Southern West Cameroon Revisited (1950-1972) Volume One: Unveiling Inescapable Traps

Chapter 3 - Southern Cameroons: Political Maturity

49 Chapter 3 Southern Cameroons: Political Maturity An Evolved Political Culture This chapter, elaborately, and in comparative terms demonstrates using various parameters, the extent to which Southern Cameroons up to the mid-1960s, had extensively developed an evolved, mature, political culture. It was amazingly led by a range of: simple, visionary, austere, honest, peace-loving and realistic leaders, almost without exception – vintage products of their epoch. Distinguished by good governance; throughout it organized frequent free, fair and transparent elections, peaceful handover of power and enjoyed free primary adult education. It was further crowned with an ideal, efficient civil service, literally, corruption free. In fact, the period, 1955-1965 in the history of Southern Cameroons qualifies as a “Golden Age”81 for that nostalgic state, whose citizens were repeatedly referred to as “nice, peace loving, good and hospitable people” by administrators, missionaries, visitors and those who got to know them closely. The most remarkable observation was that finally made by Malcolm Milne himself who noted that during his last couple of years in the Southern Cameroons administration, he dealt with: “People of high intelligence who knew exactly what they wanted.”82 However, in the interview repeated and derogatory references are made of the people in general and to the fact that: “Foncha and Muna were not well educated;” the ‘KNDP lacked sufficient qualified personnel, therefore their negotiations were weak. In yet another interview granted to; Time Scape Magazine, Ngoh is blunt and categorical maintaining that: 81 Ibid., Ndi,Golden Age of Southern (West) Cameroon – Impact of Christianity,( Full Gospel Press, Bamenda, Cameroon), 2005. 82 Ibid., No Telephone, p.254. 50 British Southern Cameroons came out with a very poor deal because the KNDP politicians were ignorant and self-centred. For example on the 20thof June1961, Ahidjo and Foncha had a secret agreement that the latter would be made Vice President in the draft constitution of the Federal Republic of Cameroon, this secret arrangement was leaked and it scared Southern Cameroon politicians who quickly fought for their own interests.83 All of this squares up with the Colonial Office correspondence by Malcolm Milne in which he quotes his colleague Foley Newn, who says: The present government in Southern Cameroons made up almost totally of inexperienced and naïve ex-primary school teachers with good intentions is incapable of grappling with the tremendous problems which face it, leadership in Southern Cameroons is inexperienced, untrained and naïve”(sic).84 This is despite the fact that other than Endeley as an individual; on a one on one basis as will be seen shortly, the KNDP leadership was of the same calibre as their CPNC colleagues if not better. In fact, described as “ex-primary school teachers”, practically all of whom had served as “headmasters”, they were the best any locality could boast of across Nigeria and Southern Cameroons at the time. On the other hand, none of the CPNC leadership but for Dr. EML Endeley, held qualifications higher than the West African School Certificate, while others were Pastors and holders of the Standard Six certificate. Some of these were amateur journalists and newspaper vendors, who had access to, and maximally used the local press to lambast, criticize and ridicule their KNDP opponents as testified by the terse provocative newspaper captions crafted by Motomby Woleta and Nerius Mbile.85 This is abundantly demonstrated in the Endeley 83 Ibid., Time Scape Magazine Vol: 02 no. 006, March-April 2011, p.18. For more on the so-called Secret Deals, see Chapters Four and Five. 84 Ibid., Epilogue, Summit Magazine. 85 Ibid., Sunday Times 21 June 1959, Foncha is referred to as: “Mr. 14:12mockery of democracy” by Motomby Woleta, also, Mbile: “‘If the KNDP does not 51 cabinet of 1954 - 1959.On the whole, this could be taken simply as political verbiage deserving no serious comment.86 Without in anyway belabouring the fact, going through the declassified British secret documents on Southern Cameroons, very little of positive value is said about Mr. Foncha’s administration and his party, the KNDP; since the British colonial officials unabashedly took sides with the CPNC. To make sense, the above criticisms should be examined within their global, historical framework beginning with political leadership generally; in Britain itself, as well as in the US, Nigeria, Republic of Cameroon and then, Southern Cameroons. Regardless of the issue of educational qualifications, it was an acknowledged fact that Southern Cameroonian politicians were...