-Era Photos Available Online

The UK National Archives has created a collection of interesting African colonial era pictures on its Flickr page.
 
Can you identify these members of the Southern Cameroons House of Representatives (1956)? (c) National Archives UK

The pictures, taken mainly by colonial staff, are part of a collection titled "Africa Through a Lens". According to the archives, “ In many instances we know little about the people or contents of the photographs and this is one of the reasons why we have published them online and asked people to comment and share their knowledge."

(Video ) Mola Njoh Litumbe on the Southern Cameroons Issue

Mola Njoh Litumbe's interesting perspective on the union between the British Southern Cameroons and the French Cameroons in this interview with Equinoxe TV (Douala, Cameroon).

 

Hanging onto the Lion’s Mane: 50 Years of Anglophone Frustrations with Cameroon’s National Football Team*

Culled from Foot for Thought: 50 Years of Football in the Southwest Region & Anglophone Cameroon, forthcoming book by Tanjong Ashuntantang.

The day was Sunday October 1, 1961. The venue was the Hippodrome Stadium in Yaoundé. The event was a football match organized to commemorate the Reunification of the British Southern Cameroons and the French-speaking La République du Cameroun to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon.
Humphrey Mosenge, one of the leading West Cameroon players, greeting President Ahidjo during a match between the Southwest province and Littoral in the 1970s

The game pitted a squad tagged “La selection Nationale” (i.e., the national football team of the new nation) against a selection of Cameroonian nationals based in the Diaspora. The guest of honor was Ahmadou Ahidjo, President of the newly formed Federal Republic of Cameroon.

Cameroon: The Historical Amnesia and Confusion Continues...

 

French Cameroons gained its independence from France on January 1, 1960 while the British Southern Cameroons gained its independence from Britain and (re)united with the French Cameroons on October 1, 1961. However, the Biya regime has decided to commemorate the "Fiftieth Anniversaries of the Independence and Reunification of Cameroon" not on January 1, 2010 and/or October 1, 2011 but on May 20, 2010, the day when the Cameroon federation, which gave the former British Cameroons significant autonomy as a distinct political and territorial entity, was dissolved to be replaced by a centralized unitary state. The historical confusion of generations of Cameroonians contnues unabated...

Click here to visit the official "fiftieth anniversaries (SIC)" webiste.

The Southern Cameroons Origins of the Youth Day Celebrations

By Churchill Ewumbue-Monono (culled from Youth and Nation-Building in Cameroon, 2009)

A policy advocacy initiative, the origins of the National Youth Day in Cameroon can be traced to the special days celebrated by youth organizations in the Southern Cameroons such as 22 February, the “Thinking Day”, celebrated by the Girl Guides and Brownies in commemoration of Lady Banden Powell. There was also the Commonwealth Youth Sunday marked by the reading of a Message from the Queen, Church services and a March-Past by youth groups such as the Boys Scouts, Girl Guides, Boy’s Brigades, Red Cross and other youth organizations. It was presided by His Honour the Commissioner of Southern Cameroons, or his Deputy Commissioner who took the salute and read the speech to the parades...

“The Business of Decolonization”: British Business Interests & the Decolonization of Southern Cameroons

Dibussi Tande

“Tilney, a director with John Holt, which was one of the major operators in the region recalls that he and fellow Liverpool MP Norman Pannell had tried to persuade the Colonial Office to grant the British Cameroons its independence as a separate state.”

Practically all books and articles on the decolonization of the British Southern Cameroons focus primarily on the internal and external political factors that ultimately led to the February 11, 1961 plebiscite. There are very few studies (in fact I am unaware of any such study) that focus primarily or exclusively on how British businesses tried to influence the outcome of the decolonization process. This is quite intriguing, considering, as S. E. Stockwell has pointed out in the case of the Gold Coast, that "British companies were much more than by-standers in the transition from colony to independence"  even when they “exercised little influence over imperial policy”.

Southern Cameroons vs. La Republique du Cameroun – The Ruling of the African Commission on Human Rights

Dibussi Tande

“The Commission, however, finds also that the Respondent State violated various rights protected by the African Charter in respect of Southern Cameroonians. It urges the Respondent State to address the grievances expressed by the Southern Cameroonians through its democratic institutions." African Commission on Human Peoples' Rights

In a communiqué read on state-run media on October 1, 2009 – the 48th anniversary of the (re)unification of Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroun – Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon’s Minister of Communications, informed the public that the African Commission on  Human and Peoples' Rights had ruled on the case filed by  SCAPO and the SCNC. He stated that  “In its final decision, the commission has rejected all the secessionist claims made by the representatives of SCNC and SCAPO. The commission has also rejected allegations that the Anglophone community is victim of violence and discrimination.”

1961 House of Commons Debates on Southern Cameroons - David Ormsby Gore, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs

We are all anxious to prevent any repetition of recent events in the Congo. It seems to us that our best hope of doing this is to continue firmly on our present course. There are always dangers when new countries are born—always the possibility of something going wrong—but these dangers would have been greater if we had tried, or were now to try to enforce reunification with Nigeria in a way contrary to the United Nations mandate and against the wishes of the people. David Ormsby Gore, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs 

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) has a considerable advantage over me in this debate, as he clearly knows the country very well. My knowledge of it is entirely second-hand, but I was very much impressed by his description of it, and the idea of a warm summer's day. I found it rather attractive on a cold winter's night in London.

The connection of the United Kingdom with the Cameroons began as a result of the First World War, and our responsibilities derive from a League of Nations Mandate which was replaced after the Second World War by the 1946 Trusteeship Agreement between the United Nations and United Kingdom. We have throughout held these territories in trust and it is for the United Nations to decide when that trusteeship was terminated.

1961 House of Commons Debates on Southern Cameroons - John Tinley, Conservative MP, Liverpool

"Perhaps the Southern Cameroonian made the decision to join up with the Cameroon Republic through fear of the Ibo, or because of lack of finance or lack of leadership by the United Kingdom in the past, for we have tried our best to remain neutral; or was it because he had no third choice offered to him?" John Tilney, House of Commons, February 20, 1961.

I am not sure what time it is now in the Cameroons, but I am quite sure that it is high time that thought was given by some Ministers and by the United Nations to the very urgent affairs of that territory. I ought, at the outset, to declare an interest in that I am a director of a company which, among many other interests, has for over seventy years operated in Victoria and elsewhere in the territory, albeit of recent years with declining success. It has a venture also in Bamenda.

The battle of the plebiscite is now over. I pay tribute to the men, many of them from the United Kingdom, who have worked hard to make the administration of that democratic decision a success. Though they were unable to put the pros and cons of the results of the choice before the electorate, they tried to make a very nearly totally illiterate electorate aware of what the choices were.

48 Years Ago - Southern Cameroons and The Republic of Cameroun Form the Federal Republic

Exactly 48 years ago on October 1, 1961, the Federal Republic of Cameroon was born after the  United Nations Trust territory of (British) Southern Cameroons merged with the French-speaking Republic of Cameroun - this, in accordance with the results of the UN-sponsored plebiscite of February 11, 1961.

On this anniversary day, we will not be looking at the ground covered or not covered by both territories since 1961 - that will be a task for the 50th anniversary. Rather, we will walk down memory lane to revisit some of the interesting post-plebiscite debates about the fate of Southern Cameroons in the British House of Commons; debates which indicated that the decolonization of Southern Cameroons was not as straightforward as it seemed to the uninitiated. One of such debates was between John Tilney, Conservate MP from Liverpool, an unapolgetic proponent of Southern Cameroons independence, and David Ormsby Gore, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, defending the new reality which emerged from the Plebiscite. We will post both of their declations in their entirety.

Later, we will use the case of John Tilney to demonstrate that the competing political and economic interests within the British political establishment over the fate of Southern Cameroons  had little or nothing to do with actual Southern Cameroons  interests - - even when they favored South Cameroons independence without "integrating" or "joining' either Nigeria or Cameroon 

Memory Lane Video (February 11, 1961): The British Cameroons Plebiscite

UPDATE: Click here to watch video. (Youtube video embed not working)
Video erroneously labeled as 20th May 1972 West Cameroon plebiscite...

CAMEROON: Independence plebiscite

Reuters - 15 February 1961: A West African country divided in two..... this is likely to be the result of a plebiscite held in the Cameroons, on Feb. 11 and 12. Final results have yet to be announced, but in Northern Cameroons there is already an unbeatable majority in favour of union with Nigeria, while in the Southern Cameroons, it is reported that a final majority in favour of union with the Cameroon Republic is already certain.

Memory Lane Video (Buea, May 17 1958): Dr. EML Endeley at the Governor's Lodge

Scenes from Buea, Southern Cameroons, as new House of Assembly set to open.

UPDATE: Click here to watch video on youtube (Video embed no longer working)

Description of video

 1.
 Inside Secretariat, Buea - "Berlin" nameplate on safe door
 
 2.
 Bismarck on Buea fountain. Shots 1 & 2 to emphasise remnants of German influence still remain (Cameroons was German colony until First World War). Shot 7 also.

Joyce Ashuntantang: Foreign Publishers Determine the Nature of our Stories (Interview)

Interviewed by Dibussi Tande

“As long as foreign publishers remain the mid-wives of our stories, they will keep determining the nature of these stories.” Joyce Ashuntantang

Early this year, Joyce Ashuntantang published a book titled Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature which Bernth Lindfors describes as the "most comprehensive study of Anglophone Cameroon literature that has been published to date". In the book, Dr. Ashuntantang, who teaches literature at Hillyer College, University of Hartford, USA, demonstrates that contrary to widespread belief, literature from the English-speaking part of Cameroon is alive and well, in spite of a host of obstacles that have slowed its development and reduced its international visibility. In this interview, Dr. Ashuntantang discusses her ground-breaking book and the state of Anglophone Cameroon literature with Dibussi Tande. Excerpts:

Literature Apartheid in Cameroon

Patrice Nganang (Translated from French by Emmanuel Ndeh Avwontom) 

“Anglophone writers appear to me akin to the Albatross in Baudelaire’s poetry. The English language that they acquired from their colonial past arms them with broad wings, but the Anglophone issue clips them in their impeding flight.”

An intellectual crime is being committed in our country: that of segregation against Anglophone Cameroon Literature. The crime is unfolding before the very eyes of our national Intellectuals, with our consent as stakeholders and, often spurred by our most respected, yet conniving francophone Intellectuals. Salient in mind are Achille Mbembe’s fumble in an article he published on the Anglophone issue.  The fact, therefore, that a francophone student can complete education, beginning at Nursery school right up to a University degree – twenty years in all – without so much as touching a poetry collection, a work of prose or a drama piece published by an Anglophone writer is illustrative of the magnitude of the literary apartheid which has been used by our educational system to brainwash us.

Cameroon Literature in English – Vibrant but Invisible

By Dibussi Tande (Originally published in Palapala Magazine)

Anglophone Cameroon writing... is too little known and much underrated... consequently, much that has been written in English in Cameroon and what has been written about writing in English in Cameroon must have the character of a first encounter with the unseen, a getting to know and shedding of light on a dark spot in the literary development of Africa - Ekhard Breitinger.

In 1978, Patrick Sam-Kubam published an article in Abbia (31/33, February 1978, 205-208) in which he lamented about “The paucity of literary creativity in Anglophone Cameroon". In 1997, Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi picked up on the same theme in her seminal book on gender when she also commented about “the paucity of Cameroonian Anglophone writing”. To a certain extent, these two statements, made some two decades apart, reflected and still reflect a reality on the ground. Literature in English speaking Cameroon has not developed at the same pace as other “national” African literatures.

Memory Lane (Video): Foncha, Ahidjo & the Cameroons Unification

A brief report on the unification of the British and French Cameroons. What expectations did Southern Cameroons leaders have of unification? What promises did the leaders of the French Cameroons make with regards to unification? How did the erstwhile equal relationship between Premier Foncha and President Ahidjo become be a subaltern one? Documentary contains very rare archival video footage and audio clips from the 1960s and 1970s. (In French).

Memory Lane (1964): Vice President of Cameroon Get's St. John's Doctorate

For those who have always wondered where and how Dr. John Ngu Foncha, the former Premier of the Southern Cameroons, earned his doctorate...

The New York Times, June 3, 1964.

Vice President John N. Foncha of Cameroon received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws yesterday from St. John's University at a special ceremony on the campus in Jamaica, Queens [New York].

The Very Rev. Edward J. Burke, president of the university, conferred the degree. He said that Mr. Foncha was " a distinguished statesman and diplomat who has shown rare qualities of leadership and dedication in helping to guide the young West African federal republic in the international community of states."

Mr. Foncha was educated in Nigeria and served several years as headmaster of the Catholic Mission School in Bamenda before entering politics in 1954.

The “Anglophone Problem” in Cameroon: A creation of “Counter Elite Intellectuals”?

By Jean-Germain Gros [Culled from « Preface » Cameroon: Politics and Society in Critical Perspectives. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America: 2003]

Rightly or wrongly, Anglophones in Cameroon today, or at least their elite, feel that they are second-class citizens of a country dominated by Francophones… I believe tat Anglophone nationalists (or at least the more ardent among them) miss several points about the Francophone-Anglophone divide.

First the division of Cameroon between “Francophones” and “Anglophones” is more historical and geographic than linguistic. A Mbororo (a member of the Peul ethnic group) cattle raiser, who has difficulties communicating even with her fellow Foulbe brethren in Fulfulde, might be quite surprised that she is “Francophone”.

Book Launch in London - The 1961 Cameroon Plebiscite - Choice or Betrayal by John Percival

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London; Thursday 18th September 2008 from 6-8 pm