Petitioning for our Rights, Fighting for our Nation. The History of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women, 1949-1960: The History of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women, 1949-1960

4. The Official Ban of the Nationalist Movement, And Reorganization in the Maquis

65 Chapter 4 The Official Ban of the Nationalist Movement, And Reorganization in the M Maquis Who can count the victims of the Sanaga-Maritime and all of Kamerun: the dead, the prisoners, the refugees in foreign lands, the freedom fighters? How many huts burned, hamlets partly or totally set ablaze? Plundered goods, plundered and stolen and destroyed, cattle stolen and slaughtered? Who can count the bereaved, the widows and the orphans? How can one soothe the women of Sanaga-Maritime or elsewhere, the women whose husbands are dead somewhere, or in prison, or fighting in the maquis, or who knows where […]? - Reverend Pastor Abomo Akoa’s Easter sermon, 19571 The French administration’s official ban of the UPC on 13 July 1955 came at the height of the party’s popularity. As a result, the proscription pushed the party into uncharted waters of heightened anti-colonial militancy as nationalists denounced it as a violation of the UN Charter and the French Constitution. UDEFEC leaders found themselves listed side by side with UPC men on the administration’s warrants for arrest. If UDEFEC had formed primarily as a women’s social organization, it now had little choice but to join the fullfledged fight - in ideology and in practice - against the administration. The official ban on the party disrupted the very things UDEFEC had formed to protect - family stability and the social well-being of women and children. UDEFEC 1 As quoted in UPC, The UPC Denounces the Planned Systematic Tortures in the Kamerun, Cairo, 1958, 57-8. 66 members began to view the administration as more than an institution that stood in the way of Cameroonian social and economic progress. Nationalists now framed the French administration as an active opponent waging a war against the nationalists and their families. UDEFEC leaders were quick to define the arrests and punishments following the party’s ban as a human rights crisis. The French administration’s use of arrest and imprisonment separated many UPC members from their wives, which in turn prompted more women to turn to UDEFEC and the UPC for support and to demand justice. The conversion of members’ homes to meeting places for the UPC and UDEFEC after the administration’s ban on the movement’s public meetings led troops under French control to conduct intrusive searches in private homes. The Official Ban of the Nationalist Movement The French administration, under the direction of Roland Pré, spent the first months of 1955 setting in motion events that it could use to justify the official ban of the nationalist movement on 13 July 1955. On 19 February 1955, Pré authorized all judicial and civil authorities “to summon the army to scatter any meeting of the progressive movements.”2 The French administration viewed UDEFEC as part of UPC strategy to increase its membership and to discourage the French administration’s use of force during mass gatherings: The UDEFEC was born of the desire to associate women with the active work of the party, the women being called upon to take 2 Ibid., 30, 33. This decree applied to “suspicious meetings of more than two persons.” 67 part in demonstrations so as to paralyze the police action by their presence.3 Not to be deterred by the presence of women in the demonstrations, the administration threatened and arrested men and women activists alike. On 19 and 25 April 1955, the police conducted an illegal search at UPC headquarters and leaders’ homes. They arrested 24 active members including Theodore Mayi Matip, the president of the JDC,4 Jacques Ngom, the leader of the USCC, Ruben Um Nyobé’s wife, and Gertrude Omog, a member of UDEFEC from Edea.5 Um Nyobé’s “infant child was snatched from its mother’s arms and handed over to the welfare authorities.” 6 Matip was deported to the Mokolo fortress, a “hell-like prison” in Maroua, with many other nationalist party members including Martha Bahida, a member of UDEFEC who was pregnant at the time. Bahida gave birth in the Mokolo prison. 7 UPC and UDEFEC petitions emphasized that the arbitrary arrests and conditions 3 Observations of the French Government as Administering Authority, 6 Dec 1955, UNTC, T/OBS.5/71. 4 Theodore Mayi Matip would be, in 1958, the only UPC nationalist to know the exact whereabouts of Ruben Um Nyobé and his family in the maquis. He became Um Nyobé’s trusted diviner and...