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

Chapter Three

Chapter Three I t was in this place that I spent the first six months of those six years. As I already stated I came in when the cases of Ouandie and Ndongmo were going on. They were finally tried in December 1970 and judge-ment was delivered early in January; I think it was 5 January 1971 and if my memory is still good, Ouandie, Wambo le Courant and a third victim who fell alongside Ouandie were executed in Bafoussam on 15 January 1971. It was after this, 1 think around 20 January, that I was called up for routine questioning just to establish my curriculum vitae. I have just been referring to the Ouandie case and the Bishop Ndongmo case as though all who will read this work knew these personalities. Ernest Ouandie was the second Vice Present of the UPC – Union des Populations du Cameroun – the first really mass political party in Cameroun. As a result of violent clashes between the UPC militants and French colonial forces in Douala in 1955, the party was banned and the French colonial authorities began to pursue and arrest its members and of course the leaders. When these clashes took place Dr Felix Roland Moumie, the then President of the UPC, Mr Abel Kingue and Ernest Ouandie, first and second Vice Presidents of the party respectively, were found in Douala and the Mungo regions. They escaped from the French and took refuge in the then Southern Cameroons under British mandatory rule. The British had linked up its administration with its vast colony of Nigeria. 30 Albert Mukong Ruben Um Nyobe, the then Secretary General of the UPC, was trapped by French forces in the Sanaga Maritime region. And the French forces organised a serious campaign to get at Um Nyobe. In these military campaigns rather ruthless treatment was meted out to known UPC members and supporters as well as to towns and villages that were sympathetic to UPC ideology. The UPC had advocated the Reunification and Independence of the two Cameroons as opposed to the French policy of assimilation and the creation of France Outre-Mer. The UPC members thus harassed and pursued found it necessary to organise resistance groups to fight back against the French forces. They were thus compelled to take refuge in the thick and swampy forests, in caves and on hills of difficult countryside. And so was born the maquis and the organised rebellion in the national struggle led by the UPC. This became very bloody as the French were also ruthless in their methods. This struggle stretched through the years, suffered many setbacks and even degenerated into an organisation of banditry. Ruben Um Nyobe was the life of the rebellion and he conducted it himself in the Sanaga Maritime Area. Unfortunately, when the Ahidjo regime came up in 1958 and talked of Independence and Unification, Ruben Um Nyobe – a nationalist and patriot of no mean order – took him seriously and so wanted to negotiate a cease-fire with him. But unfortunately for Um Nyobe and the nationalist struggle, Ahmadou Ahidjo used the opportunity to intrigue with the emissaries of Um Nyobe and obtained the needed betrayal through which he eliminated Um Nyobe. The French Forces assassinated Um Nyobe on 13 September 1958. After this the armed struggle lost the only leadership chat understood the struggle and was with the people. The leaders who fled over to the then Southern Cameroons tried to found the UPC there but in 1957 the Nigeria Government banned it and the leaders were deported. Colonel Nasser 31 Prisoner without a Crime: Disciplining Dissent in Ahidjo’s Cameroon received them in Egypt and some went to Khartoum. From outside they tried to keep up the struggle by sending supplies and propaganda material under very difficult conditions to the maquis, Their main link was the struggle in the Bamileke and Wouri regions. Nonetheless in the lifetime of Um they kept up some poor contact which also gave moral and tactical guidance to the Bamileke region. Dr Moumie was done to death by la Main Rouge (the Red Hand) in 1960. He died of rat poisoning on 3 November 1960. In 1961 Abel Kingue and Ernest Ouandie decided that it was absolutely necessary for one of them to get into the maquis. Ernest Ouandie opted to go particularly because Abel Kingue had very poor health (Kingue died in Cairo in 1964). Ouandie...