Cameroon’s Unity: and The New Cameroon

By: Janvier Tchouteu

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

An excerpt from a February 20, 1962 article in the Guardian Newspaper read “The unification of French-speaking Cameroun with the former British-administered Southern Cameroons is a ‘unique experience’ in Africa..." The reunification of the two territories marked a milestone in the cause espoused by Cameroonian civic-nationalists to reunite the lands of the 1884-1916 former German colony of Kamerun that was partitioned by Britain and France following the defeat of Germany in the First World War. It was one step forward in realizing the dream of “THE NEW CAMEROON", even though Cameroonian nationalists who weaved the Ideal were being hounded by the French pacification forces, and even though France had successfully installed a puppet regime in the French-speaking Cameroun under Ahmadou Ahidjo who set about implementing France’s game plan, starting with the usurpation of the reunification program and giving it a bad name. Today the reunification project is getting soar, especially among Cameroonians from the former British Southern Cameroons. That is why Cameroonians are asking themselves the question: What is to be done to get rid of an anachronistic French-imposed system that is leaving the country stuck in underdevelopment, corruption, fraud, despondence, dictatorship and division even as the rest of the world is forging ahead? Janvier Tchouteu comes up with some succinct answers in this account that provide the guidelines to the ultimate Cameroonian Dream of the “NEW CAMEROUN” first espoused by Cameroon’s civic-nationalists that that were successfully eliminated, sidelined or undermined during sixty years of neocolonialism by France, the puppet Ahidjo regime it put in place in 1960 and its successor the current Biya regime that took over in 1982. Today, Cameroon is at a crossroads. While it is now obvious that the French-imposed system is anachronistic and no longer sustainable, and that the political establishment is prepared to drag the country into the abyss than bow out of power, Cameroon also risks being torn apart by those who never cherished reunification---people who would like the territory of the former British Southern Cameroons to become a separate country. Both groups stand as obstacles to the “New Cameroon” and are delaying the country’s journey to take its place as the nucleus of the emerging African Union.