When
Britain and France defeated the German overseas army in Kamerun, the German
colony in the central African region from 1884-1916, and then occupied the
land, it was considered a strategic decision to deprive Germany of its richest
colony in Africa, and therefore some of the raw materials it needed in its war
effort against its enemies in World War One.
The
Treaty of Versailles — the most important of the peace treaties signed on 28
June 1919 that brought World War I to a close by ending the state of war
between Germany and the Allied Powers, confirmed the loss of German Kamerun,
and gave a seal of approval of Kamerun's partition by Britain and France into
British Cameroons (one quarter of the territory) and French Cameroon (the
remainder of pre-1911 Kamerun).
Why
was there no Kamerunian resistance to this partition, or why were there no
vocal voices protesting the division of Kamerun? Pundits would ask.
The
answer lies in the fact that at the onset of the First World War (The Great
War), the German colonial army in Kamerun executed the leaders (Martin-Paul
Samba — born Mebenga Mebono, Rudolf Duala Manga Bell, and their collaborators
Edande Mbita and Madola) of the land's civic-nationalist movement that was
formed in 1910 to liberate it from German colonial rule.
The
people of the partitioned Kamerun would rue this economic and social disruption
of their lives and ponder the high deceleration in development that ensued
under the rule of their new foreign patrons. Still, they would be sober enough
to side with Britain and France against Nazi Germany and its allies during the
Second World War; still, they would serve in their thousands in the British and
French Armies that fought in Africa, Asia, and Europe. In fact, after Germany
invaded France, occupied the north of the country and established Vichy France
(the successor of the Third Republic from July 1940 to August 1944) in the
south of the country — a de facto client and puppet state of Nazi Germany,
French Cameroun would be the first French overseas territory to oppose Vichy
France and side with Charles De Gaulle, the French general who refused to
accept France's surrender to Nazi Germany and who vowed to resist Germany from
abroad.
French
Camerounians went on to form the bulk of General Charles De Gaulle's Free
French Forces that was formed in Africa, and that went on to kick out Vichy
rule in French Cameroun and French Central Africa, before marching all the way
to Libya and challenging Italian forces there, a move that would culminate in
the Allied liberation of North Africa from Axis (German-Italian)control. French
Camerounians would continue playing an active role in the fight that liberated
Paris and the rest of France from German control.
So,
when these French Camerounian former soldiers who fought for France returned
and joined forces with other Kamerunian civic nationalists demanding the
reunification and joint independence of French Cameroun and British Cameroons,
it was a resuscitation of the cause of liberation snuffed out by the Germans
when they executed Martin Paul Samba, Rudolf Duala Manga-Bell, and their
associates. The formation of the Union of the Populations of the Cameroons
(French: Union des Populations du Cameroun — UPC) on April 11, 1948, in French
Cameroun, and the rise of UPC offshoots and sister parties in British Cameroons
attested to the seriousness of the reunification and independence agenda.
However, that agenda conflicted with French designs on the land and the rest of
Francophone Africa.
Even
so, the UPC did not see it coming when the French authorities embarked on
suppressing it, starting with its ban on 13 July 1955, thereby forcing most of
the party's leadership to flee into exile to British Southern Cameroons, then
Egypt. Guinea, Ghana, and China.
That
was how France's relentless drive to thwart the "Kamerunian Dream"
(Cameroonian Dream) began. That was France's first step, which has led to the
continuous frustration of the popular drive to found "THE NEW
CAMEROON".
Janvier
Tchouteu is the author of " The Mistakes to be Avoided in Building the New
Cameroon"
