ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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"Settlers" Versus "Indigenes" in Cameroon: The Politics of Identity and Citizenship on a Multi-cultural Context
by
Nfamewih Aseh
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Buea

The aim of this paper is to examine how identity and citizenship is understood and contested in Cameroon as communities compete for political recognition and economic benefits. The basic assumption is that there exist no genuine political institutional framework that articulates the popular aspirations and celebrates personal competence and contribution in the building of one Cameroon. This engenders the contestation of citizenship along linguistic, ethnic and regional lines expressed through various forms of voluntary associations. When Cameroon gained independence in 1960, little feasibility was paid to the background of the indigenous peoples, hence the new country plunged headlong uncritically in the process of building a "nation-state" along the same lines as it developed in Western Europe and North America between the 17th and 19th centuries. Consequently, the indigenous structural factors such as economy, family and kinship, social and political organization, belief system etc, of the indigenous peoples which ought to have been investigated, understood and strengthened as the basis for orientation towards nation-building, were ignored. Hence, an uncritical adoption of Western structures has not quite taken root as the indigenous ones still persist. Today, what is referred to as Cameroon is a fragmentation of communities, with each one of them still holding on to its ethnic identity, united only by ethnic ambition and difference (Nyamnjoh 1999). This plays a determining role in the understanding of citizenship and definition of identity, therefore, serving as the basis for the creation of ethnic, social and regional associations as means of articulating the aspirations of civil society groupings through which fellow Cameroonians who do not belong are discriminated against, described as "settlers" and then excluded from participation. This tends to undermine the very basis of collective belonging in a contemporary state system. Furthermore, post-colonial Cameroon is not only made up of a plurality of ethnic entities. It is also a bilingual country where two European languages, French and English, said to be officially in use, are cohabiting uneasily (Konings and Nyamnjoh 2003). This uneasy cohabitation of a colonial heritage coupled with the multi-ethnic heritage, which makes ones Cameroonianness to be derived from three planes of reference, creates a situation of ambiguity, which further obfuscates the understanding of citizenship and identity in Cameroon, giving rise to the politics of "settlers" versus "indigenes" in the struggle for belonging. The 1996 constitution rather seem to have sanctioned the politics of exclusion and the nascent cry for decentralization in the country is not only seen as signaling a capitulation on the nation-building project, but also feared that it may further exacerbate an already bad situation if rigorous studies are not carried out before the programme of decentralization is implemented. This study is an effort in that direction. The task will be to critically examine these issues from a histo-anthropological perspective so that a thorough extrapolation and analysis of the circumstances under which they occur, why they pose a threat to nation- building and what this mean for individuals, communities, social and regional groups and even for Cameroon as a modern "nation-state" in a global configurating world. Extensive field research will be carried out to elicit primary data that will be complimented by that obtained from written accounts.

Date received: August 29, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # call-21.