Curricular Issues in Neocolonial Cameroon: A Personal Journey

Introduction

Cameroon is gradually sinking into a civil war. It all began when in 2016 some lawyers and teachers staged a peaceful demonstration in Buea, a town in the English-speaking part of the country, to protest against the marginalization of the Anglophone legal and educational systems by the nation’s predominantly Francophone administration. The government reacted to this incident by immediately dispatching troops in the area to brutalize not only the demonstrators but also students of the local university in the town. When the rest of the English-speaking population got wind of the administration’s response, they all rallied firmly behind their teachers, lawyers, and students. A showdown was imminent. From a mere peaceful demonstration, the incident has long since degenerated into a full-blown conflict when on October 1, 2017, the English-speaking population announced the restoration of the independence of their region from the rest of the country. This marked the beginning of a brutal government military campaign in the two English-speaking regions of the country in a bid to put an end to the situation. According to reports on the ground, more than 100 villages have been set ablaze and not less than 3,000 people, for the most part innocent civilians, have been killed mainly by the Cameroonian military. According to the 2017/2018 report of Amnesty International, Nigeria now shelters not less than 250,000 refugees from Cameroon as a whole; and there are more than 200,000 internally displaced persons in the country. While there has been a tendency by analysts and political pundits to focus mainly on the historical, political, and economic aspects of this conflict, very scant attention has been paid to the role the school educational systems have played in creating this situation. This article, based on my own experience as a teacher and student in Cameroon as well as my knowledge of contemporary educational issues, attempts to bridge that gap by taking us in a journey back in time. It explores the role of Western colonialism in laying the foundation of the educational systems, which are largely responsible for the mind-set that continues to hold Cameroonians as captives in a supposedly postcolonial dispensation. The article does not only deal with the nature of the mental enslavement, which accounts for educational systems that do not respond to the needs of the local population but also delves into what could be done to reform education in order to make it suitable for genuine nation building and development.

Brief Historical Background

Modern Cameroon is located on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa and is made up of two national components. The two components, which came together to form a federation in 1961, comprise the State of Southern Cameroon, which was once a British colony and which obtained its independence on October 1, 1961; and la Republique du Cameroun, a former French colony which became independent on January 1, 1960 (Dupraz, 2015; Litumbe, 2016). From its inception, when the federation came into being through a referendum organized by the United Nation, the country has been beset by numerous problems. Recent event in the country, which pits the English-speaking part against its dominant French-speaking counterpart, has once again attracted global spotlight on the checkered history and politics of this country. On October 1, 2017, the citizens of Southern Cameroon turned out in record numbers to take part in a peaceful demonstration to celebrate the restoration of the independence of their own section of the country from la Republique du Cameroun. From la Republique du Cameroun because as Achankeng (2014) points out “. . . Southern Cameroon was undergoing a new colonial experience in a post-colonial setting under a sister country” (p. 1). The event of the restoration celebration marked the climax of political tension and agitations, which began in 2016 with a strike action organized by English-speaking lawyers and teachers. The event was pitched against the historical backdrop of a litany of complaints raised by the English-speaking population (20%) that they were being marginalized and assimilated by the Francophone majority (80%; Tajoche, 2003). Take development as an example. Cameroon is made up of 10 administrative regions, two of which are English-speaking: the North West and the South West. The 2017 investment budget of the country shows that the South Region, the one from which Paul Biya, the president of the republic, hails, and which has a population of only 800,000 people, was allocated 126.2 billion CFA. By contrast, the North West and South West Regions, from which the bulk of the country’s resources are extracted and which has a total population of seven million inhabitants, was allocated only 85.7 billion CFA. Ever since the two States came together in the 1961 referendum, which numerous observers still maintain to this day was terribly flawed, there has been numerous examples of such acts of marginalization; but the strike actions centered initially mainly on grievances relating to the judicial and educational systems (Litumbe, 2016; Nkongho, 2016; Tajoche, 2003). It must be pointed out that in the agreement, which established the federation the two States agreed to be equal partners; in this political experiment, they also agreed on a bilingual and bicultural format in which each entity of the country retained its own customs and traditions handed down by the colonial masters (Achankeng, 2014; Anyangwe, 1987; Dupraz, 2015; Lee & Schultz, 2012). However, through unilateral tinkering by a French-imposed dictatorship, which displayed little or no respect for the constitution and laws of the nation, the political experiment took a beating and quickly turned sour. Attempts to impose the French system on the English-speaking population, in flagrant violation of the original agreement, are legion. Concerning the strike action, Barrister Agbor Balla Nkongho, President of the Fako Bar Association and one of the strike leaders, in an interview granted on STV television station in Cameroon in 2016, has outlined the circumstances, which led to it and the heavy handedness with which the government responded to the peaceful demonstrators. The military was called in to brutalize unarmed students and lawyers in Buea where the strike action started. Amid threats from government officials who uttered inflammatory statements and insults against the strikers, the entire English-speaking region rose up in solidarity with the teachers and lawyers. Thus, what began as a quest for solutions to some grievances that could have been resolved peacefully by organizing a commission of inquiry to look into the complaints, escalated into a major crisis as Southern Cameroonians boycotted schools and brought business to a halt in their own regions of the country through the implementation of ghost towns. As the government stepped up its campaign of hate and repression, driven mainly by the incendiary cries of some French-speaking zealots calling over the national television for the massacre of Southern Cameroonians (Muna, 2017), the overwhelming majority of the English-speaking population were radicalized and heeded call for the restoration of the independence of Southern Cameroon.

Throughout this incident, the bulk of commentators and analysts have waxed lyrical on the historical and political developments, which led to the situation; but little has been said about the kind of school curriculum responsible for the mind frame at the root of the crisis. It must be noted at this juncture of the discussion that French Cameroon, whose independence aspirations were foiled by the French (Deltombe, Domergue & Tatsitsa, 2008) and whose actions continue to hold sway in the union, still remains largely a neocolonial entity of France in which important decisions concerning the country requires the approval of the metropolis. In addition, even following the reunification of the two Cameroons, Lee and Schultz (2011) have stated that despite a strong policy of centralization, the two areas have retained separate legal and education systems and a strong attachment to the languages and culture of their respective colonizers. Kwame Nkrumah (2004), the late Ghanaian president, has noted that “the essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of sovereignty.” However, he argues that “in reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside” (p. ix). As an example of French economic domination, the CFA, Cameroon’s currency, is issued and controlled by France. The domination goes further, for the cultural policy, especially in relation to education, is still determined by the French. This became evident to me in my schooling years; and later, when I was hired as a classroom teacher by the Ministry of National Education in Cameroon. To have a proper understanding of my journey through the Cameroonian educational systems, and my own discoveries as far as the curriculum is concerned, it is important to examine the colonial policies of the two former administering powers, namely, Britain and France.

Understanding Education in Cameroon Through Colonial Policies

Cameroon was initially a German colony. During the First World War, British and French forces attacked and defeated Germany in Cameroon. Following the 1919 Versailles Treaty, it was agreed that all German colonies, including the Cameroons, were to be seized and then administered and supervised by a League of Nations charter. Britain and France partitioned German-Kamerun unequally between themselves, with Britain obtaining one fifth and France four fifths. The charter placed the territories as mandated territories to be monitored by the two victorious powers (Che, 2013). Britain further partitioned its segment into Northern and Southern Cameroons and managed it as part of Nigeria. After the Second World War, the League of Nations was replaced with the UN and the mandated territories became Trust Territories under the UN Trusteeship Council. The purpose of the Trusteeship was to prepare the territories toward independence. Following a UN-organized plebiscite on self-determination on February 11, 1961, British Northern Cameroons opted to join Nigeria while Southern Cameroons, which had hitherto been governed as part of Eastern Nigeria, voted to join la Republique du Cameroun. In reality, Southern Cameroons joined la Republique du Cameroun on October 1, after it became independent.

Throughout the colonial period, the French and the British administrations pursued different colonial policies in their African possessions. Lee and Schultz (2012) have noted that the British administration in Cameroon was based on the concept of Indirect Rule—that is allowing native chiefs to perform most executive and judicial functions. It was always “. . . strongly anti-assimilationist and guided by Lord Lugard’s (colonial administrator) theories on indirect rule through existing indigenous institutions” (Crowder, 1967). Lee and Schultz (2012) further argue that this policy appealed to Britain because it appeared to respect native traditions, and also because it economized on money and manpower. However, Crowder (1967) also notes that “in practice neither colonial power kept, or was able to keep, to its avowed policy. . .” (p. 1) and that “even in the Northern region (of Nigeria) where the principles of indirect rule were applied most intensively, the Emir was no longer sovereign and held power by the grace of the colonial government” (Crowder, 1966, p. 235).

The French policy was one of Direct Rule, a contrast to the English; and it focused on the closer integration of the colonies with the metropolis. This was the policy of assimilation (Lee & Schultz, 2012; Tsiwah, 2014). Arthur Gurial in Principe de colonisation et de legislation coloniale published in 1885 considered the ideal of assimilation as “the constantly more infinite union between the colonial territories and the metropolitan territory.” Assimilation was the ideological basis of the French colonial policy in the 19th and 20th centuries, notes Sesan in Major Features of Assimilation as Practiced in the Four Communes of Senegal. Crowder (1967) has outlined the motive behind this policy by stating that the French when confronted with people they considered barbarians, believed in their mission to convert them into Frenchmen. This implied a fundamental acceptance of their potential human quality, but a total dismissal of African culture as of any value. So, the policy was not only opposed to autonomy but also failed to acknowledge the presence of indigenous African institutions. Amilcar Cabral (1974), slain African nationalist from Guinea-Bissau, concurs, maintaining that assimilation for the native populations “. . . turns out to be a more or less violent attempt to deny the culture of the people in question” (p. 40). Of assimilation, Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop (1996) stated,

Of all the European powers which dominate Africa, France is one of the most colonialist—if not the most colonialist. The methods they use (assimilation policy, etc.) are such that in spite of the most ferocious exploitation, no real aspiration to national independence has so far been seen in her Black African colonies. . . French colonialism has even managed the exceptional feat of creating political consciousness among all age group, the old, the middle age, the young, in defense of the French union (p. 57)

Tsiwah (2014) has pointed out that the cultural aspect of assimilation was solely meant to implant French culture on the local people thus distorting the cultural heritage of the local people. The same author then concludes that underlying this policy was the desire of France “. . . to implant French culture and civilisation on the people with the intention of suffocating the culture and fundamental ties of Afrikans (sic).”

Some anticolonialists have advanced various means by which European powers undermined local ways of knowing. Pratt (2004) has identified four tropes that she advanced as counternarratives to the idea of diffusionism: interruption, digestion, substitution and reversal. Substitution, as it was evident in the case of assimilation, was underlined by the notion of superiority/inferiority and it culminated in Western cultural superimposition or replication: capitalism to replace communal property; Christianity, African ancestral worship; ballet, African traditional dance, etc. As a result of the policies of these two powers, while Britain insisted on the need for more self-government in its overseas possessions, France devised plans for assimilation of its colonies into a large French polity.

In varying degrees, the colonial policies of these two powers had far-reaching consequences on school curriculums in Cameroon. Curriculum scholar (Au, 2012) notes that the curriculum is what is taught, who it is taught to (including the conditions of the audience to which it is being taught), how it is being taught (pedagogy), and the bringing together of knowledge into an integrated whole. Slattery (2013) maintains that in a postcolonial era, among other elements, curriculum development must be interactive with the environment, present multiple views without silencing investigation of dangerous and difficult issues and must deconstruct the status quo. Do these practices describe curriculum practice in postcolonial Cameroon? How does the policy of assimilation fit into the picture?

Dupraz (2015) notes that British colonial education policy was greatly influenced by a 1922 report “Education in Africa,” which came from Phelps-Stoke Funds, a small but influential American non-profit organization established in 1911 whose objective was to advance social and economic development in Africa. The report advocated closer cooperation between mission and colonial government. At the core of this report is the 1925 ordinance, which regulated schools in southern Nigeria and, by extension, Southern Cameroon. As for French Cameroon, the 1944 Brazzaville Conference organized by the leaders of Free French set up new goals for colonial education. Nevertheless, irrespective of which European power was in control in Africa, a distinguishing feature of imperialism is that the establishment of colonies for the purpose of exploitation did much more than simply extract wealth (Cannella & Viruru, 2004); through violence, it dismissed the indigenous people’s knowledge as irrelevant and a way of disconnecting them from what they knew and how they knew it (Chilisa, 2012).

My Journey Through the Curriculum of a Neocolonial State

In his book, Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era, Paul Slattery (2013) challenges “curriculum scholars today. . . to examine critically their own story in the context of the history of curriculum development” and it is in this spirit that I write this article.

When I enrolled in primary school, Cameroon was a federation of two states in which the cultural differences inherited from colonialism remain highly salient. English remained the language of instruction in Southern Cameroonian schools and this part of the country was and still is oriented toward the English-speaking media and international Anglophone culture. By contrast, French Cameroon used French and was oriented toward France. Dupraz (2015) confirms this by pointing out that despite numerous attempts to unify Cameroonian education systems, the country still has two distinct education systems, a French-speaking one and the English-speaking one. By the time I completed school in Cameroon, that is in 1983, the country had undergone tremendous political mutation, for under Ahmadou Ahidjo, its first president, it had rapidly developed into a one-party dictatorship in which the central government worked to undermine the government of Southern Cameroon, “culminating with the official abolition of the federal system in 1972” (Tajoche, 2003). However, despite the constitutional violation, which led to this state of affairs, “the two parts of the country retain separate educational systems: Southern Cameroonians study for the A-Levels and French-Cameroonian for the baccalaureate” (Lee & Schultz, 2012, p. 15).

When I was born, there were no nursery schools in my village, so my parents had to wait until I had attained the age of attending elementary school. The most popular school, N. A. School Ndop, was owned by the native authorities, a branch of the local government, and this is where my long journey into Western culture started. Up to this point, my education had been African and at that tender age was made up mainly of family and village lore and history recounted to me by my parents. As the son of a blacksmith, I should have also been initiated into learning how to play the xylophone and drum; but I showed little interest and my parents did not press the point, as long as I expressed enthusiasm for Western education.

Formal Western education came to Cameroon mainly through the Germans, the English and French. In spite of its numerous and undeniable benefits, it has become a sticky point for Africa. Luma (1983), a Cameroonian educator, notes that “the problems that Africa as a whole is facing continue to mount” and that “if Africa is to survive the onslaught of diverse and piercing problems facing her today, she must come to grips with the fact that education is a potent factor in finding solutions to them” (p. 1). More often than not, when examining the causes of these problems, analysts tend generally to overlook the role that education has played. The difference between a good and bad leader, an affluent and a starving nation, and a prosperous and underperforming economy may depend to a large extent on education. Is the education of a nation designed to serve local or foreign interests? Is it based on the lived experiences of the people in the country in question? Does it take into account local epistemologies? Does it encourage or discourage critical thinking? And of course the old curriculum question: “What knowledge is of most worth?” (Chambers, 1999, p. 1) These are just some of the questions that very occasionally helped to shape my thinking later in life as I navigated the educational system, in Cameroon.

I came into this world on the eve of the independence and reunification of British and French Cameroons; and since it was a watershed moment, which links the past to the present, I form a human bridge between two supposedly antithetical epochs; to wit, the colonial and postcolonial periods. I write from the vantage point of a person educated in both the English and French systems of education that the former colonial masters bequeathed onto my country. It is the combination of the forces of these two systems that continue to exert tremendous influence on me and shape my life and identity. The bilingual character of my identity is enshrined in the constitution of Cameroon.

Three aspects of the educative environment have been outlined: material such as books and buildings, language and the people in the environment, that is, the students and members of staff. The textbooks help to determine the language and symbols that the teachers and students use (Au, 2012). Most of the books I read in elementary school were published by the Oxford University Press in England and focused on Europe. They contained names of cities such as Bedford, Manchester, London and Lancashire, etc. These were all places I could not relate to. At school, we sang “London Bridge is Falling Down” and “Baba Black Sheep,” rhymes which had no connection with our environment. Our history books were often replete with stories of Lord Nelson, Florence Nightingale, and Napoleon. Since my own people were totally absent in these books, my only point of reference could only be the white faces I saw in their pages. These tales of alienation were reinforced by zealous teachers educated in the same tradition who constantly preached to us the virtues of the British Empire. Such practices made the country’s independence ring totally hollow since the national standpoint was completely ignored.

After elementary school, I enrolled into Sacred Heart College, a Roman Catholic Mission school founded by an Irish cleric called Fr. Thomas Mulligan. At the time I was a student there, both the principal and his vice were Marist Brothers from Scotland; and the bulk of our teachers came from the West, especially from the British Isles. As a mission school, Christianity played a very important role in our lives. We had to attend mass daily and evening prayers were compulsory. Most of the books we read on religious knowledge often cast African religious practices in a negative light, referring to them as heathen practices. In other areas of our studies, such as English and French literature, history and geography, the books dealt mainly with the West, especially Europe. Authors such as Denis Richards and Peacock are only two of many whose books in European history are well known to English-speaking Cameroonians. I had to spend my own spare time reading African authors such as Chinua Achebe, Camara Laye, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, Flora Nwapa, and many others. Given this lopsidedness in scholarship in favor of Europe, quotes from Dickens and Voltaire came more readily to the students. The quotes were reinforced with those from the Holy Bible, thus reducing most of the students into little “Europeans.” To crown this exercise in cultural alienation, our final examinations were set and marked by the University of London. In fact, there was very little activity in that institution, which related to Africa, let alone Cameroon. Curriculum content was just one aspect of my alienation in education. Another was language.

The language provision of the constitution shows that Cameroon still remains in the thrall of European cultural imperialism and hegemony. McLaren (2003) defines hegemony as

the maintenance of domination not by the sheer exercise of force but primarily through consensual social practices, social forms, and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state, the school, the mass media, the political system, and the family. (p. 202)

If “curriculum development in the postmodern era deconstructs prejudice and hegemony” (Slattery, 2013), Cameroon, which remains in a strict sense a neocolonial entity, is yet to genuinely initiate the postmodern era.

In the light of Cameroon’s language predicament, it was therefore “normal” for me to undertake my journey into Western culture in both languages, starting with the English language. At all levels of the education process in my early school years in English-speaking Cameroon, English was the language of instruction in the entire region (Lee & Schultz, 2012). Pupils were thus required to refrain from speaking their African languages in order to master it well. If the speaking of our African languages, as the authorities claimed, prevented us from mastering the English language, what about the French language which was in our school program and which we were exhorted to learn and speak? Clearly, the regulation was not about the mastery of a language but the imposition of Western values. In addition, all the books we used in school for the different lessons were in the English language.

Since the books were written in English and always talked about the West that was painted in a positive light, it was obvious that the colonizers wanted us to believe the West was the model to adhere to. By imposing their cultures and languages on Cameroon, Britain and France also imposed their own version of truth. Oyebade (1990) captures this well when he states that

In the history of intellectual thought, the Eurocentric paradigm has often assumed a hegemonic universal character, and European culture has placed itself at the center of the social structure, become the reference point, or the yard, by which other culture is defined. . . (p. 234)

This is education serving as a tool for oppression. Dei, Mazzuca, McIsaac, and Zine (2007) argue that “society expects the school to legitimize certain hegemonic and ideological practices, while delegitimizing others” (p. 20). With English and European culture and values upheld to the detriment of those of Africa, this argument was particularly true of my early schools. Episkenew (2009) has identified a similar trend in Canada by pointing out that Native children who attended day school were being assimilated into colonial society. On the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada website, it is stated that over 130 residential schools located across Canada existed and the last school was closed in 1996. The website points out that more than 150,000 First Nations, Metis, and Inuit children were placed in these schools often against their parents’ wishes and many of them were forbidden to speak their language and practice their own culture. Culture is a product of the history of people, which in turn reflects; and in our education in Cameroon, we were being exposed exclusively to a culture that was a product of a world external to us (Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 2009). Catching Them Young, the title of Bob Dixon’s book on racism, class, sex, and politics, is how the Kenyan author styles the entire process of acculturation.

For Cameroon, as it is for most of Black Africa, language remains a thorny curricular and educational issue crucial to development. Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986) has stated that language is always more than a simple medium of communication and instruction. Language as culture is the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history. Culture is also indistinguishable from the language that makes possible its genesis, growth, banking, articulation and indeed its transmission from one generation to the next. He argues that “the domination of a people’s language by the languages of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized” (p. 16). If language, as Ngugi suggests, is the “collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history,” Abdi (2012) has concluded that “de-linguicization’” of African countries led to “important components of the de-historicizing process. . .” (p. 137). Diop (1996) has argued that one way of achieving African renaissance is by developing indigenous languages, insisting that no people have ever achieved a true renaissance using somebody’s else’s language (Asante, 2007). To counter claims by scholars that African languages could not capture abstract notions in science and philosophy, Diop translated Einstein’s principle of relativity into Wolof, his mother tongue (Asante, 2007).

Cultural alienation through the imposition of foreign languages runs even deeper than what has been listed above. The task for the African writer is to write for the African audience and to create a strong sense of the possible among the general readership of Africans, Diop has argued in an essay: Toward the African Renaissance: Essay in Culture and Development. It is an argument that Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986, 1993) continues to harp upon and he now backs it by writing in his own African language, Gikuyu. The practice of writing in African languages is gaining popularity in some African countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and of course Ethiopia; but, Cameroonian authors are yet to muster the courage to take up that challenge. Instead, there are consistent attempts by the predominantly French-speaking administration to impose the French language on the English-speaking population of the country. In Cameroon, not only has any attempt to develop national languages been abandoned, many of the books still used for literature and even history in schools are the works of French and English authors.

As if the language issue is not bad enough, there have been persistent attempts on the part of the predominantly French-speaking administration to impose the French system of education on the English-speaking minority. First, it was an attempt to impose the French baccalaureate on Southern Cameroonians to the detriment of General Certificate of Education inherited from the British (Lee & Schultz, 2012). When Southern Cameroonians fought off the attempt, the government started imposing teachers who speak only French in Southern Cameroonian schools. This is what has sparked the latest round of conflict. At the national level, certain educational policies were simply laughable. For example, Georges Ngango, Minister of National Education (1987-1989) in the Biya administration, attempted to impose Latin on Cameroonian schools. At a time when the country should have been calling on young Cameroonians to bone up on science and technology, subjects which are relevant to national reconstruction and development, the minister settles instead for a language that has been largely abandoned even in Europe where it originated.

After high school, my journey into Western culture continued in the French language at the University of Yaounde. Like in the early years of my education, almost everything at this center of learning was modeled after that of the French. Very little I learned had any relevance to my own environment. In physical geography, the maps we used were on France and came from that country. “Curriculum is about learning, about how we see and understand the world” (Au, 2012, p. 16). The question then arises: whose world? Some scholars also note that schools can be seen as a microcosm of society and the primary site of social reproduction (Dei, James, Karumanchery, James-Wilson, & Zine, 2003). In the case of Cameroon, it is largely a microcosm not of our African society but that of the Europeans. What a betrayal, for in the nation’s own anthem a segment reads:

Foster, for mother Africa, a loyalty That true shall remain to the last. (Shiri Halle, Tacham, Fusi, & Tardzenyuy, 2013, pp. 14-15)

My Experience as a Classroom Teacher

When I graduated from the Yaounde University, Cameroon was badly in need of teachers to fill positions in far-flung country schools. After an interview and a practical teaching demonstration before a panel of pedagogical advisers, I was deemed apt and recruited to teach at a secondary school in a remote village called Nyasoso. I became a history and French language teacher. Teaching history in Cameroon is like treading on a minefield. Those in power acquired it illegitimately and are determined to hold onto it by any means necessary, including through initiating a reign of terror. This practice operates in tandem with historical revisionism to “legitimize” their power usurpation as well as to promote pastoral pedagogy, an aspect of pastoral power that was first illustrated by Michel Foucault and whose orientation in Canada organized the Canadian child’s relationship to formerly colonized people abroad thought to be savage and uncivilized (Cavanagh, 2001, p. 403). In the case of Cameroon, this form of pedagogy was intended to train students to become “exemplary partners of France.” As a result of this kind of pedagogy, those who actually died fighting for the “independence” (the process was derailed) of the country, such as Ruben Um Nyobe, Felix Roland Moumie, Ossende Afana, and Ernest Ouandie, have always been cast in a negative light (Deltombe, Domergue, & Tatsitsa, 2011). Their names are absent in most history books and no statues have been erected in their honor. By contrast, entire avenues (Avenue Charles de Gaulle in Douala), schools (Lycee LeClerc in Yaounde), and centers are still named after the colonizers. Besides, most of the history I taught to my students was pretty much that of Western Europe, which tended to be silent on the issue of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and to paint a rosy picture of European colonial conquest. It was as though Cameroon had no history, no way of knowing. Okot p’Bitek (as cited in Abdi, 2012) talks of “de-philosophizing and in the process, de-epistemologizing Africa” (p. 134). It is the “void” that Hegel (1991), a pillar of Western scholarship, fills with statement of this nature: “Africa was in a state of barbarism and savagery which was preventing it from being an integral part of civilization.” His words have been repeated in a million different ways in the Western world! Far from providing what curriculum theorist Wayne (Au, 2012) describes as “curricular standpoint,” that is counter hegemonic intervention, to this kind of discourse, history lessons in Cameroon merely subscribed to the views of the ruling elite. This is not at all surprising. It has been argued that the dominant trends in postcolonial African historiography, coming from both European and African historians, have served the interests of the burgeoning ruling classes of the new African states (Gray, 1989). As I now look back, my stint as a teacher reminds me of the movie “Sarafina,” which stars Whoopi Goldberg as a rebellious school teacher in Apartheid South Africa. Any wonder then that anti- and postcolonial Nigerian musician Fela Kuti embarks on deconstruction with songs such as Colonial Mentality (1977) and TeacherDon’t Teach Me No Nonsense (1976).

I must state that with no knowledge of critical pedagogy, I spent most of my days as a teacher merely reproducing the biddings of the ruling class. The intervention of the political class in curricular matters, as in Cameroon, is tantamount to school deform—in which educators have no formal control over the curriculum (Asante, 1993; Ng-A-Fook, 2010; Woodson, 1933/2006). This kind of scholarship has prevented Cameroonian from developing historical and social consciousness. Of “consciousness,” (Au, 2012) notes that it “requires active consideration of how one interacts with one’s social, cultural and material environment. . . ” (p. 17). For Cameroonians, this environment is still dominated by Europe. Such was the experience I had as a student and a teacher in Cameroon.

Resolutions

The purpose of this segment of the article is to seek solutions to the mental enslavement that has led to French neocolonial stranglehold on Cameroon and the crisis the country is currently facing. In this regard, some important historical references are in point. In the second paragraph of the preamble of the 1996 Cameroon Constitution, the one supposedly being currently used, it is written: “Jealous of our hard-won independence and resolved to preserve same. . .” The so-called “hard-won independence” outlined in the brief excerpt is a figment of the imagination of the comprador, French-imposed class that has been taking advantage of a national lie to enrich itself. Just how life in Cameroon is dictated by France is obvious with a mere glance at some aspects of the cooperation agreement signed between Ahidjo, the country’s first president, and his French counterpart, Charles de Gaulle, on December 26, 1959, on the eve of La République du Cameroun’s “independence.”

1. France shall determine Cameroun’s political, economic, and sociocultural orientations.

2. France shall manufacture money for Cameroun, the FCFA

3. France shall guide the determination of Cameroun’s educational system at all levels. . .

5. France shall be given priority in the exploitation of Cameroun’s strategic raw materials. . . (WCA, 2016)

This is just one of the numerous documents that self-styled scholars brandish when they talk of the independence of their country. English-speaking Cameroonians, from renowned Oxford-Sorbonne graduate and member of government, Bernard Fonlon, through opposition leaders, such as Fru Ndi and Mola Njoh Litume, to Southern Cameroonian independence militants, such as Ebenezar Akwanga and Cho Ayaba notably, have all, in one way or the other, raised questions about such levels of subservience, especially in a supposedly postcolonial dispensation. The response of some government officials, for the most part French-speaking, has been typical: “Les Anglos ne sont jamais satisfaits! (Anglophones are never satisfied!).” Does it surprise anyone then that in the call for a change in Cameroon that has come in the wake of multiparty politics, Paul Biya, the autocrat who has been in power as the country’s Head of State for 36 years, cried out: “Changer quoi! (Change what!).”

Fanon (1963) argues that “decolonization is the veritable creation of new men” (p. 35) and that in it “. . . there is the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation” (p. 37). Can one really talk of “new men” in Cameroon when Paul Biya himself once proudly proclaimed before international cameras in Paris that “Je suis le meilleur élève de Mitterand (I am the best pupil of Mitterand?)?” The rest of the world might have been shocked by such a declaration but not Cameroonians. A cursory look at the lyrics of what French-speaking Cameroonians called a national anthem and sang proudly for decades speaks volumes.

O Cameroun, berceau de nos ancêtres

Autrefois, tu vécus dans la barbarie

Comme un soleil, tu commences à paraitre

Peu à peu tu sors de ta sauvagerie

(O Cameroon, cradle of our ancestors

In bygone days, you lived in barbarity

Like a sun, you are beginning to emerge

Inch by inch from your savagery) My Translation

This song, once referred to as “chant de ralliement”(a rallying song), was written in 1928 by Samuel Minko Bamba, a student from a renowned teachers’ training college in a town called Foulassi and was adopted as the Anthem of Cameroon in 1957. It was only in 1970 that Bernard Fonlon was called upon to translate the song into English that he started by “decolonizing” the French lyrics. So, from 1928 to 1970, nobody in the entire French-Cameroonian community saw anything wrong with the song until Fonlon and Tandeng Muna, the Southern Cameroonian Speaker of the House of the National Assembly, took matters into their hands.

Most of the people who hold strategic positions in the country today are either direct relics of French colonialism or those that have been trained in that tradition. Their raison d’être seems only to prove their loyalty and subservience to France, a fealty which, contrary even to human nature, occasionally takes a kamikaze turn when local politicians back French interests to the detriment of those of their own country. For instance, Cameroonian politicians and administrators have remained silent in the face of wanton logging by French timber companies even though it is clearly Cameroon that will have to live with the consequences of deforestation. The question is what needs to be done to reverse such mental servitude and neocolonial reflexes?

Smith (1999) views decolonization as “. . . a process which engages with imperialism and colonization at multiple levels” (p. 20). One level is the system of education. Since servitude has to do more with the mind than with chains and whips, the classroom is obviously the place to start this change. Cameroonian schools must be wrested from French and English cultural domination and transformed into institutions that produce Africans and not pseudo-Europeans, as it is largely the case at the moment. This calls for the immediate creation of a curriculum, which reflects national realities and interests as well as the development of a unifying national language through which our history will be preserved and our thoughts captured and conveyed. Western languages have played a very important part in the negative representation of blackness and the distortion of African history and culture (Hall, 2013; Malcolm, 1964; Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 1986, 1993). This misrepresentation and distortion have contributed significantly in eroding ethnic worth and promoting low self-esteem and mental enslavement. The history of Cameroon has to be rewritten and the publications disseminated in schools. Students must be educated to take pride in their own history and cultural heritage. Such a history, at once national and Pan-African, should preserve and promote memories of people who fought and died for Africa, such as Martin Paul Samba, Duala Rudolf Manga Bell, Yaa Asantewaa, Harriet Tubman, Dedan Kimaathi, Steve Biko, Paulette Nardal, Queen Nzinga, Marcus Garvey, Nelson Mandela, W. E. B. DuBois, Brahm Fischer, etc. Quite naturally, such an approach to history should draw inspiration from Carter Woodson (1933/2006) who argues that education in America for Blacks must first address their historical experience. From the names, curricular content, programs, and even environment, Cameroonian schools should be designed to respond to the country’s own needs.

Concerning the challenge of developing a national language, the language should, if possible, encompass the realities of the various ethnicities that make up the country. Supporters of the regime have been quick to state that such an enterprise is costly and difficult. However, they have not mustered the courage to point out that with just a small portion of the amount constantly spent by Biya and his entourage in Swiss hotels, such a project will easily be accomplished. In the endeavor of developing a national language, Cameroonians will not have to start from scratch. Before the French came onto the Cameroonian scene and put an end to his project, the Sultan of the Bamoun, Ibrahima Njoya, had developed a language, Shumon, which was widely taught and which he used to write the history of his people as well as compile their pharmacopeia (Tardits, 1980). The Douala language of the Littoral Region was once popular and taught in many schools. Ironically, during German colonial administration, Mugaka, the language of the Bali people of the North West Region, was developed and taught in numerous schools throughout the region. Interestingly, Pidgin English, a language quite common in Cameroon, which was developed by early traders along the West African coast and is widely used in this region of Africa, could be adopted as a national language and developed. After all, do languages such as Swahili, Afrikaans, and Creole not fall under the same category? Where Cameroonian intellectuals fall short, they can reach out to the international community where there are countless experts in the field. Yaounde’s attitude of pushing for the French language conflicts with trends in countries such as Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Botswana where African national languages are increasingly being adopted, developed, and taught in schools.

Finally, it behooves me to reiterate the fact that Cameroonians are an African people. This means that their education must be Afrocentric, for as Mazama (2001) points out, our liberation rests upon our ability to systematically displace Europeans ways of thinking and replace them with ways germane to our own African cultural experience. Molefi Asante (1998) agrees, noting that “if we have lost anything, it is our cultural centeredness: that is we have moved off our own platforms” and “this means that we cannot truly be ourselves. . . since we exist in a borrowed space” (p. 8). As the anthem cited above shows, the song was composed by one with a Eurocentric and colonial mind-set.

By returning to our own roots, leadership will not only make education and development relevant to the needs of the people, but will also revive and promote thoughts and practices that enhance group interests and build stronger communities. Concepts, such as “Ujamaa” and “Ubuntu,” which Africans have used to survive against overwhelming odds for centuries, should be made part and parcel of the daily lives of Cameroonians. This will go a long way in building a genuinely inclusive Cameroonian society that rises above artificial colonial and discriminatory labels such as “Anglophones” and “Francophones.”