Prisoner without a Crime. Disciplining Dissent in Ahidjo's Cameroon: Disciplining Dissent in Ahidjo's Cameroon

Chapter Two

Chapter Two M y little kit had been held back by the Chef de Poste but he allowed me to take my loin-cloth into the cell. As I settled down on the little space that had been made for me between two inmates I quickly surveyed my ceil companions. I had met Ernest Ouandie in Accra on one or two occasions but that was all the physical contact that existed between us and I do not easily recognise faces. He too did not immediately recognise me but because of my knowledge that he was there in the BMM I guessed right that he was the one. Indeed his nine years in the bush had transformed him almost completely. I had hardly settled down when the chief of the cell called me to his side. I still remember his face and name. He was one Joseph Bisoe. He had just returned from his adventures in Brazzaville when he was picked up, suspected of being one of the UPC men in Congo Brazzaville. Bisoe and those around him, indeed the whole cell, wanted to know my name and why I had been brought in. Of course Ernest Ouandie on his bed was also very keen to know. Perhaps I was one of his many agents operating in different sections of the country. I told them I was from ‘Cameroun Occidental’ (West Cameroon). I was an electrical inspector working for Powercam at Kumba. I had just been picked up the day before and put en route for Yaounde. Here I was and I had not the foggiest idea why I had been brought there. My cell inmates all laughed at my story and told me that I had no need to hide the facts from them because they would soon be known to all the inmates of the BMM. According to them, the truth would be extracted from me 14 Albert Mukong that very afternoon in a manner that was far from being pleasant. They advised me to confess everything and save myself from torture. I admitted that if I was asked something I knew of, I would tell them, but I could not confess things about which I was ignorant. Mr Bisoe asked me whether I had not dabbled in politics. There and then I told him I had never hidden the fact that I was one of the politicians who brought about the unification of the two Cameroons. I was indeed the Secretary General of the One Kamerun Movement whose members were being harassed in the country and because of which some of my colleagues had taken refuge outside Cameroon. Indeed I had gone into voluntary exile but after sometime decided to come back home and continue the struggle in a legal way. At this juncture Mr Ouandie burst in and said, ‘C’est vous, Camarade Mukong? Vraiment mon cœur battait de façon de me suggérer quelque chose quand on vous a introduit dans cette cellule’ (It’s you, Comrade Mukong? Truly my heart was beating in a way as to suggest something to me when you were introduced into this cell). I had disagreed with Mr Ouandie and his colleagues Dr Moumie and Mr Abel Kingue in 1960 at Accra on the continuation of the armed struggle. I told them it had been misguided and therefore needed a new approach. I strongly urged them to participate in the elections of 1960. Dr Moumie almost agreed with me but his other two colleagues over-ruled him. Well, I was not a UPC-ist but as a leading member of the One Kamerun Movement, a fraternal party with the Union des Populations du Cameroun, I was in good standing in leading UPC circles. I remember that at that time Mr Isaac Tchournba, who is today still living in New Deido, Douala, was lying sick at the African Affairs Centre in Ghana. He was happy with my stand and wished strongly that I could bring reason to bear on his party leaders – unfortunately all of them are dead today. 15 Prisoner without a Crime: Disciplining Dissent in Ahidjo’s Cameroon It appears that this discussion had flashed back to Ouandie’s mind. He asked me whether in fact I had been all the while in Cameroon. I admitted it and he wanted to know how I had fared. I told him I could not count much success...