Cameroon’s
Decolonizing Struggle
An
Interview with Cameroonian Political Activist Djif Djimeli on war, cake and
politics
12.02.2020
Article from
Parwana, YAMAMOTO Lea, WENDLER Nicolas
The ongoing
crisis in Cameroon between the francophone majority and the English-speaking
minority has escalated into a civil war in the past three years, in which the
latter is fighting for a new independent state called Ambazonia. Looking back
to the beginning of the independent struggle of northern and southern Cameroon
and its post-colonial history, we would like to touch upon one aspect of the
country’s colonial heritage - language, and try to seek out the actual causes behind this
political upheaval.
Cameroon, a
multi-ethnic state with a rich diversity of languages and cultures, is not
often on the European radar. The structure of these ethnic groups is difficult
to grasp, since the heavy influence of colonialism on those groups often
followed political interest rather than the groups’ self-chosen or developed classifications. First of
all let us review the historical process of independence, which is absolutely
necessary in order to understand Cameroon’s struggle with its colonial
heritage.
Colonial history
Image1: The Palace of Foumban:
Where the last rulers prior to Colonization resided
The first contact with the Europeans happened
in the 15th century, when the Portuguese seafarer Fernando de Po
landed in the Delta of the river Wouri. The name “Cameroon '' is derivative of
the name the Portuguese gave the river: Rio de Cameroes, River of prawns. Since
the commencement of colonialism in Cameroon by the Germans in 1884 the destiny
of the peoples of the region has been constantly influenced by western powers.
The Germans, the French and the British left footprints in history and
identity, and as we see today some colonial scars outlasted independence. The French banned the use and teaching of
native languages and forcibly implemented a colonial system to assimilate the
population. It appears that many disputes in modern Cameroonian society
seemingly come from the disparity of the former colonial division. But where
did this problem start? And as for the current situation: Did the Westerners
ever stop meddling in the life of the Cameroonians?
Languages of Cameroon
The country is home to around 400 languages, 55
Afro-Asiatic and 169 of the Niger-Congo family, the vast amount representative
of the history and migration in this area. However, two colonial languages are
now dominating, sometimes as a first but often as the second language. Around
83% percent of the population considers themselves as francophones, so the anglophone population is the minority
and restricted to two regions in the West. The Anglophone numbers are further
decreasing, as a result from the current uprising: the oppression and migration
across the regions. Intriguing is the visible process of languages melting
together in the frontier areas, like “
Camfranglais” , a hybrid of English and French, mostly spoken by the youth.
This new hybrid, strong in music and popular culture, can be perceived as a
resistance against the linguistic division of the country and its political
leadership.
Stormy Times of
Independence
Images 2,3: Southern “Ex-British”
Cameroon depicted as Ambazonia
The Beginning of Unrest
Since it was considered too small to survive, the UN organized a referendum to determine if the Southern Cameroonians wanted to be a part of Nigeria or the new state of Cameroon. Past struggles with the Igbo of Nigeria and the hope to be an equal partner in a federation with the Francophones led to the conference of Foumban where negotiations were concluded and the Federation of Cameroon declared in 1961. Since the beginning, this relationship was uneasy: the anglophones did not find the partnership of equality they had hoped for. The UN supported the creation of a federal state with a high degree of autonomy, which, however, never happened. The state has been and still is governed autocratically with a strong central government and neither one of the Cameroonian presidents has been able to speak enough English to understand all citizens(!). The anglophone people thus did not find their freedom nor their representation in a mostly francophone country, instead, the French killed all the political opponents like Ruben Um Nyobé, and put Ahmadou Ahidjo on Power. Thus the beginning of Ahmadou Ahidjo’s dictatorship as well as the continuous French influence in Cameroon’s affairs destroyed for many the hope for a better future.
The Beginning of Unrest
Since it was considered too small to survive, the UN organized a referendum to determine if the Southern Cameroonians wanted to be a part of Nigeria or the new state of Cameroon. Past struggles with the Igbo of Nigeria and the hope to be an equal partner in a federation with the Francophones led to the conference of Foumban where negotiations were concluded and the Federation of Cameroon declared in 1961. Since the beginning, this relationship was uneasy: the anglophones did not find the partnership of equality they had hoped for. The UN supported the creation of a federal state with a high degree of autonomy, which, however, never happened. The state has been and still is governed autocratically with a strong central government and neither one of the Cameroonian presidents has been able to speak enough English to understand all citizens(!). The anglophone people thus did not find their freedom nor their representation in a mostly francophone country, instead, the French killed all the political opponents like Ruben Um Nyobé, and put Ahmadou Ahidjo on Power. Thus the beginning of Ahmadou Ahidjo’s dictatorship as well as the continuous French influence in Cameroon’s affairs destroyed for many the hope for a better future.
Images 4: The Conference at Foumban 1961
Since the creation of the unified state there
were ambitions of certain anglophone to gain independence. The intensity of
those ambitions varied but found a first peak in 1984, when Paul Biya
replaced Ahidjo who resigned in 1982 after 22 years of dictatorship. Paul Biya became
President after serving 7 years as Prime Minister of Cameroon. Biya officially changed the name of state from
United Republic of Cameroon, a reference to the duality of the country, to
Republic of Cameroon. The now official end of federalism was seen as another
step of marginalization of the English-speaking Western part of the country. Just a few years
later Ambazonia has declared its independence for the first time, but it hasn’t
been recognized by the international community yet. What followed were riots
and violence in the streets of anglophone
Cameroon and continuous tension within the society.
When typing the
terms Cameroon + conflict
in the search engine it hardly emerges many articles from German media covering the
subject, most articles are published either in context of economy, aid work or
terrorism. The German public’s interest in this region seems to be quite
limited to topics perceived as either economically important or threatening to
Germany, may it be projects of German volunteers or the ongoing conflict with
Boko Haram on the northern frontier. There are international articles on the
other hand focusing on the ongoing fight between the anglophone and francophone
regions of course, but other political issues and terrorist
related conflicts
obtain a more prominent role in the media because they appear to be salient,
more important or just less hard to understand. It is questionable anyway, one
can only hope the West would do more to put out fires they were so eager to
light.
Observe the crisis from a decolonising
angle, and how?
Taken from the above research on the roots of
the ongoing violent struggles in Cameroon, an undeniable aspect of the crisis
seems to be stemmed on its language policy. Anglophone vs Francophone, minority
vs majority, divided through varying education systems; the resulting
linguistic partition creating imbalance, inequality and strengthening a sense
of discrimination in the minority regions, hence fostering rebellion. As
schools can possibly be considered a microcosm of society, the schooling system
and its programs have an effect crucial to the development of Cameroonian
children. Must the process of the de-escalation of the dissentient struggle hence take place in Cameroon’s
education system, we asked ourselves. Would it need a change in language
policies at school, a breakaway from its colonially inherited languages? Or are
the languages just the tip of the iceberg? Moreover, is the effort of
de-escalation here identical to that of decolonization?
With these questions in mind, we contacted Djif Djimeli, a Cameroonian political activist and
filmmaker. He was able to give us his account of the story, his view on
colonial heritage in Cameroon as well as some insight into the decolonizing
struggle.
Djif
Djimeli
Djif is a filmmaker, actor and Cameroonian activist
who lives in Germany
now. He obtained a political asylum in 2016 after 2 years
of struggle. Before coming
to Germany he got his Bachelor on
Performing Arts and a Master’s degree on Dramaturgy
and Theater Production in
Cameroon, and he is
currently engaging in a further education program on Cinematography with the
focus on camera and montage in Berlin. In the past
few years, he has worked with Prof. Dr. phil. Andrea Plöger from Alice Salomon
Hochschule Berlin for seminars on the topic of Post-colonization and Migration
in 21st Century.
“It’s about Dictatorship”
To begin, we
ask him about the colonial history of Cameroon and its reproduction today, here
in Europe and specifically Berlin. “Falsified Information” he calls such, very
subjective, and tells us about his teachings of German colonial history at the
Alice Salomon Hochschule in Berlin. He was stunned by the complete lack of
knowledge shown by the students about Germany’s colonial past in Africa. And
the current civil war, which has been raging in Cameroon for the past three
years, he tells, is also a product of Cameroon’s colonial history. We inquire if it is a war between
two colonial heritages, separated through education, language, and culture? “The main point that leads the anglophones’ fight and the
escalation into a civil war is the dictatorship and discrimination from Biya’s regime,”
he says, “of course there are certain conflicts in relation with different
colonial cultural inheritance, but if it was really a cultural conflict matters
the civil war, we could not live in peace since the 1960s. It’s about
dictatorship.”
Djif explains
that after supporting Ahmadou Ahidjo it is still the French who got
Biya’s back since 1982, and let him build and maintain his position as the “current
dictator”. It is the French that are continually involved in all aspects of Cameroonian life: in
political, economic, military as well as in cultural and educational terms. “They have an exclusive pact for trading
Cameroon’s natural resources”. Remembering the past, he talks of the way
Europe divided Africa for itself: “Our
countries were like pieces of a cake. And they still are today.”
No, there is
no ethnic divide between the Anglophone and the Francophone. It is not about
language or Cameroonian identity but about oppression and a fight for freedom of
speech as Djif claims that all of the Cameroonian population is suffering under
the corrupt leadership of Biya: “He just wants a
piece of that cake for himself, and the dictatorship and discrimination from Biya and his cronies target not
only the Anglophones.” While local
infrastructure is lacking in every way and hence the local standard of living
is very low, Djif tells us that Biya spends a fortune on the Hotel
Intercontinental in Genf: “We say that
Biya visits Cameroon, but he lives in Switzerland. (…) And France is his
kitchen.”
“Why does this
continue?” he asks us, takes a breath and responds himself: “They kill the activists.” While Macron
offers business deals. “Biya is,” Djif also underlines, “this is common knowledge,” “spending a
vast amount of money on censorship on Facebook.” Djif’s own many posts have been deleted, he claims.
“So I support all Anglophones in their fight”, Djif
continues. He understands that they feel discriminated against and it is
undeniable that language does have its part to play. The big example: The
government putting French-speaking judges and lawyers in charge of courts in
the Anglophone districts. The English-speaking people thus have to hire an
interpreter and if unaffordable, can be easily manipulated by the francophone
authorities. No wonder, therefore, that the perception of social inequality in the anglophone regions is the cause for
unrest.
We are stunned
by Djif’s information, by his calm determination with which he presents us with
a whole new outlook on the current conflict in Cameroon. Is this conflict, this
dichotomy of Anglophone vs Francophone, then being instrumentalized by Western
media to deflect the focus from the actual issues?
We ask Djif
but he doesn’t respond. Instead he gets out his phone and shows us a picture of
a demonstration last week in Paris: The great central square of ‘Place de la République’ is completely packed with people wearing Cameroon’s red,
green and yellow colors, waving their flags: An Anti-Biya demonstration. Djif’s
remark: “There were no reports in the
French media”.
Another Voice and Relevant Decolonising
Theories
On the
contrary to what Djif describes, most people believe that the partition of the
country based on the division of colonial languages after the independence of
Cameroon predestined the national crisis. This prevailing presumption in
western media may obscure the bigger issue coming from the ill government
mechanism and military violence under the dictatorial regime of Paul Biya.
It seems like
an open secret that President Paul Biya and
his predecessor Ahmadou Ahidjo have been
colluding with France, letting French
government manipulate the economy in Cameroon for more than 5 decades. The complication of this issue seems to be
ignored by the western media, while they consistently accentuate the focus of
Anglophone crisis as a civil war, the protesters are called separatists, as if
the insurgents from the Anglophone would have to take all the responsibilities
for the humanitarian catastrophes caused by the conflict. Outside Cameroon,
thousands of supporters of the Anglophone uprising like Djif urges that the
world should understand that under the Biya’s autocratic regime, all the
people, no matter from which language areas they come from, undergo the same
tribulation.
Djif is not
the first one who has doubts about the ruling class. The well-known Cameroonian
philosopher, political theorist Dr. Achille Mbembe has mentioned many times his
concerns on the governing institutions and the African postcolonial middle
class. In one of his interviews last year, he raised questions implying the
likely tributary state: “Why do people keep colluding with the forces that
objectively work against their own material self-interest?” and referring
to the ongoing disputes on identity politics in Cameroon he condemned: “Why
are they not conducted in terms other than those that merely mimic the very
categories of oppression?”[1]
In fact, some scholars believe one of most detrimental colonial impacts is that
a lot of people in Cameroon have appropriated the negative colonial values like
assimilation, domination, economic and human exploitation.
At the same
time some writings from African political theorists seem to defend the
vindication for language politics in this crisis. Although the colonial
language as one of the chief indicators of the cultural hegemony of colonizers
did assimilate the colonized and their society, it’s plainly a fact and reality
in daily life of Cameroonians using French and English besides
the native languages for almost a century now. Nevertheless there is a small chance that French and English would be capable of devouring the cultures
and faith of Cameroonian people, the example of the invention of “Camfranglais” can be seen
as a sign for the positivity of the new generation. Furthermore, as Franz Fanon
once wrote in his book ‘Black Skin,
White Masks’ in 1952, he
argued the significant meaning of mastery of colonial language: “There is a
psychological phenomenon that consists in the belief that the world will open
to the extent to which frontiers are broken down.” And “Historically, it
must be understood that the ‘Negro’ wants to speak French because it is the key
that can open doors which were still barred to him fifty years ago.”[2] Fanon has not denied the importance of
indigenous African languages, however instead of
having an attitude of rupture, he called
for recognition of the complexity of language in the former colonies in Africa. Djif
expresses a similar idea in the interview. He mentions Cameroonians have chosen
French and English as their Lingua Franca, and as for the future of the
language policy, it should be observed in the evolution of the society.
Djif utters
another voice that in order to understand the current crisis better, one may
shift the lopsided focus from the minority issues to the despotism of the
government. Peace and prosperity can hardly be imagined unless the government
stops letting the west impose their power on Cameroon, and start concerning the
needs of the people. This is what truly triggers the crisis. The international
community should think more thoroughly, and show understanding to the
Anglophones as well as the persistent solidary activists from the Francophone.
Support from
Cameroonian Diaspora in Europe
Images: The Anti-Biya Demonstration in Paris, February 2020
Since the crisis started in 2017, it
gradually degenerated into an armed conflict, leading to between 3,000 and
12,000 deaths[3], with
530,000 internally displaced persons As of May 2019, and 35,000 had fled to
Nigeria[4].
Cameroonian diaspora regularly organize rallies in France, Germany and other countries in Europe to support Anglophone’s
revolt and fight against the dictatorship of the francophone government. 
As Djif mentions earlier in the
interview, mobilized by a Cameroonian politician Prof. Maurice Kamto,
National President of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM), a rally was held
in Paris on 1st February this year. Hundreds of thousands people participated,
they called for boycotting the election on 9th February 2020, and expressed
their determination of relentless fight against the power of government.
Maurice Kamto spoke in the rally: “We will be relentless in searching
appropriate solutions to the crisis. In the coming months, we will solve that
crisis.” Finally he added, “Fear has left
us. Cameroon is not the property of a few. Cameroon is our fatherland. No one
can put us on our knees so we can get favors.”[5]
Bibliography
Bernard
Fonl. “The Language Problem in Cameroon. (An Historical Perspective).” Comparative Education, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1969)
Cameroon – February 1 Rally In Paris: Maurice Kamto Talks
Anglophone Crisis, Electoral Hold Up, Election Boycott, Release Of Political
Prisoners http://www.cameroon-info.net/article/cameroon-february-1-rally-in-paris-maurice-kamto-talks-anglophone-crisis-electoral-hold-up-361602.html
Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis: How
to Get to Talks?
https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon/272-crise-anglophone-au-cameroun-comment-arriver-aux-pourparlers
Konings, Piet, and Francis B. Nyamnjoh. "The
Anglophone Problem in Cameroon." The
Journal of Modern African Studies 35, no. 2 (1997)
Ngalim, Valentine Banfegha. "A Conflict of Colonial Cultures
in the Educational Sub-systems in Africa: Celebrating Fifty Years of Political
and Not Educational Sovereignty in Cameroon." European Scientific Journal
1 SE (2014): 622.
Silverman, Max. Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks : New
Interdisciplinary Essays. 1. Publ. ed. Texts in Culture. Manchester [u.a.],
2005. Chapter I The Negro and Language
Thoughts on the
planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe https://www.newframe.com/thoughts-on-the-planetary-an-interview-with-achille-mbembe/?fbclid=IwAR0IWKc66rzfIISa3h6Il54NkdvBb5O9Cn0jlEDhmsAC-pMumAsfLdY-UjU
Last access: 08.02.2020
Last access: 08.02.2020
Last access: 08.02.2020
Image Citations
Image1:https://mobile.twitter.com/AtangaCelest
Image 2, 3: http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/the-self-declared-republic-of-ambazonia
Image 4: https://www.britannica.com/place/Foumban
The remaining images were provided by Djif Djimeli
[1] Thoughts on
the planetary: An interview with Achille Mbembe https://www.newframe.com/thoughts-on-the-planetary-an-interview-with-achille-mbembe/?fbclid=IwAR0IWKc66rzfIISa3h6Il54NkdvBb5O9Cn0jlEDhmsAC-pMumAsfLdY-UjU
[2] Silverman,
Max. Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks : New Interdisciplinary Essays. 1.
Publ. ed. Texts in Culture. Manchester [u.a.], 2005. Chapter I The Negro and
Language
[3] Cameroon –
February 1 Rally In Paris: Maurice Kamto Talks Anglophone Crisis, Electoral
Hold Up, Election Boycott, Release Of Political Prisoners http://www.cameroon-info.net/article/cameroon-february-1-rally-in-paris-maurice-kamto-talks-anglophone-crisis-electoral-hold-up-361602.html
[4] Cameroon’s
Anglophone Crisis: How to Get to Talks?
https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/cameroon/272-crise-anglophone-au-cameroun-comment-arriver-aux-pourparlers
[5] see footnote 3
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