The Anglophone Cameroon Predicament
This study explores the predicament of Anglophone Cameroon – from the experiment in federation from 1961 to the political liberalisation struggles of the 1990s – to challenge claims of a successful post-independence Cameroonian integration process. Focusing on the perceptions and actions of people in the Anglophone region, Atanga argues that what has come to be called the “Anglophone Problem” constitutes one of the severest threats to the post-colonial nation-state project in Cameroon. As a linguistic and cultural minority, Anglophone Cameroonians realised that the Francophone-led state and government were keener in assimilation than in implementing the federal and bilingual nation agreed upon at reunification in 1960. Calls for national integration became simply a subterfuge for the assimilation of Anglophones by Francophones who dominated the state and government. The book details the various measures undertaken to exploit the Anglophone region’s economy and marginalise its people. Principally the economic structures meant to facilitate self-reliant development were undermined and destroyed. Institutionalised discrimination took the form of the exclusion of Anglophones from positions of real authority, and depriving the region of any meaningful development. With the advent of multi-party politics, most Anglophone Cameroonians increasingly have made vocal demands for a return to a federation, in order to adequately guarantee their rights and recognition for them as a political and cultural minority. Actively encouraged by France, the Francophone-led regime in Cameroon has refused to yield to such demands, despite the grave danger of violent conflict and possible secession.
Constitutions, Citizenship and the Challenge of National Integration and Nation-Building in Africa
Summary Most countries in Africa are both “multination” and “polyethnic” states. This is due partly to the forced amalgamation, by the European colonialists, of the continent’s “ethnocultural nations” into single economic and political units that were called “colonies.” These colonies eventually evolved into what are today’s independent African countries. Today, many of these ethnocultural groups want to secede and form their own independent polities in order to have more autonomy over policies that affect their well-being, including especially their cultural and traditional values. The struggle by these groups for either outright secession or so-called enhanced rights has created many challenges for governance, national integration and nation-building in many countries in Africa today. Throughout the continent, inter-ethnic conflict, for example, over the allocation of scarce resources, has produced sectarian violence that has led to civil wars (as occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Nigeria) and significantly endangered prospects for peaceful coexistence. It has been suggested that the solution to this political quagmire is the creation of differentiated citizenship rights for each of these groups. The paper suggests that of the three types of differentiated citizenship that have been suggested as a way to accommodate diversity—self-government rights, polyethnic rights, and special representation rights—self-government rights pose the greatest threat to social, political, and economic stability in the African countries. The solution to this governance challenge may lie in inclusive and robust dialogue, which can help these groups find a way to remain citizens of their present polities, while at the same time, retaining their cultural identities.
Lord Lugard et la Politique Africaine
Opening Paragraph L'institut International Africain me fait un grand honneur en m'invitant à prendre la parole ici. J'y suis très sensible. Je ne saurais mieux vous remercier qu'en célébrant la mémoire de Lord Lugard. Il y a quelque trente ans, dans la seconde décade du XXème siècle, un jeune administrateur des colonies françaises qui était désigné pour servir au Territoire du Niger, recevait par là même un rare privilège: celui de traverser la Nigéria britannique, du sud au nord, de Lagos à Kano. Résumé LORD LUGARD AND BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY This article gives the text of the Lugard Memorial Lecture delivered in London on 29 March 1951 by M. Robert Delavignette. The lecturer, after a brief outline of Lord Lugard's life, discusses the two most notable achievements of his career: the system of government, known as ‘Indirect Rule’, which he devised for Nigeria and expounded in his book, The Dual Mandate; his lifelong fight against slavery, perhaps the guiding impulse of all his activity. M. Delavignette draws a comparison between Lugard and the great French colonial administrator, Faidherbe, and finds many points of likeness in the characters and the experiences of the two men. Both showed notable qualities of personal leadership and of both it might be said that the success of their colonial achievements inevitably resulted in their systems and their policies being superseded. The lecturer discusses present trends in colonial policy and contrasts the aims and methods of Britain and France. British policy today is directed towards the formation of autonomous African nations within the framework of the Commonwealth; France, on the other hand, is concerned with the individual African and his integration as an individual and an African into the French Republic which comprises metropolitan France and the oversea territories. In paying a tribute to the inspiration which all colonial administrators may find in the character and work of Lugard, he suggests that the future of Africa will be moulded not by out-standing individuals but by the efforts of the African communities themselves.