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CAMEROONIAN NATIONALISTS GO GLOBAL: FROM FOREST MAQUIS TO A PAN-AFRICAN ACCRA*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2010

MEREDITH TERRETTA
MEREDITH TERRETTA
Affiliation:
Ottawa University
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Abstract

This article reassesses the political alternatives imagined by African nationalists in the ‘first wave’ of Africa's decolonization through the lens of Cameroonian nationalism. After the proscription of Cameroon's popular nationalist movement, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), in the mid-1950s, thousands of Cameroonian nationalists went into exile, most to Accra, where they gained the support of Kwame Nkrumah's Pan-African Bureau for African Affairs. The UPC's external support fed Cameroon's internal maquis (as UPC members called the underground resistance camps within the territories), rooted in culturally particular conceptions of freedom and sovereignty. With such deeply local and broadly international foundations, the political future that Cameroonian nationalists envisaged seemed achievable: even after the Cameroon territories' official independence, UPC nationalists kept fighting. But, by the mid-1960s, postcolonial states prioritized territorial sovereignty over ‘African unity’ and Ghana's support of the UPC became unsustainable, leading to the movement's disintegration.

Keywords

CameroonGhanadecolonizationnationalismPan-Africanism
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 189 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 On this point, see Apter, D. E., ‘Ghana's independence: triumph and paradox’, Transition, 98 (2008), 6–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ras T. Makonnen, Pan-Africanism from Within as Recorded and Edited by Kenneth King (Nairobi, 1973), 214–15.

3 The Conference of Bandung signaled an anti-imperial shift in the global political economy and engendered the non-aligned movement and the emergence of a ‘Third World’. See Burton, A., Espiritu, A., and Wilkins, F. C., ‘The fate of nationalisms in the age of Bandung’, Radical History Review, 95 (2006), 147Google Scholar; C. J. Lee (ed.), Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives (Athens, OH, 2010); J. Burbank and F. Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and Politics of Difference (Princeton, 2010), 427.

4 See, in particular, Cooper, F., ‘Possibility and constraint: African independence in historical perspective’, Journal of African History, 49:2 (2008), 167–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wilder, G., ‘Untimely vision: Aimé Césaire, decolonization, utopia’, Public Culture, 21:1 (2009), 101–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elizabeth Schmidt calls this perspective into question by demonstrating that, by the time of the September 1958 referendum organized in France's African territories over whether or not to join the French Community, France's 1958 constitution had made the terms of confederating with France much less attractive to African states. See Schmidt, E., ‘Anticolonial nationalism in French West Africa: what made Guinea unique?’ African Studies Review, 52:2 (2009), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other recent works suggest that administrations throughout French West Africa used hefty doses of coercion to push significant portions of the populations to vote in favor of inclusion in the French Community. See, for example, van Walraven, K., ‘Decolonization by referendum: the anomaly of Niger and the fall of Sawaba, 1958–1959’, Journal of African History, 50:2 (2009), 269–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 I use ‘extra-metropolitan’ to describe movements that deliberately bypassed inclusion in or collaboration with metropolitan political institutions and frameworks. Other historians have emphasized the ‘extra-metropolitan’ dimensions of anti-colonial movements in former French territories. See, for example, van Walraven, K., ‘From Tamanrasset: the struggle of Sawaba and the Algerian connection, 1957–1966’, Journal of North African Studies, 10:3–4 (2005), 507–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Connelly, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford, 2002); E. Schmidt, Cold War and Decolonization in Guinea, 1946–1958 (Athens, OH, 2007) which historicizes Guinea's shift towards what I describe as an extra-metropolitan political practice. For an account of an ‘extra-metropolitan’ alternative available to Muslim Africans under French rule on the eve of decolonization, see Mann, G. and Lecocq, B., ‘Between empire, umma, and the Muslim Third World: the French Union and African pilgrims to Mecca, 1946–1958’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 27:2 (2007), 361–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Wilder, ‘Untimely vision’, 108.

7 V. Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New York, 2007), 45–6. See also Lee, C. J., ‘At the rendezvous of decolonization: the final communiqué of the Asian–African Conference, Bandung, Indonesia, 18–24 April 1955’, Interventions, 11:1 (2009), 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 As upécistes called the underground resistance military camps – surely a reference to the French resistance during the Second World War. Algerian revolutionaries also used the term maquis.

9 Mbembe, A., ‘Domaines de la nuit et autorité onirique dans les maquis du sud-Cameroun (1955–1958)’, Journal of African History, 31:1 (1991), 89–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, La naissance du maquis dans le Sud-Cameroun (1920–1960) (Paris, 1996), for the vernacularization of the UPC's nationalist ideology in the region of the Sanaga-Maritime. See Terretta, M., ‘“God of independence, god of peace”: village politics and nationalism in the maquis of Cameroun’, Journal of African History, 46:1 (2005), 75–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an account of a similar process among Bamileke communities.

10 Maquis camps were based on both sides of the Anglo-French boundary. See below and J. Takougang, ‘The Union des Populations du Cameroun and its southern connection’, Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, 83:310 (1996), 8–24.

11 Although UPC leaders in exile did not achieve an international media campaign on the same scale as the Gouvernement Provisoire de la République Algérienne (GPRA), they utilized the same methods as the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) of Algeria and the GPRA, attempting to transform the UPC's claims into a ‘diplomatic revolution’. See M. Connelly, ‘Introduction, in Connelly, Diplomatic Revolution, 3–13.

12 Cooper, ‘Possibility’, 168.

13 Curiously, although the case of the UPC demonstrates that, even in this ‘first phase’ of Africa's decolonization, exiled nationalists played a crucial role in the struggle for nation, the literature does not reflect this. To my knowledge only one historical study considers the UPC's external activity: see D. Pouhe Pouhe, ‘Les liaisons extérieures de l'UPC, 1948–1960’, (unpublished MA thesis, University of Yaoundé, 1999). In contrast, the role of exile in later liberation movements in eastern and southern Africa is well documented. See, for example, L. H. Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago, 1995); Sidaway, J. D. and Simon, D., ‘Geopolitical transition and state formation: the changing political geographies of Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 19:1 (1993), 6–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ellis, S., ‘The historical significance of South Africa's Third Force’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24:2 (1998), 261–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Suttner, R., ‘Cultures of the African National Congress of South Africa: imprint of exile experiences’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 21:2 (2003), 303–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; N. Manghezi, The Maputo Connection: The ANC in the World of FRELIMO (Johannesburg, 2009); Panzer, M. G., ‘The pedagogy of revolution: youth, generational conflict, and education in Mozambican nationalism and the state, 1962–1970’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 35:4 (2009), 803–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 My purpose in this article is not to recount the history of the UPC's activities in French Cameroun, but rather to emphasize its international foundations and its spread beyond French territory after its proscription. For the standard political history of the UPC nationalist movement in French Cameroun from 1948 to 1956, see R. Joseph, Radical Nationalism in Cameroun: The Social Origins of the UPC Rebellion (Oxford, 1977); for a classic approach focused mostly on ‘formal’ politics, see V. Le Vine, The Cameroons from Mandate to Independence (Westport, CT, 1977). Revisionist histories from various disciplinary perspectives have proliferated, beginning with Mbembe, Naissance. But see also: J. Onana, Le sacre des indigènes évolués: Essai sur la professionalisation politique (l'exemple du Cameroun) (Paris, 2004); E. Tchumtchoua, De la Jeucafra à l'UPC: L'éclosion du nationalisme camerounais (Yaoundé, 2006); and B. A. Ngando, La présence française au Cameroun (1916–1959): Colonialisme ou mission civilisatrice? (Marseille, 2008).

15 G. Donnat, Afin que nul n'oublie: L'itinéraire d'un anticolonialiste (Paris, 1986).

16 Cameroonian representatives included Ruben Um Nyobé, an active trade unionist at the time; Mathias Djoumessi, the ruler of the Bamileke chieftaincy of Foreke-Dschang; and Celestin Takala, a Bamileke merchant based in Douala. See E. Mortimer, France and the Africans, 1944–1960: A Political History (New York, 1969), ch. 5.

17 As part of its initial constitution, the RDA stipulated that each territory should have the right to choose whether or not to join the French Union. Not until October 1950 did the RDA, guided by the leader of the Part Démocratique de la Côte d'Ivoire, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, break with the French Communist Party and move towards collaboration with the metropolitan French Assembly and support for the French Union. See Schmidt, Cold War, 25–7, 30–67.

18 Y. Pouamoun, ‘Félix Roland Moumié, 1925–1960: l'itinéraire d'un nationaliste instransigeant’ (unpublished thesis, DIPES II, Ecole normale supérieure, Yaoundé, 1997), 18. For a biographical sketch of Ruben Um Nyobé, see A. Mbembe, ‘Introduction’, in Le problème national kamerunais (Paris, 1984), 18–25.

19 See Cooper, ‘Possibility’, 167.

20 A. Gueye, Les intellectuels africains en France (Paris, 2001); J.-M. Tchaptchet, Quand les jeunes africains créaient l'histoire (Paris, 2006); J.-P. Ndiaye, Enquête sur les étudiants noirs en France (Paris, 1962).

21 Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 170–1.

22 ibid.; Mbembe, Naissance; Le Vine, Cameroons. On women's involvement see Terretta, M., ‘A miscarriage of revolution: Cameroonian women and nationalism’, Stichproben: Vienna Journal of African Studies, 12 (2007), 61–90Google Scholar. On the involvement of Bamileke chiefs, see Terretta, , ‘God of independence’, and Terretta, ‘Chiefs, traitors, and representatives: the construction of a political repertoire in independence era Cameroun’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 43:2 (2010), 227–54Google Scholar. I use Bamileke region to refer to the portion of the Grassfields under French rule, following the French administration's classification after the delineation, in 1919, of the Anglo-French boundary. ‘Grassfields’ refers to the region stretching west to east from the Cross river to the Mbam, and from the Katsina Ala river in the north to the Manengouba mountain range in the south. See J.-P. Warnier, Echanges, développement, et hiérarchies dans le Bamenda pré-colonial (Cameroun) (Stuttgart, 1985); P. N. Nkwi and J.-P. Warnier, Elements for a History of the Western Grassfields (Yaoundé, 1982).

23 See Onana, Sacre, 293–308, for this and other political statistics from post-war French Cameroun.

24 Centre d'Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (CAOM), Affaires politiques 3335/1, 1955, Synthèse sur l'implantation de l'UPC au Cameroun. For an account of the UPC's relationship with the RDA see Ngando, Présence, 269.

25 Terretta, ‘Miscarriage’; Marthe Moumié, Victime du colonialisme français (Paris, 2006).

26 A. Mbembe, ‘Mémoire historique et action politique’, in J.-F. Bayart, A. Mbembe, and C. Toulabor (eds.), Le politique par le bas en Afrique noire: Contributions à une problématique de la démocratie (Paris, 1992), 147–256.

27 The UPC was the sole nationalist movement in francophone sub-Saharan Africa to use arms in the struggle for independence. Although upéciste leaders did not refer to South Africa explicitly (as they did with Algeria and Vietnam), there are striking parallels between the UPC's military strategy post-1957 and that of the Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party, formed in 1961. See Ellis, ‘Historical significance’, 264.

28 UPC leaders in exile would have had occasion to cross paths with Franz Fanon in 1958 at the All African Peoples' Conference discussed below. However, my intent is not to suggest that upécistes read and evoked Fanon, but rather to classify UPC nationalism as fitting a Fanonian model. See F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. R. Pilcox (New York, 2004), 130, 142. For Fanon, anti-colonial revolution in African colonies necessitated equal parts of social and political consciousness, and violence was a necessary path to liberation from colonial rule. Yet he warned against the revolutionary ‘intellectual’ who overlooked the contributions of a local peasantry and/or lumpen proletariat.

29 The UPC's armed struggle began in the Sanaga-Maritime in late 1956 and spread to the Bamileke region in late 1957. The complex history of the UPC maquis in the Mungo, Wouri, Mbam, Nkam, Bamenda, and Kumba regions (the latter two in Anglophone territory) has yet to be written. As the years progressed, UPC militia groups became increasingly factionalized and it would be misleading to present the maquis as a unified front. What is certain is that there were numerous resistance camps in regions that the conventional historiography has entirely overlooked. Several MA theses have begun to explore the histories of specific maquis. For the Mbam, see L.-C. Oubel, ‘La rébellion dans la subdivision de Ndikinimeki (Région du Mbam), 1955–1969: approche historique’ (unpublished MA thesis, DIPES II, Ecole normale supérieure, Yaoundé, 1999); for an interesting perspective on the UPC in British territory, see T. Sharp, ‘Binaries of nations: the “Anglophone problem” in Cameroon and the presentation of historical narratives on the internet’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Manchester, 2008).

30 CAOM, Affaires politiques 3335/1, Lassalle, Bureau de Documentation de l'AEF-Cameroun, n.d, apparently mid-1955.

31 Elsewhere, I have estimated the petitions sent by upécistes at around 6,000: Terretta, ‘Miscarriage’, 62. But Janvier Onana, citing New Commonwealth, 30 April 1956, writes that upécistes sent 45,000 petitions in the year 1956 alone: see Onana, Sacre, 228.

32 Interview with Ignace Djoko Néguin, Baham centre, Mar. 2002.

33 For a history of Cameroonian students' political mobilization in France, see Tchaptchet, Quand les jeunes.

34 CAOM, Affaires politiques 3335/1, Note de renseignements, 24 Jul. 1955, Section de coordination, France d'Outre-Mer.

35 Centre Historique d'Archives Nationales, Paris (CHAN), Section du vingtième siècle, Foccart papers, Fonds privés 153, Eyinga deportation file.

36 On this point see Terretta, ‘God of independence’.

37 Gueye, Intellectuels, ch. 2.

38 Ghana National Archives, Accra (GNA), SC/BAA/287 B, Mr. F. Dei Anang's summary of the letter from the Federation of African Students in France, 6 Dec. 1965.

39 Pouamoun, ‘Félix-Roland Moumié’, 53.

40 Ras T. Makonnen was named George Thomas Nathaniel Griffith by his parents at the time of his birth in British Guiana. He later changed his name, claiming that his father was of Ethiopian origin, when he became involved in anti-colonial and Pan-African politics. See H. Adi and M. Sherwood, Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787 (London, 2003), 117–22.

41 Makonnen, Pan-Africanism, 155.

42 B. H. Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 242.

43 See, for example, British National Archives, Kew (BNA) FO 371/155344, Mr. Eastwood, Colonial Office, to Sir Roger Stevens, Foreign Office, 14 Aug. 1961.

44 CAOM, Affaires politiques, 3335/1, Propagande et action psychologique des groupements extrémistes au Cameroun, s.d. apparently 1955; CAOM, Affaires politiques, 3309/1, Note de synthèse sur les activités politiques et sociales du mois de janvier 1955.

45 CAOM, Affaires Politiques, 3337, Chronologique des évenements survenus à Nkongsamba, 22 mai–30 mai 1955, Délégation du Haut-Commissariat.

46 CAOM, Affaires Politiques 3347/1, Rapport de Surêté, Note de renseignements, 22–29 Oct. 1955, Yaoundé, 29 Oct. 1955; Interview with Ignace Djoko Néguin.

47 BNA, FO 371/155344, ‘Threat of terrorists on the border of S. Cameroons and the possibility of combatant forces coming in before the 1st Oct.’, Mr Eastwood, Colonial Office, to Sir Roger Stevens, Foreign Office, 14 Aug. 1961.

48 BNA, FO 371/161610, British embassy, Yaoundé to Foreign Office, 28 Apr. 1962.

49 Matthew Connelly uses the phrase to describe the Algerian struggle for independence. See Connelly, Diplomatic Revolution.

50 Ibid. 4.

51 BNA, CO 554/2367, Despatch No. 18 from British Embassy, Yaoundé to FO, 6 June 1960.

52 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds privés 149, Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionage (SDECE), ‘Soudan-Cameroun (UPC)’, 30 Sep. 1958.

53 All information on the AASO is taken from CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics 2092, Note d'information, ‘La conférence de solidarité Afro-Asiatique de Conakry (11–16 Avril 1960)’, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Dir. de l'Afrique-Levant.

54 The AASO's Director's Committee was comprised of 27 members, each one representing a particular nation: Algeria, Cameroun (UPC), Peoples' Republic of China, Belgian Congo, North Korea, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Mongolia, Morocco, Uganda, Pakistan, Somalia, Southern Rhodesia, South-West Africa, Tunisia, UAR, USSR, North Vietnam, and Yemen. The organization's permanent secretariat was made up of 12 members chosen by the directors' committee: Algeria (FLN), Cameroun (UPC), China, Congo, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, UAR, Uganda, USSR. The UPC held seats in both the Director's Committee and the permanent secretariat. ibid.

55 Ibid.

56 ibid.

57 The bureau was constituted informally from the date of Ghana's independence, and given a legal status in 1959 after Padmore's death: see K. Armah, Peace Without Power: Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957–1966 (Accra, 2004), 27. I am grateful to Akosua Darkwah for providing me with a copy of this publication.

58 Ibid. 58.

59 GNA, SC/BAA/136, Conference of Independent African States, 15 Apr. 1958.

60 See Makonnen, Pan-Africanism, 212–24.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid. 58.

63 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper write that ‘older forms of pan-Africanism’ had withered by the mid-1950s and that, by that time, ‘already the devolution of power to territorial structures was underway’ (Burbank and Cooper, Empires, 425). And yet the AAPC convened in 1958 (and the AASO Conference held in 1957), symbolized the growth of a ‘new form’ of Pan-Africanism that premised inter-territorial cooperation over territorial sovereignty.

64 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics, Directeur des Affaires Politiques, 3è bureau, Ministre de la France d'Outre-Mer à M. le Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, 31 Oct. 1958.

65 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics, Ministre de la France d'Outre-Mer au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, Direction des Affaires Politiques, 3è Bureau, 15 Jul. 1958.

66 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics, Torre to Minister de la France d'Outre-Mer, Directeur du Cabinet, Directeur des Affaires Politiques, Paris, 18 Jul. 1958.

67 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics, Telegram from Directeur des Affaires Politiques, M. Pignon and Chef du 3è Bureau, Rostain, to High Commissioner, Cameroun, 19 Dec. 1958.

68 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics 2092, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Directeur d'Afrique-Levant, 15 Dec. 1958.

69 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics 2092, Spécial Outre-Mer, Bulletin Sud-Sahara, 11 Dec. 1958.

70 Resolutions adopted by the All African Peoples' Conference, Cairo, 23–31 Mar. 1961.

71 Makonnen, Pan-Africanism, 215. Those housed at the centre included Patrice Lumumba from the Belgian Congo, Felix Moumié and Ernest Ouandié of Cameroon, Holden Roberto of Angola, the Egyptian President Nasser's representative, Dr Gallal, Rabaroca and Mulutsi of the PAC, Banda and Kenneth Kaunda from southern central Africa, and Mbiyu Koinange and Odinga of Kenya.

72 Interviews with Job Njapa, Nkongsamba, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008; with Ignace Neguin Djoko, Baham, 2002, 2003, 2004; with Fo Marcel Ngandjong Feze, Bandenkop, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003; with Marie-Irène Ngapeth-Biyong, Yaoundé, 1999; and with Jacqueline Kemayou, New Bell, Douala, 2005.

73 ibid.

74 ibid.

75 Ibid. and BNA, FO 371/146650, ‘Jeanne’, 85 Brecknock Rd., London to ‘Felix’ [Moumié], Accra, 22 Aug. 1960, in British Embassy, Leopoldville, Congo to E. B. Boothby, Esq., Africa Department, Foreign Office, 28 Oct. 1960.

76 BNA, CO 554/2367, Extract from South Cameroons Intelligence Report for Dec. 1960.

77 BNA, FO 371/146650, Samuel Mekou, African Affairs Centre, Accra to Abel Kingue, 3 Sep. 1960 in British Embassy, Leopoldville, Congo to E. B. Boothby, Esq., Africa Department, Foreign Office, 28 Oct. 1960. Mekou did not indicate which German ambassador, East or West.

78 The scholarships increased from 1960 to 1961. There were 33 scholarships awarded to Cameroonian students through the UPC-OK during the single month of July 1961. BNA, FO 371/155340, British embassy, Yaoundé, to Secretary of State for the Colonies, Secret, 19 Aug. 1961.

79 Interviews with Job Ngoule Njapa, Jacqueline Kemayou, and Woungly Massaga, Yaoundé, 2003, 2005. See also BNA, CO 554/2367, B. A. Flack to R. C. Cox, Esq., Commonwealth Relations Office, London, 26 Feb. 1960 re Petition to High Commissioner (22 Feb. 1960) from 4 persons, political refugees from Cameroon.

80 BNA, FO 371/146650, Samuel Mekou, African Affairs Centre, Accra to Abel Kingue, 3 Sep. 1960 in British Embassy, Leopoldville, Congo to E. B. Boothby, Esq., Africa Department, Foreign Office, 28 Oct. 1960.

81 BNA, CO 554/2367, Governor-General of Nigeria to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 30 Sep. 1960.

82 Interview with Job Ngoule Njapa.

83 BNA, FO 371/146650, Ernest Ouandié, Accra, to Félix R. Moumié in Leopoldville, 4 Sep. 1960, in British Embassy, Leopoldville, Congo to E. B. Boothby, Esq., Africa Department, Foreign Office, 28 Oct. 1960.

84 Ibid. These unfortunate youths were told to return to Cameroon, although to do so would have placed them in severe jeopardy. It is more likely that many stayed and fended for themselves in Accra or moved on. Male exiles sometimes arrived accompanied by their wives. In some cases, scholarships could be obtained for men, while their wives and families had to be sent home.

85 BNA, CO 554/2367, Extract from South Cameroons Intelligence Report for Sep. 1960, ‘Part II’. Kumba, because of its proximity to the now independent territory of Cameroun, established a militia base in the thick forest area along the border. Young soldiers showing military promise were probably recruited through this base.

86 ibid.

87 BNA, FO 371/155341, Annex ‘A’ to PERINTREP No. 8/61.

88 BNA, FO 371/155341. See ‘Peking training young Africans in terrorism: disruption planned’, Sunday Telegraph, 23 Jul. 1961, and ‘Overseas training of ALNK terrorists’, Under-Secretary of State for War, 16 June 1961.

89 Annex ‘A’ to PERINTREP No. 8/61.

90 ‘Peking training’.

91 ‘Overseas training’.

92 Annex ‘A’ to PERINTREP No. 8/61.

93 On local strategies of warfare, particularly fighters' use of spiritual technology and knowledge of the landscape, see S. Mbatchou, ‘Contribution à la connaissance de l'histoire de l'Armée de libération nationale kamerunaise (ALNK), 1959–1971’ (unpublished MA thesis, Yaoundé-I, 2003). See also Mbembe, ‘Domaines’.

94 In the 1960s, upécistes described the Ahidjo government as a ‘puppet regime’ (gouvernement fantoche) and enumerated its neo-colonial characteristics. See, for example, Message du Président du Comité Révolutionnaire (Ernest Ouandié), 22 Feb. 1967, in Archives de la Préfecture de Nkongsamba, Mungo (APN), Présidence de la République fédérale, Direction du service d'études et de documentation, Brigade Mixte Mobile, Bamenda, 6 Mar. 1967.

95 For one former cabinet member's account, see Armah, Peace, 158–61.

96 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds privés 151, ‘Les activités de l'UPC’, Paris, 6 Jan. 1961. Of course, factionalization is characteristic of political movements initiated or upheld in exile. See Y. Shain, Frontier of Loyalty: Political Exiles in the Age of the Nation States (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005).

97 L. De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba (London, 2001).

98 On Sawaba, see van Walraven, ‘Decolonization’.

99 BNA, FO 371/161611, British Embassy, Yaoundé to R. J. Stratton, Esq., West and Central African Department, Foreign Office, 24 Sep. 1962.

100 See Armah, Peace, 96–104 for an explanation of the emergence of three blocs of African states from 1960: the conservative, francophone Brazzaville group, which became the Union Africain et Malgache in December 1960; the Casablanca group, of which Ghana was a member, which advocated a Pan-African assembly, political and economic committees, and High Command of Chiefs of Staff, and which pledged ‘aid and assistance to nationalist forces’; and the Monrovia group, which took issue with political subversion and pledged ‘non-interference in the internal affairs of states’.

101 GNA, SC/BAA/372, Moktar Ould Daddah to Diallo Telli, Secretary-General of OUA, 18 Feb. 1965.

102 J. H. Williams, Ambassador of Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville to Kwame Nkrumah, 8 Apr. 1965. For Ahidjo's say in the matter, see N. Morton, British Embassy, Yaoundé to Mervyn Brown, Esq., West and Central African Department, Foreign Office, 17 Aug. 1965.

103 Armah, Peace, 17 and GNA, SC/BAA/357.

104 CHAN, Foccart papers, Fonds publics, 454, ‘Conférence des Chefs d'Etats’.

105 The history of the UPC's Second Front, established in the northern regions of the Republic of Congo, has yet to be researched. No published scholarly accounts exist, although J.-F. Bayart makes brief reference to it, as does Victor LeVine. See J.-F. Bayart, L'Etat au Cameroun (Paris, 1979), 119–120; V. LeVine, The Cameroon Federal Republic (Ithaca, NY, 1971), 128. It seems that, rather than a unified ‘Second Front’ controlled by the Chinese as the early accounts suggest, there were at least two factions of exiled upécistes. One group was stationed near Ouesso and under the command of Osende Afana, who was killed on the Cameroonian side of the Ngako river during an attempt to recruit supporters for the UPC and the ALNK. Scholars do not agree on the date of Afana's death: Bayart has some time in March 1966, while LeVine cites 3 December 1967; Woungly Massaga himself states that Afana was killed on 15 Mar 1966. The other group, under the command of Woungly Massaga (aka Commandant Kissamba), was located near Alate. Various pockets of fighters loyal or potentially loyal to the ALNK ranged along Cameroon's southern border around Mouloundou, Lomié, and Djoum. See D. Abwa, Ngouo Woungly-Massaga alias Commandant Kissamba: ‘Cameroun, ma part de vérité’ (Paris, 2005), 129, 165, 172, 187, 199. While scholars ascribe UPC exiles' factionalization to the Sino-Soviet split in the mid-1960s, Massaga's own testimony suggests that there may be more to the story.

106 Interviews with Woungly Massaga and Job Ngoule Njapa. See also W. Massaga, Une histoire politique du Cameroun, 1944–2004 (Paris, 2004); E. Guevara, African Dream: The Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo (New York, 2000).

107 While maquis camps remained in the Mbam and south-eastern Bamileke regions, the invading second front had a lot of ground to cover from their point of entry at Dja and Lobo before reaching the first ‘red zone’ several hundred miles due north-east.

108 On Ernest Ouandié's arrest, see APN, Secteur militaire du Littoral, Qtr. de Nkongsamba, Bulletin de renseignements, Objet: Rapports entre ressortissants Dschang et Bangangté à Mbanga, 22 Sep. 1970. On Ouandié's execution, see E. Kamguia K., ‘39 ans après: Ernest Ouandié reste immortel’, La Nouvelle Expression, 15 Jan. 2010; J.-A. Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 119; Beti, M., ‘Le Cameroun d'Ahidjo’, Temps Modernes, 316 (Nov. 1972)Google Scholar.

109 Cooper, ‘Possibility’.

110 Joseph, Radical Nationalism; Schmidt, ‘Anticolonial nationalism’; van Walraven, ‘Decolonization’.

111 See note 13 above.