The Reunification Question in Cameroon History: Was the Bride an Enthusiastic or a Reluctant One?

By Nicodemus Fru Awasom (Africa Today Volume 47, Number 2, 2000) 

The 1961 reunification of the British Southern Cameroons and the former French Cameroons was an extraordinary event, as peoples of different colonial backgrounds decided to form a single state. It presented a countercurrent in postcolonial Africa to the prevailing trend of the balkanization of old political unions or blocs.1 The British and French Cameroons had been administered separately by Britain and France since 1916 and reunified against the expectations and maneuvers of the metropolitan powers in 1961.

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Political developments during the Second Cameroon Republic, particularly in the 1990s under President Paul Biya, seem to suggest that reunification was an undesirable and an unfortunate occurrence. Reunification came to be represented as villainy, a plague, an albatross around people's necks, and a none-too-heroic act. Against a background of incessant Anglophone agitation for a return to federalism or a secession from the union, some alleged that Anglophone Cameroonians were those who had conceived the reunification idea. One influential opinion, championed by Charles Assale (the first Prime Minister of the Federated State of East Cameroon), and popularized in LeTemoin, Le Patroite, and the Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV), held that reunification was essentially an Anglophone affair.
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The reunification question has turned out to be such a controversial subject that both initiates and noninitiates into Cameroon studies find themselves thoroughly confused and dumbfounded. Was reunification a triumphant event or an unfortunate one in the history of Cameroon? Was one party in the movement more enthusiastic than the other, and did it therefore strive harder for its realization? Put differently, who needed whom more in the reunification process? Which group went on their knees or prostrated before the other for reunification to take place? In the light of Anglophone remonstrance in the 1990s, intermittently culminating in the call for outright secession, was the quest for reunification genuine or was it a simple outburst of infatuated, naïve, and adventurous nationalists? Was reunification being used as a means to an end, or an end in itself? Clearly the reunification question is an intriguing one and a succession of scholars will continue to revisit it in the light of their own idiosyncrasies. It will remain an inexhaustible source of elephant meat for interested scholars to have their own share.

This article is written against the backdrop of the reunification discourse since the 1990s, and squarely examining the origin, flag bearers, and fortunes of the reunification movement. It addresses the issue of the degree of commitment of Anglophones and Francophones to the movement. This endeavor requires a chronological, comprehensive, and critical survey of the reunification question. Often only part of the history is presented, either inadvertently or deliberately, to confuse and distort the historiography of the movement. The partial presentation of the reunification movement creates bitterness and rancor between Anglophones and Francophones, and weakens the survival of Cameroon in terms of national integration and harmonious development.

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Comments

[Damas]

According to Malcolm Milne, Deputy Commissioner in the Southern Cameroons in the years before reunification:

"the problems that would arise as a result of bringing together the British
and French systems of government ¼ were clearly foreseen from the outset. When Foncha’ s new government sought our views in 1959 we all advised of the difficulties (which have become plain for all to appreciate in the intervening 36 years). Foncha - and one must assume his government - went into the Conference knowing of Ahidjo’ s views. The door was open to an extension of the British Trusteeship of the Southern Cameroons if Foncha and Ahidjo had been unable to agree to final terms of unification between 11 February and 1 October 1961 ¼ Such further Trusteeship was not requested."

Cited in Fanso, Anglophone and Francophone Nationalisms in Cameroon

[PAOLO LAURENT]

but now that this federation have failed, isnt is time, southern cameroons became an independent country
with7m people and cease beeing a province of another country?(la republique du cameroun)