Neoliberal Bandwagonism. Civil society and the politics of belonging in Anglophone Cameroon: Civil society and the politics of belonging in Anglophone Cameroon

5. The entry of Anglophone nationalism into public space

5 The entry of Anglophone nationalism into public space1 Introduction In February 2002, we were sitting in a bar in Buea, the capital of the South West Province of Anglophone Cameroon, watching the Cameroon-Mali football semifinal in the African Cup of Nations that was being relayed in Cameroon by a French television channel. The winner of the match was to play Senegal, which had already qualified for the final by defeating Nigeria. What struck us most during the match was the sudden change in attitude of our fellow viewers. Initially, they appeared to identify strongly with the national team, as was manifest in their comments on the prowess of Cameroon’s ‘Indomitable Lions’. However, as soon as the French commentator noticed that, whatever the outcome of the match, ‘la finale sera une affaire francophone’, almost reflexively and in unison, they shouted: ‘Cameroon is not a Francophone country!’ Suddenly any identification with the national team seemed to have disappeared. Even a later remark by the commentator that one of the Cameroonian players was an Anglophone failed to change the mood and restore their enjoyment of the match. The reaction of the Anglophone spectators reminded us of Hobsbawm’s observation (1990: 143) that the ‘imagined communities of millions seem more real than a team of eleven named people’ and demonstrates the importance of identity politics in Cameroon. It also makes for an interesting comparison with the disengagement of the extreme nationalist leader Jean-Marie le Pen from the French national team 1 Dr Nantang Jua is the co-author of this study. ANGLOPHONE NATIONALISM E IN PUBLIC SPACE 73 due to its multicultural character: ‘Je ne me reconnais pas dans cette équipe’. However, it clearly problematises Fardon’s ‘football argument’. With specific reference to the widespread identification in Africa with national football teams, he posits the development of national feelings ‘in all states that have been independent for more than thirty years... The annexation of a neighbouring state, no matter how modest, would soon show the reality of “national” identities’ (Fardon 1996: 94). To a large extent, the Cameroonian situation reflects Cahen’s thesis (1999) that African identification with national teams is simply an expression of the habit of living together in the same republic or, even better, of ‘constitutional patriotism’ (Habermas) rather than of a strongly crystallised national consciousness. The imagination of a nation (Anderson 1983) usually requires a much longer historical process than Fardon is willing to accept – a process that state policies can only reinforce but never entirely determine. Cahen cautions that it would be an ‘erreur senghorienne’ to assume that the state would precede the nation, in the sense of ‘producing’ or at least ‘preparing’ the nation. In his view, the state can only serve as a midwife for nationisme, the agenda of an ultra-minor elite to rapidly ‘fabricate’ the nation. This is a project that is different from nationalism and opposed to existing ethnic and national identities (Cahen 1999: 153-155). That the Cameroonian post-colonial state’s nation-building project has failed is clearly evidenced by the fact that nationalist feelings are still rife in Anglophone territory more than forty years after reunification with Francophone Cameroon. This study argues that the entry of Anglophone nationalism into public space during political liberalisation in the 1990s has posed a severe threat to the postcolonial nation-building project. Several Anglophone associations and pressure groups emerged that have protested against Anglophone marginalisation, assimilation and exploitation by the Francophone-dominated state in the post-colonial state. They proved capable of placing the ‘Anglophone problem’ on the national and international agenda, laying claims to self-determination and autonomy in the form first of a return to the federal state and later the creation of an independent state. Strikingly, both Francophone scholars and politicians have been inclined to perceive Anglophone nationalism as an unexpected, recent invention (Donfack 1998; Menthong 1998). They appear to have been convinced that the post-colonial state’s imposition of a project of nationisme upon the existing ethnic and national identities had effectively wiped out most traces of ‘Anglophoness’, or what Edwin Ardener (1967: 292) referred to as a ‘distinctively British Cameroonian way of life’, from the public space. This is evidenced by a recent statement from the former Vice-Prime Minister in charge of Housing and Town Planning, Hamadou Mustapha: 74 CHAPTER 5 ‘A un moment donné effectivement, on a commencé à oublier que les...