CAMEROON

The north–south syndrome was an obvious factor also in Cameroon. On the political scene the ‘UPC’, ‘Union of the Populations of Cameroon’ seemed as a matter of course a southern idea and a Protestant idea, with an intellectual background in American Presbyterian Protestantism and a tradition of American liberalism and educational ambition. In the noisy milieu of the 1950s – African nationalism, ‘pro-Independence’ connections with the United Nations (Cameroon was a trustee territory) and internationalism – it was easy to suggest that Reuben Um Nyobe, the leader of Cameroonian nationalism, was an African Communist. He was portrayed as a West-Central African version of Mao and Ho Chi Minh, a highly inflammable comparison for French imperialists at a time when the French naturally felt that one Dien Bien Fu was more than enough. Not that all Protestants were ‘UPC’ or leftists by any means.

In Douala the vigorous Presbyterian Pastor Joseph Tjega would not admit Um Nyobe to the Lord's Table. In fact, he excommunicated the man who for a decade ‘symbolized and embodied Cameroon nationalism’ for being a communist and an atheist. The Catholic Ewondo, in Yaoundé region, would not fall for such hazardous temptations. Solid and conservative they followed Dr Aujoulat's ‘Bloc democratic Camerounais’ and could be trusted to subscribe to a French federal programme. So it was also with the Fulani Muslims further north. A new party Union Camerounaise was formed by Ahmadou Ahidjo.