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505 Chapter Twenty-Six Agro-Industry And Regionalism In The South West Province, Of Cameroon During The National Economic And Political Crisis Piet Konings The South West Province of Cameroon was born in 1972. Its birth marked the end of a unique experiment in Africa whereby the political elite of two regions with· different colonial legacies-one French and the other British-had agreed on the formation of a federal state (Ardener, 1967; Johnson, 1970; le Vine, 1971; Benjamin, 1972; Forge, 1981). Stark (1976) has convincingly argued that from its very start in October 1961, federalism in Cameroon was more ‘shadow than reality’. During the negotiations between the two parties, it was already evident that the bargaining strength of the delegation from the Francophone region was much greater than that of the Anglophone delegation. Compared to the Francophone region, the size and population of the Anglophone region was small, comprising only 9 per cent of the total area and 21 per cent of the total population of the federation (Kofele-Kale, 1986). More important, at the time of the negotiations, the former French Trust Territory of Cameroun was already an independent state, having been renamed the Republic of Cameroun, while the British Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons was, by the terms of the United Nations plebiscite, still to achieve its independence by joining the sovereign Republic of Cameroon. Capitalizing on this ‘senior’ status of his region, Ahmadou Ahidjo, the then Prime Minister of the Republic of Cameroon and leader of the Francophone delegation, was able to dictate the terms for federation. Whereas John Ngu Foncha, then Prime Minister of Southern Cameroons and Anglophone delegation leader, had proposed a loose form of federalism, which he regarded as a guarantee for equal partnership of both parties and for preservation of the cultural heritage and identity of the Anglophone minority, Ahidjo eventually forced him to accept a highly centralized form of federalism. Ahidjo, who was to become the President of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, looked upon federalism merely as an unavoidable transitory phase to the total integration of the Anglophone minority into a strong, 506 Francophone-dominated unitary state (Chem-langhee, 1995: 24). To achieve this objective, he employed several tactics (Delancey, 1989: 52-65). One of these was to play Anglophone political factions off against each other and eventually unite them into the single party, the Cameroon National Union (CNU). Another was to eliminate from positions of power any Anglophone leaders who remained strongly committed to federalism, replacing them by others who favoured a unitary state. Still another was to create ‘clients’ among the Anglophone elite. By granting top posts in federal institutions and in the party to representatives of significant ethnic and regional groups in the Anglophone region, he tried to control these groups. Finally, he did not hesitate to repress any opposition. Through these and other tactics, he succeeded in putting an end to the federation. His justification for the ‘glorious revolution of 20 May 1972’ was that federalism fostered regionalism and impeded economic development (Stark, 1976). The vast majority of the Anglophones, however, did not attribute the emergence of ‘regionalism’ and lack of economic development to federalism per se, but rather to the hegemonic tendencies of the Francophone-dominated federal state. They soon began to resent their regional loss of autonomy and their integration as a subordinate minority into the unitary state. Their numerous grievances are mainly of a political, economic and cultural nature. These grievances concern in particular their under-representation and inferior role in the national decision-making councils, the neglect of the infrastructure and the exploitation of the region’s economic resources, and the attempts at ‘frenchification’. . The creation of the South West Province in 1972 was closely connected to the growing dissatisfaction of the Anglophone community with this subordinate position. There is no doubt that Ahidjo’s decision after the ‘glorious revolution’ to divide the erstwhile Federated State of West Cameroon into two provinces, the South West and North West Provinces, was aimed at reducing the danger of any united Anglophone action against the Franooph6ne-dominated state. In making his decision he was well aware of the internal contradictions within the Anglophone community between the coastal/forest people (the South West Province) and the Grassfield people (North West Province). One of the major reasons for these internal conflicts is the loss of hegemony by the South West elite in the Anglophone region. The coastal population had been exposed to early contact with Western trade...

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