Decolonisation and Federation in Cameroon
Letterhead of the President Ahidjo’s office (Source: Cameroon National Archives, Buea)
The history of Africa since independence has been marked by a remarkable fidelity to the borders that were inherited from colonisation. In only in a handful of cases have these borders changed - in the early years of independence most changes were around the former German colonies, which were by that time UN trust territories under the tutelage of the British and French empires. British Togoland joined independent Ghana, Tanganyika and Zanzibar became Tanzania, but in Cameroon the British enclave, administered until then as part of Nigeria, voted to join the newly independent republic of Cameroon. Independent Cameroon was therefore a unique case in that it inherited both an anglophone and a francophone administration and was officially a bilingual state.
Much has been written about Cameroonian re-unification. Once seen as totemic of African unity, the current political situation is tense, with frequent violence taking place in anglophone Cameroon both at the hands of secessionist groups and government forces.
I had the good fortune whilst in Cameroon to work with Kum Adrian, a historian in Buea, the administrative capital of former West Cameroon. He was able to access some of the archival records held there. Drawing on these records, this blog gives a short account of how reunification played out at the level of diplomatic representation and more specifically in the training of personnel.
Integrating/assimilating to the new diplomatic corps
Significant constitutional change of this kind necessitated new diplomatic representation. In the case of Cameroon, the new foreign service of the federated state would include both anglophone and francophone diplomats. The federal government was however francophone-dominated, both in terms of size and because East Cameroon had gained independence over a year before reunification. It had already established a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and had systems of training in place for new personnel, both in Yaoundé and in Paris at the Institut des Hautes Etudes d’outre-mer (IHEOM). It is clear, therefore, that this was not an equal process of integration, but one in which the Yaoundé government attempted to assimilate West Cameroonians into its existing structures and practices.
It would be false, however, to suggest that West Cameroon inherited no diplomatic institutions from prior to reunification, when it was administered as Southern Cameroons, within the Federation of Nigeria. Indeed, as a UN trust territory it sent regular delegations to the UN, and was thinking about independence and foreign representation from at least 1956, as evidenced by a statement from the Nigerian parliament on the training of future diplomats.[1] In the build-up to decolonisation, autonomy and independence was clearly the most popular option amongst Southern Cameroonian leaders. Independence was however not on the ballot in the 1961 plebiscite, leaving a choice between remaining within Nigeria or re-joining Cameroon. Anti-Nigerian sentiment and hopes of a loose federation of equals within Cameroon pushed the vote towards reunification.
Anglophone Cameroonians therefore went from the decentralised system of regional autonomy operated under British Empire and within the independent Nigerian Federation, to a federation marked by Jacobin French ideals of the unitary state. After reunification, any autonomous diplomacy was forestalled. A year into the federation, in August 1962, President Ahidjo wrote to Vice-President and West Cameroon prime minister John Ngu Foncha to complain of multiple instances of West Cameroonian delegates being sent to international meetings without the consultation of the federal government in Yaoundé. His letter, which referred to the new constitution, sought to establish a hierarchy of communication and decision-making that ran all international engagements through the federal government and its Ministry of External Affairs.
At the same time, the West Cameroon government was negotiating with Yaoundé to secure the entry of anglophone cadres into the foreign service, particularly to staff the London High Commission. They drew up a shortlist of appointees, drawn primarily from the existing civil service corps. Martin Epie, who had just finished a year in training as a Carnegie Fellow, was tipped to be the first High Commissioner, and was duly appointed in February 1963.
Anglophone trainees sent to France
The same month, Foreign Minister J.F. Betayene wrote to Foncha to say that West Cameroon should bear the costs of trainees’ salaries. Despite this, he also made clear that his Ministry would control future personnel decisions:
“It is not my intention to carry on discriminatory selection between the personnel posted abroad under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. All such personnel are appointed for their competence, their aptitudes and their qualities without any considerations being taken into account as to their race, tribe or the federated state to which they happen to belong. Neither is it my intention to propose to the President of the Republic the posting to one and the same embassy of civil servants coming exclusively from such and such a federated state. Such considerations can only be harmful to the unity of Cameroonian diplomacy and the efficiency of our diplomatic missions. Moreover, they are contrary to the spirit of reunification.”
This kind of ‘indiscriminate’ treatment would mean that the trainees selected by Foncha’s administration would now be trained in France rather than Yaoundé, leaving in March 1963. Unprepared, they were given no family allowance, and were sent without knowing for how long they would be away. A letter from one of the trainees in July 1963 locates them in Besançon, on an intensive French language course. He complains of what amounts to a 50% pay cut, the impossibility of providing for his family left behind in Cameroon, and the shock of finding that their training period had been extended from 9 months to 16 on account of their need to learn French.
In another one of a series of collective letters detailing the difficulties they faced in France, the trainees wrote of feeling “completely surprised and demoralised” when they arrived to find that the training would be entirely in French, and that owing to their lack of French they would be enrolled in the consular, not the more prestigious and challenging diplomatic course. They wrote: “We are constantly being reminded that we are unable to speak, let alone write, French well and therefore are not fit material for Diplomatic Careers … But we refuse to be under-rated on the grounds of non-possession of a sound knowledge of French”.[2] A later telegram read:
“STILL UPSET AND COMPLETELY DEMORALISED
FINANCIAL POSITION DESPERATE AND COURSE STILL INCOMPREHENSIBLE
LONG AWAITED DECISION KEEPS US NERVY
IMPOSSIBLE TO CONCENTRATE AND MENTAL STRAINS GROWING
PLEASE EXPEDITE ACTION”
The anxious and difficult experience of the anglophone Cameroonian trainees can be contrasted with that of their francophone compatriots like Eleih-Elle Etian who also attended IHEOM in Paris in 1963. They were entered into IHEOM’s elite diplomatic training program, were sent on prestigious placements within the French foreign service, and received a double stipend allowing them to live a comfortable life and even to bring their families with them.
The seeds of separatism?
The archives of the Cameroon Ministry of External Affairs reveal that most of these men continued in the foreign service, and indeed received further training during postings in the USA (as Carnegie fellows, and at the American University). Some held important roles within the Institut des Relations Internationales du Cameroun (IRIC). However, it is clear that hopes of a relationship of equals within the federated state of Cameroon were frustrated in the early years of its foreign service. Months after the trainees had returned to Cameroon, one was still yet to receive a post, prompting Foncha to write to the Foreign Minister:
“He has been back from training for three months, no pay, his friends have been posted but he has not. Mr. Minister I am accusing you for being careless over the life of one who has offered to serve the nation.”
However, it is tempting to read in the bewildered, disappointed, and emotionally fraught letters of the anglophone Cameroonian trainee diplomats, the seeds of eventual commitments to separatism. Martin Epie and one of the junior diplomats sent to Paris, Henry Fossung (who also reached the rank of ambassador), would, in the 1990s, chair the Cameroon Anglophone Movement and South Cameroons National Council respectively.
The French training experience might have been intended, in the ‘spirit of unification’, to overcome difference though assimilation and equal treatment. However, it is clear it instead emphasised the anglophone trainees’ difference with their new francophone compatriots in cultural, linguistic and material terms, and even marginalised them from the diplomatic career they hoped to pursue. Furthermore, it did so in a way that unambiguously concentrated power with the federal government in Yaoundé, underlining the crucial role of diplomacy in the exercise of state sovereignty and of diplomatic training in early postcolonial statecraft.
[1] Buea National Archives, Ta(1956)3: The Training of Nigerians for the Representation of their Country Overseas: a Statement of Policy by the Government of the Federation of Nigeria
[2] Buea National Archives Ta(1962)8: Joint letter from J.B. Etame, J.U.N. Ndimbie, E.J. Ako-Bryant, P.C. Asongwe, S.E. Fonderson, N.Y. Ntamark, H.N. Fossung to Deputy Foreign Minister, 18th November 1963