The ACP-EU Courier No 193 - July-August 2002
For the whole of Cameroon’s “coexistence” as a nation, Cameroonians have struggled to achieve the most basic standards for themselves and their country. In their diversity they have also sought a sense of national identity under contrasting models of government.
Mwalimu George Ngwane gives here a personal view of the politics and economics of post-colonial Cameroon.
Following the plebiscite in 1961, Cameroon subjected itself to an innovative model of governance by setting up a federal state. This brought together two nations that had carried from their colonial pasts the burden of divergent linguistic heritages. In Cameroon we can ask the question: “Why did the two Cameroons decide to reunite on 1 October 1961?” At the time President Ahmadou Ahidjo had this to say: “After more than forty years of separation, we are today reconstituting one family, one nation and one state. I express the wish that this reunification of the national territory should be the gauge and symbol of the unity of our hearts and minds.”
Cameroon had taken a major step in discarding its neo-colonial robes (German, French and English) to put on a new Cameroonian outfit. The Reunification Pact was the condition under which its politicians had vowed to live. Barely three years later (in 1964), the politician and philosopher, Bernard Fonlon, noticed the cracks in the wall. Our newfound political merger had been built “upon sand”. Logic and reason demanded that we consolidate the “Cameroonian condition” by building its foundation “upon a rock”. Was the decision to change Cameroon from a federal to a unitary state in May 1972, an attempt to build this nation on a rock? Let me attempt to answer this question by surveying three areas of our national life over the past 30 years.
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