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

6. Conclusion. Towards a Nation of Outsiders

125 Chapter 6 Conclusion Towards a Nation of Outsiders Tu n’es pas parti, et pourtant tu n’es pas là. / You haven’t left and yet you are not here.1 The military repression of the nationalists proved particularly violent, particularly after the UPC attempted to organize a territory-wide boycott of the December 1956 elections and created the Comité national d’organisation (CNO) to enforce the boycott in the Sanaga-Maritime.2 Outlawed, the party had no political recourse but to organize a boycott of the elections, which it depicted as the administration’s ploy to finally integrate French Cameroon into the French Union. To vote or not to vote was, to Um Nyobé, a life or death question.3 The Zone de pacification established in the Sanaga-Maritime led to the resettlement of the region’s population along the roads, 1 Song from Makaï referring to Ruben Um Nyobé after his assassination, as quoted in Achille Mbembe, “Pouvoir des morts et langage des vivants: Les errances de la mémoire nationaliste au Cameroun,” in Jean-François Bayart, et al. eds., Le politique par le bas: Contributions a une problématique de la démocratie, Paris, 1992, 183-229, 226. 2 Despite Ruben Um Nyobé’s reluctance to use violence as a strategy for the liberation of Cameroonians from European dominance, the French dissolution of the territorial assembly in August 1956 and its scheduling of new elections for December 1956 without granting amnesty to UPC members pushed the movement to a choice between surrender, or radicalization. See Achille Mbembe, La naissance du maquis dans le SudCameroun , 1920-1960, Paris, 1996, 328. Ruben Um Nyobé, Problème national kamerunais, Paris, 1984, 307, 317. The formation of the CNO in Makai, Eseka Subdivision, had as objective to isolate and threaten the valets, or those who supported the French administration’s political tactics. 3 Ruben Um Nyobé, Ecrits sous maquis, Paris, 1989, 173-174. 126 while marketplaces were abolished, and crops destroyed and pillaged to prevent their sustenance of the maquisards. The French administration attempted to combat the nationalist movement’s popularity by disseminating anti-UPC ideology, imitating the UPC and UDEFEC grassroots strategies. The administration recruited traitors to the movement to act as “catechists” to the people, sending them out to tell anti-UPC parables at public gatherings, the morals of which could be summed up in proverbs.4 These strategies, referred to by the administration as “psychological actions undertaken by the Administration in 1958 to turn the masses against the UPC,”5 met with ridicule, or were reinterpreted by listeners to illustrate the importance of the UPC or the independence of the population of the Bassa region. The administration’s efforts to re-appropriate the imaginary6 - that is the symbols, narratives, modes of expression, and behaviors of nationalists - proved futile. Perhaps, considering Bassa women nationalists’ role in awakening the peoples’ political consciousness, the administrators would have had more success if they had selected women to serve as their primary propagandists. In the Bamileke region, the administration focused its military attacks on villages with pro-UPC chiefs. The administrative strategy for stifling the movement’s popularity in the Bamileke region was to: 4 Mbembe, Naissance, 364-376. 5 Ibid. 6 For Mbembe, revolutions in Africa belong to the order of the imaginary. See Achille Mbembe, “Domaines de la nuit et autorité onirique dans les maquis du Sud-Cameroun (1955-1958),” Journal of African History 31.1 (1991): 89-121, 89-93, and Naissance, 362, chap. 12, and Conclusion. 127 arrest the Chief and take him to Dschang, where the local authority immediately replaced him without more ado, by a chief of its own choice, contrary to the wishes and the tradition of the people of that chiefdom.7 Such was the fate of Pierre Kamdem Ninyim, the Chief of Baham, whose arrest was protested by UPC and UDEFEC members even beyond the Bamileke region.8 That Bamileke women wrote in support of some chiefs, and described others as pawns of the French administration offers a new look at the nationalist party’s place in Bamileke politics. The historical scholarship tends to explain the conflict in terms of a “traditional aristocracy” versus the cadets sociaux, that is juniors, agriculturalists, laborers, and women. 9 Instead, the petitions suggest that the conflict had more to do with nationalist politics and alliances formed in support of or against the foreign administration...