Cameroun - Autopsie d'une Indépendance

Gaëlle Le Roy et Valérie Osouf Cameroun. Autopsie d’une Indépendance. France 5, 2008.

Here is the documentary on the decolonization of the French Cameroons in its entirety. Enjoy!

Comments

[ndam]

The psychohistory of repressed memories:

1966: Traveling to Bamenda via "East Cameroon" with my father. On the main round-about in Bafang, I spot a human head balanced on a brick with a cigarrete in the mouth. My faher tries to stuff my head under the dashboard but it is too late. My very sharp and curious 7 year old eyes have seen another decapitated head of a "maquisard" publicly displayed to shock and awe any citizen with second thoughts about who now controls Cameroon.

Bamenda stadium sometime late 1967: A army truck parades 3 captured "maquisards" -one young woman and two very young men, all chain-linked neck to neck like slaves, all over the town and to the stadium where they are exhibited on this flat bed truck like elephant meat that George Ngu used to sell in Tombel market.

They are later carted up to the army barracks station and a few hours later the crackle of the firing squad's rifle fires echoing from the hills of Medankwe transmits the same message to the all who still have doubts as to who really controls Cameroon.

The rest as they say is history. Today we don't need the pretense of any high order justification. As we saw in Douala and elsewhere around the country in February we just shoot any nyamfuka anywhere, anytime and you can as well go straight to hell.

Our government has been in the business of killing its citizens for a long time; the difference with other stupid countries is that we are smart enough to keep the scale all the time within reasonable limits, killing with discretion and backed with a watertight legal justifications of raison d'etat.

I am sure there are enough repressed memories for us to construct our very own war crimes memorial and Amadou Ahidjo may not command the high level of nostagic elegies I detect periodically on this forum when his role in the creation of this sick state and regime is openly written.

Bo Sung (camnetwork)

[BlackStar]

Thank you for posting about one of the most incredible and unknown chapters of recent history.