Cameroon: Traumas of the Body Politic (JUST PUBLISHED NEW BOOK)

Excerpted from Emmanuel Konde’s Cameroon: Traumas of the Body Politic (2015), pp. 104-108 

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Professor Emmanuel Konde (Author)

CHAPTER 5

 

Ahidjo’s Decolonized Cameroon

 

Modern decolonized Cameroon was largely shaped by two momentous events of 1958: one in French Cameroun and the other in British Southern Cameroons.  Originating in the late colonial era, reverberations of these events are still echoing in the postcolonial epoch of Cameroon’s political history and are simultaneously contributing to the political discourse of the country and raising difficult questions about the past. This chapter examines and analyzes the political impact of these developments in the French and the British administered United Nations trust territories of Cameroon, through the federal and united republics.  The most significant political figure that dominated this period of Cameroon’s history was Ahmadou Ahidjo, first president of reunified Cameroon who loomed larger than life during the first two decades (1961 to 1982) of the federal and united republics.

 

         

Ahmadou  Ahidjo

    In February 1958, Ahmadou Ahidjo, a northerner, replaced André-Marie Mbida, a southerner, as Prime Minister of French Cameroun.  This event signaled a major shift of political power from the south of French Cameroun to the north. A few months later in July of that same year, Augustine Ngom Jua, a grassfielder, organized the anlu in Kom against the visit of coastal Prime Minister E.M.L. Endeley’s.  Kom was a stronghold of the K.N.C. (Kamerun National Congress) party in the Bamenda Grassfields and its loss to the opposition Kamerun National Democratic Party (K.N.D.P.) insured John Ngu Foncha’s victory over Endeley in the 1959 elections.  This, too, meant a shift of the commanding heights from the coastal to the political elite of the grassfields in British Southern Cameroons. Then, in September 1958, Ruben Um Nyobe, the nationalist leader of Union des Populations du Cameroun (U.P.C.) was assassinated by the French.  This event marked the premature ending of the radical nationalist struggle in French Cameroun, and heralded a new chapter in the political history of Cameroon in which Ahmadou Ahidjo would emerge as the undisputed protagonist.

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        Whereas in French Cameroun Ahmadou Ahidjo had emerged in 1958 with the support of diverse political parties in the assembly, in British Southern Cameroons John N. Foncha's rise in 1959 resulted from a political machination of diabolical proportions orchestrated by Augustine N. Jua.  The anlu of 1958 assured the K.N.D.P. a short-term victory at the polls but also sowed some long-term seeds of discord that would later blossom into the much vaunted "Anglophone Problem."  In reality, the so-called Anglophone Problem was born during the nationalist phase of British Southern Cameroons’ agitation for autonomy in the 1950s.  It arose out of division among coastal and Grassfields English-speaking Cameroonian politicians, crystallized in 1958 after the anlu, ands ossified in the 1959 elections that resulted in Foncha victory over Endeley.    At the time not readily apparent, these events of the 1950s created political havoc that would bedevil English-speaking Cameroonians in the last decade of the twentieth century and early years of the twenty-first.

           Whether for good or worse, the new realignment occasioned by the events of 1958 meant that in French Cameroun Ahmadou Ahidjo's Union Camerounais (U.C.)  eventually would rise to be the party calling the shots there, while in British Southern Cameroons John Ngu Foncha's K.N.D.P. would likewise rise to political preeminence.   Consequently the making of modern Cameroon, the reunification of former German Kamerun after more than 40 years of French and British rule over a divided Cameroon, would be directed by two men—Ahidjo and Foncha—and their respective political parties.

                                      An Inexorable Movement of History

            Even though the events of 1958 happened independently of each other in the two Cameroons, they nonetheless reveal an interlocking pattern that suggests that they were precursors to reunification.  But the interconnectedness of these events is not so evident if each of them is examined singly as an isolated moment in Cameroon's political history.  However, when examined together as components of a larger political development, the seemingly isolated events take on a life of their own that displays some discernible outlines of an inexorable movement of history. The first involved the rise of a strongman from a hitherto backward region of French Cameroun.  He was thrust on the political stage by the French colonial authorities to pacify a recalcitrant nationalist party and to usher in a new realignment of power in French Cameroun.  The second, though different in character and gravity, inaugurated similar power realignment in British Southern Cameroons.  The convergence of these two strands would result in the reunification of Cameroon.

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        The French colonial political structures in Cameroun were inherited by Ahmadou Ahidjo, who meticulously put his own distinctive stamp on them.  Ahidjo's Cameroon was administered by a state apparatus that he created, and modeled upon a system characterized by Crawford Young as "the unitary Bonarpatist doctrines of France."  Since the president was himself ill-educated and therefore ill-prepared for undertaking this rather awesome task on his own initiative, it is likely that the French assisted him in shaping the contours of the political system over which he would preside.  Ahidjo's new State was hegemonic but, as long as significant segments of the country acknowledged his supremacy and rendered deference to central authority, they were allowed to pursue their own agendas.  Thus, influential traditional rulers were unchallenged in their local domains, the powerful local Roman Catholic Church left undisturbed, and the industrious class of ambitious Bamileke merchants allowed to garner huge profits from their trading activities.

        Ahidjo had the opportunity of transforming his multi-ethnic polity of tribes people of more than two hundred ethnic groups into a nation-state, imbuing in his countrymen with a strong sense of belonging to a nation that transcended ethic and tribal proclivities.  But Ahidjo’s primary concern was not to convert Cameroonian tribes people to nationalists.  That was Ruben Um Nyobe's task--the UPC (Union des Populations du Cameroun) leader who Ahidjo and his French masters had eliminated in September 1958.  Besides, Ahidjo was a political leader and not a visionary or prophet.  And the French colonial masters definitely did not want a leader who would make Cameroonians out of tribesmen.  Hence they settled for Ahidjo, who either sought, or was instructed, to increase his own personal power.  Accordingly, Ahidjo constructed a state apparatus that consisted of the government, a single party, and a police state structure, including an elaborate institutional network of professional and political apparatchiks--a politico-administrative class loyal to him.  This group of individuals was charged with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the state under Ahidjo’s personal, direct supervision.        

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        The Ahidjo regime was highly centralized in Yaounde, the nation’s capital city. From that center of power, Ahidjo made all appointments of ministers, governors, prefects, directors, etc.  All high-ranking positions in the government, party, parliament, and the bureaucracy were rewards Ahidjo personally bestowed upon mostly qualified Cameroonians whom he deemed loyal and supportive of his regime.  The formula for expediting these rewards was "ethnic/regional representation" in the political institutions of the country.  Professor Kofele-Kale refers this formula as "ethnic arithmetic" and explains that "in reality it was a sophisticated patronage system through which ethnic groups were transformed into pressure groups with the responsibility of articulating, aggregating and resolving particularistic interests and demands."

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