© 2008 University of South Africa First edition, first impression ISBN 1-86888-489-6 Published by Unisa Press University of South Africa PO Box 392, Unisa 0003 Book series designer: André Nel Editor: Gail Malcomsom Cover design: Doris Hyman Typesetting: Karen Graphics Printer: ABC Press, Epping Cover image: Aerial view of Quartier Nkongmondo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – mechanical or electronic, including recordings or tape recording and photocopying – without the prior permission of the publisher, excluding fair quotations for purposes of research or review.
CONTENTS TABLES AND FIGURES
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
vii
ONE
Introduction
1
TWO The strangers of New Bell: An overview
0
THREE
Membership fees: Money, consumption and immigrant participation in urban public spaces
FOUR
0
0
Crime and community
FIVE
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
0
SIX
Nationalism and ethnicity in the struggle against marginalisation: The final years of the colonial era
SEVEN
0
Conclusion
0
BIBLIOGRAPHY
0
INDEX
0
v
TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES Table 2.1
Ethnic breakdown of immigrant population
27
Table 2.2
Population chart
29
Table 2.3
Breakdown of the skilled labour force
32
Table 2.4
Breakdown of the intellectual professions
33
Table 2.5
Distribution of working women according to occupation
33
Table 2.6
Housing patterns among New Bell residents
44
Table 2.7
Knowledge of French reading and writing among adults
48
The ethnic breakdown of the 1918 police force
80
Table 4.1
FIGURES Figure 1.1
Map of Cameroon
3
Figure 1.1
Map of Douala, circa 1958
5
Figure 2.1
Map of the expropriation
20
Figure 2.2
Aerial view of Quartier Nkongmondo
37
Figure 2.3
Aerial view of Quartier Joss
38
Figure 4.1
Diagram of method of finger tracing
85
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Mina Jaffe Schler and Pinchas (Peter) Schler. Their life stories were my first lesson in the struggles of immigrants and the resilience of the term, ‘stranger’. I began this study as a graduate student under the direction of Richard Roberts at Stanford University. As every one of his students can testify, he is a unique and exceptional teacher and mentor. Richard provides his students with the necessary tools to undertake their research, but he also demands that they are passionate about their contributions. He has continued to advise and assist me for years beyond graduation, and he and his family have maintained an open door policy extending to their dining room table. I am deeply indebted to Richard for his ongoing commitment, support and guidance. Two other teachers deserve my gratitude. My work has been greatly influenced by Joel Beinin, who has exposed me to ideas that have both challenged and enriched my own. Estelle Freedman has also been an inspiration, both as a scholar and in her role as a teacher. Her commitment to fostering a sense of community among her students is rare and cherished. In Cameroon, there are many people to thank for teaching me about the history of Douala. First and foremost, I thank the many oral informants whom I interviewed for providing me with a wealth of knowledge of the past. In particular, I would like to mention Marie Ngobo, Marie Mbita, Anasthasie Ongono, Augustine Biloa, Valère Epée, Pauline Ngono and Léopold Moumé Etia for providing me with rich testimonies, in some cases on more than one occasion. I would also like to thank the entire staff of the National Archives in Yaounde, above all for the opportunity to examine material not yet classified. These findings constitute a significant contribution to the work that follows, and I thank Professor Fanso, as well as Mr Pokeko and Mr Bosco for their cooperation. The staff at the Institut des Sciences Humaines in Yaounde were also helpful in locating and copying important materials. Emmanuel Etolo accompanied me on most interviews, translated when necessary and assisted me in finding informants. Vince Evina located key female informants in the Sangmelina Province and facilitated the interviews there. vii
Katrin and Omar Merabet helped me to obtain material once I left Cameroon, and they are also life-long friends. Sagesse and Flavien Guetsa provided a welcoming home in Yaounde. Clement Okala did the hard work of transcribing interviews and also provided warm friendship during my stay. Many colleagues, institutions and friends provided support and encouragement outside of Cameroon. I am grateful for funding provided by the History Department at Stanford University, a Foreign Language and Area Studies Grant from the US Department of Education, a Mellon Foundation grant and the Weter Grant from Stanford University. A post-doctoral Lady Davis grant from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem made it possible to begin preparing the study for publication. I am also indebted to the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace for financial support and for constituting a home base for scholars of Africa in Israel. An earlier version of Chapter 3 appeared in the Journal of African History; Chapter 4 appeared in a different version in the Journal of African Cultural Studies, and an earlier version of Chapter 5 appeared in the International Journal of African Historical Studies. I would like to thank Publications Scientifiques du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, for permission to reprint maps from René Gouellain’s work, Douala: ville et histoire (Mémoires de l’Institut d’Ethnologie). From the early stages of my interest in Douala, Ralph Austen has provided assistance by guiding me to important source material and key informants. But I am most grateful to him for his remarkable scholarship on Douala, without which I could not have undertaken this study. I also learned a great deal from the indispensable work of Jonathan Derrick and Andreas Eckert. My former fellow students at Stanford continue to constitute a community for me, and I rely on Walter Hawthorne, Benjamin Lawrance, Kathryn Barrett-Gaines, and Emily Osborn for their knowledge, advice and friendship. In Israel, the small but tight-knit community of Africanists sustain and bolster each other on numerous levels. Louise Bethlehem, Galia Sabar, Ruth Ginio and Yael Abessira have all provided insightful critiques and encouragement. I would also like to thank Steve Kaplan, Tamar Golan and Naomi Chazan for their support. Belina Neuberger’s contribution began with meticulous editing, but also included an informed reading of the entire text. At Unisa, I am most grateful to Beth Le Roux, Sharon Boshoff, Russel Viljoen, Bridget Theron, and Gail Malcomson for their professionalism, guidance and hard work. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Abebe Zegeye for his encouragement and backing. My sister, Miriam, is the enduring link to everything I have done before this book, and her enthusiasm will accompany me on future endeavours. I could thank George for all he has done in the research and writing of this book, and for that alone, my debt to him is great. He has consistently made my work, our work. But what I really want to thank him for is being my home, everywhere and always.
Lynn Schler
viii
ONE Introduction
It was a particularly dark evening on 20 May 1919 when Baedi Dia, a Senegalese butcher, left the strangers’ quarter of New Bell along with three of his employees, leading a steer toward the centre of Douala. The butcher and his three aides harnessed the steer with ten-metre-long ropes tied around its neck and hind leg, and began the long walk to Akwa, where the steer would be slaughtered and sold in the central market the following day. One African bystander later claimed that the animal nearly trampled him, but hearing the butcher and his men crying out in a high voice in pidgin English, ‘Cow! Cow!’ he was able to save himself in time. Unfortunately, French Corporal Bourguignon, also passing by at the time, did not understand any of the languages spoken in Douala. He therefore had no way of knowing that he, too, was in danger from the steer, nor did he see the animal or the ropes dragging behind him. Bourguignon was soon tangled in the rope, causing the steer to suddenly turn and knock him over with its horns. When the corporal tried to get away, the steer lifted him up, tossed him in the air, and he landed on the ground again. Following the second blow, Bourguignon could muster only enough strength to get up and make his way to an indigène’s house nearby, where he found temporary refuge. Following this incident, the police commissioner of Douala proclaimed it illegal for butchers to transport cattle between 5.00 p.m. and 3.00 a.m. The commissioner acknowledged that a recurrence of these events could easily be avoided by lighting street lamps, but shortages in fuel made this impossible.1 Thus, only by restricting the movement of Africans, could the French official ensure the safety of Europeans in the colonial city. This incident evokes the confusion, struggle, commotion and absurdity characterising the encounter between the African immigrant community and French officials in colonial Douala, an encounter firmly set in the urban space of the immigrant quarter, New Bell. Bourguignon’s misfortune was grounded in the cultural, discursive and physical distances separating him from the community of immigrants. The unregulated flow of Africans in and around Douala threatened the safety of Europeans residing in the city, as did the accompanying movement of goods and information. But it was the Senegalese butcher who ultimately suffered the consequences of Bourguignon’s vulnerability, as colonial laws were issued to protect European interests by preventing Africans from freely navigating 1
2
The Strangers of New Bell
the public spaces of the city. Thus, the history of New Bell and the evolution of space in the quarter both testify to the persistent disjuncture between colonial and Africanimmigrant interests and to the precarious ways in which it was resolved throughout the colonial era. This book is a study of the community of immigrants living in New Bell, the strangers’ quarter of Douala in Cameroon, during the colonial era. The German administration (1884–1914) created New Bell in 1914 as part of an extensive urbanisation plan for Douala. The intent was to reserve the city centre for Europeans by relocating the local Duala population and the growing population of African strangers to newly built quarters on the outskirts of the city.2 The German administration thus imagined New Bell as an ‘African space’ within the renovated urban landscape – a vision which the French administration (1916–1960), established after the ousting of the Germans, adopted willingly. But while the quarter was the product of colonial imagination, the evolution of this designated African space into a community of strangers was a process dictated largely by African-immigrant initiatives, undertaken in the looming shadow of colonialism. New Bell housed the thousands of immigrants who were migrating to Douala from Cameroon and the entire western coast of Africa, seeking employment, adventure and refuge. Once established, this vastly diverse community of immigrants living in the quarter forged alliances, solidarities, conflicts and common experiences in response to their immediate needs and long-terms goals, while never completely evading colonial economic and political agendas. This book will provide a history of community-building in New Bell throughout the colonial era, exposing the processes by which a highly heterogeneous population of immigrants lived as neighbours, and constructed public spaces reflecting both their disparate and shared experiences. Until now, New Bell has been a neglected chapter in the history of Douala. The city has attracted the interest of historians of Africa for a variety of reasons, none of which has inspired an in-depth study of the city’s immigrant quarter before World War (WW) II. This book aims to fill this historiographic gap. In doing so, it suggests a re-evaluation of the theoretical premises upon which earlier studies of Douala’s past have been based, and ultimately suggests an alternative interpretation of the history written about the city and its inhabitants. Until now, histories of Douala have made mention of New Bell only within the context of nationalist organising, depicting the strangers’ quarter as a hotbed of unrest during decolonisation. Several historians have marked the post-WW II period as the entry of New Bell into history; indeed, studies focusing on the birth of the nation-state of Cameroon have often highlighted the role of immigrant strikers and protesters in the struggle for independence. This book questions earlier interpretations of New Bell’s history that over emphasised the processes of increasing conflict and tribalisation as characteristic of the colonial era. Beginning in an earlier period, it will decentre tropes of ethnic competition and highlight the multiple forms of alliance and cooperation among the strangers of New Bell. Thus, this history of New Bell engages with some of the most important debates in African historiography, and challenges the primacy of the nation-state as a category of analysis. By digging deeper into New Bell’s past, emphasis can be placed on the ability of Afri-
Introduction
cans to bridge differences in culture and experience and live as neighbours in cultural and political spaces not necessarily corresponding to postcolonial political boundaries. My choice of New Bell as a subject of study must therefore be understood within the context of the historiography of Cameroon. This approach will ultimately contribute to a broader body of scholarship focusing on the evolution of communities and public spaces in colonial cities of Africa.
Fig. 1.1: Map of Cameroon
Douala: An historical background The city of Douala lies on the coast of Cameroon, on the banks of the estuary of the Wouri River (see Figure 1.1). As one of the best natural harbours on the coast of West and Central Africa, Douala has played an important role in the economic and political history of the region since the arrival of Western traders on the coast of Cameroon in the sixteenth century. The Duala people, who inhabited the Wouri estuary when the Europeans first arrived, established early trade relations with the visiting merchants – relations that intensified with the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade.3 The Duala secured a position for themselves as middlemen in the economic transactions between the coast and the interior; by the eve of colonial conquest, the port of Douala had emerged as a focal point of international trade. The evolution of the early Duala settlement into the important urban centre of Douala accelerated with the establishment of formal colonial
3
4
The Strangers of New Bell
rule by the Germans in 1884 and the choice of Douala as the headquarters of the German administration. The slow expansion of German rule was mirrored by the gradual and continued growth of the city. The German strategy for economic development included some grandiose plans for urban renewal in Douala, giving physical expression to the cultural and economic aspirations of the colonial administration. The German scheme called for the creation of a modern, European centre in the city, and the removal of Africans to the outskirts. Plans for the new African neighbourhoods included a separation between the new quarters reserved for the Duala and New Bell, the quarter designated for the city’s growing population of African strangers. Duala protest against the expropriation led to a delay in its implementation. Only New Bell, the strangers’ quarter, was established according to plan before the outbreak of WW I and the ousting of the Germans. The conquest of Douala by the Allied Forces in September 1914 ultimately led to the establishment of the French mandate over Cameroon in place of German colonialism in 1916. The French inherited the partial expropriation left by the German departure, as well as the ideological premise for segregating the African masses from the European population. New Bell was thus preserved as the ‘African quarter’, and the evolution of the quarter over the next few decades continued to testify to this colonial categorisation. But while the French readily embraced the German strategy of segregation, they lacked both the resources and the vision for urban development in the post-WW I era. They therefore did not implement any substantial agenda of their own in Douala during this time. In fact, shortages of manpower and funds plagued the French administration throughout its first decade of rule, making it difficult to establish authority and to launch effective social and economic policies throughout Cameroon. Despite the scarcity of administrative funding, though, private enterprises expanded throughout the 1920s; the marked growth of the economy has led some historians to describe this as a period of prosperity.4 Douala experienced significant growth, and the population of immigrants swelled, along with an increased demand for labour in urbanbased enterprises. The Depression nearly halted this process of development as export prices plunged and the faltering economy caused many of the immigrants in Douala to return to their villages of origin. This led to a serious reduction in the already insufficient labour supply in the city.5 Following the Depression, the French administration took some important steps toward intensifying the economic exploitation of Cameroon. The 1930s witnessed the significant growth of European concessions in the territory, as well as increasing administrative intervention to protect and foster colonial economic interests by ensuring a supply of labour and wiping out local competition.6 As the production of export products increased, so too did activity at the port of Douala. Once again the city experienced growth and change to meet the expanding needs of both the French administration and the European population centred in the city. The role Douala played as the main centre for commerce, administration and European social and cultural life, was enabled and supported by an African labour force. The population of African immigrants in Douala grew steadily throughout the 1930s until the outbreak of WW II, by which time it con-
Introduction
Fig. 1.2: Map of Douala, circa 1958
stituted a clear majority of the city’s overall population. The slowdown of international trade during WW II resulted in economic hardship, however, so that many immigrants chose to return to their villages of origin as they had during the Depression.7 From then onwards, the French administration, hoping to protect the supply of labour in the city, took a more active interest in the immigrant community. During the last decade before independence in 1960, when the city of Douala and the rest of Cameroon experienced the greatest colonial efforts at development, the immigrant community played an increasingly prominent role as a labour reservoir in colonial consciousness and policy making.
History of the Duala people in Douala Several scholars have documented the history of the Duala people before and during the colonial era, paying particular attention to the dramatic anti-colonial struggle which
5
6
The Strangers of New Bell
originated in the German period. As the Western-educated elite of Cameroon, the Duala were highly visible in the historical encounter between Western powers and local populations in Cameroon. Throughout the colonial era, the Duala walked a fine line between agitation and collaboration with both the German and the French administrations, seeking to exploit proximity to colonial officials in order to increase their own power, and protesting vehemently against stumbling blocks put in their way by the colonial administrations. The main catalyst of Duala dissatisfaction with colonial rule was linked to the German administration’s expropriation of Duala lands in the city centre. The narrative of the anti-colonial activity of the Duala has dominated studies of the city in the era prior to WW II, making the history of Douala equivalent to the history of the Duala elite throughout this era. A number of scholars have pinpointed the Duala protest against the expropriation as proto-nationalist and an early step toward the establishment of the Cameroonian nation-state.8 The labelling of this protest as nationalist has privileged Duala experiences over the experiences of others and given the Duala a prominent status in the history of Cameroon. The historiographic preoccupation with the Duala male elite is thus linked to a preoccupation with nation-building as an organising principle of historic inquiry, and the effort to explain the evolution of the nation-state intersects with other categories of analysis, including those of gender and class. Ultimately, the production of Duala history has reinforced the status of the Duala as an elite in Cameroon. However, since the Duala have been marginalised both politically and economically in ‘their’ city, the project of recording their historic significance has taken on a certain urgency. When conducting oral interviews with residents of the city, I was struck by how many of my Duala informants were in the midst of writing their own manuscripts of Duala history. It seemed that every Duala interviewed was an historian, producing detailed transcripts of oral histories and impressive genealogy charts on request. Fittingly, only Duala men were suggested as suitable oral informants, and my requests for names of potential informants often led back to the same network of men who were well versed in the pre-colonial and colonial histories of the city. As to the Duala archives, controlled by ruling families in the city, access to and use of these documents is limited and closely supervised. By contrast, the immigrants of New Bell had little knowledge of Cameroon’s past in general or of the city of Douala in particular. Few could respond to questions concerning the origins of New Bell, and even fewer were aware that the quarter was created in 1914 as part of the German administration’s urbanisation plan.9 As Richard Roberts has argued, the silences of oral informants can provide historians with a wealth of understanding about the past and the present.10 The inability of New Bell informants to answer questions about New Bell’s history provides information about the link between history and power. Unlike the Duala elite, the New Bell community of strangers has made no collective or strategic use of history, and the marginalisation of New Bell’s residents in the Douala landscape is reinforced by the quarter’s historic invisibility. There is little mention of the immigrant community in any history of the city prior to WW II, despite its gradual expansion throughout the colonial era, and the fact that it had become a clear majority in the city by the end of the war.11 For example, in historian Jonathan Derrick’s
Introduction
highly detailed history of the city from 1916 to 1936, New Bell appears as an aside to the grand narrative of Duala political and economic history.12 Richard Joseph, in his study of nationalism in Cameroon, claims that New Bell was merely the home of ‘Hausa traders and some migratory workers’ until after WW II, when trade-union organising and anti-colonial riots drew New Bell into the historical record.13 Likewise, the immigrant population of New Bell enters Victor LeVine’s work on the French mandate period only in the post-WW II era.14 A realignment of power can perhaps begin with a representation of immigrant experiences as an alternative to elite knowledge, but this will first require a decentring of the nation-state in the historical narrative of Cameroon.
The nation-state and alternative histories The telescoping influence of nationalist ideologies on the history of colonised peoples is not unique to Cameroon, and current academic debates concerning the connection between history and the nation-state must be incorporated in a more critical history of Douala. Postcolonial critiques emanating from various once-colonised regions of the globe have effectively exposed the limited relevance and faulty premises of nationalist histories. Scholars of the Subaltern Studies Group, based in India, have been particularly vocal in their rejection of elitist histories and in their insistence on the need to recover alternative voices from the past. Ranajit Guha, for example, protested the representation of nationalism as ‘the sum of activities and ideas by which the Indian elite responded to the institutions, opportunities, resources, etc. generated by colonialism . . . The general orientation of the . . . elitist historiography is to represent Indian nationalism as primarily an idealist venture in which the indigenous elite led the people from subjugation to freedom’.15 Guha further proclaimed that ‘elitist historiography should be resolutely fought by developing an alternative discourse based on the rejection of the spurious and un-historical monism characteristic of its view of Indian nationalism and on the recognition of the co-existence and interaction of the elite and subaltern domains of politics’.16 While Guha and other scholars of the Subaltern Studies Group have voiced an important protest against histories that privilege the elite experience, they have not been fully successful in dismantling the nation-state centre of historic inquiry. Rather, Guha’s project was ultimately aimed at expanding the definition of the nation-state to include subaltern experiences and ‘the contribution made by the people on their own, that is, independently of the elite to the making and development of this nationalism’17 (emphasis in the original). The effort to widen the historical record of the nation-state in order to secure a place for the voices and experiences of ‘the people’ in its origins, ultimately serves to reinforce the dominance of the nation-state as a primary category of analysis. This calls into question Edward Said’s proclamation of the Subaltern Studies scholarship as ‘oppositional’ and ‘contestary’. The historic linkages between the writing of ‘history’ and the nation-state in Western societies have led some scholars to insist on the need for uncovering communities and public discourses of the past not necessarily corresponding to postcolonial political boundaries. In the words of Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, ‘colonial historiography has been so nationally bound that it has blinded
7
8
The Strangers of New Bell
us to those circuits of knowledge and communication that took other routes than those shaped by the metropole-colony axis alone’.18 A look at New Bell both past and present underscores the failures of colonialism, and a consideration of the community of immigrants that emerged in the strangers’ quarter in the interwar period questions their significance in the local consciousness. Indeed, the weaknesses of the postcolonial nation-state in Africa, a phenomenon that has generated much debate, has initiated a search for supranational forms of association ‘which would in time make the present national divisions of Africa redundant’.19 The search for alternatives to the nation-state as an organising principle is often performed with an eye to globalisation, with national identities seen as being too narrow for ‘contemporary forms of identity’20 in the expanding global village. This book deals with the inability of the nation-state to rally communal allegiances in postcolonial Africa; but it proposes a move in the opposite direction from those who replace the study of the national with the supranational. Instead, it is suggested that the political, discursive and historiographic focus on nation-building has overshadowed historic alliances based in deeply local, small-scale locations such as the neighbourhood. Beginning with the neighbourhood as an organising principle, I will examine the construction and vitality of local rationalities and their role in the integration or exclusion of groups and individuals in national or globalised contexts. By reaffirming historians’ commitment to the local, Mamadou Diouf has argued that they can provide a more textured view of how vernaculars operate in broader contexts, and account for ‘the creativity involved in the slow and shrewd deployment of the local in global space and time’.21
An urban history Cities provide useful grounds for examining the dynamic interaction between local idioms and global processes. Particularly in the case of colonial history, cities have provided historians with an opportunity to learn about the everyday experiences of Africans living under colonial domination.22 Beginning with path-breaking works such as Frederick Cooper’s Struggle for the City and Charles von Onselen’s work on the history of the Witwatersrand, the city – as the home base of colonial regimes in Africa – has provided historians with the opportunity to examine colonialism where it is expected to be most powerful.23 The exposure of the vulnerability of colonial power in cities has enabled historians to underscore the extent to which colonialism was contested, circumvented and ignored, even at the core of European power. While cities can provide historians with a powerful lens for viewing the dynamics of colonial expansion and local responses to it, the role of the city in shaping historical processes is not always evident in urban histories of Africa. Focusing on specific groups and individuals living in cities, while excluding the physical spaces in which they lived, and the way the evolution of these spaces infringed upon or enabled decision-making, ignores an essential aspect of city living, particularly in the era of colonial modernist urban planning.24 In order to understand points of cohesiveness within the community, as well as the sites of competition and alienation between New Bell residents, I will un-
Introduction
ravel the ongoing dialogue between the evolution of the physical and political landscape of New Bell as a neighbourhood, and the evolution of the groups, cultures and social networks present within the neighbourhood over time. The city, as a physical, cultural and political space, is therefore located at the centre of this history, rather than merely serving as a backdrop. This two-pronged approach to understanding the growth of an urban community in relation to the growth of urban space is an attempt at synthesising methods and theoretical stances that have remained largely separate within African urban histories of the colonial era. While recent years have seen a growth in the number of urban-based studies, an explanatory framework has not been fully developed for understanding commonalities and differences of experience.25 An examination of recent collections and review articles reveals that the criteria for defining urban history remain overly broad.26 A distinction must be made between ‘history-in-the-city’ and ‘history-of-the-city’ if historians are to construct a theoretical paradigm for understanding the historic role the city played in shaping African lives.27 Taking an example from women’s history, it is notable that many of the most prominent works on African women of the colonial era are based on urban women, such as Kristin Mann’s Marrying Well, Claire Robertson’s Sharing the Same Bowl, or Belinda Bozzoli’s Women of Phokeng. However, these important studies of social processes have not questioned the relationship between the construction of urban cultural and economic spaces and the construction of women’s experiences.28 On the other hand, studies focused on colonial planning and development in urban spaces have paid insufficient attention to the social and cultural lives of those residing in these spaces. A rich and important body of literature has addressed colonial endeavours in urban planning, with analyses covering a range of issues – from the ideological underpinnings of colonial urbanisation plans to the actual outcomes of grandiose development schemes.29 Throughout the colonial world, urban development projects revealed an intersection between city planning and the promotion of a modernist agenda.30 Architecture and spatial organisation were enlisted ‘to exert great control over such matters as family life and working conditions, industrial growth and cultural memory’.31 Colonial visions of the city in Africa enforced hierarchies of race, class and ethnicity, and supported the construction of spatial divides between communities.32 But while European ideologies, projects and policies have been fully described and deconstructed, the actual meaning of these hegemonic manoeuvres within the lives of African residents of these cities has been insufficiently examined.33 This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between these two approaches, and to understand the reciprocal impact between what Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch has described as ‘the content and the container’.34 In highlighting the interaction between urban communities and the physical, cultural and ideological landscapes they inhabited, my approach here emphasises that both urban communities and urban spaces were in constant flux and that there were co-existing and even contradictory rationalities of participation and belonging in all neighbourhoods and communities. Thus, while the expressions of New Bell communalism described here are presented as an alternative
9
10
The Strangers of New Bell
to the paradigm of nation-building, the intention is not to substitute the latter with a singular narrative of immigrant community-building and shared consciousness. The mapping of places as they are made and remade provides important insights into relationships of power operating in bounded locations and changing over time. David Harvey has argued that the description of identities and entities as they operate in particular spaces enables us to prioritise process and flux over fixity and continuity.35 Harvey claimed that individuals and groups constantly invest spaces and identities with value and what he termed ‘permanences’, which ultimately organise and direct social life. Thus, rather than describing the value and meaning of space as fixed, the historian’s task is to uncover the process through which certain spaces take on value, and to understand that this process is actually a ‘pivot for diverse forms of socio-ecological action’.36 Just as places are better conceived as mobile and dynamic, so too are the groups that inhabit them. Rogers Brubaker has described groups as events, as things that are happening, rather than as fixed entities. Brubaker suggested that we move away from the ‘group’ as subject of study and focus rather on ‘groupness as a contextually fluctuating conceptual variable’. This shift, Brubaker claimed, would allow us to see communities as momentarily cohesive and intensely engaging, but ‘without treating high levels of groupness as constant, enduring or definitionally present’.37 An examination of physical, discursive and cultural constructions of public space in New Bell, based on the underlying assumption that this space and the priorities of those inhabiting the quarter are fluid and unsteady, provides information about the culture and consciousness of the stranger population. This negates the possibility of a fixed and unchanging aggregate. In fact, there were competing and contradicting ‘communities’ in New Bell. Bill Bravman’s definition of ‘community’ is fitting: ‘despite the connotations of harmony and hegemonic claims of commonality that surround “community”, communities may be riven by tensions, conflicts, authority struggles, competing visions, etc. As a result, communities’ composition and reproduction – and their normative grounding – may well be contested and altered over time through cultural politicking’.38 A central aim of this book is to understand how city living opened up new possibilities for alignment, solidarity and cooperation among the strangers of New Bell. The goal is to understand the processes by which common people, thrust together in the shadow of a colonial city, made sense of their world and strategised to take advantage of opportunities. To this end, the choice of New Bell, particularly in the interwar period, offers fresh insights into the choices open to Africans, some of which have been insufficiently explored in earlier studies of colonial urban life. Cities of colonial Africa, especially in the post-WW II era, have been described as arenas of intensified conflict between ethnic and religious groups, where the competition for resources led to a hardening of identities and segregation between these groups. As colonial powers cooperated, and even encouraged this segmentation as part of an effort to maintain control over local populations, urban spaces were segmented, and served to enhance and enforce divisions between peoples along religious, ethnic and racial lines.39 However, a careful examination of New Bell, particularly in the post-WW I era, reveals an alternative set of outcomes. By tracing the flow of people, goods and information within
Introduction
the strangers’ quarter of this period, various forms of cooperation and coalition-building within the neighbourhood can be highlighted. In following patterns of consumption in the quarter, for example, historians can understand the role played by certain consumer goods in earning new immigrants entry and status in the public spaces of New Bell. A rather different set of alliances and solidarities among the strangers of New Bell is revealed through an examination of organised criminal activity in the quarter, such as smuggling; it created opportunities for Africans of various ethnic and religious backgrounds to cooperate in the economic sphere. As the definition and structure of New Bell as a space and a community change with each new point of reference, an examination from a multiplicity of viewpoints is essential. The aim of this book, then, is to expose the cultural, economic and political practices and discourses that bind and make legible the public space of New Bell. Although the emerging representation of the community of strangers is fragmented and transitory, the process of association and collaboration among neighbours has continuously sustained New Bell residents.
Strangers: Powerful and ordinary While the history of community in New Bell is described as evolving and transitory, the physical landscape of the Douala strangers’ quarter bears witness to a painfully enduring history of marginalisation and exclusion from power and privilege. Present-day New Bell seems to embody all that is hard, chaotic and dangerous in urban Africa of the postcolonial period. Houses, built with whatever materials could be found, are crowded together, with little air between them. There are few paved roads and those that are paved are difficult to navigate with a vehicle, as potholes several feet wide and many inches deep are more common than pavement. Most houses can be reached only by narrow, winding footpaths. The quarter is replete with open sewage, rats and mosquitoes. Many residents live without running water or electricity. The spatial configuration of New Bell can be read as a footprint of the quarter’s past; colonial neglect of the quarter, and the subsequent haphazard process by which the space evolved, were already stamped into the New Bell landscape at the end of the colonial era. As Mongo Beti wrote in 1958, ‘Walking in the suburb of New Bell . . . the first days, I had difficulty in convincing myself that human beings could daily fill their lungs with these putridities, wade in these swamps which take the place of roads, live and sleep in these caverns of troglodytes’.40 Residents of New Bell have lived with the legacy of New Bell’s history, a history comprising the underside of the colonial past, revealing the experiences of those who were disenfranchised from the narratives of modernity and progress structuring the history of the city centre during the colonial era. New Bell residents have also lived with the enduring legacy of being strangers. Although the connotation of this categorisation has changed over time, its implications have been fairly consistent in shaping the experiences of residents in the strangers’ quarter. Enid Schildkrout’s early work on the stranger as a West African social institution stressed the fluidity of the term across time and place, and argued that the relevant definition
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The Strangers of New Bell
depended on local political conditions. Throughout African history, the term ‘stranger’ could refer to those from a distant locality, visitors deserving hospitality, neighbours with different customs, enemies, allies, or even wives. As Schildkrout wrote, ‘The term is so general that it must always be defined in terms of a particular social situation’.41 Thus, though the term ‘stranger’ was not a colonial invention, the deeply transformative effects of colonial rule on African cities were also evident in the status of strangers. In the case of Douala, there is evidence of stranger populations in the pre-colonial town, but the German creation of New Bell, along with the massive growth of the city’s immigrant population during the colonial era, meant that the categorisation of strangers in the political and cultural landscapes of Douala was largely an innovation of that era. For the residents of New Bell, the term ‘strangers’ was meant to distinguish them from the local Duala, and was hence invoked by the immigrants themselves, by the Duala, and by the German and French administrations which also used it to distinguish between the problematic agitators and the passive masses. But for both colonial officials and the Duala elite, the designation of strangers was most often conjured up to establish ideological and political borders between the residents of New Bell and the rest of the city. Thus, the term ‘stranger’ served at varying times as a code word for landless tenants, unskilled labour, the uneducated, those lacking rights, or the transient and rootless. Overall, the term ‘stranger’ referred to people who simply ‘did not belong’; this had lasting implications for many immigrants’ historic sense of belonging in the cultural and political landscapes of Douala. This distinction has prevailed until the present. Postcolonial New Bell is still known as the strangers’ quarter, and generations of residence have not erased the sense of displacement among inhabitants, and a subsequent feeling of not fully belonging. A 2005 interview with a resident of New Bell, conducted by AbdouMaliq Simone, revealed the enduring sense of foreignness: ‘New Bell has always been a place where people had to adapt to each other coming from different places. People here do always imagine themselves someplace else, and this is partly because their ancestors came from somewhere else’.42 This book aims to explain the origins of this identification, but it also sheds light on its endurance. Decades of independence from colonial rule have not led to a reorganisation of priorities or resources within the city of Douala, and New Bell, as a neighbourhood and community, continues to be marginalised and excluded from the centres of power.43 Of course, the implications for identification with a national identity are clear. As Schildkrout asked, ‘Can one speak of national integration when the local/ stranger dichotomy persists locally?’44 While this book aims to improve our understanding of the evolution of the stranger identity, both in terms of individual residents and the New Bell community on the whole, it also seeks to explain the impact of this ideological and spatial designation on decision-making over time. The tactics employed by the strangers of New Bell have perhaps changed over time, but the need to employ various ways to overcome physical and cultural marginalisation within the urban landscape still persists, as can be seen in Simone’s description of New Bell residents today:
Introduction
. . . life in the quarter tends to propel an incessant opportunism to make use of all kinds of knowledge, all kinds of relationships and positions in multiple social networks in order to access some kind of opportunity to consolidate one’s position. Here, the practices of being what one needs to be at any given moment, wavers with the need to be someone specific in the city.45
The narrative that follows provides historical background to these practices of manoeuvring and coalition-building in urban spaces. It also signifies a more complex and textured description of how individuals and groups have associated and cooperated in colonial and postcolonial Africa, beyond more fixed notions of ethnic, religious and national identities. But rather than envisaging the city as an arena of conflict, this book aims to describe urbanism as a way of life that is only at times, not constantly, strife-ridden. There are two important ramifications of this approach, which deeply affect the emerging narratives of the strangers’ community. Firstly, the reality described is not only characterised by a dialogue between adversaries. Community life in New Bell was not shaped solely by conflict and resistance to colonial rule, nor were all actions taken by the stranger population motivated by the will to outdo or surpass their neighbours. There are certainly acts of resistance and competition, but not all of New Bell’s history is locked in this dynamic of struggle. In viewing the associations and acts within the strangers’ quarter outside the trope of empowerment, historians can also begin to tell different stories of individual and communal lives. That is, historians can describe the experiences of ordinary people without falling into the trap of romanticism. Andreas Eckert and Adam Jones have criticised the tendency of social historians to depict ordinary people as powerful and autonomous heroes. As they wrote, ‘the “great men” have been replaced by another cliché, that of smart and crafty rebels, who mastered their everyday life with supreme ease and were always ready to play a trick on the powerful’.46 The paradigm of everyday heroes often attributes ordinary people and their decision-making processes with a consciousness that may or may not have been operating. Thus, as Emmanuel Akyeampong and Charles Ambler have argued, ‘Historians would rather their subjects “construct culture” and “struggle against domination” than relax and have fun’.47 To allow for a more nuanced and textured view of New Bell, the strangers’ quarter will not only be described as a stage for the acting out of conflicts between the stranger population and the colonial regime, or between the strangers themselves. In what follows, there are descriptions of acts of courage, defiance and empowerment, but not all of the history of New Bell can be read through this lens. The focus on the history of everyday people living in the strangers’ quarter of Douala also reveals the widespread tendency to compromise, to make do, and when possible, to avoid confrontations. Living in the margins of colonial rule, the strangers of New Bell learnt to get by, and thus sustained themselves and their neighbourhood over time.
On method The very construction of a research agenda centred in New Bell signified a significant reinterpretation of the historiography of Douala; access to this history required methodological innovations. The archival sources used in this book came primarily from two
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The Strangers of New Bell
locations, the Archives Nationales du Cameroun (Yaoundé) and Archives Nationales de France, Section d’Outre-Mer (Aix-en-Provence). Together, these archives provided substantial material on the history of New Bell, but as is common in social history, in order to uncover information about the everyday lives and experiences of past residents of the quarter, these sources must be read ‘against the grain’. While archival material located in Cameroon and France provided an essential starting point, it was nevertheless only a starting point; a considerable proportion of my sources emerged during the collection of oral histories in Cameroon from December 1998 to March 1999. The bulk of these interviews were conducted with residents of New Bell, but I also greatly benefited from interviews with Duala residents of the Akwa, Deido and Bali quarters of Douala, and with several women who had worked as prostitutes in New Bell during the colonial era and later moved back to their villages of origin in the Sangemelina province in southern Cameroon. I found informants in New Bell by simply walking through the quarter and asking to speak to any older residents who had lived there during the French mandate. Such informants were not always easy to find, and when found, often initially expressed reservations, claiming they had nothing to offer an historian. But as interviews focused on questions concerning everyday life in the quarter, most informants were able to provide a wealth of information not found in any official colonial documents.
Fragments of New Bell: An overview of the chapters Focusing on the period between the two world wars, this book offers glimpses of New Bell from varied positions, constructed against a backdrop of the negotiated interests of immigrants, the Duala and colonial officials in the city. Viewed together, the fragments underscore perpetual change and diversity of experience, a process reflected in the ongoing redefinition of New Bell.48 What emerges is the process by which New Bell evolved to accommodate the varying interests of its inhabitants and the colonial regime. The historic origins of New Bell, which set the foundation for the evolution of the immigrant quarter, are laid out in Chapter 2 as a background for the rest of the book. The chapter serves as an overview of New Bell, examining the colonial vision of New Bell at its creation, Duala attitudes toward the quarter, and the early immigrant imaginings and initiatives in building the space and community known as New Bell. Dubbed an African space by the German administration, and later referred to as ‘the bush’ by immigrants, the discursive distinction between New Bell and the rest of the city soon found expression in the physical layout of the quarter. Chapter 2 examines the ethnic, social and professional makeup of the community of strangers and the role played by ethnicity in the public sphere of the quarter. While acknowledging the significance of ethnicity, as well as religion and class, in determining an individual’s participation in public life in the quarter, the chapter ends by exposing the limited relevance of these categories as organising principles in New Bell public life. It also sets the stage for examining alternative economic, cultural, and social exchanges and practices around which immigrants converged and aligned.
Introduction
The flow of money and goods mediated public life in New Bell, and in following their circulation, an important perspective of space and community in the quarter is revealed in Chapter 3. The exchange of money was a prominent mode of communication between strangers, as was the consumption and display of certain goods, but both of these practices were largely influenced and restricted by colonial economic policy and cultural sensibilities. Thus, the tools of communication and the ways in which they were used were not always of the immigrants’ choosing. On the other hand, the local interpretation of the cultural meaning of colonial money and consumer goods in New Bell at times contradicted and confounded colonial intentions, replacing them with local conceptualisations. This investigation into money and consumption in the strangers’ quarter reveals that the public space of New Bell was bridged by visual, performative and passing gestures, all articulated in the street. Money and goods determined the boundaries of the immigrant community, as well as membership of and participation in that community, but the controlling hand of the colonial regime over money and imported products reminds readers that the immigrant community sprang up in the shadow of colonial hierarchies of power. Immigrants attempted to reinvent, rebuild and dismantle these hierarchies through consumption, but as will be seen, their efforts met with limited success. Chapter 4 takes an entirely different perspective on public space in New Bell by examining the role of lawlessness as a foundation of the immigrant community. Colonial visions of New Bell perpetuated a desire to maintain distance between the colonial regime and the immigrant ‘other’, but this distance was impossible to preserve when it came into conflict with other aspects of the colonial agenda, namely law enforcement. The strangers of New Bell maintained a sense of autonomy within the space of New Bell and remained largely ignorant of or apathetic toward colonial law within the confines of the quarter. The immigrant refusal to acknowledge and operate within the boundaries of law forced the colonial regime to engage with the quarter, but this was done only hesitantly. Colonial indecisiveness in approaching New Bell was evidenced by half-hearted and flawed surveillance efforts, including the failed use of identity cards, informants and pass laws. To the French and the Duala elite, the space of New Bell represented a wretchedness – the full awareness of which was to be avoided at all costs. To the African inhabitants of New Bell, this image of wretchedness enabled defiance; incongruously, the ubiquitous practice of lawless activity made it possible for the community to thrive. An examination of public space in colonial New Bell would be incomplete without the perusal of popular culture and leisure, both of which are the subject of Chapter 5. This chapter looks at the main form of entertainment in the quarter during the colonial era, namely the consumption of alcohol. The presence and circulation of alcohol within the immigrant community fostered social bonds and boosted economic prosperity for many households in which alcohol was made and sold. The consumption of alcohol seemed to defy all of colonial rule, as strict laws prohibited its unauthorised fabrication and sale. The central role of women in this underground economy also confronted colonial sensibilities concerning gender roles and the inappropriateness of women as entrepreneurs and profiteers in the alcohol industry, seen as the moral decay of African
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The Strangers of New Bell
society. In their reading of colonial documents that reflect deep frustration with African defiance regarding illegal drinking, some historians of alcohol consumption in colonial Africa have equated drinking with resistance. The colonial regime in Cameroon clearly interpreted the illegal activity as an intentional challenge to colonial law and ideology, but for the strangers of New Bell, drinking was not a pointed act of resistance to colonial rule. Thus, although it was illegal, the consumption of alcohol in New Bell was not anti-colonial, reminding readers that not all aspects of communal life or public space in New Bell were in direct dialogue or confrontation with the colonial state. Chapter 6, which deals with the era of nationalist organising in the decade prior to independence in Cameroon, marks a turning point in the historic and historiographic status of New Bell. This era, examined closely by scholars such as Joseph, has been characterised as a period of fervent and radical nationalist organising; and against this background, New Bell has been identified as a key base of support for leaders of the radical nationalist movement. Trade union organising and violent strikes of the unemployed masses of New Bell have been identified as pivotal moments in the march toward Cameroon’s independence from France. Ethnicity also surfaced as an increasingly significant determinant of immigrant participation in public life in the quarter, far more so than during the interwar years. But while this era is clearly testimony to significant changes in the political and social spheres of New Bell, the vast majority of immigrants living in the quarter did not experience these changes as revolutionary or even as unsettling. Most of the strangers of New Bell continued, in the nationalist era and beyond, to live outside the scope of history-making processes. As will be shown, it is this legacy of marginalisation from broader political processes on the one hand, and reliance on locally based solidarities on the other, that has wielded the most influence in shaping the lives of New Bell residents.
Notes to Chapter One 1 Archives Nationales du Cameroun (hereafter ANC–FF), Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Rapport de E. Ducq, Commissaire Central de Police, 31 May 1919, and Monsieur E. Ducq à Monsieur le Gouverneur, Commissaire de la République de l’Ancien Cameroun, 31 May 1919. 2 The German plan to expropriate land belonging to the Duala in the city centre has been dealt with extensively in numerous studies. See R. Austen and J. Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers: The Duala and Their Hinterland, c. 1600–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); A. Eckert, Grundbesitz, Landkonflikte und Kolonialer Wandel: Douala 1880 bis 1960 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999); J. Derrick, ‘Douala Under the French Mandate, 1916 to 1936’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1979); R. Gouellain, Douala: ville et histoire (Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie, Musée de l’Homme, 1975); V. LeVine, The Cameroons: From Mandate to Independence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964); H. S. Rudin, Germans in the Cameroons 1884–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). Similar strategies have been noted by historians of several colonial cities. See D. M. Anderson and R. Rathbone, eds., Africa’s Urban Past (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000). 3 On the early history of the Duala people, see Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers. 4 O. Chatap, Le travail salarié au Cameroun sous mandat français, 1922–1939 (Mémoire de Maîtrise, University of Yaoundé, 1976); E. F. Etoga, Sur les chemins du développement: essai d’histoire des faits économiques
Introduction
5 6 7 8
9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23
24
du Cameroun (Yaoundé: Centre d’édition et de production de manuels et d’auxiliaires de l’enseignement, 1971). Gouellain, Douala, 219. Gouellain claims that the immigrant population fell by at least one third during the Depression, but had again surpassed pre-Depression levels by 1935. J. A. Mbembe, Bureaucratie et forces marchandes dans le Cameroun de l’entre-deux-guerres (1920–1938) (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 1988). Gouellain, Douala, 263. R. Joseph, Radical Nationalism in Cameroon: Social Origins of the U.P.C. Rebellion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 37; Derrick, ‘Douala Under the French Mandate’, 433; LeVine, The Cameroons, 116; Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 144. For example, interviews with New Bell, Douala residents: Jacques Kwopi and Pie Nguidjol, December 1998. R. Roberts, ‘Reversible Social Processes, Historical Memory, and the Production of History’, History in Africa 17 (1990):341–49. Several important sociological and demographic studies of New Bell were conducted by French researchers in the late colonial period and in the first decades following independence. These studies provide important data on the origins of the population, employment statistics and living patterns, and have served as a valuable contribution to the background material upon which this study is based. See R. Gouellain, New Bell Douala: enquète urbaine demandée par le Haut-Commissaire, (Douala: IRCAM, 1956); R. Diziain and A. Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New-Bell à Douala (Yaoundé: ORSTOM, 1956); J. Guilbot, Petite étude sur la main-d’œuvre à Douala (IFAN, Centre au Cameroun, 1948); G. Mainet, ‘New-Bell, prototype des quartiers des étrangers à Douala’ (Département de Géographie, Université de Yaoundé, 1979). Derrick, ‘Douala Under the French Mandate’. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 160. LeVine, The Cameroons. R. Guha, ‘On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India’, in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. R. Guha and G. Chakrovorty Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 38. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 39. F. Cooper and A. L. Stoler, ‘Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda’, in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. F. Cooper and A. L. Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 28. P. Chabal, ‘The African Crisis: Context and Interpretation’, in Postcolonial Identities in Africa, ed. R. Werbner and T. Ranger (London: Zed Books, 1996), 40. Ibid. M. Diouf, ‘The Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora and the Making of Vernacular Cosmopolitanism’, trans. S. Rendall, Public Culture 12 no. 2 (2000):679–702. Anderson and Rathbone, Africa’s Urban Past, 11. F. Cooper, ed., Struggle for the City: Migrant Labor, Capital, and the State in Urban Africa (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1983); C. van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 (Harlow: Longman, 1982). Other important studies include P. M. Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); T. A. Barnes, ‘We Women Worked so Hard’: Gender, Urbanization and Social Reproduction in Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930–1956 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1999). C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘The Process of Urbanization in Africa (From the Origins to the Beginning of Independence)’, African Studies Review 34 no. 1 (1991):1–98.
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The Strangers of New Bell 25 Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘The Process of Urbanization’, 1–98; Anderson and Rathbone, Africa’s Urban Past; A. Burton, ed., The Urban Experience in Eastern Africa c. 1750–2000 (Nairobi: British Institute in Eastern Africa, 2002); S. J. Salm and T. Falola, African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005). 26 Review articles on Falola’s urban histories by Andrew Burton. 27 H. Sapire and J. Beall, ‘Introduction: Urban Change and Urban Studies in Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies 21 no. 1 (1995):7. 28 K. Mann, Marrying Well, Marriage, Status, and Social Change Among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); C. Robertson, Sharing the Same Bowl: A Socioeconomic History of Women and Class in Accra, Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); B. Bozzoli with M. Nkotsoe, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900–1980 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1991). One notable exception is that of Jeanne Marie Penvenne’s work on Mozambican women migrants employed in the cashew-shelling industry in Lourenco Marques. Penvenne’s work examines urban factories as sites of alternative cultural opportunities. See J. M. Penvenne, ‘Seeking the Factory for Women: Mozambican Urbanization in the late Colonial Era’, Journal of Urban History 23 no. 3 (March 1997):342–80. 29 Important contributions include A. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge, 1976); D. Simon, Cities, Capital and Development: African Cities in the World Economy (London: Belhaven, 1992); M. Heffernan and K. Sutton, ‘The Landscape of Colonialism’, in Colonialism and Development in the Contemporary World, ed. C. Dixon and M. Hefferman (London: Mansell, 1991). 30 P. Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). 31 G. Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 7. See also A. Kervanto Nevanlinna, Interpreting Nairobi: The Cultural Study of Built Forms (Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1997). 32 See, for example, Eckert, Grundbesitz; D. Pellow, ‘The Power of Space in the Evolution of an Accra Zongo’, Ethnohistory 38 no. 4 (1991):414–50; G. A. Myers, ‘A Stupendous Hammer: Colonial and PostColonial Reconstructions of Zanzibar’s Other Side’, Urban Studies 32 no. 8 (1995):1345–59. 33 Some exceptions include Pellow, ‘The Power of Space’ and Cooper, Struggle for the City. In addition, studies of South African cities, including D. Smith, ed. The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa (London: Routledge, 1992); P. Gervais-Lambony, T. Ferradji and J. Saliba, ‘Petite histoire d’espace et d’identité dans une ville sud-africaine’, Champ Psychosomatique, no. 21 (2001):119–31; P. Maylam and I. Edwards, The People’s City: African Life in 20th Century Durban (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1997). 34 Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘The Process of Urbanization in Africa’, 19. 35 D. Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 7–8. 36 Ibid., 11. 37 R. Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 11–12. 38 B. Bravman, Making Ethnic Ways: Communities and Their Transformations in Taita, Kenya, 1800–1950 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1998), 5. 39 See, for example, Pellow, ‘The Power of Space’; M. Banton, West African City: A Study of Tribal Life in Freetown (London: Oxford University Press, 1957); R. Gauze, The Politics of Congo-Brazzaville (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970). 40 M. Beti, ‘Lettre de Yaoundé: Cameroun 1958’, Preuves 94 (December 1958):57, quoted in Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 160.
Introduction 41 E. Schildkrout, ‘Strangers and Local Government in Kumasi’, Journal of Modern African Studies 8 no. 2 (July 1970):251–69; A. Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (London: Routledge, 1969), 253. 42 A. Simone, ‘Urban Circulation and the Everyday Politics of African Urban Youth: The Case of Douala, Cameroon’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29 no. 3 (Sept. 2005):516. 43 With regard to Zanzibar, Garth Andrew Myers has argued that the colonial legacy of urban planning has endured in the postcolonial era, and can be seen in the bureaucratisation and centralisation of power; the manipulation of space as a means of fostering hegemony; and the alienation of residents from the planning process. See Myers, ‘A Stupendous Hammer’. 44 Schildkrout, ‘Strangers and Local Government in Kumasi’, 268. 45 A. Simone, ‘Straddling the Divides: Remaking Associational Life in the Informal African City’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25 no. 1 (March 2001):112. 46 A. Eckert and A. Jones, ‘Introduction: Historical Writing About Everyday Life’, Journal of African Cultural Studies 15 no. 1 (June 2002):8. 47 E. Akyeampong and C. Ambler, ‘Leisure in African History: An Introduction’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 35 no. 1 (2002):8. 48 The notion of ‘fragments’ is taken from P. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
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TWO The strangers of New Bell: An overview
In 1910, the German administration formulated a plan for the urbanisation of Douala aimed at improving sanitary conditions in the city and controlling its chaotic growth.1 At the cornerstone of this urban renewal project were plans to segregate the African and European populations. Africans living in the Duala quarters of Bell, Akwa and Deido were to be relocated to newly built quarters to be named New Bell, New Akwa, and New Deido. These new African neighbourhoods were to be established a few kilometres inland from the coast and separated from the European quarters by a one-kilometre zone known as the Free Zone. Africans removed from their land were to be compensated for their houses and land, and the administration would provide new housing in the new neighbourhoods (see Figure 2.1).3 Duala resistance to the plan began immediately following its announcement and continued well into the French mandate, until the outbreak of WW II. From the beginning, local colonial administrators were unsuccessful in obtaining Duala consent, despite frequent meetings concerning the plan. The Duala sent numerous petitions and protest telegrams to the Reichstag and hired a lawyer in Berlin to represent their cause. Their immediate and unrelenting opposition to the expropriation was responsible for its postponement as the Reichstag debated the issues. The Reichstag ultimately voted in favour of the plan, but the delay meant that the first steps at expropriation were not carried out until 1914. However, the outbreak of WW I and the ousting of the Germans from Cameroon prevented the full implementation of the expropriation, and only the Bell were removed from their native lands on the Joss Plateau. The Bell did not accept the situation passively, and the struggle to regain their customary lands continued for decades, albeit without any real success. Historians have identified the Duala protest against the expropriation as the start of the anti-colonial, proto-nationalist movement in Cameroon.4 This can be explained partially through an examination of their actions and claims throughout the campaign. By the beginning of the colonial era, the Duala had developed a hegemonic discourse with regard to other ethnic groups in Cameroon; even when they were struggling for their own rights they signed treaties and addressed petitions as representatives of a ‘population’ or 20
An overview
Figure 2.1: Map of the expropriation2
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‘people’ beyond the ethnic Duala.5 In one petition, they claimed to represent ‘the natives of Cameroon and their chiefs’.6 Their appeals to leaders of other local groups for assistance and support in the anti-German struggle also bolstered the identification of the Duala with ethnic coalition-building during this period.7 Duala rhetoric and protest strategies reflected a strong identification with Western-style political institutions, culture and values, and have therefore drawn the attention of historians interested in the evolution of modern political discourse and movements. The problem with this historiography is not only rooted in the interpretation of what emerges as historically visible, but also derives from what lies outside its parameters. Histories of the Duala expropriation have until now neglected an important sequel to the removal of the Bell from the Joss plateau – the fate of the immigrant population relocated to the strangers’ quarter of New Bell. The Bell categorically rejected settling in the new quarter, but the strangers, as they were known by the German and French administrations, did take up residence in the remote quarter. The historiographic silence on New Bell prior to the era of nationalist mobilisation might mislead historians into thinking that nothing of significance happened in New Bell from its creation until the post-WW II era. But in fact, a closer look at the events surrounding the establishment of the strangers’ quarter reveals that more strangers than Duala were implicated in the actual implementation of segregation, and more importantly, that the colonial regime faced no opposition at all from these non-Duala masses. For the strangers of Douala, the expropriation was not a crisis, but an event that set in motion processes of invention and innovation around which the immigrant community of New Bell crystallised. By posing a fresh set of questions in evaluating the significance and outcome of the expropriation and the creation of the new African quarter, we can begin to describe alternative models of alliance-building and public discourse that diverged markedly from those adopted by the westernised Duala elite. The origins of New Bell, first in the colonial imagination and ultimately in the construction and early settlement of the quarter, all had a lasting impact on the evolution of public spaces and processes of community building among residents, continuing to the present. It is therefore essential to understand the early beginnings of New Bell, and the transformation of the German administration’s idea of a strangers’ quarter into a negotiated, fluid and contradictory home base for newcomers to Douala, beginning in the interwar years. A description of the creation and settlement of New Bell will serve as a conceptual foundation to subsequent thematic explorations of public space in the quarter. After describing the origins of New Bell, this chapter will examine the ethnic, professional and social makeup of the immigrant population and the hierarchies of power functioning in the quarter during this era. The role of ethnicity, and its limits, will be scrutinised in this description of newcomer absorption into the New Bell community.
An overview
The colonial regime and New Bell Lacking a detailed explanation behind the German administration’s motivation to create a separate strangers’ quarter, historians can only speculate as to why it was decided to establish this separate space for non-Duala immigrants, the Eingeborenen Fremdenstadt, a Native Strangers’ Quarter, between Neu-Bellstadt and Neu-Akwa.8 The administration no doubt viewed these two populations, the Duala and non-Duala, as distinct and separate entities. Recognising the Duala’s rights over the land slotted for expropriation, the administration offered the Duala financial compensation for their customary lands, as well as housing in their new quarter. No such offer was made to the immigrant population, who did not own any land in the city centre. It was probably deemed efficient, and more appropriate, to maintain a physical distinction between the Duala property-owning elite and those who were not compensated for the move. The Duala practice of extracting high rents from their tenants was almost certainly also a factor in creating a quarter for immigrants, reflecting the colonial desire to limit Duala control and to ensure the immigrant work force’s ability to sustain itself economically in the city. This policy was supported by the large commerce houses, which moved their employees from overcrowded barracks near the port to the new housing as soon as it became available in 1914.9 Beyond the specific economic and political circumstances prompting the creation of New Bell in colonial Douala, it is possible to explain this move toward ethnic/class segregation as typical of modern, and even pre-modern, urban planning. The German administration’s decision to create a quarter separating all non-Duala strangers from the Duala was reflective of a pervasive tendency to follow some basic rules of modern living in urban ethnic mapping; it was, however, equally prevalent in the pre-modern beginnings of city dwelling. Sociologist Lyn H. Lofland accurately described the phenomenon when she wrote, ‘to paraphrase the old adage, to segregate is human, to integrate, divine’.10 Examining urban spatial construction over time and place, Lofland identified the practice of lodging foreigners and immigrants in separate quarters in cities as historically and geographically diverse as tenth-century Constantinople, seventeenth-century Canton China, and early modern London. Eckert has argued that the physical separation between the living quarters of various ethnic groups was widespread in pre-colonial African cities.11 Even in Cameroon, the Germans were not the first to introduce this practice. In pre-colonial Douala, as in most pre-colonial African cities, visiting Hausa merchants and slave populations were given parcels of land separate from the ethnic Duala population.12 The segregation of the immigrant population in Douala seemed the logical and natural course of action. In creating a separate space for non-Duala Africans in New Bell, the German administration was instrumental in laying the foundations of a community of strangers distinguishable from the neighbouring Duala. By dividing the African population of Douala into Duala and non-Duala, the administration inadvertently paved the way for previously unlikely alliances among an extraordinarily diverse population of strangers. Physical space in the quarter initially evolved along the lines of the colonial imagination of this amorphous non-Duala African collective, and the German planning of New Bell reflected the conceptualisation of the quarter as a space for native manual labourers and
23
24
The Strangers of New Bell
temporary bureaucratic staff. New Bell obtained a certain kind of permanence within the colonial psyche as the home of the African ‘other’, the contained space designated for the natural, pre-modern lifestyle of Africans.13 The policy ramifications for this slotting of New Bell were immediately apparent. This designated African space engendered an initially nonchalant attitude within the German administration toward the quarter. As opposed to the Duala quarter in the city centre, where Europeans strove to erase the African character of spatial organisation and replace it with modern living, New Bell was the area appropriated for Africans to exercise a limited autonomy in their off-hours from work in the colonial economy. Within the limits of colonial order and rule, New Bell could grow and develop outside the close scrutiny of the administration. The German plan to separate the African quarter from the European city centre by a one-kilometre Free Zone epitomised the colonial secession of this space to Africans. New Bell became the border where the civilising mission ceased to matter, and represented instead all that was unarticulated, uncharted and temporary. The German administration’s laissez-faire attitude toward New Bell did have its limits, and these were set to guarantee the vital role played by residents of the African quarter within the colonial economy. New Bell was designed, first and foremost, to provide an unlimited and unrestricted supply of labour for the colonial work force. Thus the German vision of New Bell wavered between permanence and temporality, with the focus on the granting of minimal provisions to ensure immediate colonial needs, without bothering to anticipate the implications of long-term settlement. Avoiding major plans for developing New Bell, the Germans merely made efforts to facilitate the easy access of the labour force to the centre of the colonial economy. Prior to the expropriation, the administration provided the new quarter with a limited infrastructure, including a few roads connecting the area to the Joss plateau and Akwa. The indigenous hospital was also transferred to the New Bell area. Some preliminary housing was made available, with reports from the period claiming that approximately 500 houses, 200 of these with kitchens, were built in the new quarter.14 New Bell was designed to accommodate the masses of Africans retiring to their own neighbourhoods after putting in a full day’s work within the colonial economy. The German-designed blueprint of New Bell contained additional indicators of the place of this quarter within the colonial consciousness. In addition to housing for the labour force and the minimal infrastructure, New Bell was home to the new prison in Douala.15 This positioning undoubtedly satisfied multiple needs of the German administration. The proximity of African criminals to the centre of the European community was threatening to both the aesthetic sensibilities and the critical sense of security among Europeans, making it inappropriate to situate the prison in the vicinity of the Joss plateau. The construction of the prison within the African quarter also served as a disciplinary reminder to all potential delinquents. Efficiency was also a consideration, with the location of the new prison aiding in the easy transport of criminals from their quarters to the jail when necessary. The police camp was also conveniently located in New Bell. African criminality was, of course, assumed in this spatial configuration. Perhaps most telling is the establishment of the leper colony in New Bell. The leper camp housed all those with incurable and contagious diseases, and was staffed by one native nurse.16
An overview
Africans arriving from ships abroad were often housed in this leper colony until it was verified that they were not carrying any diseases.17 The priority of the colonial regime was to insulate the European centre of the city from disease rather than to provide proper medical care for infected Africans. This could be seen in the 1923 report of the medical inspection, reporting that the gravely ill could not make the walk to the hospital from the leper colony and therefore could not get any proper medical treatment.18 New Bell was thus the waste basket for all the unsolvable dilemmas facing the German administration. The administration apparently believed that the removal of these native problems from the colonial field of vision would serve as an adequate substitute for time and resource-consuming solutions. While the German administration envisioned New Bell as an annex of workers to the European city, French urbanisation policies made this secondary status official. Particularly in the era following WW I, when Douala began on a path of rapid growth and expansion, the French administration formulated an agenda for urban planning, and the question of New Bell immediately arose. Making Douala a ‘dignified, model city in a privileged position, able to compete with other colonial cities elsewhere’ entailed dealing with – and avoiding – the burden of a renewal scheme in New Bell.19 Thus, in 1925, before implementing any urbanisation programme, the French administration under Governor Marchand simply re-drew the city borders, with New Bell excluded from the official municipality. Marchand explained: This quarter was given by the Germans to the Bell family in compensation for measures taken . . . We would certainly encounter difficulties if this quarter were included in Douala, forcing us to undertake urbanisation projects there, particularly the building of roads. We would be faced with no real owner, and discussions aimed at settling this matter would drag on endlessly, only complicating matters. It is best, from all points of view, to remove this collective from the city before incorporation.20
From this point onward, New Bell was no longer the responsibility of city planners. The zone of New Bell was allowed to develop in accordance with the colonial vision of a ‘typically indigenous’ space.21 A notable exception was the French administration’s commitment of 1928 to build one paved road traversing all of New Bell. This road was to connect up to a circular route of paved roads for the use of Europeans on leisure drives during the evenings and weekends. New Bell was only included in the scenic drive when the Europeans complained that the current route did not enable enthusiasts to return on a different path than that taken on the outward journey. This was an important criterion for promenade routes designed to provide changing scenery. In examining the problem, urban planners suggested developing a route originating in Deido, crossing through New Bell and Bassa, and returning through downtown Akwa. In adopting this plan, the administration agreed to maintain a road in New Bell, but this was the only mention of the strangers’ quarter in the otherwise extensive and detailed 1928 report on urbanisation in Douala.22 The overarching policy regarding New Bell was, therefore, the off-hours’ containment of the native workforce away from the European community. As will be seen in
25
26
The Strangers of New Bell
subsequent chapters, from the very moment of its creation, the ongoing threat to the urban order emanating from the individual residents of New Bell prevented the colonial regime from completely ignoring its internal processes. But while the actions of individuals were kept in check by an active police force and colonial legislative efforts, New Bell as a whole was not considered or regulated by colonial urban planners until late in the colonial era. At this point, it will be seen, it was far too late for them to make any lasting improvement to the quarter’s infrastructure. An examination of colonial maps from Douala in the French mandate provides a visual insight into colonial intentions and priorities with regard to New Bell. These maps reveal, in Harvey’s words, a ‘mixture of extraordinary insights and monstrous lies’.23 The political business of map-making in colonial Douala highlighted the incorporation and projection of power in the city. Particularly conspicuous in these mandate maps of Douala is the invisibility of New Bell. Once New Bell was removed from the municipality of Douala, a detailed, mapped awareness of that space became superfluous. Although it was described as densely populated in 1920, and the most populated African quarter by 1930, no map of the area was drawn until 1950.24 Detailed mapping simply ended with Akwa and Bali, with the space to the east left either blank or with the words ‘New Bell’ written in to designate the limits of the unknown and the insignificant in the colonial landscape.25 The general attitude was summarised in the Picanon Inspection Report of 1926: ‘the administration has no need for New Bell, located far enough away from the European quarter as to pose no threat to its growth’.26
New Bell in Duala consciousness For the Duala, New Bell was not as marginal or ambiguous as it appeared to be for the colonial regime. Within the Duala cognitive map of urban space, New Bell was bounded with a negative significance, representing a location for slaves and under classes. Protests and petitions against the expropriation reveal Duala views on New Bell as the suggested alternative home for expropriated Duala, and outline the perceived economic and cultural hazards associated with their relocation to the new quarter. Residing in New Bell was simply not a viable option for the Bell, or any other Duala chiefdom. As fishermen and traders, the distance between New Bell and the port threatened Duala livelihood. But even more ominous were the cultural consequences of being transferred to the plots allocated to the Duala by the Germans in New Bell. The Duala envisioned New Bell as kotto land, or slaves’ quarters, lying inland far from the coast. The traditional Duala separation between free-born and slave living quarters made it culturally impossible for the Duala to reside inland and in close proximity to bakom (slaves). Austen and Derrick have argued that the Duala also recognised the health risks of living in low-lying swampy areas, where malaria was a greater potential danger.27 Furthermore, the Duala built their elite position in colonial society on their physical and cultural proximity to European society and could therefore hardly accept living among other Africans. They claimed the proposed removal to New Bell would result in nothing short of ‘cultural ruin’.28
An overview
Considering the weighty economic and cultural barriers standing in the way of Duala approval of New Bell as their new home, it is not at all surprising that the majority of the expropriated Bell residents never relocated to the new quarter. Many avoided the choice by fleeing to their plantations in the Mungo Valley.29 Those who had initially accepted plots following the demolition of the Bell quarter eventually rejoined the majority of the chiefdom residing temporarily in Bali, in the Free Zone. Rudolph Duala Manga Bell, the king of the Bell, apparently refused the house the Germans had built for him in New Bell, and chose to take refuge in the ‘open air’ of the Bali plateau, close to Joss, instead.30 Some followers joined him immediately, and others slowly drifted into the area during WW I and in the early years of the French mandate. This movement was largely unauthorised, and although some individuals did request permission from the colonial regime, most occupied the area unofficially.31 The arrangement only became permanent with the long-awaited resolution of the expropriation crisis in 1931. At this time, the Bell agreed to accept registered plots in Bali in exchange for finally renouncing their claims over customary lands on the Joss plateau. Thus, New Bell, envisioned and subsequently rejected by the Duala as slave land unsuitable for free-born habitation, remained completely repugnant to the landlord class until the 1950s, when economic setbacks on the plantations inspired the Duala to reclaim ownership over New Bell as a prerequisite for demanding rent from immigrant residents.32 Although this manoeuvre, to be examined more fully in Chapter 6, indicated a shift in the Duala assessment of New Bell’s economic value as land, it did not represent any modification in the Duala estimation of the residents of New Bell or in the dynamics between the two populations. The Duala’s attempt to squeeze high rents from immigrant tenants and the tense divide separating the Duala and the non-Duala populations were not born out of this post-WW II conflict over New Bell land-ownership rights. The gulf of experience setting immigrants apart from the Duala elite emerged from the earliest arrival of non-Duala residents in the city, and the relationship of each side to New Bell was merely symptomatic of this divide. The divergent paths taken by the newcomers and the Duala in assigning meaning and power to New Bell as both an imagined and a material place are representative of the overall differences in experiences and positioning of the Duala and the non-Duala populations in the colonial city.
The strangers of New Bell Both colonial and Duala articulations of New Bell as a home appropriate for the African ‘other’, slaves, or under classes had an undeniable impact on the options and strategies adopted by residents of the quarter in occupying this space. However, the residents themselves ultimately played the most significant role in constructing colonial New Bell and the cultural and social discourses operating within its public spaces. As Harvey has argued, ‘places acquire much of their permanence as well as much of their distinctive character from the collective activities of people who dwell there, who shape the land through their activities, and who build distinctive institutions, forms of organisation,
27
28
The Strangers of New Bell
and social relations within, around or focused on a bounded domain’.33 In detailing the history of New Bell, an emphasis on process and fluctuation is vital because temporality itself became a cornerstone of New Bell solidarities. This description of the New Bell locality does not presume an integrated, exclusory community, and it is hence essential to recognise diversity rather than unity of experience.34 New Bell was a home to a porous association of immigrants, travellers and passers by and, as a result, the ethnic, religious and regional profile of the New Bell community was not constant over time. The only existing statistics concerning the ethnic breakdown of the quarter were gathered in the last few years of colonial rule, as in the following chart from the 1956 study of Roland Diziain and Andrée Cambon:35 Table 2.1: Ethnic breakdown of immigrant population Non-Cameroonian
Proportion of total immigrant population
British Cameroons
2.0%
Southern Nigeria
4.3%
Northern Nigeria
1.1%
Dahomey
0.8%
French West Africa
0.2%
French Equatorial Africa
0.3%
TOTAL
8.7%
Cameroonian (Region of origin) Bamileke
37.8%
Nyong/Sanaga
15.3%
Sanaga Maritime
14.2%
Mbam
10.0%
Bamoun
3.3%
Mungo
2.7%
Nkam
2.1%
Kribi
1.3%
Ntem
1.3%
Haut-Nyong
0.7%
Lom/Kadei
0.7%
Dja/Lobo
0.4%
Adamaoua
1.0%
Benoue/Diamare/Margui-Wandala TOTAL
0.6% 91.4%
While these figures are a useful indicator of the ethnic breakdown of New Bell in the final years of the colonial era, the percentages were not accurate for the earlier years of the French mandate when no one group dominated the immigrant population, as the Bamileke did in the last decade before independence.
An overview
From the start of the colonial era, individuals and groups originating from both the interior of Cameroon and from other colonies throughout West and Central Africa, arrived at Douala with manifold economic, political and social objectives. During the German period, the West Africans originated mostly from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Dahomey and Togo. With the start of the French mandate, African bureaucrats and merchants began arriving from Senegal and Guinea. Immigrants from within Cameroon represented more than 200 ethnic groups, but there were particularly large concentrations of Beti, Bassa, Bamileke and Hausa, the relative population of each varying over time. Most came voluntarily, as employees of large commerce houses or the colonial regime, but there were also newcomers brought to the city by the colonial regime as prisoners, soldiers, or forced labour. Hausa traders and artisans began arriving in significant numbers during the German period, using Douala as their base for long-distance caravan commerce throughout Cameroon.36 Porters carrying goods from the harbour to Yaounde also continually arrived in Douala. During the German period, these newcomers lived in the Duala quarter until the creation of the strangers’ quarter in New Bell. Non-Duala Africans, employed in office jobs either for private firms or for the German administration, usually lived as tenants in houses or rooms rented from the Duala. Others, working as manual labourers at the port or as porters, were housed in large hangars built by the administration near the harbour.37 Non-Duala sailors, soldiers and police were also provided housing on the Joss plateau.38 Only the Hausa managed to escape both the Duala landlords and colonial barracks by establishing a small, independent encampment for Hausa traders and their caravans. This encampment was originally located on the Joss plateau, but later moved to the area which became New Bell.39 It is highly probable that the Germans selected New Bell as the strangers’ quarter because of the Hausa settlement there. The port of Douala was a constant source of incoming and outgoing traffic, with people staying for varying lengths of time. It was not unusual for a stopover in the city to become a long-term stay for those who found work opportunities. New Bell was home to many of these incidental newcomers. One striking example of this trend was the repatriation of thousands of Africans taken to Fernando Po island off the coast of Cameroon by the Germans during WW I.40 At the moment of surrender to the Allied Forces, German forces retreated to Fernando Po with more than 16 000 Africans. Some of these were natives of Cameroon; others originated from various locations in West Africa. According to French reports from the period, the group was partially composed of 6 000 native soldiers accompanied by their wives and children, equalling 12 000 out of a total population of 16 000 seeking repatriation. The remaining 4 000 were 40 chiefs from Yaounde and the surrounding regions, and their followers. The most powerful chief among them was the well-known Charles Atangana, a faithful servant of the German administration, who later served the French. Following the war, the entire group requested permission to repatriate from the French Consulate in Fernando Po. While the French agreed to their return, the repatriation of these soldiers, chiefs and their followers was no simple endeavour. Considering the lack of resources and understaffing plaguing the French administration in the years immediately following the war, it was extremely difficult to
29
30
The Strangers of New Bell
direct the 3 000 individuals who landed daily during the repatriation. Many stayed in Douala for months until they were sent on to their villages of origin. Some of the soldiers originating from the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal were incorporated into the city’s police force, and others joined the regional guard. These soldiers and their families were housed in the Tirailleurs Camp located in New Bell, established in 1918 as home to more than 15 000 recruits from Chad stationed in Douala.41 Some newcomers came to Douala seeking refuge from dangerous or oppressive conditions in villages, or escaping forced labour, making New Bell a refuge for individuals evading local hierarchies of power. Women throughout the colony were most likely to flee to Douala in pursuit of freedom from their husbands, fathers or village chiefs. The colonial regime often received requests from abandoned husbands to locate their wives living in the quarter.42 Others came to the city to evade oppressive work conditions in rural areas, particularly forced labour used to build the Midlands railway to Yaounde in the early 1920s. According to LeVine, the brutal treatment of conscripted workers in colonial Cameroon led to a mass exodus of men from regions of high recruitment.43 While some left Cameroon for neighbouring colonies, others sought refuge in New Bell.44 New Bell also served as a retreat for those who were ousted from local hierarchies of power and were subsequently unable to find alternative placement in small village societies. This is evidenced by a deposed Bamileke chief from the village of Bangoulap residing in New Bell while awaiting reinstatement to his former position of influence.45 As a result of immigration, the population of Douala expanded dramatically throughout the colonial era, as seen in the population chart compiled by Eckert (Table 2.2).46 Eckert’s figures can be taken only as a starting point in evaluating the exact size of the immigrant population of Douala throughout the colonial era, particularly in the pre-WW II era. This is because many of the strangers evaded the control of the colonial regime, constituting what was referred to over and over again as the ‘floating population’.47 There is little doubt, however, that immigrants began arriving in Douala in large numbers during the German period, and already constituted a clear majority of the African population by 1930, if not earlier. Particularly for the early years of the French mandate, Eckert’s figures are low. By contrast, French sociologist René Gouellain, quoting an annual report from the circonscription of Douala, offers the following official figures for the population in 1919: ‘There are 15 600 Duala, with 7 500 in Akwa, 2 100 in Bell, 2 500 in Deido, and 3 500 in Bonaberi . . . There are almost 4 000 strangers in the city, 800 coming from British colonies, 200 from French colonies, and 3 000 from the interior of Cameroon’.48 These official figures seemed plausible to Gouellain, but the Meray Mission of Inspection of 1919 estimated the number of strangers at approximately 5 000.49 It can reasonably be assumed that both of these figures were inaccurate. First, the large numbers of tirailleurs were excluded from this tally. Second, in that same year of 1919, Commissioner Carde already estimated that the immigrant population would soon surpass that of the Duala.50 Moreover, as Derrick has shown, the colonial administration was fairly inept at tallying the civilian population of strangers in Douala. According to Derrick, while a 1929 census
An overview Table 2.2: Population chart Year
Total*
Duala
Other Africans
Europeans
1916
15 228
13 101
933
?
1920
23 900
?
1 900
467
1921
25 000
?
?
415
1924
22 772
16 669
4 396
ca. 600
1927
27 666
ca. 14 000
?
819
1929
30 881
?
12 800
801
1931
26 761
?
9 952
862
1933
27 186
15 839
8 870
?
1935
38 350
18 499
17 424
684
1937
41 812
21 022
18 181
939
1939
34 002
17 871
13 847
?
1941
36 232
ca. 16 000
14 630
1 020
1944
37 751
20 692
14 151
1 050
1947
59 699
22 927
32 507
1 971
1949
67 952
?
46 006
?
1954
108 150
?
83 600
ca. 6 000
1956/57
124 703
23 075
86 144
ca. 8 000
*
Discrepancies between columns are largely due to the fact that not all figures for each year come from the same source.
put the population of New Bell at 12 800, an anti-sleeping sickness campaign for the same year indicated that the population of the strangers’ quarter was over 20 000.51 An earlier report from a Mission of Inspection of Health Services helps to confirm that in 1923 the immigrant population was at least equal with that of Akwa. In that year, the Akwa clinic treated 8 208 Africans, while the New Bell clinic registered 7 203 consultations.52 With a large portion of the population of New Bell being ‘unofficial’, it is probable that many residents of the quarter would avoid seeking colonial medical care, making this number of consultations only partially indicative of the total immigrant population. What surfaces from these various tallies is that the immigrant population of Douala clearly constituted a significant force even in the early years of the French administration, and that this population perpetually dodged colonial control embodied in the census.
Urban work Newcomers to Douala earned their livelihood in highly diverse ways, with opportunities changing over time throughout the colonial era. The colonial regime had a strong hand in determining possibilities and conditions for employment in the city. From the beginning of the colonial era in Cameroon, the Germans, in search of manpower, employed various tactics in overcoming what they perceived as the ‘inherent laziness of the Negro’.53 With a relatively small Duala population and an expanding colonial
31
32
The Strangers of New Bell
economy, there was a constant labour shortage in Douala.54 While the Duala could fill some bureaucratic positions, the colonial regime and European enterprises struggled to attract and maintain an adequate labour supply for low-skilled jobs shunned by the Duala.55 Throughout colonial Africa, colonial governments adopted various strategies for moulding Africans into an available and compliant proletariat.56 Perhaps the most extreme strategy taken by the Germans in Cameroon was the purchase in 1891 of nearly 400 slave-mercenaries in Dahomey to serve as a special military force in Cameroon. These mercenaries, forced to work in order to buy back their freedom, suffered brutal treatment at the hands of German officials.57 Although the Germans used forced labour in Cameroon, the usual tactics employed by both the German and French administrations to develop and groom an efficient labour force were more tempered. The initial impetus leading to the creation of New Bell was the German desire to entice African workers to establish homes in Douala. The French also suffered from a labour shortage in Douala, particularly following the departure of many workers from the city during WW I hostilities. As the 1920 annual report for Douala stated: The local population cannot meet the needs for manpower at the port, commerce houses, industrial businesses, public works, plantations, agriculture, and palm oil production. The crisis which was already grave in 1919 is only worse now. The solution for labour recruitment can be found by bringing populations from the interior into the circonscription of Douala. An individual who comes alone, living in barracks and eating communal foods will not adapt to life in Douala and will not stay. It is necessary for the worker to find his traditional milieu, where he has his wife and children, his house and fields. The Germans had a similar plan and budgeted in 1915 for the creation of Workers’ Villages.58
Thus, for both the German and the French administrations, New Bell was envisaged as a transplanted ‘African village’ on the outskirts of the colonial city, allowing Africans to return to their traditional milieu at the end of the working day. Despite colonial recruitment efforts, the majority of Africans came to Douala throughout the colonial era by their own choosing, seeking new opportunities. The insatiable colonial need for labour in Douala allowed for some manoeuvring on the part of Africans. Many oral informants recalled an abundance of work opportunities in the colonial economy, with one stating, ‘There was work for anyone who wanted it’.59 Thus not everyone was coerced into working for Europeans, and many who did find work in the colonial economy were able to maintain a certain measure of autonomy and influence over the circumstances of their employment. In his study of dockworkers in colonial Mombasa, Cooper argued that Africans employed in colonial economies commonly exercised limited autonomy in shaping work cultures, and as a result, pre-colonial systems of labour, concepts of time, and employee-employer relations coexisted alongside and within capitalist industries. Cooper thus challenged hegemonic portrayals of colonial industries and governments, and stressed instead the weaknesses or limitations of the systems.60 In Douala, the dependence of the colonial regime upon African labour, and
An overview
the abundance of opportunities for work, allowed Africans to stop and start work at their own convenience. Particularly in the early years of the mandate, when French control over the workforce was severely limited, African labourers in Douala would habitually vacate their jobs and the city, returning to their villages of origin during harvest seasons. Confronted with their vulnerability, French employers and government officials could only complain about the need for a reliable workforce.61 The inability of both the German and the French administrations to satisfy all their labour needs through free labour compelled them to use prisoners for various public-works projects in the city. In the German period, for example, much of the labour used to clear New Bell and prepare for the expropriation was that of prisoners.62 The labour shortage was particularly acute during WW I, when many non-Duala Africans fled Douala during hostilities between the German and the Allied Forces. After the Allied occupation, the early French administration continued to rely almost exclusively on the manpower of prisoners. This arrangement was problematic for a colonial regime seeking to mould the local population into a permanent workforce. As Chef Mathieu, the chief administrator of the circonscription of Douala, instructed in 1918, prison labour should only be used as a last resort in order to provide ‘an honourable means of existence . . . to vagabonds and looters’.63 While there were clearly some Africans available for work in the city, the administration was not always able to harness this manpower for its own needs. A few studies, conducted during the mandate, provide insight into the kind of work immigrants performed as salaried labourers in the official economy. In a study of labour in Douala in 1947, Guilbot interviewed 3 583 men between the ages of 16 and 50, and provided a breakdown of the skilled labour force according to profession and ethnicity (Table 2.3).64 Table 2.3: Breakdown of the skilled labour force Total no. Group of workers Abo 34 Baboute 36 Bafia 153 Bakoko 63 Bamileke 594 Banen 157 Bandem 50 Bassa 648 Bulu 39 Douala 303 Eton 224 Ewondo 373 Ewudi/Wouri 33 Malimba 39 Nyokon 43 Pongo 49
Carpenter 7 21 7 24 8 95
Metalworker 8 5 17 27 33 4
57 37 64 8 5
129 10 160 40 131 18 25
12
27
Electrician 3
Mason
Painter
3 10 7 8 85 16
43 4
18 10 44
40
Labourer 26 99 13 445 127 33 244 4 10 128 119
Other 3 2 6 16 61 18 9 52 17 42 9 15 7 6
3 10
33
34
The Strangers of New Bell
With regard to intellectual professions, Guilbot provided the following data: Table 2.4: Breakdown of the intellectual professions Total no. of workers
Secretary
Clerk
Abo
9
2
7
Bafia
5
Bakoko
7
Ethnic Group
Bamileke
21
Banem
6
Bandem
8
Batanga Bassa Bulu
1 1
Infirmier 4
6 19
2
1
5
6
1
5
30
1
19
10 17
8
20
1
2
Douala
126
12
108
6
Ewondo
26
8
18
Ewudi/Wouri
12
10
2
5
4
1
9
1
Ngumba Pongo
11
1
As for the employment of women, the earliest statistics are those gathered by Diziain and Cambon in their 1956 study, as shown in Table 2.5. Diziain and Cambon realised there were serious inaccuracies in these statistics, particularly with regard to the number of reported prostitutes in New Bell. As they explained, ‘We will leave streetwalkers aside, because many more identified themselves as such than are listed here, but we were surprised to not find a trace of them when sorting the results out; some prudish employee must have systematically merged them, during card encoding, with the mass of women without occupation’.65 As will be seen in subsequent chapters, the women of New Bell remained an uncharted field of knowledge for colonial officials and researchers until the end of the colonial era. Thus, the studies of Guilbot and Dizian and Cambon provide some preliminary insights into the work of people engaged in officially recognised employment, but most immigrants did not participate in this type of work. The difficulty in securing immigrant labour for colonial and European enterprises was largely explained by the ever-present alternatives for work in the city throughout the colonial era. Many of the immigrants secured their livelihood in various types of employment springing up in the expanding economy of New Bell, where a particularly vibrant and independent economic sector provided numerous opportunities for newcomers looking for work.66 Male immigrants came to the city to work as artisans, tailors, merchants, or transport workers serving an African clientele. Women immigrants worked almost exclusively within the local economy of New Bell as alcohol manufacturers, petty-commerce traders or prostitutes. Population growth only led to an expansion of the local economy and New Bell-based employment opportunities. The French administration’s frustration with this independent economy
An overview Table 2.5: Distribution of working women according to occupation Commercial
Number
Bank
1
Shop
1
Bar
5
Sub-total
7
Proportion
1.9%
Administration Teacher
2
Nurse
6
Social worker Sub-total
4 12
3.3%
160
44.0%
14
4.0%
174
48.0%
Food “vendors”
77
21.2%
Drink “vendors”
35
9.6%
Crafts Dressmaker or similar Embroiderer Sub-total Small commerce
Shopkeepers, vendors of manufactured products
45
12.4%
157
43.2%
Farmer
8
2.2%
Laundress
1
0.3%
Streetwalker
4
1.1%
Sub-total Various
Sub-total TOTAL
13
3.6%
363
100%
could be seen in the 1929 annual report from Douala: ‘The need for manpower is practically limitless. All those willing can find work, unemployment is unknown. Certain professions, serving an indigenous clientele, have grown beyond normal proportions for a city like Douala, indicating an evolution of superfluous needs: photographers, tailors, jewellers, shoe-makers, bakers, hatters, transport workers, and various retailers such as grocers, haberdashers, hosiery shops, and hardware stores’.67 Based on New Bell, there is no concrete information available on the exact nature and scope of the labour force operating in this unofficial economy throughout the colonial era, as the colonial regime had little success or interest in researching it. But the limited autonomy enjoyed by residents of New Bell in choosing employment outside the colonial economy represented an ongoing affront to an administration attempting to capture this labour supply for its own purposes.
35
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The Strangers of New Bell
Place-making: The beginnings of New Bell For the non-Duala African population of the city, the creation of New Bell within the framework of expropriation came as a relief. Unlike the Duala, the immigrant population had nothing to lose and everything to gain from the plan. In fact, many eagerly seized the opportunity to relocate to the new quarter. Reports suggest that in addition to the Duala, housing was provided for 1 400 administrative and commerce-house workers.68 All others simply claimed open land and built their own huts. The German administration received many requests from non-Duala Africans seeking authorisation to live in New Bell immediately following the demolition of the Duala quarter in Joss.69 Colonial officials supervising the expropriation documented the great enthusiasm of the immigrant population regarding the new quarter. As one administrator commented, ‘One indigène already living in New Bell told me that everyone is very pleased. The nights are much fresher in the new quarter’.70 While it is easy to suspect the administration’s motives in portraying a content indigenous population in the new quarter following the controversial expropriation, there is abundant evidence to suggest that the non-Duala residents of the quarter were indeed gratified by their new surroundings. They clearly welcomed escaping the high rent of the Duala quarters. In addition to the abuses of landlords, the immigrant population had also suffered at the hands of corrupt Duala chiefs, who habitually abused their tax collecting privileges by extracting fraudulent sums from non-Duala tenants.71 Settlement in New Bell also freed the non-Duala Africans from the jurisdiction of the Duala chiefs who exploited the legal system and demanded high justice fees from newcomers.72 Alongside the financial and political grievances felt by newcomers toward their Duala hosts, there were perceived cultural differences between the immigrant population and the Duala. The Duala liked to think of themselves as aristocrats and nobles, and they openly referred to members of immigrant population as bakom.73 This common insult used by the Duala was infuriating to newcomers, sometimes to the point of inciting violence.74 The Duala also disparaged newcomers by dubbing them primitive, dirty, or odorous.75 To avoid friction, most newcomers preferred simply to maintain space from their Duala neighbours; as one oral informant claimed, ‘it was not possible to live next to the Duala who called us slaves’.76 The residents of New Bell also sensed the cultural distance imposed between themselves and the Duala by Western education. The Duala were seen as culturally closer to colonisers, even as white. One long-term resident of New Bell explained, ‘marrying a Duala was like marrying a European’.77 Residents of New Bell acknowledged a superiority complex among the Duala, but did not internalise Duala disparagement. Instead, residents of New Bell counter-attacked by formulating their own negative images of the Duala. The Duala were admittedly unaccustomed to physical labour, and some interviewees acknowledged the need for non-Duala in the city since they were willing to take on the hard work.78 Immigrants consequently viewed the Duala as lazy and feeble, unable to shoulder the difficult physical labour performed by members of other groups. Stereotypes of the vain and weak Duala were perpetuated in jokes, such as the one in which a Duala man advises his immigrant adversary to hit him anywhere he pleases, but to take care not to tear his clothes.79 Once New Bell was established, relations between the Duala and the immigrants were limited, with many
An overview
residents of the strangers’ quarter claiming there was little contact between the two groups. As each quarter had its own market, and immigrants occupied jobs different from those of the Duala, there were scant opportunities for proximity. The public and private spaces occupied by the Duala and the immigrant populations remained, for most of the colonial era, distinct and separate. The immigrant discourse with regard to New Bell reflected a vision of the quarter as outside colonial space. Over and over again, oral informants referred to colonial New Bell as ‘the bush’.80 ‘The bush’ signified a purely African space, deeply local, un-owned, natural and outside the control of any dominant power. While reminiscent of something ordinary, the description of ‘the bush’ associated with New Bell was in reality an entirely new construction, merely invoking elements of the familiar as a foundation upon which to build a community strikingly dislocated from any prior frame of reference. By describing New Bell as ‘the bush’, residents could ground and interpret urban patterns of settlement as an extension of an intelligible, known locality. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson have argued that a ‘nostalgia for origins’ plaguing diasporic, migrant and refugee communities displaced through processes of globalisation has inspired associations of displaced communities as somehow extensions of a distant, familiar local world left behind.81 Thus, this construction of the New Bell locality as ‘the bush’ – somehow part of the natural landscape, or untainted pre-colonial space – should be viewed as a move typical of immigrant communities in pursuit of a familiar frame of reference for their new surroundings. This was as an important step in the process of place-making in New Bell, allowing residents to imagine their new home as familiar and uncolonised, yet characterised by tempered anarchy and marginalised within the European field of vision. This categorisation of New Bell space was at the root of subsequent perceptions of the New Bell community and in the construction of public spaces within the quarter. Just as the colonial association of New Bell as a ‘native’ quarter enabled ongoing neglect of the space, and the Duala labelling of the space as a slaves’ quarter, perpetuated views of New Bell as uninhabitable for the Duala elite, the immigrant reiterations of this space as African, natural and uncontrolled paved the way for subsequent immigrant empowerment and the exercise of autonomy in New Bell. The consequence of this three-pronged incursion – immigrant, colonial and Duala – on the discursive construction of New Bell, was the exclusion of the strangers’ quarter from the colonial city, and as a result, from those spaces of Douala remade in the modernist spirit. The material outcome of this exclusion could be seen in the organisation of physical space in the quarter, specifically with regard to land ownership and exploitation. Unlike the Duala and European quarters, the land in New Bell was never privately owned. In the early colonial era, when land was readily available, many residents simply claimed plots of open land and built their huts. As new communities began to grow, and hierarchies of power sprang up within them, colonial appointed chiefs of New Bell would claim control over specific areas of unclaimed land. Newcomers would then be required to obtain permission from these chiefs to construct their huts. This control of chiefs was incomplete at best, particularly in the years preceding WW II, when land was readily available. But in all cases, plots of land were not sold – they were simply claimed or given. Most informants claimed
37
38
The Strangers of New Bell
that obtaining land was not a problem, and after saving enough money to afford materials for construction, immigrants had little trouble securing a plot upon which to build.82 Land slowly became scarcer as the population grew, but even in 1956 approximately half of the 61 890 residents of New Bell lived in houses they had constructed themselves.83 As land was scarce, newcomers bought pre-constructed huts or houses from residents leaving the city. But even in these cases, only ownership of the residence would be transferred, never the land. When asked how residents negotiated potential conflicts over land, or who controlled the living arrangements or the infrastructure, many informants explained the lack of control by simply claiming, ‘New Bell was the bush’.84 This, they explained, was the reason for the abundance of space, the absence of private ownership, and the lack of a dominant authority controlling landholding. A map of the Quartier Nkongmondo of New Bell from 1957 reveals the outcome of decades of uncontrolled settlement (see Figure 2.2).85
Figure 2.2: Aerial view of Quartier Nkongmondo
Comparing this aerial representation of New Bell to a map of Quartier Joss from the same year, a stark contrast emerges between New Bell and the colonial centre of Douala (see Figure 2.3).86
An overview
Figure 2.3: Aerial view of Quartier Joss
With its broad avenues, tree-lined streets, and impressive edifices built from lasting materials to house administrative offices, the architecture and layout of Joss were constructed in the image of the modern city. In Douala, as in many colonial cities, architecture and construction were fundamental to the expansion and entrenchment of European colonialism, signifying the venture of Western powers to transform native lands physically and culturally.87 The map of Joss reveals the extensive efforts made to implant Western notions governing the organisation of public spaces into an African colonial city. In contrast, New Bell shows no traces of colonial bulldozers. Without private property, the realisation of a modernist version of geographic order could never be achieved. In any case, very few efforts were made to that effect. Ignored by colonial planners until the 1950s, New Bell grew and developed in the shadow of urban development, and the landscape resonated with diffused authority and short-term planning. Physical monuments to the colonial presence such as broad boulevards, gridded streets, or large administrative structures were absent from the quarter. Residents walked or rode bicycles on narrow unpaved pathways, and there were few broad passageways in the quarter to accommodate motor vehicles.88 There was no running water or canalisation in New Bell, posing serious
39
40
The Strangers of New Bell
health risks, but these went unnoticed by the French administration until after WW II. At that time, when plans were contemplated to rectify the situation, an official responsible for monitoring hygiene services proclaimed, ‘The order of housing in New Bell is simply impossible, construction has been undertaken with no sense, how would you like to send an hygiene officer there?’89 Construction conformed to the boundaries set by the natural landscape, such as creeks and rivers, rather than transforming it. In contrast, the natural world of Joss was remade to suit the colonialist’s needs, and nature became a mere reminiscence in the form of carefully planted, orderly trees lining the walkways of parks and streets. Oblivious to modernist rules concerning the separation of public and private spaces, structures in New Bell served multiple purposes of housing and industry, as petty commerce and the production of goods such as alcohol took place within living quarters.90 Extended families, lodgers and long-term guests all shared cramped quarters in makeshift housing. Animal grazing and agriculture, outlawed within the European and the Duala quarters by the hygiene services, continued in New Bell throughout the colonial era.91 Along these lines, health regulations were enforced with far less zeal in New Bell. As hygiene policies served the dual purposes of protecting the health of the European population as well as satisfying colonial aesthetic sensibilities, it was unnecessary to apply them with the same rigor in New Bell, situated at a distance from the European population. Unlike the Duala quarter of the city, New Bell was not vigilantly patrolled by officers of the hygiene services. Some efforts were made in this direction by particularly enthusiastic local chiefs, but the majority of the quarter remained unmonitored.92 Overgrowth around houses went largely unchecked, and structures were built with whatever materials were available. By contrast, residents of Akwa, Joss and Deido were required to construct houses from durable materials, and to strictly limit overgrowth and standing water for fear of mosquitoes.93 The undeniably non-modern character of New Bell led Gouellain to conclude that immigrants had modelled New Bell housing in the image of rural societies, transplanting village life into the city.94 In his search for pre-colonial roots in the development of a colonial urban living space, Gouellain’s interpretation errs in essentialising African village life. A description of New Bell as an extension of ‘the village’ ignores both the vast ethnic diversity of New Bell residents and the configurations of power centred in Douala and shaping the evolution of public spaces in the strangers’ quarter. The homes, neighbourhoods and communities emerging in New Bell in the colonial era reflected the limitations inflicted by the colonial power, the materials and resources available to immigrants within the local environment and colonial economy, and the cultural sensibilities negotiated in a diverse and volatile social setting.
Chiefs and hierarchies of power in New Bell Hierarchies of power grew and strengthened along with the population of New Bell throughout the interwar period. But the political leadership operating in the strangers’ quarter was mostly a colonial invention of tradition, a handpicked selection of loyal servants. Faced with a highly diverse immigrant population weakly associated by the
An overview
common experience of migration, the newly established French administration claimed that there was no one clan or family currently in place in the immigrant community that could exercise any real authority over the entire immigrant population.95 The administration had little choice but to install hierarchies of political power where none had existed before. The administration appointed ‘chiefs’ in New Bell to represent and carry out colonial policies among the population of strangers. A native Chef Supérieur was installed to preside over New Bell in 1920, and ‘village’ chiefs appointed to represent each ethnic group. Later, the administration added another Chef Supérieur, with one to represent New Bell residents originating from outside Cameroon, and one to represent those of Cameroonian origins.96 The idea behind the establishment of a New Bell-based political leadership was to neutralise Duala hegemony over the non-Duala population, as Duala chiefs had presided over the immigrant population throughout the German period.97 The Meray Mission of Inspection of 1919 found that the growing population of immigrants from outside Cameroon, including Senegalese, Gabonese and Nigerians, as well as the growing number of immigrants from the north and Yaounde, could not be governed or administered by the Duala chiefs, as had been the practice under the Germans. According to the inspection report, this immigrant population would not recognise any authority but its own, and particularly not that of the Duala who treated the immigrants poorly.98 The report claimed that the appointment of a local leadership in New Bell represented an important step in establishing equal opportunities and rights for the entire population of the city. The chief of the Yaounde people in Douala, for example, was to be given the same prestige as the Duala chiefs if the immigrant population was to be emancipated from Duala influence. But while the appointment of a non-Duala leadership in New Bell signalled the desire to curb some of the Duala influence over the immigrant population, the French administration continued to nurture the Duala position of privilege within local political and economic hierarchies. The native Chef Supérieur in New Bell was to carry out administrative tasks, but did not have any influence over decision-making processes within the administration, and all positions of this nature were reserved for the Duala. Thus, immigrant representatives were not included in the Douala Council of Notables established by the French in 1925 to serve as a consultative body on issues of legislation and taxation, convening twice a year. Only Duala were deemed worthy of filling this role, and even when immigrant leaders were finally included in the council in 1933, there were six immigrant representatives compared to eight Duala, and the Duala continued to retain all of the appointive positions reserved for Africans on all other administrative bodies.99 Thus, the Duala enjoyed relative privileges within local hierarchies in the city, a situation that was only reversed by political reform of the post-WW II period, as will be shown in Chapter 6. As the population of New Bell grew, French administrative needs led to an increase in the number of chiefs of lower rank appointed to represent specific ethnic groups in New Bell. Thus, by 1941, the Chef Supérieur of the Cameroonian immigrant population, Marcous Etemé, presided over 20 chiefs of lower rank, and Joseph Paraiso, the Dahomean Chef Supérieur of the non-Cameroonian immigrant population, held power over
41
42
The Strangers of New Bell
12 lower chiefs.100 The French administration justified its decision to have immigrants headed by one of their own in democratic terms, arguing that each group should have its own representative.101 In reality, the appointment of local chiefs to preside over the strangers’ quarter aggravated social and political inequalities and abuses of power, ultimately leading to conflict. The first native chiefs of New Bell were drawn from among compliant subjects eager to seize opportunities arising from close association with the administration. Their main tasks were to collect taxes, to supply labour to the administration when needed, and to maintain order in the quarter. The administration sought out those who demonstrated self-discipline and strong loyalty.102 With chiefs earning a percentage of taxes collected, this was a highly sought-after position and individuals often went to great lengths to win these appointments. In the later years of the colonial era those with aspirations to become chiefs could offer financial payment in exchange for their appointment.103 Thus, in 1953, an individual named Paul Yana filed a complaint with the administration, claiming that in 1949 he had paid the Chef Supérieur of New Bell, Joseph Mongo, 15 000 francs, six bottles of Tuborg beer, three bottles of rum, one bottle of wine, and one sheep, in exchange for a promised chiefery, but that Mongo had not made the appointment.104 The Chef Supérieur and the lower chiefs enjoyed varying degrees of popularity in their constituencies and exercised limited influence over political, economic and cultural processes in the quarter. The population of New Bell reluctantly recognised the power of local chiefs as representatives of the French administration, but these colonial-appointed rulers were generally not regarded as legitimate representatives or leaders of the immigrant population.105 Although some chiefs who represented the Hausa and Bamoun populations claimed to have connections with chiefs in their villages of origin, thus gaining some relative legitimacy in the eyes of their New Bell constituents,106 in most cases this colonial rank embodied the weakened and ineffective structures of power that attempted to steer events in New Bell throughout the colonial era. The primary responsibility of the colonial-appointed chiefs in New Bell was the collection of poll tax.107 The inefficiencies of the system allowed for both exploitation of the tax-paying population and payment evasion. In the early years of French administration, chiefs collected taxes from their constituents and brought these sums to the Treasury. The Treasury received the collected sums and gave the chiefs separate receipts for each as proof of payment. Often, long periods lapsed between the payment of the tax and the distribution of receipts, leading to injustices and abuse of the system. Some taxpayers left the district before the arrival of the receipts, and chiefs would pass on the receipt to other individuals who had not paid. There were also corrupt chiefs who were known to deny taxpayers their receipts, even when they had paid the tax.108 Furthermore, those enjoying proximity to the chief could ask for special arrangements in paying taxes to allow for late payment or no payment at all.109 But, as chiefs received five to ten percent of all sums collected, there was great incentive to collect the highest sums possible, and many chiefs used excessive force in extracting payment from the local population. The extreme zeal shown by some chiefs in the process of tax collection sparked the concern of the administration, requiring local officers to monitor and curb these excesses.110 Corruption was widespread, as can be seen
An overview
in the following excerpt from a 1953 report summarising current judicial proceedings involving the lower chiefs of New Bell:111 v Ambani Dominiquer: chief of the Akonolinga quarter. Condemned last August to 10 months in prison for the possession of stolen goods. v Nyambi Étienne: chief of the Bangangte quarter. Owes more than 400 000 francs from the collection of head taxes in 1951 and 1952. Under the threat of sanctions, he took flight to the British Cameroons, and never returned. It is suspected that he is located in the Belgian Congo. v Banakena Garba: chief of the Bafia quarter. Guilty of embezzlement and breach of trust. His dismissal has taken effect and a replacement is being sought. v Kombo Pierre: chief of Lom and Kadei quarter; Abega Joseph: interim chief of Yaounde quarter; Biwole Clement: chief of the Makia quarter. All [three are] guilty of embezzlement, but this case is less clear-cut than that of Banakena Garba. All currently in custody. The corruption of chiefs and their alliance with the French administration often fostered resentment among the population of New Bell. As one informant claimed, relations between immigrants and the chief were cold, as the chief ’s only function was to collect taxes and arrest those who broke the law.112 Some of the local chiefs of New Bell even built cells in their houses to deal with offenders.113 The over-zealous attempts of chiefs to exert their authority stirred animosity among constituents and the administration was concerned that the authority and influence of local chiefs in New Bell had been greatly compromised as a result.114 Strained relations could evolve into public protest, as could be seen among the ‘Yaounde’ of New Bell in 1924. Etemé, the Chief of the Yaounde, was known by the local population as Nyanga Boy. ‘Nyanga’ is an Ewondo term describing people who take great care of their personal appearance by dressing well and looking sharp, exhibiting no small amount of vanity.115 Etemé’s privileged position no doubt bolstered his inflated self-image, earning him access to resources used to flaunt his power. Nyanga Boy infuriated his constituents by the zeal he displayed in executing administrative orders, such as collecting taxes, cutting down overgrowth between houses and attempting to register prostitutes for periodic medical examinations. The protest also focused on the refusal of his constituents to recognise Nyanga Boy’s authority, since he was an Eton, while the majority of those labelled ‘Yaounde’ were Ewondo. On 20 July 1924, more than 500 Ewondo men and women surrounded the chief ’s house in protest, claiming they would no longer pay taxes. A colonial administrator, Bouquet, succeeded in dispersing the crowd and preventing a further escalation of the situation. Twelve of the protesters were arrested, and the leaders received stiff punishments of one-year imprisonment, fines of up to 500 francs, and a ten-year exile (interdiction de séjour) from the circonscription of Douala.116 This harsh response on the part of the administration in support of Etemé probably served to deter future public protests against him and other chiefs in New Bell. The event is significant for revealing the unpopularity of these
43
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The Strangers of New Bell
colonial appointed chiefs among the local population, and the reluctance to recognise their authority as legitimate. Particularly noteworthy were grievances against the colonial imposition of ethnic identities and alliances resulting from the creation of local chiefs. Colonial policies aimed to create a cadre of non-Duala native administrators to represent New Bell required ethnic classification of the immigrant population. As seen in the 1924 protest against Etemé described above, the assumption of ethnic allegiances between various groups could lead to resentment and conflict. This was evident in a 1953 incident, when members of the Yambassa tribe filed a complaint against their colonial appointed chief, Yonas Bossoken, claiming that he was not a member of the Yambassa tribe, but a member of the Lemandé, and had won his election by buying votes for 5 000 francs. They claimed that in their home region a Lemandé would never be made a leader over the Yambassa, and vice versa. ‘Imagine a rich British citizen being elected the President of the French Republic without being a French citizen.’117 They claimed that the two groups did not speak the same language, and that though Bossoken did not even understand the Yambassa language, he had nonetheless been providing false intelligence reports to the administration about the Yambassa constituents. They also complained that he had embezzled funds from the Yambassa and distributed money and tax receipts to members of his own group. Thus, the imposition of local leadership within the community of New Bell often aggravated tensions and inequalities between groups, and could initiate ethnic-based conflicts. But the colonial invention of local chiefs was just one of the multiple and ongoing political, social and economic processes leading to the invention and reinvention of ethnic identities in colonial New Bell. As will be seen, the process of ethnic identity-making in the quarter was complex and contested, consequently playing an ambiguous role in the history of New Bell.
Ethnic identity-making in New Bell Histories of immigration across time and place commonly focus on ethnicity as a central determinant of immigrant experiences. Ethnicity is the rubric most often invoked in describing the circumstances, motivations and outcomes of population movement, following the familiar mould of the ‘so-and-so people immigrated to . . .’ Shared experiences distinguish a people from other groups, either newly arrived or already located in the specified location. The German and the French administrations in Cameroon identified ethnicity as an important marker of the immigrant population, recording how many Togolese, Bassa, Hausa, or other ethnic groups settled in New Bell. French sociologists studying the quarter in the post-WW II period posited ethnic identity as the most significant factor determining immigrant lifestyle and employment choices. Guilbot, for example, claimed that the purpose of his study was to identify the ‘natural’ inclination of each ethnic group in the professional sphere and to use this information to improve labour recruitment strategies.118 Thus, most of the information collected in the quarter throughout the colonial era is imbedded with a pervasive bias concerning the role of ethnicity in shaping immigrant experiences. Immigrants themselves clearly
An overview
attached importance to ethnic distinctions, with many neighbourhoods in New Bell named for a specific group, such as the Quartier Congo or Fonken Ewondo, named for Congolese or Ewondo residents. Among newcomers to New Bell, ethnicity must be regarded as a time and placespecific construct rather than as an unproblematic signifier of identity. The instability and fluidity of ethnicity in New Bell throughout the colonial era renders the historical significance of the concept particularly difficult to evaluate. The colonial era witnessed the continual realignment of solidarities, as well as the concurrent association of individuals with seemingly incompatible ethnic identities. While it is clear that some form of ethnic identification was of paramount importance to most immigrants at some point in their lives in New Bell, the slipperiness of these identities makes it very difficult to attribute ethnicity with any long-term impact on the history of the quarter. Any examination of the historical link between ethnicity and community building in New Bell must remain short term in focus, and emphasise diversity of experience between individuals and groups. When examining New Bell it is impossible to ignore the role of ethnic affiliations, in all their incarnations, in individual lives and in the long-term process of community building. Most newcomers to Douala relied on kinship or village ties for assistance in acclimating to life in the city. Many came with brothers, sisters or cousins, and joined an aunt, uncle, or fellow villager already residing in the quarter. Newcomers lived with their relatives until they had saved enough money to buy their own huts. This can be seen in Table 2.6 which shows the housing patterns among New Bell residents, compiled by Diziain and Cambon in 1956: Table 2.6: Housing patterns among New Bell residents Men
Single women
Proprietors
47.8%
Paying tenants
13.8%
6.0%
Lodgers
38.4%
36.0%
58.0%
As can be seen, relatively few immigrants rented their homes, and Diziain and Cambon found that New Bell residents were quick to make a distinction between those who paid rent and those who did not, as the report explained: ‘The questionnaire contained only two questions: “Do you own your own cabin?” and “Are you a tenant?” The answer to the second one was always without any ambiguity: “Not a paying tenant, a lodger” or “Yes, a paying tenant, not a lodger”’.119 By and large, newcomers enjoyed the hospitality of their hosts, and their reception and long-term stays followed local customs associated with hospitality and reciprocity among kinsmen. As oral informants explained over and over, one did not take rent from a brother.120 Dizian and Cambon described the difference between lodgers and paying tenants as follows: The lodger is never unrelated to the owner of the cabin in which he lives; he is at least a friend and, with no exception, a man of the same ethnical group. He can use the same entrance and
45
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The Strangers of New Bell
generally share the hosting family’s meals. Though he may live under the same roof as the owner, a paying tenant occupies a room with an independent entrance. It is often an ‘income’ cabin that is entirely rented out, after having been divided into several apartments.121
Huts were even passed on to relatives gratuitously, and only sold to members of other tribes.122 In this respect, the connections an individual had with kinsmen played a central role in his or her arrival and integration into city life. Beyond housing, newcomers received instruction and orientation from relatives, helping them to adapt to an urban lifestyle. Once newcomers earned enough money to establish their own homes, they became hosts to other kinsmen. Thus, established customs of hospitality and reciprocity among members of the same extended family or village played an important role in community building among the immigrant population of New Bell. Ethnic ties also played a role in the historical relationship between immigrants and work. The sustenance of individuals, and their continued ability to survive and prosper in the city, was therefore linked to kinship relations. The connections a newcomer had with relatives often facilitated his or her finding employment in the city. As a result of the central role played by ethnicity in determining opportunities for work, some occupations were disproportionately represented by one particular ethnic group, such as the preponderance of Bulu among the general population of prostitutes, or the domination of the Bamileke among petty commerçants known as ‘market-boys’, or Bayam-Sellem (pidgin for ‘buy them, sell them’).123 The link between ethnic affiliations and the economic sustenance of communities in New Bell can be seen in the history of well-documented credit associations and popular banks known as tchua instituted among the Bamileke. Through these financial cooperatives, members of the same village groups or age sets were able to obtain capital for investment in business ventures. The celebrated Bamileke ‘dynamism’ and economic success throughout colonial and postcolonial Cameroon and in Douala in particular, can be attributed in part to these ethnic-based associations, confirming the significance of kinship ties in the development of economic and social communities.124 Colonial stereotypes of certain ethnic groups and their professional talents also contributed to the dominance of some groups within certain professions. Thus the Beti, whom the Germans perceived as disciplined, loyal and hard-working, were highly recruited for the armed forces and police work. This trend continued throughout the French mandate, and the Beti maintained strong representation in the police force of Douala until independence.125 Colonial preferences for particular ethnic groups to occupy specific professions were highly influential in shaping solidarities in New Bell, and particularly in forging a pan-African community among the immigrant population. First the Germans and later the French recruited West Africans originating from outside Cameroon to fill positions deemed particularly suited to them. An early example of this practice can be found in the first years of the German administration, when it purchased slaves in Dahomey to work in Cameroon as mercenaries. This group of soldiers was used to pacify the local population, a task the Germans felt would be better carried out by non-Cameroonians.126 The British and French Allied Forces landed in Cameroon with
An overview
3 600 porters from Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria. They believed this labour force would compensate for the local population of Cameroon, whom they perceived as weaker and unable to handle intensive carrier work.127 There was also a demand for Western-educated Africans originating from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Lagos and Togo to work in administrative capacities for the colonial regime and commerce houses. The French encouraged Senegalese and Guineans to settle in Cameroon from the start of the mandate, when few Cameroonians spoke French and there was a great need for staffing in numerous public-works positions.128 Once in Cameroon, these West-African immigrants were classified by the colonial administration according to their places of origin, with population censuses tallying the number of Togolese, Lagosians and Dahomeans, to name a few. Each group was appointed a local chief for administrative purposes.129 These groups consequently bonded together and represented themselves as a contained community in addressing the administration. In one example, the ‘Senegalese’ and ‘Dahomeans’ of New Bell composed post-WW I letters of welcome to the French administration as unified communities.130 Colonial policy, and local adaptations to it, therefore played an important role in the association of individuals with specific ethnic sub-groupings in the strangers’ quarter – groupings which played an important role in determining the experiences of individual immigrants in New Bell.
Beyond ethnicity, approaching place While recognising the central role played by ethnic identities in community building in New Bell, it is also essential to stress the weakness and fluidity of these bonds. The conflict between Nyanga Boy and his Ewondo constituents offers one clear example of the temporality of ethnic affiliations over time. The dissatisfaction of the Ewondo with their Eton chief signified a recognised distinction between the Ewondo and Eton identities, later blurred by the unification of these two groups under the ‘Beti’ ethnic grouping.131 As ethnicity became an increasingly important tool in political organisation throughout the colonial era, groups realigned and enlarged their ethnic affiliations to gain political clout and influence.132 This process will be examined more fully in Chapter 6, but it is mentioned here to emphasise the temporal, fleeting nature of ethnic identification within the history of the immigrant population of New Bell throughout the colonial era. In light of the ephemeral nature of ethnic ties, it is essential to look beyond ethnicity in uncovering the building blocks of community in New Bell. The construction of New Bell as a place, and the participation of individuals in that space, was not determined by ethnic association alone. There were, in fact, multiple markers attached autonomously or exogenously to individuals and groups, ultimately determining rights, associations and ranks among participants in public life. This could be seen in the strong religious affiliations binding Muslims originating from inside and outside Cameroon, and in the associations uniting Catholic converts from many different ethnic backgrounds within the colony.133 As immigrants settled in Douala for long-term stays, ethnic affiliations
47
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The Strangers of New Bell
shifted as a result of increasing embeddedness in local culture. For example, although intermarriage between groups was not highly common, it blurred the boundaries of identities, allowing individuals and their children membership in multiple ethnicities. Male immigrants who married Duala women would be given parcels of land in Duala quarters, while Duala men who married immigrant women could live in New Bell.134 In the case of the intermarriage between Marie, the daughter of the well-known Duala businessman David Mandessi Bell, and Senegalese Mamadou Diop, the forging of bonds was based on class lines rather than religious or ethnic lines.135 The ties between the Western-educated elite from outside Cameroon were also reflective of class-based solidarities and alliances, and colonial reports and censuses afforded particular attention to this group as an economic elite.136 Distinctions of race were equally prominent in determining social and political boundaries, evidenced by the growing population of métis in Douala, and the turmoil sparked by these half-breeds among colonial officials obsessed with maintaining social and cultural distance between whites and blacks.137 Of course, gender also played a vital role in determining access to resources and positions of power in the city throughout the colonial era. Thus, religious, gendered and class-based distinctions, to name a few, played prominent roles equal to that of ethnicity in building solidarities and communal boundaries in New Bell. But public space was not exclusively regulated by solidarities of identity based on ethnicity, religion, class, or gender. While sub-identities proliferated and impacted place making in New Bell, there were also factors and forces converging to create permanence in the strangers’ quarter. This bounded space garnered power over time and ultimately exerted that power in the form of a New Bellian identity, adopted by and implanted on those who participated in its public space. Identification as a New Bell resident was not the same as an ethnic affiliation exhibiting increasingly hardened boundaries. The conceptualisation of identity offered here adopts James Clifford’s description of ‘a nexus of relations and transactions’.138 New Bellian identities were inseparable from the location of New Bell, and can be understood as ‘tactical affiliations’ to answer immigrant needs at specific conjunctures.139 Rather than seek a long-term basis for unity, it is necessary to understand how New Bell residents adopted strategies to bridge differences and articulate cooperation from multiple, distinct vantage points. The colonial regime was largely responsible for establishing the circumstances and opportunities characterising the crystallisation of immigrant alliances, as officials preoccupied with and plagued by Duala agitations made the simple distinction between the Duala and the immigrant population among the Africans of Douala. The invention of this dichotomy dissuaded deep intervention into internal processes of New Bell, and perhaps the discovery of difference within this community.140 Thus, the culture emerging in New Bell public spaces reflected a junction between colonial policies and local negotiations. An examination of spoken language in the public spaces of New Bell in the interwar years demonstrates this dynamic. In New Bell the heterogeneous community of strangers spoke pidgin English as a means of verbal communication within the quarter. Pidgin made its first appearance in Douala in the seventeenth century and had become firmly
An overview
established in the coastal region by the nineteenth century.141 As prominent traders, the Duala were the first Africans in the coastal region to use pidgin for international business transactions and political action, and this established the language as the primary mode of communication with foreigners in the city. The Germans did not easily accept the prevalence of a language bearing anglophone influence, and as the colonial presence was extended, all contact with the indigenous population was conducted exclusively in German. Furthermore, it was eventually required that all instruction in schools be conducted in German. This policy was designed to protect the German administration’s national interests.142 The French were equally sensitive to the symbolism embedded in spoken language, and for ‘patriotic, utilitarian, and humanitarian reasons’, the administration set to work immediately to instruct Africans in French, and the use of French in schools was mandated soon after the establishment of the French mandate.143 Despite colonial efforts, European languages were not adopted in New Bell. French was not widely spoken among immigrants, and relatively few had obtained any literacy in the language, as can be seen in Table 2.7 relating to immigrants in the quarter in 1956:144 Table 2.7: Knowledge of French reading and writing among adults Knowledge of French reading and writing among adult men (proportions) Age group Do not know at all Know a little
16–19
20–24
25–29
30–34
35–39
40–49
+50
35.0%
38.5%
43.5%
56.0%
65.5%
85.5%
92.5%
7.0%
10.4%
13.5%
11.9%
8.2%
5.7%
2.1%
Know, no diploma
44.5%
41.7%
33.9%
27.4%
22.1%
11.4%
3.3%
Know, have a diploma
13.5%
9.2%
9.0%
4.5%
4.1%
2.5%
2.1%
Knowledge of French reading and writing among adult women (proportions) Age group Do not know at all Know a little Know, no diploma Know, have a diploma
16–19
20–24
25–29
30–34
35–39
40–49
+50
81.6%
86.5%
93.4%
96.7%
95.0%
97.5%
100%
3.5%
4.8%
1.5%
1.5%
3.2%
–
–
13.5%
7.5%
4.6%
2.7%
1.8%
2.5%
–
1.3%
1.1%
0.5%
–
–
–
–
The absence of French as a spoken or literal language in the quarter marked the boundary separating the immigrant community from colonial authority and resources. The continued use of pidgin within the immigrant community symbolises a break from these authorities, particularly when considering colonial efforts to impose European languages, and the Duala mastery of German and French as a means of participating in colonial public spaces in the city centre. Unlike European languages, pidgin was not taught by colonial authorities or missionaries, and it therefore was not linked to or regulated by any power. Pidgin was not written, but only spoken, and this enhanced the flexibility and fluidity of the language. Knowledge of pidgin was learnt in the street, the centre
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The Strangers of New Bell
of public life in New Bell.145 This made it a perfect tool for the immigrant population. As one oral informant recalled, ‘I did not know a word of pidgin when I came to New Bell, but three months later, I could speak perfectly. It was a very easy language for communication’.146 Others recalled that while French was difficult to learn, and only taught in colonial schools, anyone could speak the ‘bad English’.147 The immigrant community viewed pidgin as a symbol of the distance separating them from the European presence in the city. One informant, who had been a resident of New Bell during the colonial era, explained ‘there was French spoken in the city, but pidgin was the form of communication for inferior people’.148 The presence of pidgin in the quarter demonstrates that immigrants employed creative, localised strategies for bridging differences in a highly diverse community of strangers, and this was an important step enabling the evolution of a multi-ethnic collective. The collective solidarity slowly emerging in the space of New Bell in the interwar era was even hinted at by one oral informant as an alternative form of nationhood when he remarked, ‘pidgin became a sort of national language during the colonial period’.149 Thus the process of alliance building in New Bell was an ongoing and contested dialogue between multiple relations of power embedded and changing in the discursive and material context of New Bell. Subsequent chapters will undertake an historical examination of the immigrant community evolving in New Bell in the colonial era. While the power of location was highly evident in shaping historical processes, the boundaries of this community of strangers were not articulated in the same fashion as nationalist, religious, or ethnic affiliations. It is possible nonetheless to describe the nexus of this immigrant community by observing the pathways and directions of its internal processes. Thus the flow of money and commodities, the permeation of lawlessness, and the association of strangers through the consumption of alcohol will all be examined in an effort to delineate the public space of New Bell. In seeking to understand the nature of processes rather than fixed outcomes, an understanding can be gained of how alliances were built within a community of strangers and how these alliances sustained the residents of the strangers’ quarter during the interwar period and beyond.
Notes to Chapter Two 1 Dealt with extensively in numerous historical studies, the main events associated with the expropriation crisis need only be outlined briefly. See Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers; A. Eckert, Grundbesitz; Derrick, ‘Douala under the French Mandate’; Gouellain, Douala; LeVine, The Cameroons; Rudin, Germans in the Cameroons. 2 Archives Nationales, Section d’Outre Mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter ANSOM) FM/SG/TGO28/239. 3 Ibid. 4 Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 37; Derrick, ‘Douala Under the French Mandate’; LeVine, The Cameroons, 116; Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 144. 5 For example, ANC-FF APA 11875/A, Correspondances diverses, Douala 1918–26, Le Commissaire de Police de la Ville de Douala, à Monsieur le Délégué de Monsieur le Commissaire de la République, 16 December 1924.
An overview 6 7 8 9 10 11
12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37
Derrick, ‘Douala Under the French Mandate’, 144. Ibid., 84. ANSOM FM/SG/TGO28/239. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2920, Exposé historique de l’expropriation de Douala, 13 March 1914. L. H. Lofland, A World of Strangers: Order and Action in Urban Public Space (Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press, 1973), 74. Eckert, Grundbesitz, 111. Eckert argues that pre-colonial African practices of spatial segregation between groups in urban areas related to living quarters, and that public spaces were shared by all equally. This is in stark contrast to European colonial policies of racial segregation that entrenched hierarchies and inequalities between groups based on race. Interview with Le Chef Aladji Ousseni, New Bell, Douala, December 1998; A. Cohen, ‘Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas’, in The Development of Trade and Markets in West Africa, ed. C. Meillassoux (London: Oxford University Press for the International African Institute, 1971). ANSOM FM/SG/TGO31/288, The Humbolt Report, 1919–20. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2920, 24 December 1913 and 13 March 1914. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2920, 13 March 1914. ANC-FF NF 891, Santé divers, 1922–29, Projet de réorganisation des services sanitaires de Douala, 11 July 1921. Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 16 September 1924. ANC-FF NF 891, Santé divers 1922–29, Report of medical inspection, 25 May 1923. ANC-FF DOM 510, Lotissements et aménagements des centres urbains, 1925–46, Marchand to the Head of Circonscription of Douala, 6 June 1925. Ibid. Gouellain, Douala, 225. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM989/3421 Cameroun – administration: Rapports/ Circonscription 1927–33, Douala – Embellissement et développement de la ville, 3 September 1928. Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 4–5. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2921, Terrains expropriés par les Allemands, 13 February 1920; ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, Chef de la Circonscription de Doula à M. le Commissaire de la République, 5 March 1925. Maps of colonial Douala can be found in the National Archives in Cameroon and in the French Colonial Archives in Aix-en-Provence. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2922, Picanon Inspection, 20 December 1926. Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 134. Petition to Reichstag, 8 March 1912, quoted in Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 134. See also Eckert, Grundbesitz, 122–23. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2920, 24 December 1913. Ibid.; Gouellain, Douala, 141. ANC-FF, Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, letter regarding Duala request to move to Bali, 19 June 1917. Gouellain, Douala, 308–11. Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 310. M. Featherstone, Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. (London: Sage Publications Ltd, 1995), 102–23. Dizian and Cambon, Étude sur la population, 16. ANC-FF VT 38/17, Population exodus, 1917–25. Interview with André Ngangue, Akwa, Douala, December 1998.
51
52
The Strangers of New Bell 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56
57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66
67
A detailed German map of Douala from 1896 can be found in Gouellain, Douala, 370. Interviews with Ousseni; and Marie Claire Mbita, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. Details of the incident can be found in ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138, Mission d’inspection Meray, 1919–20. ANC-FF 2AC 3302, Administration générale – correspondences, 22 August 1918. For example, ANC-FF APA 10338/A, Justice – requêtes d’Africains, 1931–36, Request of Sadic O. Chidjou, 2 December 1935. LeVine, The Cameroons, 104–10. Interview with Michel Ndjock, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. ANC-FF APA 11831, Requêtes des indigènes, 1939–40. For the immigrant population, Eckert relied largely on Gouellain’s work, Douala. See Eckert, Grundbesitz, 281. The chart was reprinted in Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 142. For example, ANC-FF APA 11873, Circonscription de Douala, Rapport Annuel, 1920; ANC-FF APA 11280/A, Police – Douala, 1928–29, 7 May 1930. Gouellain, Douala, 157. ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138. ANSOM FM/SG/TGO31/288, Commissioner Carde to the Minister of Colonies, 2 July 1919. Derrick, ‘Douala Under the French Mandate’, 356. ANC-FF NF 891. Deutsches KolonialBlatt no. 11, 1893, 275 and no. 12, 1893, 294, quoted in A. P. Oloukpona-Yinnon, ‘La révolte des esclaves mercenaires, Douala, 1893’, Bayreuth African Studies Series 10 (1987):31. For example, ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Memo of Chef Mathieu on labour shortage, 12 October 1918; ANC-FF APA 11873. Interview with Léopold Moumé Etia, Deido, Douala, December 1998. C. van Onselen, Chibaro, African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1933 (London: Pluto Press, 1976). Van Onselen was among the first historians of Africa to examine colonial strategies in producing an African labour force at minimal cost to European employers. In focusing on the mining industry of colonial Rhodesia, his study revealed the brutal tactics associated with the chibaro labour system, where African men were constrained in crowded compounds and measures passed to isolate, regiment, and exploit the working class. Oloukpona-Yinnon, ‘La révolte des esclaves mercenaires’. ANC-FF APA 11873. Interviews with New Bell, Douala, residents: Jean Assama, December 1998; El Hadj Souleiman Moumi, December 1998; and Pie Nguidjol, December 1998. F. Cooper, On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial Mombasa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Administrative correspondence of Mr Beynis regarding the departure of workers during harvests, 17 April 1920. ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2920, 24 December 1913. ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–24, Memo of Chef Mathieu on labour shortage, 12 October 1918 Guilbot, Petite étude sur la main-d’oeuvre à Douala, 32, 35. Diziain and Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New-Bell à Douala, 178. Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of Witwatersrand. In this second volume of his study of mineworkers, Van Onselen argued that many Africans avoided proletarianisation within colonial industries by integrating into the service industries based in African sectors of the new economy. Working as alcohol manufacturers, prostitutes, or washerwomen, Africans in colonial South Africa were able to seize new opportunities provided within the colonial economy without working directly for European employers. ANC-FF APA 10005/A, Circonscription de Douala, Rapport Annuel, 1929.
An overview 68 69 70 71 72 73 74
75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87
88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99
ANSOM FM/AGEFOM929/2920, 24 December 1913. Ibid. Ibid. ANC-FF APA 11873; Interview with Nguidjol. ANC-FF APA 11873. Interview with Moumé Etia, December 1998. The potential for these tensions to escalate into violence can be seen in the 1950 court case concerning the murder of Jean Manga, a Nigerian who attacked a Douala woman for calling him a slave, and was in turn stabbed and killed by the woman’s brother; ANC-FF 1AC 1813/2 Wouri, 1946–53. Interview with Mbita. Interview with Marie Ngobo, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. Ibid. Interviews with Moumé Etia, December 1998; and Ngangue. Interview with Mbita. For example, interviews with New Bell, Douala, residents: Joachim Onana, March 1999; El Haj Hamidou Paraiso, March 1999; Samuel Kapendia, December 1998; and Mbita. A. Gupta and J. Ferguson, eds. Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 7. For example, interview with Anasthasie Ongono, New Bell, Douala, March 1999. Population statistics available in Gouellain, Douala, 292. Statistics on housing available in Diziain and Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New-Bell à Douala. For example, interviews with Kapendia and Paraiso. Map taken from Gouellain, Douala, 381. Ibid., 383. See G. Wright, ‘Tradition in the Service of Modernity’, in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. F. Cooper and A. Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); T. Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); J. L. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: The Dialetics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Gouellain, Douala, 308; Interview with Jeanne Koloko, New Bell, Douala, March 1999. ANC-FF, Wouri Region, Municipal Commission, 12 January 1952, quoted in Gouellain, Douala, 309. Interviews with Ngobo, March 1999; and Augustine Biloa, New Bell, Douala, March 1999. Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 6 September 1921; ANC-FF APA 11201/D, Police Douala, 1930–33, Entretien des habitations, 25 February 1933. ANC-FF, Unclassified file, Douala 1925–28, Administrator Bouquet to Chief of the Circonscription, 20 July 1924. ANC-FF APA 11201/D. Gouellain, Douala, 303–5. ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138, Organisation Administrative, 12 December 1919. The Chef Supérieur for the Cameroonian population was chosen from among the Yaounde until the post-WW II period, evidence of their numerical dominance within the population until this point. ANC-FF APA 11937/A, Douala Annual Report, 1920; Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 143. ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138. D. Gardinier, ‘Political Behavior in the Community of Douala, Cameroon: Reactions of the Duala People to Loss of Hegemony, 1944–1955’, paper published by the Centre for International Studies (Athens OH: Ohio University, 1966), 6–8.
53
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The Strangers of New Bell 100 ANC-FF 2AC 8092, Région du Wouri, Rapport Annuel, 1941; ANC-FF 1AC 1813/2, Reply to Soppo Priso, 17 February 1949. 101 ANSOM FM/SG/TGO31/288, Commissioner Carde to the Minister of Colonies, 2 July 1919. 102 ANC-FF 2AC 8093, Région du Wouri, Rapport Annuel, 1923; ANC-FF 2AC 8092. 103 ANC-FF APA 10208/C, Douala – sûreté, 13 March 1946. 104 ANC-FF 1AC 1813/2, Letter from Paul Yana, 9 September 1953. 105 Interviews with Koloko; and Dieudonné Yondi, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. 106 Interview with Ousseni. 107 ANC-FF APA 10097/6, Région du Wouri, Rapport Semestriel, 1939. 108 ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138, Inspection of the Circonscription of Douala, 12 December 1919. 109 Interview with Zéphirin Benjamin Ngoko, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. 110 ANC-FF APA 10658/A, Indigènes – affaires diverses, 15 April 1936. 111 ANC-FF 2AC 1714, Chefs poursuites, 1953. 112 Interview with Koloko. 113 Interview with Assama. 114 ANC-FF APA 10005/A. 115 Correspondence with Emmanuel Etolo, Yaounde, March 2000. 116 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala 1925–28, Administrator Bouquet to Chief of the Circonscription, 20 July 1924; Derrick, ‘Douala Under the French Mandate’, 211–12. 117 ANC-FF 1AC 1813/2, Letter from members of Yambassa tribe, 21 December 1953. 118 Guilbot, Petite étude sur la main-d’oeuvre á Douala, 3. 119 Diziain and Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New-Bell à Douala, 188. 120 For example, interviews with Ndjock; Ongono; and Thérése Monthe, New Bell, Douala, March 1998. 121 Diziain and Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New-Bell à Douala, 188–9. 122 Interview with Ongono. 123 Interviews with Moumé Etia, December 1998; and Ngobo, December 1998; Diziain and Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New-Bell à Douala, 90. 124 J.-L. Dongmo, Le dynamisme Bamiléké (Yaoundé: CEPER, 1981); G. Gosselin, Le crédit mutuel en pays bamiléké (Geneva: BIT, 1970). 125 ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138; ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–24, État nominatif des gardes de police de la circonscription de Douala, 5 August 1918; ANC-FF 1AC 1813/2. 126 Oloukpona-Yinnon, La révolte des esclaves mercenaires, 31. 127 General F. J. Moberly, Military Operations, Togoland and the Cameroons 1914–1916 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1931), 135. 128 ANC-FF APA 10658/A, Indigènes – affaires diverses, Chef of the Circonscription of Douala to the Commissioner, 21 December 1931. 129 ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138, Situation politique, 10 December 1919. 130 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Les Sénégalaises de Douala à M. le Gouverneur, 1 January 1917, and Dahomean letter, 18 August 1917. 131 P. Geschiere, ‘Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging’ Public Culture 12 no. 2 (Spring 2000):423–52. 132 Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 148, 174–78. 133 On the Catholic community, see ANSOM FM/AGEFOM355/170, Mission d’inspection Dimpault, 22 June 1931. On Muslim unity, see Interview with Ousman Nouhou, New Bell, Douala, March 1998. On Muslim diaspora communities, see Cohen, ‘Cultural Strategies’. 134 Interviews with Jean Gouzou, New Bell, Douala, March 1998, and Cyril Goethe, Akwa, Douala, March 1999.
Crime and community 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143
144 145 146 147 148 149
ANSOM FM/SG/TGO31/294, Commissioner of Cameroon to the Minister of Colonies, 21 May 1928. For example, ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3138, 12 December 1919. ANC-FF APA 11283/A, Métis – affaires diverses, 1918–44. J. Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 344. J. Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 87. ANC-FF APA 10038, Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, Correspondance, 1930. C. de Feral, Pidgin-English du Cameroun: description linguistique et sociologuistique (Paris: Peeters/Selaf, 1989), 23. R. P. K. Stumpf, ‘La politique linguistique au Cameroun de 1884 à 1960’, PhD thesis, D.E.F.A.P. Paris, 1977. See Stumpf, ‘La politique linguistique’ and Interview with Valère Epée, Bali, Douala, March 1999. Similar dynamics have been noted in colonial Togo. See B. N. Lawrance, ‘Most Obedient Servants. The Politics of Language in German Colonial Togo’, Cahiers d’études africaines 159 (2000). Diziain and Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New-Bell, 60. Interview with Goethe. Interview with Benjamin Ngoko. Interviews with Benjamin Ngoko; and New Bell, Douala, residents: Elisabeth Chantal Chenu and Gaston Dibango, December 1998. Interview with Benjamin Ngoko. Interview with Ousseni.
55
THREE Membership fees: Money, consumption, and immigrant participation in urban public spaces
When asked to identify the most significant difference between city and village life in the colonial era, most oral informants of New Bell who had immigrated to the city during the colonial era replied without hesitation, ‘money’.1 The evolution to a monetised economy in Cameroon was felt far earlier in urban areas, particularly in Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital and the centre of its European-controlled economy. The identification of money as the key differentiation between urban and rural lifestyles indicates that the move toward European currencies had a deep, transformative effect on African lives in colonial cities. The power of colonial money earned in the city, and particularly its use in consumption, drew many immigrants to Douala. The ownership of certain goods was a prerequisite for turning newcomers into full members of the urban community, and consumption thus played an increasingly central role in constructing immigrant identities and the community in the strangers’ quarter throughout the inter-war years. Without negating the power of money and commodities to rearrange social relations, and to cancel or invent hierarchies of power, the extent to which money led to a complete realignment of allegiances and obligations within the African population requires verification. Did the circulation of money and goods instigate a rupture in the social and cultural lives of Africans in the colonial era, or did it merely give new expression to pre-established alliances, leading to a perpetuation of local custom and culture? By mapping the forces determining the uses and meanings of money and goods in New Bell, the depth of the colonial imprint on the construction of space and community in the quarter can be measured. Although money was introduced by colonial rule, its meaning and power was not determined by the colonial regime alone; local cultural, social and political structures invested colonial currency with value and meaning. Since money had both universal and particular qualities, multiple actors were able to bestow value and meaning upon colonial currency. Local populations in colonial Cameroon reinterpreted, rejected, or affirmed value as determined by the colonial regime, and thus derailed colonial intentions with regard to money and its uses. 56
Membership fees
Thus, the history of the use and meaning of money in colonial Douala informs the reader of the relations of power between the local population and the colonial regime. In New Bell in particular, an investigation into the use and social value of money among the immigrant population will serve to map the extent to which immigrants were able to determine the structure and character of their community and the limitations placed on their autonomy by colonial policy. The history of material processes in the strangers’ quarter therefore serves as a window into the complex dynamics underlying the evolution of this community. The ongoing negotiation between colonial and immigrant social visions and the extent to which various actors succeeded in asserting their cultural agenda will be seen. First, German and French colonial monetary policy and the ideological and administrative underpinnings to these policies will be reviewed; second, local responses to the colonial agenda with regard to monetisation will be reviewed; and finally, the efforts of New Bell immigrants in reinterpreting and reappropriating the uses of money and consumer goods in the public spaces of the strangers’ quarter will be examined.
The introduction of colonial money in Cameroon Pre-colonial economies in Africa functioned on complex systems of multiple and multipurpose currencies.2 During the pre-colonial era in Cameroon locally produced and controlled currencies, as well as units of exchange, were used in international dealings whose values were ambiguous and negotiated. Austen and Derrick have shown that pre-colonial trade on the Cameroonian coast between Africans and Europeans was mediated by a currency system, but without the widespread use of money.3 The basic unit of currency was the crew, which was not perceived as a ‘tangible entity, but rather as a fictitious measure of value . . .’4 Large-scale transactions in the import and export of goods were measured in these fictitious units. On the local level, cowrie shells and iron bars were intermittently used as currency for local transactions, but barter remained the most widespread medium of exchange well into the colonial era.5 Europeans also participated in this local barter economy, exchanging small amounts of imported goods – referred to in pidgin as ‘little tings’ – local goods, such as eggs, yams and woven mats.6 Thus both local and international trade transactions in pre-colonial Douala were based on unstable values, perpetually negotiated and contested by the parties involved. Colonialism did not necessarily bring order to the chaos characterising the African pre-colonial currency systems. The attempts of the German, and later the French, administrations in Cameroon to stabilise and control the economy through the introduction of European currencies, were not fully successful and the introduction of a single, specialised currency introduced a whole new set of uncertainties and unintended consequences into African social and economic lives. The establishment of formal colonial rule by Germany in 1884 did not lead to an immediate transition to monetisation based on the Reichsmark (hereafter mark). In fact it took several years and considerable efforts on the part of the various colonial administrators to introduce European currency into Cameroon as the universal measure of value
57
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for both the local and the colonial economies. In its monetisation efforts, the German administration was motivated by practical considerations, ideological motivations, and the desire to secure greater control over local processes. Private European enterprises manipulated the lack of standardisation to freely interpret values to their advantage. They favoured a system characterised by instability. For the administration, however, the system posed more difficulties than advantages. The administration frequently paid workers in food, which proved increasingly difficult as the number of workers grew, along with administrative enterprises. Transporting large quantities of food to employees of public-works projects in the interior was highly impractical, and the administration began advocating the payment of workers’ salaries with currency, thus enabling labourers to buy their own food.7 The absence of a standardised currency also posed difficulties in the collection of taxes. Payments were often made in the form of ivory, creating additional transport problems. Those who could not pay in ivory were required to work for European private enterprises, which then paid the administration in currency. These various systems generated tremendous abuses on the part of private businesses and local chiefs, and the administration insisted that the use of currency would facilitate and regulate a more equitable collection of taxes. The introduction of the mark was hence deemed an important step in establishing standardisation and efficiency in the local economy of Cameroon. This policy was also promoted along ideological lines. For the Germans, as for other powers in Africa, monetisation represented an important aspect of the civilising mission. The use of money in preference to bartering, represented rationality, modernity and progress. As John and Jean Comaroff have shown, missionaries and other colonial agents believed that money would usher in progress to the continent. This conviction can be seen as an outgrowth of the more widespread ‘nineteenth-century European belief in the power of the coin’. Within this ideology, ‘money was uniquely capable of setting free the intrinsic worth of the world to be traded in neutral, standardised terms’.8 The use of currency rather than local regimes of value was perceived as a potential boost to African morality. In Cameroon it was believed that the introduction of currency would eradicate the base practice of polygamy, allowing African men to store their wealth in currencies rather than wives.9 Despite rhetoric espousing the potential of money to introduce morality, neutrality and standardisation to African economic spheres, a close examination of colonial efforts to promote the use of European currencies reveals that both the German and the French administrations saw monetisation as a way of tightening their hold over local processes and enabling a more efficient economic exploitation of Cameroon. While monetisation might have put a check on the abusive practices of independent European employers, it provided the colonial administrations with greater potential for manipulating local circumstances to promote their own economic agenda. The most notable aim was the expansion of capitalism into the continent, and the incorporation of Africans into international markets as consumers.
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Money in the French mandate: Perpetual instabilities Soon after the British and French Allied Forces had succeeded in ousting the Germans from Cameroon, British General Dobell issued a decree introducing the shilling and franc as legal tender, while at the same time preserving the mark.10 While the British and French might have preferred to rid the colony of all traces of German influence immediately, it was necessary to keep the mark in circulation in order to enable the continuous functioning of the economy. With few shillings and francs available in the territory, it would have been impossible to collect taxes without marks.11 The Allied plan was to slowly substitute the shilling and the franc for the mark, which would be devalued by a fixed exchange rate. This policy of devaluing the mark was eventually adopted by the French administration, officially established in Cameroon in 1916. The French were propelled by nationalist sentiment and a general anti-German feeling, and maintained a constant fear of pro-German attitudes amongst the indigenous population. The circulation of the mark was an unwanted reminder of continued German influence, but it was not until 1926 that Governor Marchand finally outlawed the use of the mark.12 In substituting the franc for the mark, the French administration reaped substantial profits. By fixing exchange rates, the administration was able to manipulate the economy to its advantage. Thus, when General Dobell first introduced the franc into the colony as legal tender, the exchange rate between the French and German currencies was set at 1 franc = 1,05 marks. With the pre-war exchange rate set at approximately 1 franc = 0,80 marks, Dobell’s rate represented a depreciation of the German currency. The administration justified the move by claiming that the mark had also been depreciated in neutral markets in Europe during the war.13 Deep concerns over political and economic instability kept this fixed rate within limits the administration believed indigenous populations and European merchants in Cameroon could tolerate. Nonetheless, the imposition of the franc did signify an important procurement of power for the administration. The guarded approach adopted in the early years of fixing exchange rates was thus ultimately abandoned. The rates set later on reflected a blatant attempt to manipulate value to increase colonial wealth. The use of colonial money exposed indigenous populations to the whims of the colonial regime and made Africans economically vulnerable to Euro-centred political processes. The clearest example of this can be seen in the 1925 reimbursement of Africans who had money invested in sequestered German firms. Following the Allied occupation, the French administration seized the assets of German firms in Douala, some of which were holding the investments of wealthy Africans, a group composed mostly of Duala businessmen and planters.14 After years of appeals by these Duala, and much deliberation, the French administration decided to reimburse those Africans who had made investments in the sequestered firms at the above-mentioned pre-war exchange rate of 1 franc = 0,80 marks, or alternatively, 1,227 francs = 1 mark. African investors were also to be paid interest on their investments at a rate of 5%. While this seemed like a fair proposition, it resulted in great losses for the investors because the devaluation of both the mark and the franc (relative to the dollar in the years following
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the war) led to a 1925 exchange rate of 5 francs = 1 mark. Thus, at pre-war rates, an African making an investment of 500 marks in 1914 held the equivalent value of 625 francs. By 1925, these same 625 francs bought only 125 marks. Even with a 5% interest rate paid over 10 years, the sums reimbursed remained considerably below the original value of marks invested. For many, the policy translated into a loss ranging from 25 to 40% of their initial investment.15 Although only a handful of Africans were affected by this policy, the example is significant in demonstrating the heightened vulnerability of African individuals and groups as they became more entangled in the colonial economy and as their wealth was increasingly stored in colonial currencies. Thus, while the German and the French administrations promoted the introduction of colonial currencies by asserting their rationality and stability, it is clear that the imposition of a single, specialised colonial currency as legal tender led to increasing economic volatility and uncertainty for the indigenous population. Yet despite their increasing vulnerability to the tides of international economics, the African population in Cameroon, particularly that of Douala, continued to play a role in determining the value of the European currencies as they were used locally, at times defying administrative designs with regard to the supply and social value of money.
African interpretations of colonial currency values It was perhaps the long-term historical trend of currency instability that made Africans of the colonial era particularly sensitive to fluctuations in value, and sceptical of the ability of colonial powers to impose stability. In the long run, rather than producing utter discouragement, fluctuating values made indigenous populations more adept at responding to the changeability of money; they approached colonial currencies with a lack of absolute faith precisely because long-term uncertainty had ‘actually honed their skills at rapid adjustment to maintain the crucial equivalences of social life’.16 The Hausa of colonial Cameroon had in fact learnt to manipulate the fluctuations in values to their advantage, and conducted a lucrative traffic in currencies across the Nigerian border. Keenly attuned to changes in exchange rates Hausa traders made handsome profits by exchanging francs for shillings along historic caravan trade routes that traversed colonial borders. French merchants in the region complained that the currency traffic across the border had succeeded in devaluing the franc by 50% by 1925.17 The French were disturbed by their inability to secure local trust in the colonial currencies. Scepticism among Africans could turn into panic and the administration feared the disastrous effects the loss of confidence could bring to the economy. Even more troublesome to the French administration was its inability to understand local sentiment with regard to money or to uncover the origins of African uneasiness with colonial currency. On several occasions, the gaps of knowledge separating the administration from local economic sentiment exacerbated colonial efforts to control the value of money. For example, in one 1936 incident rumours circulated among the indigenous population of Douala concerning bills issued by the Banque de l’Afrique occidentale (BAO). African
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residents of the city began questioning the value of the specialised colonial currency, claiming it was worthless outside the territory. This lack of confidence in BAO bills led to a rush on the banks as individuals demanded to convert BAO bills into bills from the Bank of France, or into silver.18 Assurances from the administration did little to stop the panic and French officials were worried about the economic and political repercussions of the local rejection of the currency. A police investigation was unsuccessful in uncovering the source of the rumours, and the internal logic of the African population’s economic sense remained an enigma to the administration.19 In another instance, the French administration was confounded by the aversion the African population demonstrated toward metal coins. In a 1955 circular, all regional headquarters were asked to investigate the reasons behind the rejection of 1 franc and 2 franc coins by the local population. According to the notice, the dislike of the small coins was causing prices to rise, as consumers preferred to round off prices to 5 francs and use bills instead of coins. Regional administrators were asked to survey their indigenous populations and verify whether the discontent was rooted in ‘a simple repugnance for new aluminium coins, which might be too lightweight for their tastes, or if this disdain was the result of a more general sentiment linked to the economic expansion noted in recent years’.20 The administration clearly did not believe that any practical considerations could be behind African economic behaviour, but the responses received to the survey demonstrated otherwise. Africans realised that the coins in small denominations had been greatly devalued over time, and as a result preferred to avoid them in favour of bills in larger denominations.21 The small coins held little purchasing power on their own and individuals were forced to carry around heavy purses in order to make purchases. The administration could do little to sway public opinion on this issue, and the coins were taken out of circulation as a result of the local response.22
The social meaning of colonial money in Douala It is clear that the French administration was unable to fully control local use of money, nor was it able to convince the African population that colonial money was a safe, rational medium for storing wealth. This scepticism toward the currency reveals some fractures in colonial hegemony. The administration’s inability to control public opinion and boost confidence led to increased instability in the supply and value of money. Even more difficult to control than the supply of money was the impact colonial money made on the social and cultural life of Douala. It is true that the introduction of colonial money led to a reorganisation of economic and social life in colonial Cameroon, but once in circulation, its cultural value and impact were largely determined by social relations and hierarchies of power deeply imbedded in local society. European money became the medium of exchange in Douala far earlier than in rural areas of Cameroon. It was not until late in the colonial era that people outside Douala conducted economic transactions in cash. In a study of bridewealth payments among the Beti of the colonial era, Jane Guyer noted that cash was rarely used in local communities.
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Within rural settings, she added, ‘the only people who could be wealthy in cash were those who had links to the administration, the chiefs, and their personnel, because of close constraints on expanded production by ordinary farmers’.23 The supply of money in rural areas was virtually non-existent late into the French mandate.24 Salaries paid to African workers in all regions of the colony outside Douala remained considerably lower than urban salaries throughout the colonial era, and those employed in cash-earning positions had little or no disposable cash after paying taxes and buying food. Thus, in the 1929 annual report from the eastern town of Abong-Mbang, the French administrator claimed that permanent and temporary manpower recruited in the region earned a monthly salary of 40–50 francs, ‘conforming to the necessities of life in the region’.25 Labour recruited in Ebolowa that year received between 12,5 and 25 francs per month. At the same time, in Douala monthly salaries ranged from 120 francs for labourers, to 200 francs for cooks, to as much as 1 000 francs for auto mechanics.26 Historians of monetisation disagree over the extent to which the introduction of money into a new social setting leads to a total reorganisation of social life. Sociologist George Simmel has portrayed money as an all-powerful agent of disruption, destroying deep-rooted social allegiances while ‘establishing relationships between elements that otherwise would have no connection whatsoever’.27 Simmel believed that money completely dismantled the most fundamental social bonds by ‘excluding everything personal and specific’.28 Like Simmel, Karl Marx warned of the transformational powers of money, declaring it the ‘radical leveller’. In Grundrisse, Marx wrote, ‘Where money is not itself the community, it must dissolve the community’.29 Others have been less convinced of the power of money to transform society. In disagreement with neoclassical theorists, some historians and sociologists have insisted that monetisation has not led to a complete corrosion of social relations, but merely given new expression to pre-existing social relationships. As Viviana Zelizer has written, ‘money used for rational instrumental exchanges is not “free” from social constraints but is another type of socially created currency, subject to particular networks of social relations and its own set of values and norms’.30 Throughout colonial Africa, monetisation did not erase social obligations. Sara Berry has argued that ‘allegiances, especially with influential people, remained crucial to the exercise and defence of claims on goods and services, even when these claims were established through monetary transactions. Creating allegiances may no longer have been the primary purpose of holding material wealth, but remained a necessary condition for acquiring and controlling it’.31 It is possible to identify the transformative power of money once it entered circulation in colonial Douala. Money undoubtedly opened up doors to new resources and positions of power for the local population, particularly with regard to the strangers of New Bell. With money, immigrants could accumulate goods and titles representing influence or authority previously unavailable to them. Sidestepping or avoiding pre-colonial hierarchies of power, individuals could buy positions of influence with cash. Thus, in 1929, the French administration noted a breakdown in the traditional authority of chiefs as a result of monetisation.32 The introduction of colonial-appointed chiefs in New Bell also
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reflected the power of money to replace local criteria determining access to positions of political power. Individuals with money could simply buy political authority. This could be seen in 1946 when Ignance Fouda, the chief of the Yaounde in New Bell, was paid 1 200 francs by Gabriel Ekoe in exchange for an appointment as chief of the Yaounde in Japoma.33 Individuals also regularly offered monetary bribes to gain access to bureaucratic or professional positions within the colonial administration.34 The administration was keen to acknowledge that political and social allegiances could be bought and sold for the right price, and security agents paid handsome sums to indigenous informers for intelligence information regarding the immigrant population.35 The commodification of knowledge made it possible for these informants to earn large salaries and advance their social positions through the betrayal of social relationships and loyalties. But the circulation and accumulation of money did not result in the complete breakdown of social allegiances or in the diminished significance of social relationships in determining individual status. Social alliances remained of primary significance in the lives of immigrants to the city, and were often the impetus behind efforts to accumulate material wealth. This was partially because salaried workers in the colonial economy remained exposed to fluctuations in this economy, and vulnerable to the far-reaching effects of economic crises originating both within and outside Cameroon. For example, in periods of economic crisis such as the Depression, when wages of African workers in Douala fell by nearly 50 %, immigrants relied on social networks – both within and outside the community of New Bell – to sustain their livelihood.36 Thus the configuration of the social life of urban immigrants remained deeply influenced both by pre-colonial, non-urban hierarchies of power and by the colonial presence in the city. Local social and cultural institutions played a prominent role in increasing, as well as in limiting, the power of money to change an individual’s standing. It is thus only with the simultaneous consideration of broad and local processes, ranging from global politics down to the most intimate household dynamics, that it is possible to understand ‘the social meaning of money’ in New Bell.37 This can be seen in the role played by gender in determining immigrant access to and use of money in New Bell. When asked, most oral informants claimed that women did not work and did not earn money in New Bell. Informants repeatedly claimed that only men earned money.38 Yet women did in fact make money as beer brewers, prostitutes, and petty merchants, often earning more than their husbands.39 A clear distinction nonetheless existed between cultural perceptions of the income of men and women, binding the social value of the individuals’ earnings to their gendered identity. Money earned by men through employment in the official economy was defined as money, and work done by men in the colonial economy was defined as work, while women’s work and the money they earned in the unofficial economy were not. More significantly, men who earned ‘money’ were free to spend it as they pleased, and most claimed they bought goods, such as clothing and shoes, initially and eventually, huts and wives. Women, on the other hand, claimed they contributed their earnings to the family. Thus, women used their earnings to build durable homes for their families, an expense their husbands
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could often not afford with their wages.40 Single women working as prostitutes said they spent their earnings to buy clothing, but this was done primarily to attract men, hoping to find a husband through their work.41 By itself, money did not create the gendered borders of the public sphere, but it does serve as a useful instrument in mapping relations of power within the immigrant community. Yet, once money becomes representative of a larger discourse of power it begins to play an active role as a tool of that power. As the accumulation of money and material goods became an important source of power for individuals, pre-existing political structures, social relations and cultural dictates created an environment where not all individuals had the same access to the power embedded in money and goods.
Immigrant consumers in New Bell public culture Consumption was an important tool of power within the public culture of New Bell, and as a result, it became a significant basis for group identity within the immigrant community. Entering into an arena where money and material goods played an increasingly powerful role in shaping social relations, immigrants to New Bell used commodities to signify their membership of the community of strangers. The key interest groups that shaped this public consumption culture were colonial economic interests, the Duala bourgeoisie, and immigrants themselves, all of whom responded both to cultures of origin and to new opportunities within the urban environment. The power of consumption partially emanated from a reality constructed by the colonial regime, which aimed to prod all Africans, not just the elite, into becoming regular consumers of manufactured goods imported from Europe. Colonial economic interests worked to create an environment that would encourage and ensure African enthusiasm for European commodities. As a representative of the Douala Chamber of Commerce wrote in 1932, ‘It is certain that Africans can become great consumers for the whole world and for France . . . But they will never become consumers if they do not have the means to buy’.42 Maintaining a certain level of purchasing power among the indigenous population thus became a priority for the French administration which periodically monitored salaries earned by Africans in order to ensure that spending could take place. To this end, in 1925 the BAO urged the minister of colonies to supply bills in low denominations, in particular those between 5 and 25 francs, so that Africans could engage in purchases and sales.43 Efforts were made to protect the supply of these bills in Douala, where the use of money among Africans was most widespread. The Duala westernised elite also played a role in advancing the significance of consumption for the public culture of the city. They recognised the power of consumption to determine social standing and in attempting to establish their elite status and distinguish themselves from other Africans, they were eager to acquire various commodities. Fashionable or innovative products not available in the markets of Douala were ordered by catalogue and delivered by sea.44 The proximity of the Duala to European culture and to the French administration was publicised through European-style dress, European-style
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homes, and even European foods. The Duala invested huge resources in these commodities. Perhaps the most striking example is that of clothing. In responding to a 1938 colonial questionnaire on indigenous eating habits, yearly budgets, and expenses, Duala respondents claimed to spend anywhere from 890 to 1 200 francs per year on clothing. This was more than ten times as much as the average non-Duala labourer claimed to spend.45 As the active participants in the public sphere of the colonial city, Duala men also claimed to spend nearly three times more on clothing than did Duala women, who rarely took on public roles. Eating habits also reflected a desire to adopt European ways. Respondents from wealthy families enjoyed imported table wine with their meals. Coffee and tea were also consumed on a regular basis, and meals were almost always followed by dessert, which was considered a luxury.46 With regard to housing, a Duala respondent claimed that 20% of the Duala – the notables and plantation owners – lived in high-priced houses, while the remaining 80% – bureaucrats and fishermen – lived in middle-income housing. According to the respondents, none of the Duala lived in houses for the poor. By contrast, a Bassa respondent claimed that 97% of the Bassa lived in either middle-income or poor housing, while a Hausa respondent claimed that there were no Hausa living in upper-class homes.47 The enthusiasm with which the Duala took on obligations to own certain goods made the colonial regime uneasy. For the French administration, however, the desire to preserve and boost African consumption had its limits, and there was great disdain for conspicuous consumption by wealthy Africans. Once the purchasing power of Africans approached that of Europeans in the colony, the latter feared that their civilising mission had perhaps gone too far. The adoption of European dress and the purchase of inexpensive manufactured goods, such as household items or cosmetics, were symbolic of progress and enlightenment among Africans. But the purchase of automobiles and expensive clothing, or the building of large European-style houses, was a clear threat to the French administrators. French uneasiness with Duala accumulation of wealth serves as testimony to the power of consumption to determine and legitimate certain claims of identity, and the French viewed Duala spending patterns as a challenge to racial boundaries. As the 1929 annual report stated: On account of their salaries and their profits, the Duala have been able to acquire automobiles, motorcycles, multiple bicycles and spend approximately 300 000 francs per year on the construction of buildings . . . They know no constraint. Once their taxes and their duties are paid, they enjoy full freedom. It is only necessary to see them in the streets and in public places to understand the ease of their pace and the tranquillity which guides them.48
Immigrants to Douala entered into a public culture largely mediated by consumption, with both the colonial regime and Duala elite lurking behind this constructed reality. In adopting colonial or Duala status symbols, immigrants appeared to consume some of the superficial symbols of colonial urban culture as uncritical receptors. But Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge have argued that the transmission of images or the adoption of an identity through commodities can represent an active participation in
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cultural debate rather than passive mimicry.49 As they wrote, ‘consumers of mass-mediated cultural forms are agents and actors, not merely objects and recipients’. Thus, while immigrants to New Bell absorbed the cultural messages transmitted by the colonial and the Duala elites, they reinterpreted these messages in accordance with their own needs, and subsequently reproduced and transmitted local versions of modernity grounded in the immigrant community. The culture emerging in New Bell reflected both a dialogue with the colonial centre of the city and an autonomous community of values and symbols rooted in the quarter. The emergence of consumption as a prominent discursive tool in the public space of New Bell was partially the product of the evolution of New Bell as a physical space. While New Bell was somewhat distanced from the European and the Duala quarters of Douala and excluded from the official municipality, it remained a part of the greater urban environment and developed in the ever-present shadow cast by the colonial centre. This physical relationship between New Bell and the colonial city had great implications for the public culture ultimately emerging in the strangers’ quarter. Equally significant was the internal physical development of New Bell. Lacking the political institutions of the European and Duala quarters, which articulated the exclusion and marginalisation of many individuals and groups from participation in the public sphere, New Bell’s public life revolved around the more permeable and inclusive outdoor public space. The street thus emerged as the centre of public life in New Bell. It was in the street that rules of urban living were broadcast and membership of the urban community determined. The discourses operating in New Bell’s street-centred public space were certainly not literary, nor necessarily verbalised. Much more significant were visual, performative and impersonal gestures and overtures. The street evolved as the main arena regulating and integrating masses of unfamiliar individuals into shared experience. In this formation of public space, consumption played a crucial role in communal life. Material goods aided individuals in securing and displaying their membership in the community of strangers. As consumption became a primary method of participating in public life, immigrant dependence on the street for conveying trends and correcting behaviour grew. Status was deeply tied to a certain ‘look’, but an institution had to operate in promoting the latest trends. In the absence of advertising agencies, such as newspapers, posters, or mass media, to create ‘structures of meaning’ around commodities, the street became the venue where the public was educated about consumer options.50 Talking a walk (se balader) emerged as a main form of entertainment in New Bell.51 Immigrants learnt how to carry themselves and behave in an urban way, thus distinguishing themselves from newly arrived villagers. Body language thus served as a primary vehicle of communication between strangers in the streets of New Bell; oral informants even claimed they could easily distinguish between newcomers and long-term residents simply by the way they walked.52 Not all belongings carried the same status, and the display of certain items could advance an individual’s status far more than others. As one informant testified, children would cheer in the streets for someone who passed by on a bicycle in New Bell of the 1920s.53
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The street was not only a school for mimicry, however. As Timothy Burke has argued, ‘the consumption of commodities was also shaped by individual acts of will and imagination, engagement and disinterest’.54 The public discourse of consumption conveyed immigrant resistance to elite discourses and power structures. Residents of New Bell used material goods to break down or reject hierarchies of power that were centred in the villages, as well as those established by the colonial regime. The significance of these goods was re-appropriated by the consumers of New Bell, at times enabling them to overcome entrenched hierarchies of power and initiating a certain level of democratisation within the local population. At other times, barriers to obtaining certain goods remained intact, and immigrants could only aspire to the higher status represented in the ownership of a particular item. The dynamic efforts of New Bell residents to dismantle or widen social structures to enable their personal advancement can be seen in the history of consumption patterns associated with specific commodities, such as European clothing, durable houses, wives and guns.
European clothing in the public discourse of New Bell Several historians of colonialism suggest that the adoption of European dress represented an appropriation of power by indigenous populations.55 Having examined the history of European clothing in colonial Africa, most researchers, however, insist that the use of clothing to ascertain power was an extension of, rather than a break with, pre-colonial methods of cultural expression. Throughout their histories, Africans have used and adorned the body surface in the ‘authentication of social categories, the legitimisation of authority, and the creation of value’.56 The adoption of European clothing during the colonial era thus represented a perpetuation, not a transformation, of cultural practices relating to the expression of power and identity. Colonialism established new environments for this cultural expression, and shifted some of the hierarchies of power to which individuals responded. But in Douala, just as elsewhere in colonial Africa, the exploitation of the body and outward appearance as an arena for public debate and critique must be seen as the reinvention of a long-standing cultural motif rather than an innovation brought on by colonialism. Monetisation and the import of European manufactured goods did allow for a wider section of the population to adopt symbols of power previously reserved for the elite. In the city, the early and widespread circulation of money enabled masses of Africans to access the power embedded in clothing enthusiastically. European clothing and shoes nearly reached the status of a uniform for New Bell immigrants, with white tennis shoes earning particular popularity.57 Shoes were important markers of status, as many of the newcomers had come to the city barefoot. Footwear thus became a stark signifier of urban and rural identities.58 Evidence of the popularity of shoes among immigrants in Douala can be found in import statistics for the early years of the French mandate. In 1921, 4 104 kilograms of shoes, valued at 164 515 francs, were imported into Cameroon. In 1923, this increased to 9 824 kilograms of shoes, valued at 415 066 francs. By 1926, the statistics
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had jumped to 61 766 kilograms, valued at 2 080 676 francs.59 Similarly, European-style clothes were highly sought after, and most oral informants recalled clothing being their first purchase in the city.60 For immigrants to New Bell the purchase of European clothing represented an escape from the hierarchies of power in rural areas. In villages, where money was scarce, only chiefs had access to resources enabling them to buy European clothing. Imported clothes thus became a symbol of chiefly authority, setting the ruling class apart.61 The French administration strengthened the pre-colonial link between clothing and status by assigning official uniforms to indigenous chiefs, thus distinguishing between those on a village level and those with broader regional responsibilities.62 Upon arrival in the city, immigrants who earned money frequently bought clothing once reserved for those in power. As Martin has shown, the purchase of clothing in the city was a statement against the economic deprivation facing individuals in the village.63 This explains the pride with which New Bell immigrants wore their new clothes. It was common practice for those with a new outfit to stroll the streets, making their new status public knowledge.64 Uniforms conveyed a strong statement of power, particularly in a highly heterogeneous society of immigrants, where spoken language was not always a viable option for broadcasting authority and status. Both the French administration and the Africans believed strongly in the ability of the uniform to command respect and legitimise power. Africans were often attracted to jobs because of the power and prestige embedded in uniforms and official clothing.65 The importance of owning certain types of clothes is highlighted by an examination of overall consumption patterns among New Bell immigrants. It seems that the ownership of at least some European clothes was almost mandatory, regardless of the person’s lack of resources. These were often the only possessions individuals could call their own, as can be seen in colonial records of immigrants who died in Douala, away from their villages of origin and families. These records provide scant lists of the possessions of the deceased and highlight the importance of the few articles of European clothing which immigrants had succeeded in buying. Thus, other than the clothing he was wearing, a deceased railroad worker was reported to own ‘10 francs, one penknife, one ticket d’impôt, a railroad ticket receipt, one handkerchief and one belt’. Another market boy owned one harmonica, one penknife, a packet of letters, a laissez-passer, one train ticket and one franc, other than the clothing he was wearing.66 As these records reveal, many immigrants owned little but the European clothes on their backs. Because the meagre salaries paid to most immigrants did not grant unlimited purchasing power, those who did succeed in obtaining fine imported clothing wore it proudly. This can be seen in the following description in a 1936 article from L’Éveil du Cameroun: ‘If you see native couples better dressed and smart, they are Strangers, “non-Dualas”’.67 Derrick has argued correctly that this was not an accurate portrayal of the vast majority of poorly paid immigrants. Nonetheless, it is clear that immigrants learnt how to dress in the street, and made a calculated return to this public sphere to broadcast new acquisitions. As one woman explained, ‘They would just stroll. They bought their new clothes, nice shoes and hats, and they would go and be gentlemanly in the streets’.68
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Luxury goods: Durable houses, bridewealth and guns Beyond the minimal requirements of membership, immigrants in New Bell used certain objects of prestige to assert their status as members of the immigrant elite. Though certain commodities bestowed immediate status upon individuals, material wealth did not diminish the importance of social relations and obligations in communal life. Those who earned money invested it in goods that boosted their status in the eyes of family members and neighbours. Of course, this kind of consumption was only practised at times of economic prosperity; in crisis periods, such as the 1929 Depression, few could sustain these efforts to boost their social standing through the purchase of luxury items. Conspicuous consumption among well-off immigrants was often expressed in family-related expenses such as housing or bridewealth, or in items such as guns, guaranteed to advance an individual’s personal standing in the eyes of others. Investments in housing were an investment in social relations, and as a result providing a durable house for a family was a high priority for immigrants. Records from 1925 to 1928 show that only a small fraction of immigrants were able to afford the renovations needed to convert huts into durable houses; those who were able to do so spoke with pride about their accomplishment.69 As homeowners, immigrants could become hosts to newcomers, thus boosting their prestige and power.70 Single men also claimed they needed houses to attract potential wives.71 As in the village, men in the city earned and saved money for bridewealth. While marriage remained a key institution in the accumulation of power, some changes in the custom reflected the shift to an urban lifestyle. Many immigrants converted to Christianity and began to adopt the practice of monogamy. This shift was not of great consequence because meagre urban salaries would not enable most men to afford more than one wife. The introduction of monogamy presented a problem only to those who had the financial means to invest in more than one wife, but were prevented by Christian custom from acquiring this added status and prestige. As an alternative, wealthy young men in New Bell began to use bridewealth as a form of conspicuous consumption, paying highly inflated sums for their wives in an attempt to make an impression on the girls’ families and on the community.72 For some, bridewealth thus became a luxury item during times of prosperity. While Duala men complained of the unreasonably high prices demanded by their fiancées’ families, residents of New Bell claimed to have voluntarily paid more than the asking price. This was often because families of immigrants in rural areas were not aware of the high Douala rates. Women who lived in New Bell during the 1930s proudly claimed their husbands had paid up to 1 500 francs for their bridewealth in the city, while village rates for the same period fluctuated between 400 and 1 000 francs.73 Archival records report some payments to have reached astronomical heights of 3 000 to 10 000 francs in Douala.74 The trend of inflated bridewealth became a source of stress for the young men of New Bell who were seeking to attract women and impress their families.75 But for those who succeeded, the benefits were potentially far-reaching and constituted a challenge to rural male elites, who traditionally controlled bridewealth.
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While the purchase of guns was not a direct investment in social relationships as were durable housing or bridewealth, the desire to own a gun was linked to an individual’s drive for recognition and respect within the community, an urge to secure the status once reserved for chiefs and other members of the rural hierarchies of power. Guns had long been a symbol of power in the eyes of both Africans and colonial conquerors – a status symbol culturally reserved for men. Despite a certain breakdown in hierarchies of power resulting from the purchase of guns by immigrants in New Bell, on the whole gendered hierarchies of power remained intact with regard to an individual’s ability to advance his social standing through the ownership of European-manufactured weapons. However, as the colonial era advanced, it became increasingly difficult for even African men to obtain European arms, as the colonial regime became concerned about the proliferation of arms among the indigenous population. This only increased the prestige associated with guns in the eyes of Africans, and inspired local efforts to overcome restrictions standing in the way of individuals gaining the power embedded in the ownership of European weapons. From the very beginning of German rule in Cameroon, the administration found itself in conflict with European capitalist interests over the sale of arms to the indigenous population. For centuries, European traders in Africa had been exchanging guns with local chiefs and traders for export goods. The German administration sought to control this supply and distribution, but European business interests, fearing a slow-down in the local trade, objected to each policy aimed at controlling the sale of arms to Africans. The protests of traders forced ongoing modifications in legislative policies.76 Traders made several, often outlandish, claims in protest of regulations, arguing that Africans would be afraid to go out into the bush without a gun, and that this would hinder the collection of wild rubber by villagers. Or it was claimed that without guns, the supply of meat would decrease and Africans would be forced to resort to cannibalism.77 Despite the opposition of traders, from 1908 onwards the possession of arms by Europeans was closely regulated in Cameroon, and the sale of guns to the indigenous population was strictly prohibited. This did not put an end to trade in weapons, however, as they were smuggled across borders; Africans continued to obtain guns until the end of the German administration. From the outset of the French mandate, the administration voiced its concern over the widespread possession of arms by Africans. Like the Germans, the French wanted to control the trade, but settled for strict regulation rather than complete prohibition of sales. The first decree issued by the French in 1916 suspended the issuing of permits to Africans, and demanded that all those already in possession of guns report to their local administration in order to obtain a permit.78 This early decree was finally revised in 1920 to permit the purchase of guns by Africans with plantations in need of protection from wild animals, or simply by those who had earned a ‘good reputation’.79 Africans submitted requests for permits to the administration, outlining how they met one or both of these criteria. As a result, certain Africans – many of them members of the Duala elite – were granted permits to own guns. While the use of arms by either Africans or Europeans
Membership fees
was strictly forbidden in the city of Douala, many of the Duala had plantations in other regions and were thus granted permission to own guns.80 It was also acknowledged that Africans were not being sold the most dangerous weapons, and many of the guns permitted for Africans were only minimally threatening to European security.81 Even under the German administration, traders argued that only ineffective, outmoded guns, which posed less threat to Europeans than the poisonous bows and arrows used locally, were exported for sale to Africans.82 During the French mandate, permits to Africans were largely restricted to hunting rifles, while Europeans could have more dangerous and efficient weapons, such as automatic revolvers.83 Guns sold to Africans were intended to provide minimal protection to trustworthy subjects, while limiting the security threat facing the colonial administration. Yet guns were to serve an additional purpose. According to Marchand, gun permits given to Africans were a sign of benevolence of the administration towards individual subjects.84 Those Africans who had served the administration well, and proved themselves upright and worthy citizens, were granted permission to own guns. Marchand complained, however, that the situation had spiralled out of control by 1928. It seemed that too many Africans, particularly those employed in bureaucratic positions within the administration, had been granted permits. Scores of écrivains-interprètes, nurses and monitors had been issued with permits, and the whole system had lost its value as a form of deserved compensation. Marchand noted that a certain class of Africans had begun to see the arms permit as a right rather than a privilege, and he demanded an immediate change in policy.85 From that point on, regulations would be strictly enforced and all demands which could not be fully justified would be rejected, even those made by influential merchants and notables within the indigenous population. Owning a gun became an important marker of status within the African upper class. The power behind the gun emanated from its symbolic value – the prestige it bestowed on its carrier and its identification with bourgeois lifestyle. This was reflected in the permit request one Duala man made when he wrote, ‘I am interested in shooting for sportsman as well as educational purposes, and this gun will allow me to occupy my leisure time during my vacation days’.86 Unlike European clothing, guns were not physically displayed by their owners in the streets of Douala. However, those who had guns were careful to make it known publicly, and they relied on gossip to circulate knowledge of their acquisition. According to one Bassa informant, ‘guns were guarded carefully. Most owners stored them neatly under their beds, taking them out only periodically for cleaning. But when you had a gun, you made it known. It was an object for boasting. With a gun, you could surpass others’.87 Thus, although the visual image of the owner with the gun was not publicised outdoors in New Bell, the utility of gun ownership was only actualised when it became part of public knowledge. For immigrants to New Bell, ownership of a gun was the ultimate symbol of economic and social status in the city. In rural villages, chiefs and other members of the political elite were the usual proprietors of guns, having a monopoly on access to resources with which to obtain European arms. In the city, the barriers to elite status were less rigid, and
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those who had acquired an upper-class lifestyle could purchase the social and cultural power of the gun. Unlike the Duala, most immigrants in New Bell did not have plantations, and therefore could not use a need for crop protection to justify their desire for a gun permit. For immigrant bureaucrats or merchants the request for a gun was usually made solely on the grounds of personal merit. A review of permit requests made by immigrants in the 1920s and 1930s reveals the social and cultural value of guns in New Bell, and highlights how consumption had become a primary signifier of social status within the strangers’ quarter. Immigrants submitted requests for gun permits only after serving the French administration for many years, believing they had earned the privileges of the elite through hard work and loyalty, rather than birthright. As one Bamoun man wrote in his request in 1934, ‘Originating from Bamoun, I have been living in Douala since the Allied occupation of 1914–1916. From this time, I have been working as a cook for the French military’. Similarly, a Yaounde man wrote, ‘I would like a 12 calibre hunting rifle. I have been working for the railroad for 18 years, living in the Yaounde quarter of New Bell’.88 The French administration rejected most of the permit requests made by immigrants in New Bell, but this did not prevent the individuals from attempting, again and again, to get authorisation. The high volume of requests and the frequency with which many immigrants continued to apply, despite the ongoing rejection of their applications, are significant indicators of the sense of entitlement immigrants acquired in the city. Applicants believed that status symbols, once reserved for important notables, were accessible to them. Thus some of the applicants gave little or no justification for wanting a gun at first. Tobias Bia wrote in his first request in 1931 that, ‘as a nurse and the father of three children’, he wanted a hunting rifle with 50 cartridges.89 After being rejected the first time, Bia applied four more times in the following years, each time providing a more elaborate justification for his request. The second time he wrote, ‘This reward will help me to conveniently feed my family and serve as a souvenir for sixteen years of service which I have already given the French administration’.90 Bia’s third request, submitted in 1936, mentioned five children in need of feeding.91 For his final request, made in 1938, he claimed to have a plantation in the Yaounde area, where savage animals were devastating his crops.92 From these requests, it can be seen that Bia, like many other immigrants, believed that ordinary individuals could claim the status once reserved for important notables. The widespread failure of New Bell residents to secure gun permits, however, is a reminder of their ultimate inability to undermine the hierarchies of power. In the final analysis of consumption in the community of New Bell, caution must be used not to ‘cheerfully equate “active” with “powerful”’.93 Desire alone could not dismantle the cultural boundaries established around certain commodities; boundaries that preserved the power of a privileged few. An examination of immigrant longings to own certain things, and the extent to which they succeeded in fulfilling these desires, helps to map the forces that shaped identity, community and public space in New Bell.
Membership fees
Notes to Chapter Three 1 For example, interviews with New Bell, Douala, residents: Marie Claire Mbita, December 1998; Lori Loga Rigobert, December 1998; and Sebastien Nzekou, March 1999. 2 S. S. Berry, ‘Table Prices, Unstable Values: Some Thoughts on Monetization and the Meaning of Transactions in West African Economies’, in Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities, ed. J. Guyer (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995), 299. 3 Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 78–81. 4 Ibid., 79. 5 J. I. Guyer, ‘The Value of Beti Bridewealth’, in Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities, ed. J. Guyer (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995), 114. 6 Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 80. 7 Rudin, Germans in the Cameroons, 154. 8 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, 2: 171. 9 Rudin, Germans in the Cameroons, 224. 10 ANSOM FM/AGEFOM 354, Rapport – Inspecteur Coste, régime monétaire, 1 January 1927. 11 A. Peloux, ‘Le régime monétaire dans les régions du Cameroun occupées par le corps expéditionnaire franco-britannique, de la conquête au partage’, Annales de la faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de Yaoundé 2, no. 5 (1973):5–18. 12 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 10 February 1926. 13 ANSOM FM/SG/TGO1/5, Cameroun – Le Président du Conseil, Ministre des Affaires etrangères à Monsieur le ministre des Colonies, 16 July 1917. 14 ANC-FF VT 38/17, Population exodus, 1917–25; DOM 253, Créances 1915–25, 17 April 1925. 15 For information on exchange rates and calculations of losses, see Bryan Taylor,
[email protected], a web-based consultation service on historical exchange rates. 16 J. I. Guyer, ‘Introduction: The Currency Interface and its Dynamics’, in Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities, ed. J. Guyer (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1995), 5. 17 ANC-FF APA 10934/A, Divers, 1919–26, 9 September 1925 and 17 November 1925. 18 ANC-FF APA 10197/F, Sûreté, 6 October 1936. 19 ANC-FF APA 11223/B, Sûreté, 1931–41, 22 July 1940. 20 ANC-FF 1AC 7552, Coins métalliques, Circulaire no. 500, 1 January 1955. 21 ANC-FF 2AC 6437, Monnaie métallique, 1 January 1955 and 29 March 1957. 22 ANC-FF 2AC 6437, Circulaire no. 452, 5 March 1957. 23 Guyer, ‘The Value of Beti Bridewealth’, 120. 24 ANC-FF APA 11119, Régime des laissez-passer, 1934–45, Circulaire no. 36, 15 May 1943. 25 ANC-FF APA 10005/A, Abong-Mbang, 1929. 26 Chatap, ‘Le travail salarié’, 51. 27 G. Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, trans. T. Bottomore and D. Frisby (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1900] 1978), 346. 28 Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, 345. 29 Quoted in Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, 120. 30 V. A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief and Other Currencies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 19. 31 Berry, ‘Stable Prices, Unstable Values’, 307. 32 ANC-FF APA 10005/A, 1929. 33 ANC-FF APA 10208/C, Rapport des Agents, 13 March 1946.
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The Strangers of New Bell 34 Ibid., 4 April 1946. 35 ANC-FF NF 531/2, Indicateur – salarié, 1937–38. See various decrees concerning the payment of indigenous informers. 36 Chatap, ‘Le travail’, 56. 37 Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money. 38 For example, interviews with Nguidjol; Assama; Ousseni; and Ngobo, December 1998. 39 Interview with Ongono. 40 Ibid. 41 Interview with Pauline Ngono, Nkil Zok village, Sangmelima province, March 1999. 42 ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/2535/5, La crise économique – Cameroun 1930–32, 15 May 1932. 43 ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/2689/3, Circulation monétaire 1926–36, 25 April 1925. 44 Interview with Moumé Etia, March 1999. 45 Institut des Sciences Humaines, Yaoundé (hereafter ISH), Wouri file, Réponse de l’enquête no. 1C sur l’alimentation des indigènes par le Chef Supérieur Lobe Bell, 1938; Réponse par Guillaume Jemba, 1938. 46 ISH Wouri file, Réponse par Bell; Réponse par Moukouri Jacques Kuoh, 1938. 47 ISH Wouri file II, Habitation, Bassa, Haoussas, and Quartier de Deido, 1938. 48 ANC-FF APA 10005/A. 49 A. Appadurai and C. A. Breckenridge, ‘Public Modernity in India’, in Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, ed. C. A. Breckenridge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 3. 50 M. J. Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn: The Cultural Politics of Consumption (New York: Routledge, 1993), 17. 51 Interview with Biloa. 52 Interviews with Ngobo, December 1998; and John Eko Flobert, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. 53 Interview with Ngobo, December 1998. 54 T. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996), 10. 55 For example, see H. Hendrickson, ed., Clothing and Difference: Embodied Identities in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996); Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville; E. Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 56 Hendrickson, Clothing and Difference, 8. 57 Interview with Loga Rigobert. 58 Interviews with Loga Rigobert; Ndjock; and Tchope Tassi Barthelemy, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. 59 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations sur l’administration sous mandat du territoire du Cameroun, 1921, 1923, 1926. 60 Interviews with Kapendia and Barthelemy. 61 ANSOM FM/AGEFOM799/1853, Santé, 23 November 1920. 62 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 4 February 1933. 63 Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville, chapter 6, ‘Dressing Well’. 64 Interview with Gertude Mbe, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. 65 Interview with Ngobo, December 1998. 66 ANC-FF Dom 444, Successions indigénes, 1923–28, and Dom 445, Successions indigènes, 1928–32, individual files. 67 Derrick, Douala Under the French Mandate, 408. 68 Interview with Mbe. 69 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, 3 July 1928; Interview with Biloa. 70 Interview with Ndjock.
Crime and community 71 Interview with Loga Rigobert. 72 Interviews with Ongono; Ngono; and Lydie Zang, Ekombitie village, Sangmelima province, March 1999. 73 In years of economic crisis, it was difficult for men in rural areas to pay even a minimal sum for bridewealth. As Jane Guyer wrote, ‘The Depression was, of course, a catastrophe for cash incomes. People could hardly pay their taxes, let alone entertain a major expense such as bridewealth’; see Guyer, ‘The Value of Beti Bridewealth’, 119. 74 ANC-FF APA 10594, Justice – affaires diverses, 1934; ANC-FF APA 10535/A, État civil – mariage, 1922–45, 1 May 1927. 75 Interview with Nouhou. 76 Rudin, Germans in the Cameroons, 313. 77 Ibid., 314. 78 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 31 May 1916. 79 Ibid., 10 September 1920. 80 Ibid., 2 May 1916; ANC-FF APA 11209/B, Armes et munitions –- état des armes existantes, 1927–32, 31 March 1932. 81 ANC-FF APA 10760, Opérations de pacification et de police, 1916–23, 19 December 1917. 82 Rudin, Germans in the Cameroons, 311. 83 ANC-FF APA 11209/B. 84 ANSOM FM/AGEFOM989/3429, Cameroun 1927–28, Police, Circulaire dated 25 April 1928. 85 Ibid. 86 ANC-FF APA 10900/B, Armes et munitions – demandes rejetées 1931–32, 15 September 1931. 87 Interview with Konrad Mbody, Bassa, Douala, December 1998. 88 ANC-FF APA 11678, Armes et munitions – demandes rejetées 1934, 31 August 1934, and 8 September 1934. 89 ANC-FF APA 10900/B, 2 October 1931. 90 ANC-FF APA 11678, undated. 91 ANC-FF APA 11205/A, Armes et munitions – demandes rejetées 1936, 7 October 1936. 92 ANC-FF APA 11205/B, Armes et munitions – demandes rejetées 1936, 23 February 1938. 93 I. Ang, ‘Culture and Communication: Towards an Ethnographic Critique of Media Consumption in the Transnational Media System’, European Journal of Communication 5 (1990), quoted in Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn, 54.
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FOUR Crime and community
The ambiguities of New Bell’s place in the colonial consciousness had dramatic implications for the construction of place and community in the strangers’ quarter. Both the German and the French administrations relinquished this quarter on the outskirts of the city to the Africans and ignored its internal development. Initial French intentions to allow New Bell to grow as a contained ‘African’ space were, however, quickly frustrated by the reality on the ground. The unmonitored flow of people, goods and information into and out of the quarter posed incessant challenges to the colonial sense of security and control. New Bell was soon feared as a breeding ground of criminality and dissent.1 As the colonial gaze on the strangers’ quarter reinvented its subject, colonial policies changed and began to address the problem of criminality within the immigrant population. Policing efforts largely failed to establish full control over New Bell, however; a failure rooted in the French administration’s reluctance to approach the strangers’ quarter. As New Bell remained an African space in the colonial consciousness, the establishment of authority in the quarter remained ambivalent. The local population in New Bell filled this power vacuum with their own initiatives and maintained a limited autonomy in the void created by the ambivalence and impotence of colonial authority. But while the weakness of colonial laws and law officers enabled the immigrant population to easily disregard them, and the French administration continually bemoaned the delinquent tendencies of New Bell residents, the people in New Bell were often unaware of the fact that they were perceived as criminals by the administration. The physical and authoritative gulf separating the strangers’ quarter from the colonial presence meant that the strangers of New Bell often defied or escaped policing without even realising they had done so. It is therefore best to speak of lawlessness rather than criminality at the foundation of the community. The distance separating New Bell from the city centre played a primary role in constructing this reality. New Bell’s location on the periphery of Douala and the haphazard evolution of its public spaces impeded the colonial regime’s efforts to fully monitor and control movement into and within the quarter. This confirms the significance of space in shaping colonial rule and highlights the relationship between space and community 76
Crime and community
in New Bell. Colonial hesitation in approaching New Bell opened windows of opportunity for the development of independent networks of knowledge and the establishment of tactical alliances serving as an alternative to colonial power.2 Thus the conscious and unconscious evasion of colonial law was a central component of shared experience among New Bell residents.
The evolution of ambiguous space At its creation, New Bell was envisioned as a semi-autonomous zone allotted to its African residents, and the construction of the quarter was thus left in the charge of its residents. Since immigrants tended to build temporary housing wherever land was available, the ensuing haphazard pattern of building created chaotic neighbourhoods not easily navigated by the colonial regime. With zigzag clusters of houses connected by narrow alleyways and little space between residences, it is hardly surprising that no colonial map was drawn of New Bell until 1950. The manner in which space evolved in New Bell made the quarter a non-place for colonial cartographers and, at times, policymakers. No accurate census was ever taken of New Bell, and all population statistics relating to the quarter throughout the colonial era were rough estimates. The colonial regime preferred to leave New Bell as a reservoir for cheap labour, situated just below the European field of vision.3 But it was not only New Bell’s marginality in the colonial consciousness that contributed to the lack of control over the quarter at the start of the French mandate. The acute shortage of resources and manpower, which represented the greatest obstacle to establishing effective rule in Cameroon in the mandate’s early years, also forestalled the establishment of any real control over the space of New Bell. The French were slow to establish their administration, thus it remained understaffed and under-funded. In 1918, in an effort to cut expenditures, the chief administrator of Douala reduced the police force from 200 to 100 officers and cut the number of prison guards by 10%.4 In light of official estimates that put Douala’s population at approximately 20 000 at this time, with the number of New Bell residents greatly underestimated, this reduction of the police force appears highly risky for a colonial regime seeking to maintain control.5 There is, in fact, evidence that the German departure created a temporary power vacuum in Douala. During the war and in its immediate aftermath, Africans quickly capitalised on opportunities presented by lax control, and in Douala, as elsewhere, German properties and goods were pillaged.6 The French administration turned a blind eye, partially because there was no great concern for loss of German property. The issue was particularly sensitive in Douala because most indigenous chiefs had some hand in the crimes, and the French plainly had no interest in their arrest.7 The administration also realised that without an extensive and powerful police force, it would be extremely difficult to retrieve the stolen property, and that where perishable goods were concerned, the evidence could be easily destroyed. But more significant was a fear that mass arrests of commerce-house employees implicated in crimes would aggravate the wartime shortage
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of African clerks and labourers. The administration encouraged local officials to relax punishments, suggesting fines rather than imprisonment.8 Thus the looting reveals the tenuousness of early French rule in Douala, and its limited capacity for maintaining control.
Colonial attempts at control French leniency toward native crime did not last long, and this nonchalant attitude soon gave way to growing concern about criminality among the native population. The shift was more reflective of changes in the colonial economic and political agenda in the colony than of any changes in local crime rates. While a severe lack of resources dictated a snail’s pace in the expansion of effective control, the French administration never lost sight of its goal to establish a profitable environment for colonial enterprises in Cameroon. There was therefore an increasing need for control over the local labour force. The administration hoped to encourage the recruitment of workers and ensure calm within the native population through the legislation of new laws and increased law enforcement. As the definition and punishment of crime broadened along with administrative needs, more and more Africans fell under the category of criminal. Soon after the French administration had established itself, the urban centre of Douala became a primary target for efforts to tighten control. First steps at instituting the rule of law in the city were taken in 1919, when Commissioner Carde sent a letter to the chief administrator in Douala ordering him to remind the local population that all German laws were still in effect and would be strictly applied.9 This simple reminder did little to curb illegal activity; indeed, evasion of colonial law among certain sectors of the native population was becoming the norm. Beginning in 1920, annual reports from the city repeatedly complained of increasing criminal activity among the African population and the difficulty in curbing it.10 Much of the difficulty the colonial regime experienced in ensuring adherence to colonial law was rooted in the nature of Douala as a rapidly growing port city situated at the centre of the colonial economy. The port was the gateway into and out of the colony, and the ongoing flow of people and goods at this juncture generated movement and opportunity not easily monitored by colonial law enforcement. Not surprisingly, much of the criminal activity in the city was centred on the port.11 Crewmen temporarily docked in Douala were among the instigators of illicit activity.12 Foreign sailors were often arrested for unruly behaviour and creating nocturnal disturbances. Beyond this relatively benign agitation, the colonial regime continually complained of sailors and other dockworkers involved in criminal enterprises such as smuggling and the spread of dangerous propaganda.13 The problem was aggravated by some confusion concerning sailors and legal jurisdiction, whereby crimes committed on board foreign ships did not fall under the jurisdiction of local courts. Until Marchand corrected this situation in 1927, sailors guilty of various crimes enjoyed impunity.14 Similar to the port, the railroad conveyed masses of unmonitored passengers into and out of the city in the early
Crime and community
years of the French administration.15 Finally, the proximity of Douala to the anglophone zone also fostered opportunities for illegal movement of Africans into and out of the city – beyond creating opportunities for trafficking across the border, the proximity of Douala to British-controlled Cameroon created both an urban refuge for those fleeing the anglophone zone, and a quick escape route for French subjects on the run.16 Thus, procrastination, which characterised the early French administration’s establishment of rule, enabled an unchecked influx of immigrants into the city. Although the bedlam of the early mandate years eventually gave way to stricter controls, the administration was never able to secure a watertight hold on large sectors of the city’s population. The scores of Africans crossing over the city’s fluid borders were dubbed ‘the floating population’ by the administration. The classification of a population not employed by colonial interests as the ‘floating population’ was not unique to French officials in Cameroon. As Cooper wrote in his study on labour in colonial Africa, ‘British officials in London shared with their French equivalents a sociology of Africa that divided its population into peasants and educated elites and treated everyone else as a residual – “detribalised Africans” or a “floating population”’.17 Uncounted and unregistered by any official body, the floating population materialised most conspicuously in the statistics of the legal system. It was in the court houses and prisons that this ephemeral mass was most successfully brought under colonial scrutiny and control. Subsequently, criminality became synonymous with the floating population in the colonial lexicon. As one official wrote, ‘All of these vagabonds steal, quarrel, get arrested, go to prison, and then start over again’.18 Any efforts to secure a tighter hold over the immigrant population would prove to be impossible without an effective police force. The first efforts made in improving the law-enforcement capabilities of the police focused on the French commanding officers. From the very arrival of the French in Cameroon, the commissioner and other officials complained of shortages in French personnel to head and train the local police. During the first two years of rule, one French officer, Sergeant Buoy, presided over the entire force. Buoy was faced with the difficult task of training all of the 200 agents, none of whom spoke French or had any kind of military training.19 His departure from Cameroon in 1918 aggravated an already difficult situation. Continual requests were made to the Minister of Colonies to send more trained personnel. Reinforcements were slow in coming, and in 1926 the chief of the circonscription, or constituency, of Douala charged that the security of the city’s inhabitants was jeopardised by the lack of French personnel presiding over the police. The police commissioner at the time was the only colonial official overseeing law enforcement in the city, and he was ‘completely overwhelmed’.20 The lack of French officials created a security problem for the entire circonscription beyond the city of Douala. This was because the limited resources that were available were all concentrated in the city, leaving the rural areas completely unmonitored. Thus, the chief rejected requests for a visit from a European police agent to the rural areas outside of the city. He claimed that the departure of the one dependable agent would pose too great a threat to the security of the city.21
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After the initial reduction in 1918, there was a gradual increase in the number of rankand-file police agents and, eventually, more commanding officers were appointed to the Douala police force.22 In 1925, it was determined that New Bell was in dire need of its own police commissioner. With no personnel immediately forthcoming, it was necessary to expand the responsibilities of the prison warden. Thus, by a decree issued on 24 September 1925, Warden Pfileger also became the police commissioner of New Bell.23 In 1930, Marchand made significant efforts to reorganise the police force. By a decree issued on 17 May, Marchand established the special police and security forces in Douala.24 According to the decree, each of the quarters would have its own commissioner, with the prison warden continuing to serve as commissioner in New Bell.25 The immigrant community was also placed under the jurisdiction of the newly created Special Service Police. This force was to be responsible for controlling the floating population, the waterways of Douala, the labour force, and the trafficking in arms, alcohol and narcotics.26 In addition to manpower, the police force suffered from ongoing shortages of equipment. Particularly during the early years of the French mandate, it was handicapped by the absence of the most basic types of gear and vehicles. Sturdy police uniforms made of canvas were only distributed to the police in 1926, ten years after the arrival of the French. Prior to this, police wore simple cotton shirts.27 Stipends for uniforms were given to police officers from this time until 1937, when they were again withheld. Police officers complained in 1939 that the lack of proper uniforms impaired the function of the force because uniforms were essential to the ability of the police to earn the respect of the local population. As they wrote, ‘You must remember that it is us who represent the orders of the European administration . . . We are insulted everywhere we go, by Europeans and Africans, because of our untidiness’.28 Shortages of equipment thus played a central role in limiting the effectiveness of police agents. The upper echelons of the police force also suffered from equipment shortages. In the early years of the French mandate, strenuous demands were made to provide bicycles for the police commissioner. As Chief Mathieu wrote to the commissioner in 1919: The distances one must cross in Douala are too great to demand of a tired personnel without providing some means of transportation that would render this difficult Cameroonian climate more tolerable. It is probable that these bicycles do not exist, or would be difficult to find, but I suggest that one could obtain them with the help of the Department of Colonies, whose wartime stocks are not completely depleted. I would be very happy if you would provide this necessary means of transportation to the circonscription.29
This demand was rejected, but Mathieu argued three months later: In light of your decision to reclaim the cart being used by the police commissioner until now, it is essential that this official, who is often needed at a moment’s notice, be provided with some means of transportation. I ask you to revisit the decision you made when I last asked you to purchase a bicycle for the police commissioner . . .30
Crime and community
Following this demand, the request was granted and a bicycle was purchased. But one bicycle could not satisfy the needs of the entire police force. Far more grave was the need for a means of water transportation. Without a boat it was impossible for the police to combat the multiplicity of crimes committed on the rivers and at the port, including illegal immigration, smuggling of imported goods, arms, and alcohol, and the clandestine movement of illegal workers from Fernando Po. After several requests for a boat during the first decade of the French mandate, one was provided in 1928, but its engine did not work and it was considered unsafe to carry passengers.31 Crimes continued unabated, and as one official wrote, ‘The sole remedy for this unfortunate state of affairs is to provide the police with a boat which is light, quick, easily manoeuvred and equipped with a motor. The expense would not be very high, and would be recuperated with the repression of these frauds’.32 As with the bicycle, the boat was slow in coming, and was only provided in 1930, along with the establishment of the special unit of maritime police.33 Improving the work ethic and loyalty of police officers was also an issue. Numerous fringe benefits made this line of work attractive to some Africans, but these did not assure the necessary level of motivation among agents to improve their policing efforts. Police were granted a certain prestige among the population because they earned a good salary, part of which was paid in meat, eaten every day.34 Uniforms also attracted certain individuals to this line of work. But neither the elevated status nor the personal benefits could guarantee the loyalties of the police. Archival records from the period testify to the ongoing role played by many police officers as a hindrance to maintaining the rule of law in the city. Officers themselves were often punished for smuggling, extortion and abuse of power.35 Police loyalty to the colonial administration was greatly compromised by the personal allegiances between agents and the local population of New Bell. Throughout the German and the French administrations, the vast majority of the police force of Douala was recruited from the immigrant population. This can be seen in the following table detailing the ethnic breakdown of the 1918 police force, with only 34 agents coming from the Douala environs: Table 4.1: The ethnic breakdown of the 1918 police force36 Region of origin
Number of agents
Yaounde
95
Douala/Wouri
34
Bamenda
20
Bana
21
Edea
11
Doume
3
Garoua/Ngaoundere
2
Liberia
3
Ebolowa
1
British Colonies TOTAL
8 198
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Ethnic allegiances between the police force and its constituents no doubt blurred the lines of authority, but it was not necessarily ethnic ties alone that allied the police to the immigrant population. Police agents were a part of the multi-ethnic New Bell community, and their membership in this community of immigrants spurred some degree of laxity in their performance as law-enforcement agents. As one oral informant described the duality of the police positioning in the urban landscape, ‘the police would arrest women for making wine, but when they were not working, they would come and have a drink like everyone else’.37
Surveillance and identification of the floating population The compromised loyalties of the police in New Bell contributed to an overall sense of alienation and a lack of control over the immigrant population within the French administration. In Duala quarters, the French could easily identify with the cultural, social, and political gestures made by the Duala elite, despite ongoing conflicts between the two groups. With regard to the immigrant population, however, the opposite was the case. The strangers’ quarter, an African space, was largely unknown and misunderstood. The ineffectiveness of the administration in charting and controlling the inner workings of New Bell was largely due to the physical and discursive gaps dissociating the immigrant quarter from colonial understanding. In the colonial consciousness, New Bell remained an African space whose interior architecture was, by and large, a mystery. The rifts in understanding and control between the colonial powers and their stranger constituents were soon suffused with suspicion and contempt. New Bell earned a reputation for sheltering purely corrupt elements.38 One delegate, sent to Douala in 1925, reported that the unemployed vagrants of New Bell were all thieves suffering from venereal diseases.39 Another health inspector said that in the native quarter of Douala ‘one can find all the physical and moral residue of the black race. It is a place where syphilis and theft reign’.40 According to the French, New Bell was home to ‘all the dregs of the interior populations’.41 The colonial perception of New Bell as a hotbed of recalcitrance and hostility was set against a backdrop of ignorance concerning the inner workings of the strangers’ quarter. When it was no longer possible to ignore New Bell, the French administration struggled to grasp the essence of the community. The administration strove, in the words of James Scott, to improve the ‘legibility’ of New Bell’s immigrants as a prerequisite to securing control.42 Thus, the administration took many steps toward improving its knowledge of the quarter, initiating an intensive campaign to improve surveillance of New Bell and its residents. French officials expressed concern over internal information networks circulating in New Bell. According to White, colonial officials referred to all information that they had not engendered, shaped, or controlled as rumour: ‘Rumour is a category that simultaneously reveals popular conceptions about the actions and ideas of those in authority and declares the weaknesses of official channels of information and education’.43 Administrative and police reports from Douala often referred to the rumours circulating in the
Crime and community
strangers’ quarter as catalysts for dissent, social and political unrest, and as a challenge to colonial hegemony.44 So too were the lack of control over knowledge and information of the quarter’s residents. Rumours concerning European interests that originated among the African population of New Bell were blamed for incidents involving worker unrest and strikes as well as for widespread panic over the potential return of the Germans, the devaluation of money, growing crime rates, and the political situation during WW II.45 Officials feared the unrest that could result from this ‘unsophisticated but lively public opinion not based upon reason, as in Europe, but on passion’.46 The power of rumours to challenge colonial hegemony inspired incessant efforts at monitoring the flow and content of information within the local population of Douala. The only access the French administration had to local information was through African informers, and consequently a large network of freelance intelligence agents was slowly established. These informers were paid for the information they furnished, with the compensation dependent upon the value of their disclosures. The administration was willing to pay considerable sums for these intelligence reports, and some informers earned handsome salaries comparable to those of employees in commerce and in the administration.47 When providing information became a profitable venture, even distinguished members of the indigenous elite, such as Chief Paraiso of New Bell, and the Duala businessman, Sam Mandessi Bell, exploited its potential for earning some extra cash.48 Colonial archives abound with intelligence reports furnished by these agents, often consisting of reconstructed conversations heard in the streets.49 Information of interest to the administration was at times political, at times focused on criminal activity or social unrest. This can be seen in the following excerpts from intelligence reports: Douala, 10 January 1946, Report of Agent #21: Information received on 15/1/46 at 12:30 . . . I took part in a conversation in which someone declared . . . ‘The French administration has struggled to turn the entire feminine population of Cameroon into prostitutes. This is the reason that it has grouped together a band of women with Mr Puig and called this a Girls’ School. Since the founding of this school, there is no need for these girls other than prostitution for Europeans, and therefore, each one of the girls who has conceived has miscarried.’ Douala, 27 April 1946, Report of Agent #12: On 26/4/46, during surveillance of the Yaounde quarter, I overheard a conversation between certain écrivains and auxiliary monitors who were complaining that the administration had neglected to give them a raise. The administration had also refused to pay them allowances for their housing or their wives. They questioned if their wives did not need to eat just as the wives of other officials employed by the administration. They are drafting a letter to the High Commissioner on this subject.50
These transcribed conversations allowed the French administration some insight into local activity and helped in uncovering dissident and criminal elements. The paid informers, commonly referred to as mouchards, or squeals, were extremely unpopular among the local population of New Bell. Their identities were not always known, and as one oral
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informant claimed, ‘these same people who would tell on us were the same people who lived with us, the same ones who would come to drink’.51 Despite the French administration’s efforts, the network of informants did not answer all colonial calls for surveillance and control of local networks of knowledge and potential dissent. Freelance informers were not always dependable, as one police commissioner complained in 1933, ‘I am only able to obtain information which is partial, broken, and of limited value’.52 He asked Governor Bonnecarrère for permission to employ two fulltime agents whose sole responsibility would be to survey the waterways and roads for suspect elements either in transit or living in Douala, as a supplement to the freelance system in place. But even the addition of full-time intelligence agents did not create the kind of control the administration sought. Their frustration became noticeable in a 1939 report, in which an official complained of the continual power of rumours to compromise colonial rule. He wrote, ‘despite having taken all the necessary precautions, it is difficult to stop the circulation of false information’.53 Thus, although local networks of information in New Bell were partially revealed by intelligence reports, they remained just beyond the grasp of colonial control.
Implanting African identities The unchecked fluidity of the immigrant population frustrated the colonial inclination to fix and classify African populations as part of their ruling strategy. The population of New Bell was indiscernible as long as it remained a mass of vagabonds, prostitutes and smugglers. It was necessary to draw this entire population into colonial institutions. The efforts made to accomplish this goal with sporting associations, for instance, only helped to locate a very small percentage of the masses in New Bell.54 In order to change New Bell into a known entity, a standard was needed for identifying and organising its population. The colonial power needed an instrument to help it distinguish one African from another. The French administration therefore experimented with various markers of identification to be issued to the local population. From the beginning of the French mandate, the administration hoped to control the crime rate in Douala through the distribution of identity cards. In a 1917 circular, Governor Fourneau ordered all African employees of government or private enterprises in Douala to be furnished with identity cards, ‘in light of the frequent thefts committed daily in Douala’. This card was to be distributed and signed by European employees, and validated by the police commissioner. Upon demand, Africans were expected to present their identity cards to police.55 Fourneau’s circular was apparently ignored, and another decree requiring the possession of identity cards in Douala was issued in 1923, but this too was never actually applied.56 It was only in 1927 that a more thorough investigation into the issue of identity cards was made. Marchand planned that this card would eventually be issued to the entire indigenous population and would include information concerning an individual’s employment, payment of taxes, work permits, and medical information. Marchand
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planned to begin distributing them among employees in commerce and administration, as well as to licensed artisans and petty merchants. This would allow agents of the French administration ‘to discern without difficulty those indigènes who were really employed from those who lived as parasites’.57 Identity cards would render the space of New Bell more legible and help create African subjects recognisable to European bosses and police. The elusive stranger could now be followed, detained, and held accountable for his or her presence in the city. In the modernist tradition of social control, each African subject residing in New Bell was to have verifiable proof of name, place of employment, and evidence of having complied with laws regarding taxes, commerce and hygiene. But the card had to reflect a subject’s physical attributes in order to verify that the individual holding a particular card was the person to whom the card had been issued, and it was here that the Europeans met with great difficulty. Technical obstacles were exacerbated by a European attitude toward the African body that was fearful, misinformed and racist. Marchand endeavoured to establish a connection between card and individual through photographs and fingerprints. Douala’s police commissioner suggested that a copy of each photograph be delivered to the police and a file opened on each individual, as this would be ‘of the greatest utility in researching and arresting criminals . . .’58 But the use of photographs was only possible with a sufficient supply of cameras and photographers. Marchand surveyed the chief administrators in each circonscription in order to inquire about the availability of each. The responses he received sabotaged his plan: apparently, there were no photographers in Ebolowa, Yabassi, Ndiki, Dschang, Bafoussam, Bafia, Akonolingo, Yoko, or Doume, and only one photographer was found in Yaounde, one in Mbanga and one in Nkgonsamba.59 The chief of the circonscription of Doume offered an alternative solution: ‘More or less all of the indigenous people have tattoos, scars, deformities or amputations of their fingers or toes, particular marks, or colouring, etc., which would allow for the establishment of a close description’.60 Marchand thus instructed officials to note any distinguishing physical traits on an individual’s card.61 Since he also remained convinced that a photograph would be the best method of identification, he provided a budget for each circonscription to buy a camera and train one of its African interpreters in its use. By the time Marchand had issued the specific orders concerning the purpose and use of the identity card and explained its various uses, it was evident that a simple card alone would not provide enough space for all the information the administration hoped to record on it. Thus, the identity card became the identity booklet, with pages to record employment history, personal status, travel visas, bridewealth and tax payments, vaccination records and medical history.62 Once the booklets were distributed to the circonscriptions, problems immediately emerged concerning fingerprints because the colonial administrators had no idea of how to extract a legible print, nor were they capable of reading a clear one.63 Messy black splotches were of little use to law-enforcement services, and it was determined that an alternative was needed to the fingerprint. On 4 October 1928, Marchand sent out another circular in which administrators were instructed to substitute the fingerprint with finger
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tracing, a method he claimed was widely used in French West Africa and Indo-China. The circular, shown below, described the method by which officials were to trace the left index finger of each African’s hand on the back of the identity booklet. Detailed instructions were included on how to position the finger, trace it, and how to illustrate knuckles, nails and various lines found on the finger (Figure 4.1).64
A. A vertical line showing the levels of each marking. B. The drawing of an index finger, for demonstrative purposes only. System of identification based on markings taken of the left index finger: 1. Fingertip. 2. First line at the base of the finger (palm side up). 3. and 4. Lines located at the level of the knuckle. 5. Line located at the level of the upper finger (palm side up). 6. and 7. Upper and lower edges of the nail. Figure 4.1: Diagram of method of finger tracing
The details of these efforts are significant in revealing the dynamics of the colonial gaze as it was cast upon its African subjects. Propelled by a desire to control, and invigorated by patronising and racist attitudes cloaked in the fundamentals of science, colonial officials struggled to bring the African population into focus. The failure to do so resulted in the ongoing inability to establish an uncontested rule. Africans simply did not make themselves available to the ruling bodies issuing the booklets, and the frustration of officials can be seen in the following excerpt from a letter sent by Governor Repiquet to the chiefs of circonscriptions in 1934:
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My attention has been called to the difficulties facing the authorities of Douala . . . and the impossibility they face in trying to verify the identity of indigènes in an effort to control their fiscal situation. I believe some progress can be made in this area with a stricter application of the decree . . . I ask you to remind the local populations that those who leave their regions of origin, and particularly those using a water route on their way to Douala, would greatly benefit from the possession of an identity booklet which is in perfect order and indicates their fiscal situation.65
It is evident that more police and better intelligence, surveillance and identification did not enable the French administration to control and construct the community of strangers in New Bell. The failure of colonial policy in New Bell can be found in a close examination of the immigrant population, their motives and methods in averting colonial control, and their own visions of their community.
Community of lawlessness: The immigrant population of New Bell Like the colonial regime, immigrants related to New Bell as an African space. As opposed to the Duala quarter, New Bell was known as the ‘popular quarter’.66 Residents imagined a distance between themselves and the regime, despite the large and looming prison situated in the centre of the quarter. New Bell residents frustrated officials with their widespread disregard for colonial laws and their ongoing exercise of autonomy, sometimes without any awareness of having done so. In 1928, the chief of the circonscription thus complained: The Duala are perfectly aware of rules concerning manners, and they make a real effort to show respect to the authorities. But the floating population of petty merchants, artisans and labourers are generally crude. These people do not salute, perhaps not recognising the person who passes by them in a car. Often, they are distracted, or completely lacking in any education whatsoever.
He recommended that indigenous chiefs of the quarter organise mass meetings to remind the population of their obligations, and, where necessary, to impose sanctions against offenders.67 The colonial regime did realise that violations committed by the local population were the result of imperfect communication between the African and colonial populations of the city. Residents of New Bell were not always informed of new or existing laws, and it was primarily through confrontations with police that they differentiated between illegal and legal activity.68 Only Western-educated Africans could read the colonial gazette in order to learn about new laws, and in New Bell, where few received any Western education under the French administration, local chiefs were commonly asked by the administration to conduct meetings with their constituents in order to inform them of important news and decrees.69 But many New Bell residents, such as women, and particularly unmarried women, were highly unlikely to attend these meetings. Thus, some
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female informants said that they knew nothing about laws concerning the laissez-passer, and that they did not need a laissez-passer because they were women.70 Women living in the quarter throughout the colonial era also had no knowledge of landmark events within the European community, such as WW II.71 The vast majority of New Bell residents had little contact with the colonial regime, with police being the only representatives to visit New Bell with any kind of frequency.72 Thus, in areas where police control was lax, as it often was with regard to women, it was not difficult for immigrants to conduct activities defined as illegal by the regime.
Continuities: Vagabondage Despite such a climate of compromised police power and imperfect communication, and despite colonial restrictions, the immigrant population attempted to carry on many aspects of pre-colonial life. In fact, much of the activity deemed illegal by the colonial regime was simply an immigrant attempt at extending pre-colonial autonomy into a colonial space. People and goods flowing into and out of New Bell were often an extension of pre-colonial social, cultural and economic practices, notwithstanding their recognised displacement in the colonial city. Thus, even when members of the stranger population were fully aware of prohibitions on certain activities and practices, they nonetheless disregarded these restrictions. This dynamic can be seen in the history of vagabondage in New Bell, which exposes colonial impotence in confining African bodies to designated spaces, as well as local reconfigurations of space in avoidance of the colonial reality. From the outset of the French mandate in Cameroon, official reports bemoaned the unchecked movement of Africans into and out of Douala. According to law, Africans were prohibited from travelling between circonscriptions without a laissez-passer. Granted by the heads of circonscriptions, this pass authorised movement for purposes of employment. All Africans without a laissez-passer were designated ‘vagabonds’, but requirement of the laissez-passer did little to curtail illegal movement; this was partially due to the nature of the pass and its distribution. Until 1941 there was no uniformity of information, format, or validation of the passes between regions. For the chief of the circonscription of Douala, this posed insurmountable problems. He outlined the difficulties associated with a system in which the laissez-passer consisted of a piece of paper designed by local African bureaucrats in each region, and signed by some European official. Often, the laissez-passer did not specify a single identity for its carrier, and multiple persons could be listed on one pass. Thus the pass could note the name of an individual, ‘accompanied by two women’ or ‘accompanied by four boys’. These passes were obviously useless as deterrents to illegal immigration. In some regions, African bureaucrats signed the passes, and while this became a very lucrative business for them, it robbed the laissez-passer of any law-enforcement potential.73 In light of these complaints voiced by the Douala administrator, Governor Cournarie encouraged all circonscriptions to use passes designed for one individual, including their first and
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last names and, if possible, Christian names. The passes had to be numbered, signed by a European, and specify the carrier’s reasons for leaving the circonscription of origin.74 But loopholes remained intact, as did opportunities for falsification and counterfeiting. Archival records and oral histories reveal that Africans resorted to bribery and theft to obtain official stationery for counterfeiting purposes.75 The French administration embraced punishment as the most effective deterrent to illegal movement among the African population. Until 1924 the punishment for vagabondage was 15 days in prison, followed by expulsion from Douala back to the region of origin. These 15 days in prison were usually served by working on European plantations outside the city.76 But this punishment seemed insufficient to Marchand, and he increased the sentence for vagabondage to correspond to that employed throughout French West Africa, namely, imprisonment for up to six months, followed by expulsion (interdiction de séjour) for five to ten years.77 This severe punishment made vagabondage equivalent to theft, as perpetrators of both crimes received sentences of six months in prison.78 The increased severity of the punishment did not put an end to vagabondage, primarily because proportionately few Africans were arrested and forced to serve this sentence. According to police records, 773 individuals were prosecuted for vagabondage in Douala in 1928, while this number fell to 492 in 1929.79 Estimates from the period show that the population of New Bell exceeded 20 000 at this time,80 while official reports suggest that no more than 6 000 immigrants were officially employed in 1929.81 Thus, it is clear that the vast majority of New Bell’s vagabonds easily escaped punishment, and its increase in severity remained largely theoretical. Oral informants confirmed these archival findings. Most informants interviewed claimed that the laissez-passer was never an obstacle to immigration to Douala. Residents of New Bell, including former police officers, recalled that little was done to convict the masses residing in the quarter without the pass.82 One informant claimed that individuals who wanted to remain in the city without a laissez-passer simply stayed in New Bell, and did not venture out to other quarters where law enforcement was more active.83 The laxity of the police force in dealing with vagabondage in New Bell led some immigrants to believe that they did not need the pass.84 But even for those aware of the law, there was simply no recognition of vagabondage as a crime.85 Indeed, police records of illegal immigrants reveal a dissonance between colonial and local definitions of criminality. The colonial regime met with tremendous difficulties in combating the problem simply because few residents in New Bell would define their presence in the quarter as vagabondage. Those prosecuted explained that they had simply come to the city to visit a brother or an uncle, or for private employment purposes. When asked to present a laissez-passer, tax receipt, or identification card, they simply explained, ‘I don’t have them’.86 This continued exercise of autonomy, accompanied by a nonchalant attitude, provides some insight into local perceptions of colonial power in New Bell. Some officials in 1945 suggested cancelling the law altogether, arguing that the laissezpasser was acting as a deterrent to the recruitment efforts of European employers because
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it hindered the masses from freely migrating toward employment opportunities.87 The suggestion was rejected, but it seems that its implementation would in any case not have made any great impact on the decision-making process among Africans. The history of vagabondage in New Bell revealed that colonial laws did not impact local choices on where to live or work, and it was ultimately this inattention or circumvention of colonial rule that enabled New Bell to flourish. The continuities in pre-colonial patterns of movement and networking can also be seen in the history of smuggling and prostitution in New Bell, as well as in innovations rooted in the emerging community of strangers.
Smuggling Throughout the French mandate, unauthorised trade troubled the administration in New Bell. Illegal trade was facilitated by the massive volume of goods imported and exported at the port and the authorities’ inability to survey the myriad of waterways leading into and out of the city sufficiently. The acquisition of a single motorboat did little to improve police and customs officials’ effectiveness on the vast river network.88 The space of New Bell itself was also vital to the illicit trade, with the strangers’ quarter serving as the centre of Douala’s black market. Trafficking was conducted in a wide variety of imported goods and local foodstuffs, with one informant claiming that agricultural products were easily brought into the city by women traders without a laissez-passer or trade licence.89 The potential for profit enticed members of all ethnic groups, and some colonial officials, to participate in the trafficking. What was illicit in the eyes of officials was often merely the extension of pre-colonial trade networks and economic relationships into a colonial space. This was particularly apparent among the Hausa traders. Travelling along pre-colonial caravan routes, the Hausa incorporated new products of the colonial era into pre-existing markets. They were particularly active in the black markets in currencies, exploiting ethnic ties crossing over colonial borders and capitalising on fluctuations in both French and British currencies.90 The Hausa also made great efforts to maintain their autonomy in trade, despite the imposition of regulations regarding licensing, tariffs and immigration. Unlicensed Hausa butchers in New Bell, for example, were prosecuted for selling meat rejected by colonial inspectors.91 The Hausa also maintained a lively arms trafficking along caravan routes.92 Like the Hausa, Bamileke market boys exploited pre-colonial social and economic networks in conducting business in New Bell. This was particularly evident with regard to the tchua, the credit associations examined in Chapter 2. But while a portion of the illicit trade in Douala sprouted out of pre-colonial ethnic-based economic alliances, the main base of the trade was characterised by multi-ethnic participation in trafficking centred on the port. While each ethnic group exploited its particular cultural practices and norms, it was the cooperation between groups and their specialisations that enabled widespread trafficking in Douala throughout the colonial era.93 Trafficking conducted at the port was primarily nocturnal. In the years preceding the acquisition of the police motorboat there was no water surveillance, but even afterwards police had great difficulty patrolling at night when visibility was limited.94 Captains generally came ashore in the evening, enabling local traders to board ships and conduct
Crime and community
business with crewmen. Familiarity with crewmen and guards was essential, as one informant claimed: ‘only those with good relations with others could participate in the trade’.95 In the main, Duala traders boarded the ships. Capitalising on relations nurtured over decades as trade monopolists, the Duala developed longstanding ties with crewmen who returned to port year after year. The Duala were also prime candidates for this work because they had canoes with which to approach ships at night.96 Commonly referred to as ‘wholesalers’, the Duala would bring goods purchased aboard ships to the shore for an active nightly trade with Bamileke, Hausa, Togolese and Dahomean retailers. Immigrant ‘retailers’ were also referred to by their pidgin name, Bayam-Sellem, because they took goods purchased from the Duala and resold them in the markets in New Bell.97 The use of pidgin names and terminology such as ‘wholesalers’ and ‘retailers’ allowed participants to shroud themselves in a self-constructed legitimacy, distancing them from colonial law. Traffickers thrived in a marketplace created independently from European interests, and at the expense of colonial enterprise. Large commerce houses such as John Holt and Woermann suffered ongoing losses to this trafficking, but the colonial regime was nonetheless unable to stop what they defined as damaging, criminal behaviour.98 For New Bell residents this trafficking was an important component of the community’s sustenance. Those working in the illicit trade were highly prosperous and the entire quarter enjoyed easy access to products not available elsewhere.99 Aware of this situation, but unable to prevent it, the frustration of European powers in the city can be seen in the following excerpt from the local colonial press: It is estimated that in Douala, there are presently between eight and ten thousand market-boys – equal to the number of salaried workers – who work in the black market without a patent. All that is impossible to find in the official market (in certain large commerce houses in particular, everything is always out of stock), can be found in the hands of the markets boys, be it a bicycle part, fabric, lampshade, or a hundred other articles. This merchandise is always unloaded at the port, but one cannot find it for sale anywhere . . . except by the market boys, and at double or even triple the official price . . . One is surprised that they do not fall into the hands of the law. This trade is all methodically organised, and enjoys complete impunity.100
Prostitution White’s work on prostitution in colonial Nairobi has revealed the disparity between colonial and local perceptions of prostitution in colonial Africa, with Nairobi prostitutes emerging in this history as ambitious and resourceful entrepreneurs serving as the foundation of their communities.101 Rather than posing a threat to family life and social harmony, White argued that prostitution was in fact family work, and constituted a vital contribution to community welfare. Just as in Nairobi, prostitutes in New Bell occupied a central position in the social fabric, preserving and reproducing community life. Also similar to Nairobi, the failure of the colonial regime to control prostitution in Douala was due to the dissonance between local and colonial definitions of prostitution.
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In Douala during the French mandate, the administration’s policy toward prostitution evolved in conjunction with other economic and social policies, and the administration applied varying degrees of tolerance and control over time. Thus, at the very beginning of the mandate, great efforts were made to protect troops from venereal diseases through the expulsion of prostitutes from Douala. While there was laxity toward men moving in and out of the city without the laissez-passer, all women arriving in Douala without the pass were identified as vagabonds, and efforts were made to send them back to their regions of origin.102 This intolerance toward prostitution in the city gave way to a more accommodating view, when labour recruitment became a major priority of the administration as early as 1920. More lenient conditions were needed in order for the labour force to migrate to Douala and settle there, and prostitution was soon adopted as a necessary evil. 103 While acknowledging the need for prostitutes in the city, the French administration hoped to control the practice through a series of regulating decrees, the first of which appeared in 1923. The sanctioning of ‘traffic in women’ only related to local Africans, and in 1928, Marchand enforced strict measures to prevent ‘the international trade in women’, and particularly white women, from penetrating into Cameroon.104 While the protection of African women’s morality was not a concern, there were fears that unmonitored prostitution could endanger the labour force, and colonial laws sought to regulate the provision of sexual services by African women by keeping any health risk in check.105 The main objective was to register prostitutes, equip them with a sanitary-record booklet, and have them undergo periodical medical examinations. During the first decade of the mandate, the administration also required women to identify a sponsor in the city who was responsible for them or risk deportation back to their regions of origin, but later this requirement was dropped.106 These steps, enforced with varying levels of enthusiasm by the French administration throughout the colonial era, did little to curb the practice of unmonitored prostitution. Although an optimistic Marchand claimed in 1923 that the measures introduced had nearly wiped out prostitution from southern Cameroon, the annual report of 1929 complained that Douala was inundated with ‘public girls’.107 By 1956 the chief of the Wouri (Douala) circonscription believed that Douala could compete with the world record for the number of prostitutes relative to the city’s population, with at least 5 000 operating clandestinely in the city.108 Yet throughout the colonial era the regime was aware that only a tiny fraction of women were adhering to colonial laws regulating their activity. In 1932, for example, only 152 prostitutes were registered in New Bell, with a population exceeding 20 000 residents.109 This number fell to a mere 22 in 1939, and even after a vigorous campaign to identify and register others, the French administration could only account for an additional 31 women.110 The French were aware that a ‘clandestine prostitution’ existed in New Bell, and that they had failed to uncover it.111 Part of the failure on the part of the French administration was the lack of retribution for those who did not comply with punishments both mild and rarely enforced. Thus Douala administrator Le Métayer complained in 1930, ‘there is perhaps room to increase the fine from 50 to 500 francs, and the punishment from one to three days in prison’
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for those women refusing to register.112 In the immediate aftermath of the appearance of new legislation, women were expelled and others came under closer scrutiny, but these efforts soon dissipated and the unmonitored influx of women from the interior resumed with full force.113 The lack of compliance among prostitutes in New Bell is best explained by an examination of the attitudes of women who dodged colonial definitions of prostitution. The 1923 decree defined prostitutes as ‘those who live habitually from prostitution and have no other means of existence’, but Le Métayer claimed that the type of prostitution described in this decree ‘simply did not exist in Cameroon’. He claimed that: No person lives continuously or solely from the commerce of her charms without having another means of existence. Most often, women who want to satisfy a passing desire or those who have a lustful attraction to some object, will prostitute themselves, but this is only a single act which will not repeat itself, and often the obsession for money is connected to some insignificant thing.114
There is little correspondence between the uninformed musings of this official and the explanations given by oral informants for their choice of prostitution as a means of existence in Douala. Women interviewed presented themselves and their choices as far less fickle or arbitrary. For most, the choice to come to Douala was grounded in a desire to improve their lives, and the move to Douala was often done under difficult circumstances. Some fled their villages of origin to escape abuse at the hands of their fathers or husbands, while others recalled hopes for improving their standard of living by leaving impoverished rural areas.115 Most arrived in Douala alone after a long journey and had to construct an urban social network of support, usually by exploiting ties to distant relatives or fellow villagers who had preceded them to the city. As a result of their place within both colonial consciousness and local hierarchies of power, the move to New Bell presented tremendous challenges to these women. Life in New Bell required that they learn new cultural norms, new languages, and a new profession – all under the threat of the colonial regime and detached from the social and economic ties to their villages. City life was initially overwhelming for these lone women, but all feelings of intimidation had to be overcome in order for them to begin working. This could take some time, as one informant explained, ‘Those of us who were newly arrived, we did not know pidgin, or French, and we were afraid. We had to stay for a while and learn a few words, and become brave in order to start working with anything but our own language’.116 Although many joined a relative in the city, the introduction into the world of prostitution was a solitary affair, and as one women explained, ‘you only learned what to do by watching others, you did not ask’.117 The difficulties associated with this way of life were hardly worth facing by a woman merely seeking to satisfy a fleeting and superficial craving, such as that described by Le Métayer. On the contrary, women who worked as prostitutes in New Bell did so to fulfil long-term goals. Prostitution was widely employed as a stepping stone, perhaps the only one available, to more advantageous and permanent relationships with men. Thus, oral informants claimed that all non-married women in the city were prostitutes.118 Women
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living on their own used prostitution to earn a living in the short term. But financial profit was not always substantial; one woman interviewed claimed, ‘I did not make any money, I was too naïve. I would content myself with a small piece of clothing or other objects someone would offer me’.119 For many, the immediate gains were not the primary incentive for practising prostitution. Rather, prostitution was ultimately used as a means for finding a husband. In fact, all women interviewed claimed to have succeeded in accomplishing this goal. A closer inspection of these women’s testimonies reveals that these marriage relationships born out of prostitution little resembled pre-colonial, village-based unions. Marriages contracted between women and their clients in New Bell were of varying duration and levels of commitment. The use of the term ‘marriage’ to describe long-term relationships with men to whom they had brokered themselves, often without the payment of bridewealth, highlights the hopes and intentions of prostitutes in colonial New Bell. One informant even referred to her relationship of concubinage with a European doctor as marriage. In describing her eight-year relationship with the European, she claimed: Our relationship was very good because Mr Belmont took me as a wife and not as a simple concubine. The proof of this is that . . . when he went back to France to marry his fiancée after all the time we spent together, he graciously gave me three sewing machines, one Vespa motorcycle, two bicycles (one Peugeot and one Rally), and 200 000 francs in cash.120
It is true that women were able to exercise some autonomy in exploiting new opportunities presented by colonialism and arranging their own marriages, but this must be seen as a strategy employed against a backdrop of limited choices. Women turned to prostitution as a way of negotiating their disadvantaged position with regard to men and hoped it would create better opportunity. Some insight into the ways in which prostitution was ultimately perceived in New Bell can be garnered from an examination of the local term widely used for prostitution, mbamba. Mbamba is a word taken from Bulu, the ethnic group most highly represented among prostitutes of Douala in the colonial era.121 During the colonial era, the word mbamba was first used to describe the work of male porters. Mbamba referred to work a person was forced to do for pay. This work entailed carrying a heavy load whose contents and weight were unknown, and belonged to someone else. It was considered unclean and only undertaken for lack of options. Later, prostitution was referred to as mbo mbamba, meaning doing the work of mbamba.122 The connotation is clear – prostitution provided women with work for pay, but ultimately they hoped to move beyond it. As one woman explained, ‘when a woman realised that she could not support herself on the life of prostitution, she married a man in a more permanent manner, and only then could he spend as many nights as he wanted with her’.123 Thus, for many women, prostitution was ultimately a tool for creating and maintaining supportive family networks for themselves in New Bell. This point was missed by the colonial regime, and it explains the utter failure of the French in their attempts to pin the identity of prostitute on African women.
Crime and community
Only a handful of colonial officers realised that no improvement in surveillance or knowledge could ensure the availability of African labour for colonial enterprises rather than for the New Bell-based economy. These officials understood that the local decision to avoid incorporation into the colonial workforce was based on the complete depravity of employment standards. As one official explained in 1947, Africans ‘have complaints about the work regime, housing, food, salaries, brutality of overseers, disregard of employers . . . In one word, all the causes of worker discontent, past and present, can explain the difficulties faced by [European] planters, merchants and industrial enterprises’.124 With little incentive to work for the colonial power, immigrants to New Bell generated alternative modes of existence. Africans foiled colonial tactics by rejecting definitions of criminality and instilling different meaning into their presence in the strangers’ quarter. Ultimately, this rejection of colonial boundaries defining legal and illegal ventures became the foundation of community in New Bell, and the key to its viability.
Notes to Chapter Four 1 Andrew Burton has documented a similar shift in British policy with regard to the African population in colonial Dar es Salaam. See A. Burton, African Underclass: Urbanisation, Crime and Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam (Oxford: James Currey, 2005). 2 Gary Kynoch’s work on Marashea gangs in South Africa reveals a similar pattern. He claims that the failure of the colonial government in South Africa to fully control urban areas opened up spaces in which organised crime gangs like the Marashea emerged. These gangs ‘established, protected and expanded spheres of influence independent of larger political and ideological concerns’. See G. Kynoch, We Are Fighting the World: A History of Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2005), 3. 3 ANC-FF APA 10005/A. 4 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala 1916–25, L’administrateur des colonies Ch. Mathieu, le chef de la circonscription de Douala à M. le commissaire de la République, 20 December 1918. 5 Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 142; Gouellain, Douala, 157. 6 ANC-FF APA 10934/A, 28 February 1917; ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, L’administrateur de Douala à M. le commissaire de la République, 21 January 1917. 7 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, L’administrateur de Douala à M. le commissaire de la République, 21 January 1917. 8 Ibid., 17 April 1916. 9 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Commissaire Carde au chef de la circonscription de Douala, 20 May 1919. 10 ANC-FF APA 11873. 11 For example, ANC-FF APA 10970/C, Sûreté. 12 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, Le commissaire de police de la ville de Douala à M. l’administrateur, le chef de la circonscription, 29 June 1926; ANC-FF DOM 253, Bulletin de recherches, 28 April 1925. 13 For example, see ANC-FF APA 10910/E, Contrôle politique 1930–36, Commissaire Marchand au ministère des colonies, 7 July 1930; ANC-FF APA 10780, Travail – grèves, Le délégué du commissaire de la République à M. le commissaire de la République, 13 August 1937. 14 ANC-FF DOM 826, Correspondances diverses 1926–27, Commissaire Marchand, 3 March 1927.
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The Strangers of New Bell 15 ANC-FF 2AC 3302. 16 ANC-FF APA 10209/11, Rapports divers – sûreté 1945, Compte-rendu de L’adjudant de police Amougou Mendomo Michel, 19 October 1945. 17 F. Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 169. 18 ANC-FF APA 11873. 19 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, L’administrateur adjoint des colonies Dimpault, le chef de la circonscription de Douala, à M. le gouverneur des colonies, commissaire de la République, 2 February 1918. 20 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, Le chef de la circonscription de Douala, à M. le commissaire de la République, 7 July 1926. 21 Ibid., Le chef de la circonscription de Douala, à M. le chef du service judiciaire, 6 April 1929. 22 ANC-FF APA 11280/C, Gendarmerie, 1929–46. 23 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, Le chef de la circonscription de Douala, à M. le gouverneur des colonies, commissaire de la République, 7 August 1925. 24 ANC-FF APA 10910/E. 25 ANC-FF APA 11280/A, Le commissaire central de police à M. l’administrateur des colonies, le chef de la circonscription de Douala, 14 October 1930. 26 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 31 March 1934. 27 ANC-FF APA 10949/A, Milice 1923–28. 28 ANC-FF APA 11375, Détachement de Douala, agents de police, La police de la ville de Douala à M. le Gouverneur général, haut-commissaire de la République au Cameroun, 13 July 1939. 29 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, L’administrateur des colonies Mathieu, le chef de la circonscription de Douala, à M. le gouverneur des colonies, commissaire de la République, 8 January 1919. 30 Ibid., 3 April 1919. 31 ANC-FF APA 11280, Police – Douala, 1928–29, Le chef de la circonscription de Douala à M. le commissaire de la République, 8 April 1930. 32 Ibid., 18 April 1930. 33 ANC-FF APA 10227, Propagande allemande, Le commissaire de la République française dans les territoires du Cameroun à M. le ministre des colonies, 5 March 1933; Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 31 March 1934. 34 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala 1916–25, J.A.M. Grenouilleau Frères au Commandant de la Circonscription de Douala, 17 December 1918. 35 ANC-FF APA 11375. 36 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala 1916–25, État nominatif des gardes de police de la circonscription de Douala, classés par circonscription, 1918. The agents from the Douala region identified themselves as Bandem (28), Bassa (1), Yangem (1), Bodiman (1), Bakoko (1), Balon (1) and Yabassi (1). 37 Interview with Biloa. 38 ANC-FF APA 11873. 39 ANC-FF APA 11875/A, Le délégué du commissaire de la République à M. le commissaire de la République, 5 March 1925. 40 ANSOM 1/AFFPOL/3139, Mission d’inspection Picanon 1926–27, Inspection générale du Service de Santé, 8 March 1920. 41 ANC-FF APA 10184/A, Cameroun politique, psychose collective du banditisme, 8 August 1948; ANCFF APA 11873. 42 J. C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
Crime and community 43 L. White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumors and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 210. 44 ANC-FF APA 11201/N, Commissariat de police, Douala, 1929–32, 3 July 1931; ANC-FF APA 10197/F Sûreté – Atteinte au crédit de la nation – échange de billets, 6 October 1936; ANC-FF APA 10184/A, Cameroun politique, psychose collective du banditisme, 8 August 1948; APA 11200/A, Rapport de police, Douala – Sûreté, 4 September 1939. 45 Ibid. 46 ANC-FF APA 10184/A. 47 ANC-FF DOM 167, Contrats de travail, 1936–45; ANC-FF APA 11223/B; Chatap, Le travail salarié au Cameroun. 48 ANC-FF APA 11223/B. 49 For example, see ANC-FF APA 11200/A; ANC-FF APA 10208/C; ANC-FF APA 10209/3, Agitation Douala, 1945–46. 50 ANC-FF APA 10208/C. 51 Interview with Ongono. 52 ANC-FF APA 11280, Police – Douala, 1928–29, Le commissaire spécial, chargé de l’immigration, à M. le délégué du commissaire de la République, undated. 53 ANC-FF APA 11200/A, 4 September 1939. 54 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, Le chef de la circonscription de Douala, 4 April 1927. 55 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Circulaire no. 46, 6 August 1917. 56 ANC-FF APA 11326/B, Carnet d’identité des indigènes, Le chef de la circonscription de Douala à M. le commissaire de la République, 18 September 1928. 57 ANC-FF APA 11326/B, Circulaire no. 32, 3 August 1927. 58 ANC-FF APA 11326/B, Le commissaire central au chef de la circonscription de Douala, 13 September 1928. 59 ANC-FF APA 11326/B; Responses to Circulaire no. 32, 3 August 1927. 60 ANC-FF APA 11326/B, Le chef de la circonscription de Doume à M. le commissaire de la République, 17 September 1927. 61 ANC-FF APA 11326/B, Circulaire à toutes les circonscriptions et chefs de cervices et de bureaux, chemins de fer et travaux publics, port, P.T.T. douane, domaine, finances, ateliers, 7 July 1928. 62 Ibid. 63 ANC-FF APA 11119, Le chef de la Région du Wouri à M. le gouverneur du Cameroun français, 20 October 1941. 64 ANC-FF APA 11326/B, Circulaire no. 66, 4 October 1928. 65 ANC-FF APA 11326/B, Circulaire no. 42, 20 July 1934. 66 Interview with Jacqueline Angono Ebe, Mendong, Sangmelina province, March 1999. 67 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1917–25, Le chef de la circonscription de Douala à M. le commissaire de la République, 14 February 1928. 68 Interviews with Zang; Angono Ebe; Ngono; and Jacqueline Kemayou, New Bell, Douala, March 1999. 69 Interview with Moumé Etia, December 1998. 70 For example, interviews with Kemayou and Ngono. 71 Interviews with Zang and Angono Ebe. 72 ANC-FF APA 11875/A, Le délégué du dommissaire de la République à M. le commissaire de la République, 5 March 1925. 73 ANC-FF APA 11119, Le chef de la région du Wouri à M. le gouverneur du Cameroun français, 20 October 1941. 74 ANC-FF APA 11367/A, Circulation des indigènes – vagabondage, 1918–46, Circulaire no. 56, Commissaire Cournarie à toutes régions, 30 October 1941.
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The Strangers of New Bell 75 Train tickets were also counterfeited after Governor Marchand ordered in 1928 that they be sold only to those carrying a valid laissez-passer. ANC-FF APA 11367/A, Gouverneur Marchand aux chefs de circonscriptions, 18 January 1928; ANC-FF APA 12409, Tribunal de 1er degré Douala, 1927–30. Also, interview with Nguidjol; ANC-FF APA 10282, Personnel indigène, 1929–40. 76 L. Moumé Etia, Cameroun: Les années ardentes (Paris: JAPRESS, 1991), 37. 77 ANC-FF APA 11367/A, Le ministère des colonies au président de la République française au Cameroun, 6 May 1924. 78 ANC-FF APA 10407, Interdiction de séjour 1930–32. 79 ANC-FF APA 10005/A. 80 Derrick, Douala Under the French Mandate, 356. 81 Gouellain, Douala, 220. 82 Interviews with Kapendia; Ngobo, March 1999; Benjamin Ngoko; Zang; and Dagobert Fampou, Joss, Douala, March 1999. 83 Interview with Yondi. 84 Interview with Kemayou. 85 Interview with Kapendia. 86 ANC-FF APA 10751, Justice – indigènes, affaires diverses, 1930–34, 7 March 1930. 87 ANC-FF APA 11119, Letters dated 9 October 1937 and 2 March 1945; Circulaire no. 239, 10 March 1945. 88 ANC-FF APA 10227, Le commissaire de la République française dans les Territoires du Cameroun à M. le ministre des colonies, 5 March 1933. 89 Interview with Kemayou. 90 ANC-FF APA 10934/A, 9 September 1925 and 17 November 1925. 91 ANC-FF, Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Ducq Ernest, commissaire central de police au gouverneur, 31 May 1919; ANC-FF APA 10278/J, Santé divers 1930–45, Proces verbal no. 46, 21 September 1939. 92 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Le Sergent Chef de Poste, 1 January 1917. 93 This type of cooperation among ethnic groups in Cameroon has also been described in A. Eckert, ‘African Rural Entrepreneurs and Labor in the Cameroon Littoral’, Journal of African History 40 (1999):109– 26. 94 Interviews with Epée, December 1998; Moumé Etia, December 1998; and Onana. Information on smuggling can also be found in ANC-FF APA 11280. 95 Interview with Aladji Assan Tanko, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. 96 Interview with Epée, December 1998. 97 Ibid. 98 ANC-FF APA 11280. 99 ANC-FF APA 11875/A, Letters to John Holt, 1917. 100 L’Éveil du Cameroun, 8 August 1948. 101 L. White, Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 102 ANC-FF 2AC 3302, M. le chef de la circonscription de Douala pour le gouverneur des Colonies commissaire de la République française, 24 August 1918. 103 ANC-FF APA 11873. 104 ANSOM FM/AGEFOM989/3429, Police, Rapport Annuel sur la traite des femmes et des enfants et la prostitution pour 1927, 12 March 1928. 105 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 7 September 1923; 25 October 1933; 9 November 1933; 31 December 1942; 24 April 1946; and 8 July 1948. 106 ANC-FF APA 12052/N, Prostitution, 1925–40, M. le chef de la circonscription de Douala pour le commissaire de la République française, 10 August 1930.
Crime and community 107 ANSOM FM/AGEFOM989/3429; ANC-FF APA 10005/A. 108 ANC-FF 1AC 1801, Prostitution reglementation, 1954–56, Le chef de la région du Wouri à M. le hautcommissaire, direction des affaires politiques, 25 August 1956. 109 ANSOM FM/AGEFOM913/2733, Cameroun – police sanitaire, 1928–33, Le chef du secrétariat général au chef de la circonscription de Douala, 22 February 1933. 110 ANC-FF APA 12052/N, Report on Prostitution in Douala, 4 July 1939. 111 ANSOM FM/AGEFOM913/2733. 112 ANC-FF APA 12052/N, Le Métayer, admininstrateur adjoint des colonies au chef de la circonscription de Douala, undated (1930). 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 115 Interviews with Ngono and Zang; ANC-FF APA 12409, Case involving Belinqa Nze, 8 August 1928. 116 Interview with Ngono. 117 Ibid. 118 Interviews with Kwopi, Benjamin Ngoko and Ongono. 119 Interview with Zang. 120 Interview with Angono Ebe. 121 Interview with Ngobo, December 1998. 122 Interview with Vince Evina, Mekas village, Dja Reserve, March 1999. 123 Interview with Ngono. 124 ANC-FF APA 11655/B, Travail et main-d’oeuvre, 1944–47, Gouverneur Delavignette au Chef de Nyong et Sanaga, 27 January 1947.
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FIVE Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
Many scholars have studied the pivotal role played by alcohol in the European colonisation of Africa.1 The trade in alcohol and local consumption, as well as European attempts at regulating both, have served historians as a lens for examining the dynamics of colonial rule throughout the continent. Most colonial administrations in Africa made some effort to control the indigenous population’s access to and consumption of alcohol. The failure of the colonial administrations to block the diffusion and use of alcohol within African societies, despite these immense efforts, has been identified as evidence of colonial weakness and African agency in shaping local processes during the colonial era. In recent years particularly, the study of alcohol consumption in colonial Africa has attracted many scholars attempting to understand local responses to colonial rule. The history of alcohol is interpreted against a larger backdrop of colonial oppression and the African struggle against this oppression. In Charles Ambler and Jonathan Crush’s words: Ubiquitous daily struggles over alcohol production and consumption, and occasional violent conflicts between brewers and police, were surface manifestations of a deep rejection of state interference and control in the arena of drink. Illegal drinking places became sites for what James Scott describes as the ‘hidden transcript’ of the dominated: a discourse of opposition that encompassed not only the web of alcohol legislation, but the shared experience of racial oppression and economic exploitation that bound drinkers together.2
In their history of liquor and labour in Southern Africa, Ambler and Crush examined the role played by alcohol in local societies, primarily within the context of an ongoing dialogue between Africans and their European oppressors. Alcohol was seen as a tool used by both colonisers and Africans in their attempts to seize power. According to Ambler and Crush, ‘drinking must be conceived not simply as a weapon of domination but also as a relatively autonomous form of cultural expression – and thus a potent form of resistance’.3 Thus, Ambler and Crush saw the consumption of alcohol as a form of resistance to colonial rule, and in their collection of essays concerning the history of alcohol in southern Africa they sought to map this ‘terrain of resistance’.4 100
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In another important work on the history of alcohol in colonial Africa, Emmanuel Akyeampong took a similar approach to Ambler and Crush in interpreting the ‘uses and meanings of alcohol’ in Ghana as a ‘metaphor for power’.5 Akyeampong argued that alcohol – along with two other fluids, blood and water, – ‘lubricated social relations’ throughout the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial history of Ghana, and that in studying the role of alcohol in this history, it is possible learn about the ‘culture of power’ in the region.6 In colonial Ghana, both the British administration and local chiefs attempted to control access to alcohol and its consumption as a way of securing control over the entire social order. For the local population, struggles against these controls were connected to broader popular protests against local and colonial hierarchies of power. The link between popular struggles related to alcohol and mass political protest was most prominent in the nationalist movement of the 1940s and 1950s, in which the elimination of colonial control over alcohol became a central issue in the movement for independence. Akyeampong also argued that alcohol remained an important ‘symbol of protest’ for the Ghanaian masses even after independence, and even those who used alcohol as an escape did so in response to frustrations linked to the political arena.7 In colonial Cameroon, similar to both Ghana and southern Africa, efforts to control the distribution and consumption of alcohol within the territory were clearly linked to the German and the French administrations’ larger efforts to shape social, economic and political processes in the colony. From the colonial perspective, access to alcohol did represent power. As will be seen below, European officials went to great lengths to limit and differentiate the local culture of drinking from that of Europeans as part of the racial ideologies and cultural policies that were at the foundation of colonial domination over African subjects. Thus in Cameroon, and particularly in Douala, the colonial struggle to limit the production, sale and consumption of alcohol among Africans underscored the fundamental struggle carried out by the colonial administrations to secure and maintain power. The history of alcohol distribution and consumption did not follow the same trajectory in all areas of colonial Douala. The cultural and political significance of alcohol was not uniform throughout the urban space, and the presence of alcohol in each quarter of the city did not reveal an identical metaphor of power struggle between the colonial power and the local population. Rather, the history of alcohol in Douala was deeply linked to the distinct construction and evolution of each cultural, economic and political space. The differences in the construction and control over these spaces were revealed in the multiple histories of drinking in the city. Colonial officials and the European population shared their administrative, commercial and residential spaces with the local Duala elite in the quarters of Joss and Akwa, and it was in these quarters that the colonial administrations made their most stringent attempts to protect European society from African intrusion. Colonial efforts to control access to alcohol and the culture of drinking were therefore most exacting in these quarters. By contrast, the colonial administrations’ desire to maintain some distance from New Bell also found expression in their efforts to monitor and control the culture of
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leisure in the quarter. Thus, the colonial administrations treated the consumption of alcohol, the main method of distraction in the quarter, far differently in New Bell than in Duala. From the immigrants’ perspective alcohol occupied a central position in the social, cultural and economic spheres of the quarter, and colonial policy inevitably played a role in determining the impact of alcohol in all these areas. The history of drinking in the quarter reveals that residents of New Bell capitalised on the colonial designation of New Bell as an African space, and established pockets of autonomy from colonial rule. The history of alcohol in New Bell was not solely the product of dialogue or conflict between the immigrant population and the colonial or the local hierarchies of power. Though this does not deny the influence of power struggles on the production of alcohol and the culture of drinking in the strangers’ quarter, the use of alcohol was ultimately neither a response to colonialism, nor a tool of resistance to colonial power. Rather than conceptualising drinking in New Bell as an expression of power, or an instrument of political or cultural struggle, it could be viewed more accurately as reflective of community life that was generally transitory, spontaneous and creative, and as such, uncaptured by the colonial regime. The attempt here is to move away from representing African cultures as locked in an inescapable dialogue with colonial powers and to categorise all expressions of local culture as some form of resistance or response to colonialism.8 For the strangers of New Bell, sharing a drink at the end of the day was not necessarily an expression of power or a conscious political gesture. Drinking was an expression of popular culture rooted in the strangers’ quarter, and the realignment of economic and social relations following the growth of a vibrant local industry of alcohol production made its most significant impact on the internal workings and construction of the community of strangers.
Alcohol and colonialism in Cameroon It is difficult to overestimate the significance of alcohol in the history of colonial Cameroon. Indeed, the introduction of alcohol into the pre-colonial territory by European traders helped pave the way to formal colonial rule. As historian Susan Diduk wrote, ‘spirits, above all other trade goods, helped secure Germany’s annexation of Cameroon, its control over indigenous labour, and access to the country’s interior’.9 After becoming a staple of international trade in Cameroon, the demand for European alcohol grew. So valued was the imported liquor that it soon became a form of currency in the territory. After the Germans established formal colonial rule in 1884, alcohol was widely used as salary for African employees, and thus facilitated the recruitment of African labour. The sale of alcohol to local populations by European traders was met with opposition by colonial administrations and missionaries throughout Africa. These forces of opposition began lobbying for prohibition on either moral or political grounds. While missionaries feared the decline in local morality brought on by excessive drinking, colonial administrations wanted to secure control over the sale of alcohol as a means of monitoring and controlling local economic and social processes. In 1910, the German
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
administration began a programme of limited prohibition in Cameroon, rather than a complete outlawing of the trade. Arguing that an outright ban would only foster an active illegal trade with neighbouring colonies, Governor Seitz hoped to severely reduce the trade by limiting it only to the southern coastal region.10 The Allied Forces ousted the Germans from Cameroon during WW I, and the start of the French mandate in 1916 brought new pressures to control the local trade of alcohol. As historian Lynn Pan has documented, the terms of the mandate established by the League of Nations stipulated that strong control should be exercised over the sale of liquor to Africans and required that annual reports be made to the League concerning this control.11 But according to Pan, the existence of a large community of French businessmen and colonial officials in Cameroon prevented the total prohibition of alcohol in the territory. Thus, faced with pressures from the Permanent Mandates Commission, missionaries and international public opinion on the one hand, and the needs of the local expatriate community on the other, the French attempted to walk a tightrope of alcohol policy that would both ensure an ample supply of liquor in the colony and simultaneously block African access to it. The first French commissioner in Cameroon, General Aymerich, lost no time in attempting to prevent Africans from consuming alcoholic beverages. Three months after taking control of the city from the British armed forces, he reminded the general public of laws concerning Africans and alcohol when he proclaimed: In taking over the administration in Cameroon, the Commissioner has reminded the public that decrees issued by the Allied authorities would be vigorously enforced, and particularly the decree of June 1, 1915 banning the deliverance of alcohol to the indigenous population. [Certain components] of this decree seemed to have been overlooked, as well as the penalties associated with them.12
As reinforcement to the legislation issued by the interim regime, the early French administration issued another decree on 22 November 1916 outlawing the consumption of all alcoholic beverages, wine and beer by the indigenous population.13 On 20 December of the same year, another law was issued, banning the sale of alcohol to Africans, as well as the employment of Africans as intermediaries in the sale of alcoholic beverages.14 The colonial agenda embedded in this legislation was propelled by both economic and political factors. First and foremost, precautions had to be taken to protect the supply of labour, which the French administration believed was vulnerable to alcohol abuse. The administration ordered European employers to pay their African employees in food rather than cash in order to prevent workers from buying alcohol.15 But while policy makers feared that the consumption of alcohol threatened the availability and reliability of the work force, there was also a pretence of protecting African morality within the policies aimed at controlling local use of alcohol. In an attempt to satisfy the Permanent Mandates Commission, the administration presented prohibition as a moral responsibility to what it saw as corruptible African subject. As the administration wrote in the 1924 report to the League of Nations, ‘it would be highly desirable for the indigenous people
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of Cameroon to substitute the pleasure of alcohol consumption with more pure joys’.16 In its yearly reports, the administration outlined the specific measures taken to block the access of Africans to alcohol. The racist underpinnings of these policies expressed a belief that Africans could not control their alcohol intake, and that this could lead to social ruin. One administrator in Douala warned that without colonial control, Africans would drink themselves to death. He wrote, ‘this is a national vice which has led to the ruin of the family, of society and of the indigenous economy. Do you want to resolve the Duala problem? Let alcohol flow freely for a few years, and this entire race will disappear forever’. As long as Africans lacked the morality to use alcohol with civility, it was the French administration’s duty to impose controls. The same administrator wrote, ‘I applaud all measures taken, be they draconian, by the High Commissioner against the use of alcohol among Africans. In this matter, it is better to be safe than sorry’.17 But despite rhetoric to the League of Nations, the initial phase of zealous control over local consumption ultimately gave way to a more relaxed approach. On 12 September 1919, a decree was passed authorising Africans to purchase beverages with an alcohol content of no more than 14%.18 This decree was in turn modified in 1929, increasing the permissible alcohol content to 20%.19 There was certainly reason to prevent the excessive use of alcohol among Africans, but there were also incentives for avoiding a complete ban. These modifications were designed to maintain a guise of prohibition while enabling the French administration to reap the tremendous profits from the sale of beer and wine to its African subjects. Thus, while the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations imposed a policy of prohibition upon the administration in Cameroon, the colonial economic agenda propelled the administration to look for loopholes in implementing this policy. In distinguishing between distilled hard liquor and fermented beer and wine, the French administration claimed that it was protecting Africans from the most virulent of substances. Distilled liquors, such as rum and gin, were extremely inexpensive and thus accessible to large sectors of the population. A similar situation was noted by Akyeampong in colonial Ghana: ‘In the late nineteenth-century Gold Coast, where rum and gin were often sold cheaper than water, young men had the opportunity to indulge themselves’.20 The diffusion of these inexpensive and potent beverages would lead to widespread alcoholism within the indigenous population because Africans simply could not handle them. Beer and wine, on the other hand, did not pose the same dangers. The French administration claimed that a total repression of alcohol within indigenous society would only lead to an active illegal trade.21 The administration therefore authorised the sale of imported beer and wine because it was believed Africans would be less prone to abuse them. Of course, the administration would profit from this policy, through both import duties and licensing fees. The administration hoped that the diffusion of European beer and wine would encourage Africans to abandon locally brewed palm and maize wine for imported beverages. An alcohol content of 14% was authorised because this was the
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
minimum level of alcohol needed to enable the transport of wine from Europe without it spoiling.22 In the early years of the French mandate, the widespread consumption of locally produced alcoholic beverages threatened the economic interests of the French, but did not pose any threat on social or cultural grounds. As the administration queried in its 1923 report to the League of Nations: Is it convenient to attach an excessive importance to infrequent scenes of drunkenness caused by wine made of maize, a substance indispensable as a source of nutrition? We think not. Regrettable from a moral standpoint, the manifestation of drunkenness only exerts a limited influence because it is not often repeated. Infinitely more dangerous can be the regular consumption, even without drunkenness, of distilled drinks, whose low prices can enable their spread among the native population. The best way to prevent against this danger seems to be the authorisation of some beverages, beer and wine, in order to compete against the indigenous brews. One can already see in centres where contact with Europeans is constant a gradual increase in the native clientele which drinks these imported beverages.23
The excessive production of palm wine was insignificant as a social phenomenon, but it did pose a challenge to colonial economic interests because of the threat it posed to valuable trees. As the French administration claimed in its annual report of 1921, ‘the principle inconvenience with regard to the production of palm wine is not alcoholism, but the decay of palm trees as a result of their excessive punctures. These trees have become precious because of their oleaginous value, and it is therefore opportune to take a few sanctions towards stopping abuses’.24
Alcohol and urban space For the French administration, while concern over the moral decay of local society was expressed for the benefit of the Permanent Mandates Commission, the true colonial agenda regarding the indigenous consumption of alcohol was primarily driven by economic interests. In addition, there were also cultural and racial components to the administration’s desire to regulate the alcohol intake of the indigenous population. While the administration was willing to sacrifice local morality for economic gains, there was an ongoing attempt at preserving the public spaces designated for colonial interests in Douala. The consumption of alcohol within African society posed a potential threat to European public spaces in the city, imagined as insulated both spatially and culturally from the indigenous population. This was not unique to Cameroon; as Ambler and Crush wrote with regard to southern Africa, ‘official efforts to impose and enforce liquor regulations aimed not only to subordinate African drinking to the temporal rhythms of industrial employment but to contribute to a definition of urban space . . . ’25 The goal of the German and the French administrations in establishing an insulated European centre in Douala emulating the cultural norms of a Western bourgeois society was maintained by an ongoing separation of urban space along cultural and racial lines. Alcohol demarcated those spaces reserved for whites from those relegated to Africans.
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For the European population, alcohol was synonymous with leisure, pleasure and civilisation. Africans, on the other hand, lacked restraint and sophistication, and could not help but abuse alcohol. This abuse represented a profanity of a foundational element of Western culture as it was practised in colonial spaces. The offence felt by Europeans over this African intrusion into white cultural spaces is to be seen in the following observation made by the French administration: ‘Unfortunately, conversion to Christianity does not always have the effect of blocking an individual’s desire to drink alcoholic beverages. On the contrary, a number of new converts have expressed to Europeans an amazing observation that, “Now that we are Christians, we can drink the same alcohol as whites”’.26 In Douala, efforts to protect alcohol for the European population were most pronounced in those quarters where Western culture came into closest contact with Africans, namely Akwa and Joss. In these quarters, prohibition policies were intricately linked to larger questions of public space and culture, and ultimately reinforced racial boundaries in the city. This could be seen in the French administration’s rejection of a liquor licence for Clement Cizey’s Cinéma d’Akwa. In 1927, the administration revoked Cizey’s liquor licence, claiming that too many Africans frequented the cinema, and that there was no way to guarantee they would not be served any alcohol.27 Cizey responded with a protest petition signed by 80 European residents of Akwa and Bell. It claimed that the lack of proper lighting and communications made it difficult to move far at night, and it was therefore necessary to maintain the liquor licence for the cinema in Akwa as it was easily accessible to the European population residing there.28 The cinéma’s licence was not renewed and as a result, Cizey petitioned the administration two months later for a liquor licence for a new private bar he planned to open exclusively for Europeans. As he wrote, ‘this club, without having the character of a private circle, will permit me to only accept clients at my convenience, and to reject those who might cause a scandal, such as sailors. I believe that you will find favour with this plan, as it responds to the objections of granting a liquor licence to a mixed establishment’.29 The chief of the circonscription of Douala lent his support to Cizey’s new plan when he wrote to the commissioner: Without going as far as saying that this bar is indispensable, it is certain that since the closure of the establishments owned by Najbi Elmir and Doubouille, the European population have been forced to frequent mixed establishments to drink wine and beer, or to go to the Bell plateau if they want to have liquor. Here in Douala, the café is a very popular meeting place for the local population. Mr Cizey, when managing the Tabourel Bar-Dancing, was never the cause of any significant complaints which are inevitable in his profession, and I believe that his request should be authorised.30
The issue over Cizey’s liquor licence demonstrates the active role played by the colonial regime in constructing urban space and culture in Douala. In attempting to establish and preserve a specific social order in the city, there was a need to structure the culture of leisure and entertainment. According to a decree of 1924, all establishments selling alcoholic beverages were to open no earlier than 7.00 a.m. and to close no later than 11.00 p.m. on weeknights, and midnight on Sundays and holidays. Bars or cafés that
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
repeatedly disturbed the ‘public tranquillity’, or enabled the practice of prostitution, faced steep penalties or closure.31 The French administration also encouraged Europeans to socialise separately from Africans in order to protect Western culture from feared local sabotage. To ensure that the racial division of leisure spaces was maintained, the police sent African undercover agents to European bars; when the agents were served alcoholic beverages, the owners of the establishments were immediately arrested and slapped with steep fines. In 1925, for example, Joseph Bockler of Akwa paid a fine of 2 000 francs for selling an African a glass of rum costing one franc.32 Mixed bars presented an ongoing menace to the colonial vision of public space in Douala. The French administration’s reluctance to grant liquor licences to these mixed establishments was at times infuriating for European proprietors. This could be seen in the repeated efforts of a Mr R. Durand to obtain a licence to sell alcohol at his dance hall. In a letter of 1936, Durand explained that his dance hall would be divided into two floors – the ground floor being reserved for Africans and the top floor for Europeans – and that alcohol would be sold to Europeans only, on the second floor. The playing of music and dancing would only take place on the first floor. Durand, aware of the administration’s objection to mixed bars, added, ‘from a moral point of view, it is better to separate the two populations from each other, but this will not prevent the European clientele from enjoying the local spectacle from the balcony on the second floor’.33 The request was rejected, and Durand later wrote: I would like to forget all the hassles to which I have been subjected over the last six years of my stay, but have not had the courage to do anything about. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that the worst enemy of a colonial official and merchant is not the anopheles mosquito or the tse-tse fly, but most often, some Chief of a region.34
In attempting the keep Africans out of bars and dance halls reserved for Europeans, it was necessary to provide them with their own leisure establishments for off-work hours. At the same time, bars and dance halls designated for indigenous use required constant regulation to prevent them from encroaching on European-occupied public spaces. The potential for African bars to disturb European residents was felt primarily in Duala. As will be seen below, the nightlife of New Bell created few inconveniences for the community of expatriates. In Akwa, on the other hand, these bars challenged the colonial administration’s efforts to preserve a civilised environment for its European citizens. Thus, African bars and dance halls in Akwa were closely monitored, and their proprietors forced to comply with strict rules concerning noise levels, hours of operation and even interior design.35 This could be seen in an authorisation for an African dance hall in Akwa, given to a Mr Diaye in 1935, only after all the European residents of the quarter had given their approval and the site had been inspected to verify the layout and cleanliness of the building. The authorisation limited the number of instruments to three brass instruments, one drum and three string instruments. In addition, the dance hall was only to be opened on weekends, and the police were to ensure that those leaving the bar would not make too much noise.
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The administration’s surveillance of establishments serving an African clientele could become obsessive. For example, complaints by a neighbour of the famous Fischer Dancing in Akwa led to a close surveillance of Emile Fischer’s dance hall in 1932. The following intelligence report made by an officer of the court was prepared in order to assess the level of disturbance: At 9:10 PM . . . one could distinctly hear the brass band playing a dance, and the same music could be heard until 9:17, when the jazz band began playing. At 9:24 and 9:30 the brass band played and at 9:40, the jazz band played with a singer using a microphone . . . At 10:08, the brass band came on again, as they did at 10:25 and at 10:35, at 10:45 the jazz band played again with a singer and microphone accompanied by castanets, a bass drum and cymbals. At 10:58 the brass band played a Maringa non-stop, and from 11:25 on it played alternatively ‘This is for my Papa’, and a Maringa until 11:37. At the end of the dance, one could hear shouts of ‘You-ou . . . ’36
This report demonstrates the high level of surveillance to which African bars in Akwa could be subjected. It is important to note, however, that not all of the indigenous population suffered from this colonial intrusion into their leisure world. It was primarily the Duala who had both the financial resources and the cultural inclination to attend the African bars and dance halls of Akwa. For immigrants employed as manual labourers, beverages in these bars were prohibitively expensive. Durand acknowledged, for example, that African customers alone could not sustain his bar, and mixed establishments enabled some Africans to benefit from the resources of the European clientele.37 As one New Bell resident claimed, ‘beer and wine were for white people’.38 The middle-class Duala had both money and a cultural penchant to enjoy imported wines and beer decades before other populations of Cameroon. Imported alcohol was indeed a luxury item in colonial Douala, even for the French administration. This was evident in a complaint made by the judiciary services concerning the confiscation and destruction of alcohol seized by the police from some Africans. As the court officer wrote concerning the destruction of the liquor, ‘one wonders if it is not more in keeping with the general interest of the population for the authorities to find an alternative to this measure (which no doubt satisfies immediate needs and compensates the zealous work of prohibition agents) of brutal destruction of such riches, which are only prohibited for the indigenous population’.39 Few members of the indigenous population could afford these luxury items, apart from the Duala elite. Unlike other local groups, many Duala had the economic resources to adopt the Western bourgeois practice of enjoying a bottle of European table wine with lunch or dinner on a regular basis.40 The widespread consumption of imported wines among the Duala became a symbol of their privileged status in the eyes of the immigrant population. According to one informant, ‘the Duala disliked some tribes more than others. They would only give imported wine and liquor to those they got along with’.41 The westernised Duala were the first group in Cameroon to enthusiastically embrace European trends in leisure and cultural activities such as music and dance. Their exposure to colonial culture was expressed in their quick mastery of European instruments and
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
musical style. Enthusiasm for this music could be seen in the great success of the Duala as pioneers in Western-influenced music in Cameroon and their ongoing recognition as singers and musicians today. Duala musical groups requested permission to study music with Europeans in the city in the late 1920s.42 Duala musicians began recording albums in Lagos, to be duplicated in England and sent back to Cameroon for sale in the 1930s.43 Traces of Duala influence as forerunners in this field can still be seen when popular music is sung in the Duala language by all ethnic groups in Cameroon. The cultural proximity between the Duala and Europeans made the sharing of leisure space a natural consequence for the Duala elite. Inclined to see themselves separate from and above other groups of Africans in the city, it was not surprising that the Duala enthusiastically frequented mixed establishments and Western-style dance halls reserved for Africans in Akwa. For the immigrant population, the participation in the nightlife of the Duala quarters was both impossible in economic terms, and undesirable from cultural and social perspectives. In New Bell, an alternative world of leisure and entertainment developed to suit the needs of the community of strangers. Far removed from colonial surveillance and inspection, the off-hours world of New Bell reflected local perspectives on public space and community life outside the tight control of the colonial regime.
Alcohol and leisure in New Bell The stark contrast between drinking establishments in New Bell and the Duala quarters serves as a metaphor for much of the difference in the experiences of each quarter under colonial rule. As opposed to the Duala quarters, the culture of leisure time and entertainment in the strangers’ quarter did not evolve in the image of Western bourgeois society, or under its control. Indeed, the immigrant population lacked the financial resources to enjoy European wine on a regular basis or to frequent dance halls with ten-piece brass bands, where musicians earned in one month the near equivalent of a yearly salary for the average labourer.44 For the community of strangers, colonial policy and economic circumstances allowed for a nightlife of a far more sparing nature. But unlike in the Duala quarters, off-hours entertainment escaped colonial control, and therefore generated revenues remaining inside New Bell. Thus the culture of entertainment and leisure thriving in the quarter during off-work hours was an expression of community life that was essentially unhindered by colonial regulations, and helped to circulate resources among residents of the quarter, rather than into the hands of European proprietors or the French administration. The nightlife of New Bell was significant not only as an expression of a unique and vibrant social domain, but also as a vital contributor to the economic sustenance and viability of the community. In the years prior to WW II there were no European-style bars or dance halls in New Bell.45 This was not because the immigrant community did not drink or dance. On the contrary, nearly all oral informants responded to questions concerning leisure time activities with, ‘we drank’. Indeed, alcohol played a paramount role in the culture of entertainment in New Bell. Oral informants recalled that drinking was, in fact, the only
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diversion available for workers during off-work hours in the quarter.46 The consumption of alcohol in New Bell was so universal that drinking ultimately became synonymous with community in the quarter, and oral informants would signify an individual’s membership of the community by their sharing a drink with others. This could be seen in one informant’s description of the police: ‘When they were not working, they would come and have a drink like everyone else’.47 Although drinking was widespread in New Bell, the production, sale and purchase of unlicensed alcohol were all illegal activities. Colonial regulations and sporadic attempts to enforce them made a definite impact on the culture of drinking and the spaces within which drinking took place in the strangers’ quarter. Beginning in 1921, the sale of alcohol required a licence.48 The fabrication of alcohol by the indigenous population was outlawed by a decree issued on 17 July 1922.49 These measures taken by the French administration were thus intended to maintain control over the diffusion of alcohol within local society and to allow the administration to earn revenues from its trade. Residents of New Bell were tuned in to colonial motivations, and as one informant recalled, ‘palm wine was only made illegal when the whites wanted to sell us their own beers’.50 Colonial control undoubtedly influenced the type of alcohol consumed in New Bell. It was far more difficult to circumvent the need for a licence to sell alcohol for imported beverages than for beverages locally produced and sold on a small scale within the confines of the quarter. As a result, the sale of locally produced palm and maize wine was far more widespread in New Bell than the sale of imported beer and wine. Because laws regarding licensing made locally produced alcohol both cheaper and more accessible, colonial policies merely served to encourage a vibrant New Bell-based industry of alcohol production, rather than to actually limit the access of the local population to alcohol, or to encourage the sale of imported beer and wine. The French administration was frustrated by the failure of the indigenous population to purchase European alcohol. By 1935, the administration was complaining that the steady decline over time of the sale of imported beverages was the result of increasing production of local palm and maize wines.51 In the early years of the French mandate, as seen above, the French were relatively apathetic to the production and consumption of locally produced alcoholic beverages. They reported to the League of Nations in 1921 that the production of local wines exposed indigenous people to the punishment of the indigénat in theory, but that in practice they were prosecuted only for the severe abuse of these beverages. The report claimed that when consumed in normal quantities, these beverages were ‘less dangerous’.52 This relaxed attitude toward the economic and social significance of locally produced drinks was in stark contrast to the ‘Durban system’, instituted by the British in South Africa in 1909, according to which the sale and consumption of locally produced utshwala was permitted only in municipal beer-halls, allowing the colonial government tight regulation and monopoly over this important local industry.53 But as the increasing sale of palm and maize wine encroached upon the sale of imported beer and wine in Cameroon, the French administration revised its nonchalant
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
view of the African brews. The threat to European economic interests inspired a growing opposition to locally produced alcohol. In the 1930s, the administration increasingly described palm and maize wine as dangerous narcotics. The president of the Commerce Department asked for support in 1935: Following intelligence information which I was able to obtain, it is clear that the decrease in the sale of [imported] beverages is the result of the increase in the clandestine fabrication of mimbo (palm wine), maize beer, or other drugs more or less dangerous, which the indigenous people consume in great quantities in the region of Douala, to great detriment to their health. I ask you, Mr Governor, to intervene in order to stop the production and sale of these beverages with which the indigènes are poisoning themselves.54
This language of paternalist morality was continually employed to disguise moves aimed at protecting European economic interests involved in the sale of alcohol to Africans. In its campaign against locally produced beverages, the French administration also claimed that palm wine was frequently laced with marijuana, increasing its potency and potential to harm the indigenous population.55 Once the local beverages were categorised as dangerous, Commissioner Répiquet wrote in 1936, ‘without ignoring the fact that the radical suppression of intemperance among certain tribes would be practically impossible, the administration would be lax in its duties if it did not try to prevent it in the greatest measure, or if it did not actively intervene’.56 In 1939, the chief of police recommended that the most effective method to protect the indigenous population from the combination of palm wine and marijuana was to increase the number of licences given to residents of New Bell in order to improve surveillance.57 Efforts were focused on the unlicensed production and sale of alcohol in the quarter but, as will be seen, these met with little success. In reaffirming their faith in the potential for policy to change drinking habits in New Bell, these colonial administrators grossly underestimated the extent to which cultural, social and economic factors rooted in New Bell served to shape the culture of drinking in the quarter. Within the community of New Bell, African drinking habits and preferences were guided only in small part by colonial laws. The culture of leisure and entertainment were ultimately grounded in the space of New Bell and remained insulated from excessive colonial influence. The residents of the strangers’ quarter relied on their experiences both as ex-villagers and as newly arrived immigrants to the particular space of New Bell to contribute to and participate in a public culture based heavily on the consumption of alcohol. For many immigrants, the easy access to locally produced alcohol was linked to its inexpensiveness – a significant difference between urban and rural life. While maize wine was more expensive than palm wine, both were cheap enough to be affordable to the general immigrant population in Douala on a regular basis.58 This was in stark contrast to life in the village, where access to palm wine was severely limited for the vast majority of the population. Diduk noted that in rural areas, ‘daily alcohol consumption was a privilege available only to very high-ranking older men’.59 While palm wine was
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a relatively rare commodity and status symbol in the village, its widespread availability and accessibility made it a marker of the freedoms and opportunities gained by relocation to the city. Unlike in villages, the production of and access to alcohol in the city was not controlled by a few powerful ‘big men’. On the contrary, it was women, and primarily married women, who produced palm and maize wine in New Bell. Women earned and controlled the revenues from this industry, and thus ‘democratised’ alcohol consumption for the urban population. On a social and cultural level, women also played an important role in constructing community life through their control over the access to and sale of alcohol to the immigrant population. Married women had few options beyond the sale of alcohol to earn an income.60 Obtaining a licence to sell in the market was costly and difficult, and most women preferred to avoid colonial control by establishing their own businesses, which were often far more profitable than petty commerce based in markets.61 Married women who fabricated wine worked individually, each having her own area where production took place. In periods of stricter controls and closer police surveillance, the women set up their private breweries beyond the living quarters, in the bush. The production process took several days, during which palm or maize kernels were washed, dried and fermented.62 Throughout the process of production and sale of locally produced wine, the women were constantly aware of the illegality of their activities. The presence of police was always a factor in shaping this process, particularly during periods of stricter control and mass arrests. Thus, the women attempted to work discretely and to maintain some level of concealment for their enterprises. Once the wine was ready, the women brought it into their homes, where they often kept doors and windows closed to avoid police scrutiny. Benches and tables were set up for customers. One oral informant claimed that customers entered quietly, without knocking, because even they were in danger of arrest. People knew of these places by word of mouth, and ‘there was no need for publicity or exposition’.63 Wine was sold primarily in the evenings and on weekends, when most of the population of New Bell was not working, but it was possible to buy locally produced wine at any hour of the day. Women interviewed claimed that Sunday was their busiest day, and the time of greatest profit. Despite efforts to maintain a low profile, the existence of illegal bars in New Bell was no secret to either the police or the French administration. Some informants even claimed that the wives of police were also involved in the sale of alcohol. While police always posed a threat to the alcohol industry, there were periods of particularly zealous control. These usually followed changes in legislation, but the specific personalities of French police commanders also played a role in determining the level of police interference in the fabrication and sale of alcohol in the quarter. Oral informants recalled that Chief Commissioner Dubois was particularly fervent in his efforts to put an end to the production and consumption of palm and maize wine in New Bell.64 Dubois, who served in the 1920s, was the commissioner reprimanded by the administration for destroying confiscated alcohol.65 Under Dubois, bars were raided frequently and women
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
were arrested, fined and sent to jail regularly for possessing and selling the locally produced wines.66 According to one informant, Dubois developed an impressive network of informants who helped him in these efforts.67 But, as one resident of New Bell recalled, ‘these same people who would tell on us were the same people who lived with us, the same ones who would come to drink’.68 Women continued to produce and sell alcohol, even under periods of intense surveillance such as that under Dubois. The main reason for this was that although the arrests and fines were an ever-present nuisance, they did not constitute any real obstacle to the women. Those found guilty could be imprisoned for up to two weeks, but once released, they quickly resumed activity. The French administration often preferred to fine the perpetrators, and the women could simply pay the fine and return to work. Although the administration assumed that fines would serve as a deterrent, oral informants recalled that fines were extremely low. As one informant claimed, ‘we paid fines that were nothing compared to the profits we made. After arrest, we would begin again, knowing that we would be arrested again . . . We paid between 300 and 600 francs each arrest, and a cup of wine would cost 10 francs at first, later 40 francs’.69 The tremendous gap between colonial perceptions of local processes – particularly of the role of women in those processes – and the reality of New Bell is reflected in the low fines. Had the French administration been aware of the kinds of profits women were making from the sale of wine, it is highly unlikely that fines would have remained so low. Women’s activities and experiences remained largely misunderstood and unknown by the administration, and these gaps in knowledge created opportunities exploited very effectively by women in New Bell. To colonial officials, it apparently seemed inconceivable that African women could earn more than their husbands. But in fact women did earn far more from the sale of wine than did their husbands, who were employed in the colonial economy. One informant explained that she made more than four times her husband’s salary by selling wine, and it was through her earnings that they were able to build a house from durable materials.70 In underestimating the earnings of women in local industries, the administration actually fostered women’s earning potential through the imposition of meaningless fines. In exploiting opportunities, women made an immense contribution to the creation of a public space and culture in New Bell. For most of the colonial era, bars in the quarter were situated inside women’s homes, precluding a distinction between private and public spheres. Living rooms became sites of large gatherings where urban popular culture was invented and shaped. In these bars, ethnicity neither determined nor limited participation in communal life.71 Members of all tribes congregated, using pidgin as the common language. Customers would mostly sit and tell stories while drinking, but there was also some gambling. Women recalled many fights between clients; one informant claimed, ‘there were also fights, there cannot be drinking without fights. I even saw this in France . . . ’72 Bars established by married women became the primary meeting place for the vastly diverse community of immigrants and served as the common ground for communal identity.
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The study of alcohol consumption in New Bell is thus essential for understanding the nature of popular culture in the strangers’ quarter. Bars were the most significant sites of public gathering and cultural exchange in the quarter throughout the colonial era. Through this study of alcohol, the nature of popular culture within the immigrant community emerges as separate from and defiant of both local and colonial hierarchies of power. Many historians have ardently pursued this image of empowered and defiant ordinary people, seeking to recover the experiences of non-elite cultures from the past. Cultural histories of groups and communities excluded from history, such as the immigrant population of New Bell, often seek to uncover the role of influence and power within these groups in shaping historical processes. Relating to their collection of essays on popular culture, Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson wrote, ‘the study of popular culture in history has had a range of uses and benefits for historians as well as a diversity of analytical tools . . . One should never again think that ordinary people have been unimportant to political history; they have been visibly engaged in the cultural realm in shaping and resisting the exercise of power’.73 Without denying the immense political significance of popular culture on political processes throughout history, a political consciousness must not be imposed on all expressions of popular culture, even when the exercise of popular culture does have far-reaching political consequences. The ongoing use of alcohol in New Bell, despite colonial efforts to stop it, could be interpreted as an anti-colonial immigrant initiative. Easy access to alcohol did reflect a breakdown in local hierarchies of power based in rural areas, and a direct contradiction of colonial policies restricting African consumption of alcohol. However, the culture of alcohol consumption in New Bell should not be overly characterised as an immigrant attempt to express or exploit new-found power in the city. The claim that off-work hours of local residents were not always exploited to seize, express, resist, or combat hierarchies of power situated both within and above New Bell does not ignore the intersections of power configuring the alcohol industry in the strangers’ quarter. The strangers of New Bell gathered to share a drink because it was the only outlet for entertainment in the quarter. Bars served an important purpose within the community by providing individuals with an opportunity to socialise after a long working day, and ultimately the alcohol industry was a significant indicator of internal economic and social processes within the quarter. The history of alcohol consumption in the strangers’ quarter cannot be reduced to a response to colonial rule, nor should it be seen as a symbol of African agency in the face of foreign oppression. New Bell residents were not conscious of colonial power in all aspects of their decision-making, and the cultural and social life of the quarter was not constructed in constant dialogue with the European centre of the city. For most, drinking was an important expression of community life that was present-based and practical, and not orchestrated by anti-colonialism, nationalism, or class consciousness. Thus, while power struggles played a role in constructing the culture of alcohol in the strangers’ quarter, this is not the only lens through which to view and interpret it.
Sharing a drink: Alcohol and urban popular culture
Notes to Chapter Five 1 For example, see C. Ambler and J. Crush, ‘Alcohol in Southern African Labor History’, in Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa, ed. C, Ambler and J. Crush (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1992); E. Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Recent Times (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996); M. O. West, ‘Liquor and Libido: “Joint Drinking” and the Politics of Sexual Control in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1920s to1950s’, Journal of Social History 30 (1997):645–67; S. Heap, “‘We Think Prohibition Is a Farce”: Drinking in the Alcohol-Prohibited Zone of Colonial Northern Nigeria’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 31 (1998):23–52; A. Mager, ‘The First Decade of “European Beer” in Apartheid South Africa: The State, the Brewers and the Drinking Public, 1962–1972’, Journal of African History 40 no. 3 (1999):367–88. 2 Ambler and Crush, ‘Alcohol in Southern African Labor History’, 3–4. 3 Ibid., 11. 4 Ibid., 27. 5 Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change, xv. 6 Ibid., xvi. 7 Ibid. 8 Popular culture has often been conceptualised as a tool for resistance or empowerment in urban settings; see T. Tsuruta, ‘Popular Music, Sports, and Politics: A Development of Urban Cultural Movements in Dar es Salaam’, African Study Monographs 24(3), (July 2003):195–222; L. Fair, ‘Pastimes and Politics: A Social History of Zanzibar’s Ng’ambo Community, 1890–1950’, PhD thesis, University of Minnesota, 1994. 9 S. Diduk, ‘European Alcohol, History and the State in Cameroon’, African Studies Review 36 no. 1 (1993):1. 10 Ibid., 9. 11 L. Pan, Alcohol in Colonial Africa (Uppsala: Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, 1975), 52–54, cited in Diduk, ‘European Alcohol’. 12 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, Note of General Aymerich, 23 August 1916. 13 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1916–25, List of early decrees, 1916–22. 14 Ibid. 15 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations sur l’admininstration sous mandat du territoire du Cameroun 1924, 12. 16 Ibid., 14. 17 ANC-FF 2AC 8092. 18 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 12 September 1919. 19 Diduk, ‘European Alcohol’, 12. 20 Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change, 54. 21 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, 1921, 11. 22 Ibid. 23 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, 1923, 14. 24 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, 1921, 11. 25 Ambler and Crush, Liquor and Labor, 22. 26 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, 1924, 14. 27 ANC-FF APA 11680/C, Alcool – infractions, 1924–36, Letter to Clement Cizey, 10 February 1927. 28 Ibid., Petition and letter from Cizey, 28 January 1927. 29 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, Cizey to the Commissioner of the Republic, 7 March 1927. 30 ANC-FF Unclassified file, Douala, 1925–28, Chief of the Circonscription of Douala to the Commissioner of the Republic, 23 April 1927.
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The Strangers of New Bell 31 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 23 November 1924. 32 ANC-FF APA 11680/C, 26 April 1925. 33 ANC-FF APA 11697, Débits de boissons, licences, M. Durand à M. le Délégué du Commissaire de la République à Douala, 18 November 1936. 34 Ibid., 30 January 1937. 35 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, 1924, 12. 36 ANC-FF APA 11680/B, Alcool – police des débits, Affaires diverses 1927–44, Procés-Verbal de Constat, 10 September 1932. 37 ANC-FF APA 11697. 38 Interview with Ngobo, December 1998. 39 ANC-FF APA 11680/C, Chef de service judiciaire à Monsieur le commissaire de la République, 19 April 1927. 40 ISH Wouri File, Réponse Bell; Réponse par Kuoh. 41 Interview with Zepherin Benjamin Ngoko, New Bell, Douala, December 1998. 42 ANC-FF Unclassified, Douala, 1925–28, Letter from ‘Un groupe d’indigènes soussignés’, 15 June 1928. 43 ANC-FF APA 11368/A, Censure: films, disques, et enregistrements 1935–45. 44 ANC-FF DOM 167; J. Guilbot, ‘Les conditions de vie des indigènes de Douala’, Étude camerounaise 27–28 (September–December 1949):179–239. 45 Interviews with Ngobo, March 1999; and Nzekou. 46 Interviews with Mbita; Mbe; and Barthelemy, December 1998. 47 Interview with Biloa. 48 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, 1921, 11. 49 Journal Officiel du Cameroun, 17 July 1922. 50 Interview with Onana. 51 ANC-FF APA 11699, Alcool, vins, principes, 1925–39, Le Président de la section commerciale au gouverneur des colonies, 21 November 1935. 52 Rapport Annuel au Conseil de la Société des Nations, 1921, 11. 53 P. la Hausse, Brewers, Beerhalls and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988). 54 ANC-FF APA 11699. 55 ANC-FF APA 10005/A, Yabassi Circonscription, 1929. 56 ANC-FF APA 11910, Circulaires – départ, 1929–36, Circulaire no. 63, 17 June 1936. 57 ANC-FF APA 11680/B, Le délégué du haut-commissaire de la République à M. le haut-commissaire de la République, 16 August 1939. 58 Interviews with Assama, Ongono and Monthe. 59 Diduk, ‘European Alcohol’, 6. 60 Interview with Ongono. 61 Interview with Biloa. 62 Interview with Ngobo, March 1999. 63 Interview with Ongono. 64 Interviews with Biloa and Ongono. 65 ANC-FF APA 11680/C, Chef de service judiciaire au commissaire de la République, 19 April 1927. 66 Interview with Monthe. 67 Interview with Mbody. 68 Interview with Ongono. 69 Interview with Biloa. 70 Interview with Ongono.
Crime and community 71 Akyeampong noted a similar trend in the Gold Coast when he wrote, ‘Drinking circles in towns came to transcend barriers of ethnicity and age – industrial labor cut across ethnicity and homogenised the socioeconomic circumstances of wage laborers.’ See Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change, 60. 72 Interview with Ongono. 73 C. Mukerji and M. Schudson, ‘Introduction’, in Rethinking Popular Culture, Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, ed. C. Mukerji and M. Schudson, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 18.
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SIX Nationalism and ethnicity in the struggle against marginalisation: The final years of the colonial era
On 24 September 1945, riots broke out in Douala during a railway workers’ strike. While the strikers gathered at the train station to conduct an organised protest against their low salaries, bands of Africans carrying sticks assembled in New Bell and headed toward the centre of Akwa. The rioters attacked African workers, destroyed property, and pillaged throughout the city. New Bell was also the target of attacks, with the marketplace devastated and a girls’ school invaded and vandalised. While these riots were taking place, European settlers living in Douala quickly responded by taking up arms and forming paramilitary groups. Enraged at the weak response of the French administration, these independent forces decided to take matters into their own hands. Armed mobs of settlers patrolled the streets of Douala throughout the day, shooting Africans at random. The settlers even used a helicopter to fire a machine gun at the rioters in the streets. By the end of the day, the official estimate reported eight Africans dead and 20 wounded. But this figure has been disputed as grossly inaccurate, with alternative tallies reaching close to 80 Africans killed by the white mobs.1 These events of September 1945 have been seen as a turning point in the political history of Cameroon. Austen and Derrick, for example, have claimed that the long-term significance of these riots was to radicalise decolonisation politics in the littoral region. After 1945, African political leaders rejected Duala elitist politics and sought instead to garner support by playing to the emotions of urban immigrant masses.2 According to LeVine, the riots and their aftermath galvanised even moderate African political activists into action, demanding the suppression of the indigénat, the expulsion of European traders from rural areas, the establishment of regional elections, and the creation of a Territorial Assembly.3 On the colonial side, the 1945 riots led to the replacement of Governor Nicolas by Robert Delavignette in early 1946, as well as the immediate expulsion of European union organisers. While the significance of the September riots has been associated with broad political and social processes affecting all of Cameroon, these events had a particularly conspicuous impact on the history of New Bell, and on the place of New Bell in history. For the 118
Nationalism and ethnicity
first time New Bell residents played a prominent role in political events whose influence was felt throughout the territory. The strangers’ quarter, situated at the margins of colonial vision over the course of three decades, suddenly became a major focal point for nationalist mobilisation and, subsequently, for colonial policymakers. The post-WW II period also witnessed the start of ethnic tensions and tribalist organisation within the political sphere of the quarter. The riots of September 1945 ushered in an era of colonial concern about the internal workings of New Bell, as well as efforts to control and prevent further unrest within the community of strangers. Thus, 1945 represents a turning point in the visibility of New Bell in political and historical contexts, which was reflected both in colonial policy toward the quarter, and in historical memory concerning the role of New Bell in anti-colonial, nationalist movements in Cameroon. At the same time, it would be a mistake to take an exaggerated view of the significance of post-WW II political unrest. The dramatic events of 1945 and later the riots of May 1955, have caught the attention of historians, many of whom have described New Bell’s place in the histories of Douala and Cameroon only in connection with this unrest. This chapter will attempt to outline significant changes in the internal development of New Bell as a place, and in the community of strangers living there, in the post-WW II period until independence. But alongside the examination of these processes of change, the continuity in the construction of communal life and public space in New Bell before and after this period must also be acknowledged. Despite the enormous changes brought on by the nationalist struggle for independence, the ultimate removal of official French colonial rule and the active role played by some members of the immigrant community in initiating these changes, the period of nationalist mobilisation did not entirely recast the experiences of New Bell residents. They remained distanced and to a large extent unseen by those in power, and continued to define themselves accordingly.
Growth and change in post-WW II New Bell The most conspicuous change to the social, political, and economic landscapes of New Bell in the post-WW II era was the massive influx of new immigrants to the city. While noting this change, many historians have minimised both the size and significance of the strangers’ quarter prior to the period of immense expansion after 1945. This can be seen in a description of pre-WW II New Bell by historian Martin-René Atangana, who wrote, ‘This quarter, which was originally the home of Hausa traders and some migrant workers, swelled after 1947 to form an unstable and precarious community that was double the size of the rest of the city’s population, but occupied half the space’.4 This misrepresentation of pre-WW II New Bell is linked to archival material on the quarter. Austen and Derrick have argued that French colonial officials consistently underestimated the population of New Bell.5 As seen in Chapter 2, the perpetual undercount of New Bell residents was rooted both in the widespread practice among immigrants of avoiding colonial surveillance and in the French administration’s method of basing population statistics on tax registers, which lacked a record of the ‘floating population’. It was not
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until 1956 that an official census of New Bell was conducted, counting individuals rather than family units or ethnic groups residing in the quarter.6 In any event, there is little doubt that the immigrant population significantly expanded in the years immediately following WW II. The rapid and immense growth in the immigrant population can be partially attributed to a considerable increase in the colonial need for labour in the city after WW II. Following the 1944 Brazzaville conference, French colonial officials reaffirmed their commitment to the development and modernisation of their colonial possessions in Africa. A series of recommendations concerning the goals of increased economic planning in the colonies, including the improvement of infrastructures, railways, ports, and communications, were adopted at the Brazzaville conference.7 As elsewhere, the French administration in Cameroon stepped up development plans for the colony, with the port of Douala a major focal point for development schemes. The administration was able to undertake these development plans with funds made available through Fonds pour l’investissement en développement économique et social (FIDES). Established by the French in 1946, FIDES was created to supply the colonies with metropolitan funds for development projects.8 The FIDES programme was designed to jump-start development, and encourage private investment in Africa. According to Cooper, the French scheme propelling FIDES ultimately failed because French colonial administrations throughout Africa were unable to overcome the immense barriers to development and modernisation that dogged each project. This failure was described as follows by a French journalist assessing development efforts of FIDES in 1956: ‘FIDES and its fistful of billions [of francs] amounts to nothing in the face of discouraging distances, exhausted land, the routines of Africans, and the immense territories without men and water’.9 But despite failures elsewhere in Africa, in Cameroon the FIDES programme succeeded in achieving some of its goals for modernisation and development. Joseph argued that this was due to Cameroon’s favoured status under FIDES; the territory received nearly one-fifth of the total funds directed at French colonies within the programme.10 The vast majority of these funds were used to improve the territory’s infrastructure, of which Douala was the major beneficiary. French plans for the development of all of Equatorial Africa required the modernisation and expansion of the Douala port. As one observer commented, Douala is the natural outlet not only for Cameroon, but because of its unique geographic position as the deepest point in the Gulf of Guinea, also for Oubangui-Chari and Chad. As a result, this situation justifies Douala’s exceptional importance on the west coast of Africa along with Dakar and Abidjan. In addition, Douala is surrounded by a zone particularly rich in export products: bananas, coffee, cocoa, wood, etc. . . .11
The main focus of the initial phase of FIDES investment between 1947 and 1952 was thus a modernisation project for the port of Douala.12 In order to undertake these massive renovations of the port, the French administration needed a sizeable labour force in the city. As a result, the administration made an ‘appeal for manual workers’ to African
Nationalism and ethnicity
populations of the interior; according to Joseph, this call was answered by 20 000 Africans during the five years of the first phase of development.13 The new immigrants to New Bell who responded to colonial policies in this period represented nearly every ethnic group in Cameroon, as well as some outside the colony. Even so, the population explosion in the decade prior to independence is most often attributed to the particularly massive emigration of the Bamileke ethnic group from the western highlands, the Bamileke region of origin. It has been estimated that by 1954 approximately 20% (100 000) of the Bamileke had migrated from the western highlands to southern plantation areas and towns, including Douala.14 According to Joseph, the impetus behind the massive Bamileke migration was threefold: overpopulation in the Bamileke region, an acute land shortage, and the ethos of industriousness among the Bamileke people.15 Colonial policy also played a hand in encouraging the exodus of young men, in particular from the western highlands, to other regions of southern Cameroon. The proximity of the Bamileke to European plantations made them prime targets for colonial labour recruiters. Wartime production increased following a British commitment to buy Cameroonian produce, and this intensified the need for African labour by plantation owners eager to reap profits of expanded production.16 The conditions under which the Bamileke were obliged to work were particularly deplorable, and as one labour inspector remarked in 1945, ‘newcomers need only see the kind of work which needs to be done and hear the complaints of others in order to flee’.17 Many of these fleeing young men found refuge in Douala, and settled in New Bell. As the largest ethnic group in Cameroon, the growing Bamileke presence posed something of a threat to members of other ethnic groups in Douala, who felt outnumbered. The massive settlement of Bamileke immigrants in New Bell upset the balance between ethnic groups in the pre-WW II era, when no particular group was numerically dominant. The tensions resulting from the imposing Bamileke presence in the quarter following the mass migrations can be seen in the following statement by an oral informant: ‘The Beti were only able to fight the Bamileke because they are strong, and it was only by sheer force that the Beti resisted them’. He recalled a popular joke from the period in New Bell: ‘When you left home in the morning, the Bamileke would take everything you have while you are gone. Then, he will call fifty of his friends and they will quickly build a house on top of yours, and by the time you got home, you could not do anything about it’.18 This rapid increase of the Bamileke people in New Bell was the source of social tension, and the renowned economic success of this group led to some resentment and envy among other ethnic groups, some of whom attempted to mimic the village-based credit associations underlying the successful Bamileke commerce. Tensions between the various ethnic groups in New Bell were heightened by competition for resources during WW II, and undoubtedly found expression in the September 1945 riots. While the war brought economic prosperity to some European plantation owners, the vast majority of Africans experienced great hardship as a result of the rising cost of living. The economic pre-WW II slowdown was highly aggravated by the hostilities,
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and Africans were faced with unemployment and shortages in food and essential goods throughout the war, particularly in Douala.19 Even those in high-paying bureaucratic jobs suffered; one écrivain from the period was reported as saying, ‘life has been become unbearable since the war was declared, and at this moment, there isn’t one region in all of Cameroon where people are not suffering’.20 The African population of Douala was particularly vulnerable to inflation, as most of the city’s inhabitants had no access to food other than that which was purchased with their salaries. One colonial official described their impossible situation in 1942: The daily salary of a labourer is fixed at 5 francs per day. With the current cost of living, even for an indigène, it is undeniable that their situation is far from being privileged. Following a recent report, these are some current prices: bananas, 7 to 8 francs per bunch; meat, 6 francs per kilo; yams, 1 franc per kilo; beignets, 4 for 0.50 francs; chicken, 12 to 15 francs . . . It is therefore impossible for the indigenous person to live on their salary. If one considers that he must deduct 106 francs for taxes from this salary (an enormous sum, but one that is greatly needed during the war), what is he left with to clothe himself, support his family, and pay for a few extras? This alarming situation among the indigènes must be studied immediately and a decree fixing the minimum salary at 200 francs per month is, I believe, far from being exaggerated.21
Despite this official’s warning, the French administration did not rectify the deplorable situation of the African workers in time to stop the riots of 1945. But realising the role played by economic hardship in the social unrest, the administration moved quickly to increase the minimum salaries of all workers in the weeks and months following the riots.22 Many Africans were enraged at the persistence of vast inequalities despite the contribution of Africans to the French war effort. This could be seen in another intelligence report gathered one week before the riots of 1945, according to which a labourer in Douala was overheard saying: If we only had more freedom, if we would only be recognised as aides to France . . . We have taken part in all of France’s work. We have shed our blood for the country, and our compensation is bad luck. We paid our dues along with our French brothers, we cried with them, and they repay us with only hatred. We now consider the French as ferocious animals. We don’t like them. But since might is always right, and the French are stronger than us, we can’t do a thing about it.23
This complaint mirrors the sentiment expressed by ex-servicemen in Douala during and immediately following the war. Veterans in Cameroon played a prominent role in promoting an anti-colonial agenda, serving as vocal opponents to the colonial oppression of basic rights for Africans.24 The discontent among the ex-servicemen and the labour force also contributed to an environment of frustration and rage, ultimately leading to the outbreak of violence in 1945.
Nationalism and ethnicity
New Bell in the era of nationalism The war-time economic and social circumstances in New Bell which lead to the spontaneous riots in September of 1945 also had a long-term impact on political organisation within the community of strangers. Beginning in the period immediately following the riots, immigrants to New Bell became increasingly involved in organised, centralised anti-colonial activity. The city of Douala in general was an important centre of nationalist mobilisation; of particular significance in this period was the founding of the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) at a Douala bar, Café Sierra, one April evening in 1948.25 Established by trade unionists with strong Marxist leanings, the UPC supported an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist agenda, and opposed tribalism. The party called for full independence from France and for the reunification of territories in Cameroon that were controlled by Britain and France. The UPC was renowned for its impressive organisation and tight structure, with small local committees, based in urban areas and in some villages, at its foundation. Above these local organisations were central committees serving to transmit information from the leadership to local groups. These central committees were grouped into regional committees; at the top of the organisation was the Central Executive Committee, including a political Bureau, a Secretariat and a Treasury.26 While the UPC espoused a pan-ethnic, nationalist political agenda, its main base of support was concentrated in the southwest region of Cameroon, with Douala as a major centre of UPC activity. Within Douala the immigrant community of New Bell played a pivotal role in expanding the membership of the UPC, as the proletariat and sub-proletariat responded to deteriorating economic circumstances by rallying to the UPC call for an end to colonial exploitation.27 The UPC leadership in New Bell protested against police brutality and worked to defend the rights of the working class, winning the organisation a wide base of support among residents of the quarter.28 The immigrants of New Bell were thus an important source of UPC activism, and the party headquarters were located in the quarter.29 Increasingly fearful of the radical elements in UPC doctrine and the growing support for the party in the territory, the French administration, under the leadership of Roland Pré as of 1954, went on the offensive against the party.30 In April 1955, Pré concentrated all UPC civil servants in Douala, hoping to keep close watch over them. Tensions between the administration and the UPC reached boiling point in May, when several regions in Cameroon witnessed the outbreak of violence, resulting in the loss of life and the eventual outlawing of the UPC. New Bell residents were also drawn into the wave of violence when UPC activists clashed with French troops and local anti-UPC political groups, who aimed to prevent organised meetings of UPC activists. LeVine described the conflict in New Bell as follows: ‘some three thousand rioters, armed with nail-studded clubs, machetes, axes, iron bars, and some firearms, stormed the central radio station and spread havoc’ throughout the quarter.31 The rioting lasted for several days, with UPC residents attacking non-UPC groups, storming the prison and administrative offices, and setting cars on fire. These actions met with brutal retaliation by the colonial police, who used shock grenades and
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firearms to disperse the crowds. The police seized UPC headquarters and rounded up hundreds of UPC members residing in the quarter. By the end of hostilities on 27 May, seven New Bell residents had been killed and scores more wounded.32 In the wake of the May 1955 riots the administration banned the UPC and forced the party underground. The history of UPC activity in New Bell in particular, and in Cameroon generally, is of vital interest to historians as a narrative of uncompromising resistance to colonial rule. In documenting the radical movement, historians seek an alternative to histories of Western-style politics practised by pro-French collaborators in colonial and post-colonial Cameroon. Thus, while the French administration ultimately defeated the UPC movement, the history of the movement provided an uplifting foil to the disappointing reality of the postcolonial Ahidjo regime. Highlighting the historical significance of the radical nationalist movement, Joseph made his ideological intentions clear: ‘There is the moral question concerning the role of academic scholars in constructing elaborate apologies for a highly authoritarian régime’.33 For Joseph, the suppression of the UPC represented the suppression of an authentic ‘national consciousness uniting diverse peoples into one movement against colonial power’.34 Likewise, Achille Mbembe argued that the history of the UPC under the leadership of Ruben Um Nyobe could provide insight into a distinctly African political morality that was not wholly transformed by the colonial onslaught. As an historical figure, Um and his leadership of the UPC represented the resilience of local cultural and social institutions in their confrontation with colonialism. Thus, a careful mining of this history may further a richer, deeper understanding of local societies in colonial and post-colonial Cameroon.35 The UPC was a pivotal force in shaping the process of decolonisation in Cameroon, but post-colonial historiographic attention to the movement has inflated the significance of the party in the broader political landscape, particularly with regard to New Bell. Up to 1951, if not later, LeVine claimed that throughout Cameroon the UPC ‘had not yet attracted the attention or understanding that a more experienced electorate might provide’. The UPC was ‘neither as powerful nor as attractive as it claimed to be . . . ’36 The central elements of the UPC platform, calling for reunification with British Cameroons and an end to the trusteeship, were issues that most of the local population ‘showed little inclination to become excited over’.37 Even New Bell residents who took part in mass mobilisations under the UPC banner did not wholly identify with the nationalist agenda, but rather used the momentum of anti-colonial agitation as a trigger to release their own frustrations with economic hardship. Thus, with regard to the participation of New Bell residents in the events of May 1955, Joseph argued that the spread of the protest was a reaction to economic and social discontent among the unemployed or underpaid masses of the quarter, as had happened a decade earlier. Joseph concluded that the violence was not a UPC insurrection, but rather a spontaneous riot of the sub-proletariat in New Bell.38 Thus the identification of New Bell as a hotbed of UPC activism has perhaps masked a largely superficial identification with radical nationalist ideology among immigrants living in the quarter. When formulating a final analysis of the role played by New Bell
Nationalism and ethnicity
in the radical nationalist movement, the weak ties between immigrants and the UPC must not be the only consideration to the exclusion of the many expressions of anti-UPC sentiment noted throughout the period in the quarter.
Anti-UPC elements: The ethnic factor Although New Bell was identified as an important headquarter of UPC activity, not all immigrants in the quarter supported the party, and many took part in anti-UPC activity. Some of the hostility toward the UPC originated within the Catholic Church, as the priesthood spoke out against supposed communist and atheist elements of the movement. A letter composed by five bishops was read from pulpits throughout the territory in April 1955, warning: ‘We are placing Christians on guard against the present tendencies [of the UPC] not because of the cause of independence which it supports but the spirit which guides it and inspires its methods’.39 This message roused some of the faithful to take to the streets and violent confrontations between New Bell Catholics and the UPC ensued. But these events were quickly overshadowed by the dramatic May riots that followed soon afterwards.40 The more significant anti-UPC sentiment articulated in the quarter originated in the escalating number of ethnic-based organisations. These associations proliferated in the post-WW II era, many sharing the common goal of combating the pan-ethnic UPC.41 The colonial regime had a hand in creating this opposition to the UPC, using the ethnic associations to simultaneously splinter the local population and create an effective obstacle to the spread of dangerous UPC ideas of reunification and independence. For the French administration, the promotion of ethnic associations was the key to fragmenting local societies throughout Africa, and colonial administrations found allies in local chiefs seeking to preserve their own power through a reaffirmation of ethnic loyalties.42 This could be seen in the remarks of one colonial official seeking to derail the growing support for the UPC in the Ntem region when he wrote: ‘It is therefore necessary to put the [local] chiefs on guard, to emphasise the danger to them, to point out to them that they have every interest in not becoming separated from us, because the success of the [nationalist] party will bring the exercise of their functions, as well as the privileges these entail, into question’.43 In New Bell, the post-WW II proliferation of ethnic associations was one of the most conspicuous and significant changes to the political and social landscapes of the quarter. These associations sprang up among all the major ethnic groups represented in the population of strangers. Many of the associations mimicked some form of pre-colonial political or social formations, and as such were perceived by members to have direct links to pre-colonial political institutions.44 Some historians have exposed these post-WW II ethnic associations as artificial re-creations of village-based political cultures replanted in an urban setting. However, Ralph Austen has circumvented the debate on the legitimacy of historical and cultural claims by arguing that ethnic associations such as the Duala Ngondo did evoke the distant past and culture of the Duala people, despite huge
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gaps between the contemporary claims of legitimacy and the empirical historical record concerning the Duala Ngondo association.45 Regardless of how closely these organisations reflected long-standing political and cultural institutions of any particular ethnic grouping, their primary purpose was to meet the urgent and expanding needs of the immigrant population that was increasingly under stress due to competition for space, power and resources in New Bell. The ‘invention’ of the Duala Ngondo association in the 1940s was most certainly a response of the Duala people to the challenge posed by the rapidly expanding immigrant population.46 Similarly, the Bamileke affirmed their group unity and identity through the Kumzse association, also active from the 1940s onward. Both the Ngondo and the Kumzse were temporary supporters of the UPC, and both broke their ties with the party in favour of more particularist interests. The Beti of Douala were quick to follow suit, and formed the Association des Betis de Douala. As the president of the organisation wrote to the high commissioner, ‘our association has no political character . . . it has been modelled along the lines of the Association of Bamileke of Douala . . . with the purpose of most efficiently adapting to the particular conditions of life in the city of Douala’.47 By 1955 almost all of the ethnic groups in New Bell were represented by an association designed to meet the political, cultural, or economic needs of their members.48 As seen elsewhere in Cameroon, colonial officials manipulated the personal interests of local chiefs in order to secure the loyalty of these associations to the French administration. These chiefs fervently disavowed any association to the UPC in order to continue reaping the financial and social benefits of their close association with the French. This could be seen in the following letter from Pierre Boum, chief of the Eseka quarter in New Bell: As I have repeated over and over again, Sir, I would never approve of the odious and backward activities of the UPC. I recognise day after day the benefits of French rule, and I continue in my work to convince all those who will listen. As a link between you and the population, I would not be afraid to report to you concerning the rumours spreading among the population, but always with the purpose of collecting helpful information to aid in your efforts to calm the population . . . Finally, I would like to express my deepest thanks for the salary you have paid me for my thankless work as a chief. This salary has very much encouraged me, and many of my friends have come from all over to congratulate me.49
Along with Boum, many local leaders in New Bell promoted ethnic associations among their constituents as a way of maintaining their own privileged positions. Some scholars have argued that the post-independence conflict and struggle for power among ethnic groups in Cameroon had its roots in this colonial strategy of ‘decentralised despotism’.50 This colonial legacy of divide and conquer was carried over into the pro-French Ahidjo regime of the post-colonial period, with the president of Cameroon seen as ‘a master juggler’, playing off ethnic elites against one another.51 The struggle over resources, then, was at the root of the growing competition and tension between ethnic groups in the era of decolonisation. The dynamics at play could
Nationalism and ethnicity
be seen in a 1954 incident involving the appointment of chef supérieur Joseph Paraiso as president of the newly established Customary Law Court in New Bell. Paraiso, a Muslim originally from Dahomey, had lived in Douala from the end of the German period and had served under the French as the New Bell chef supérieur of immigrants from outside Cameroon for over 30 years. He had Cameroonian wives, one of whom was a non-Muslim Ewondo.52 Paraiso was remembered by several New Bell residents as a notable figure of the period, and particularly for those from outside Cameroon; he was also seen as a unifying force, as one Togolese informant recalled: ‘There were Bassa and Ewondo. The Togolese were my neighbours. Ghanaians, Nigerians, and the Senegalese also lived close by . . . There were no problems. Everyone knew how to behave since after all there was one grand chief, known as Paraiso, in the quarter. He was chief of all the strangers’.53 Another Dahomean oral informant recalled that chief Paraiso had arranged housing for him when he arrived in Douala because he was a fellow Dahomean, and that Paraiso represented all strangers to Cameroon. He claimed: ‘I was warmly welcomed in New Bell; there was no difference between Cameroonians, Senegalese and Congolese during the colonial period’.54 Paraiso was a strong loyalist to the French administration and his appointment as president of the Customary Court was no doubt a reward for his long history of collaboration with the administration. But despite Paraiso’s formidable reputation in New Bell, his lengthy residence in Cameroon, and his decades of leadership as a chef superieur, his appointment was strongly opposed by New Bell’s lower chiefs of Cameroonian origin, who sent a motion of protest to the administration on 3 July 1954. The motion stated: We regret the arbitrary nomination of Mr Paraiso to the position of President of the Tribunal, and regard it as an insult to the Cameroonian population. Mr Paraiso’s reputation has become well established in Cameroon over the years, during which time he always maintained good relations with the Cameroonians; however, as Mr Paraiso is a Muslim chief of the Dahomean race and custom, he is far from capable of interpreting Cameroonian customs. Dahomean customs are quite different from Cameroonian customs. It should be noted that despite his long sojourn in Cameroon, Mr Paraiso will never have the same kind of responsibilities with the Cameroonian population as we do; it is logical that each person should rule over his own kin. The Customary Court of New Bell should be confided to a member of the Cameroonian elite or to a specific chief for the strangers of New Bell. It seems that at this stage of political evolution, with institutions in demand, Cameroonians should, step by step, be taking over the management of public affairs.55
The motion was signed by Boum, serving as President of the Association of Chiefs of New Bell, and accompanied by an unsigned list of 20 lower chiefs from the quarter. Three weeks later, Boum presided over another meeting of 50 chiefs from throughout the city on the issue of Paraiso’s nomination, this time at the office of Paul Soppo Priso. Boum claimed that there was much discontent within New Bell over Paraiso’s appointment, and that is was widely held that a Dahomean could not preside over legal proceedings involving different local customs. The meeting notes documented the sharp opposition of Paul Kwette, the Bamileke chef supérieur, who claimed that it was unacceptable that
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Paraiso, a Muslim, should render judgments over Christians. Priso argued that they could not object to Paraiso on the grounds of his religion, and that they might argue instead that the number of Muslims in Douala was relatively small. In what seemed an effort to disassociate himself from a leadership role on this matter, Boum sent another letter to the administration on July 17, claiming that the chiefs’ motion had in fact been dictated by the two chefs supérieurs of the quarter, Paul Kwette and Joseph Mongo, and that each had refused to sign the petition, fearing retribution from the administration. An intelligence report, submitted to the administration by an informant who had attended a meeting of chiefs on the Paraiso matter, also highlighted Kwette’s strong opposition to the nomination. Kwette, it added, would not sign any petition, because ‘traitors had reported his comments to the security forces’, and because he had been blamed by the administration for the incident. Mongo also refused to sign, fearing repercussions, and this led to a general refusal of the chiefs to sign the petition. Disgusted with the cowardice of the chefs supérieurs, two local chiefs from New Bell threatened to create their own association of chiefs and thus avoid being subjected to the pressure of ‘volatile and corrupt chefs supérieurs’.56 The Paraiso incident uncovered deep rivalries between the local chiefs in New Bell and the high level of competition between them. Boum, the only signatory to the anti-Paraiso motion, sent a letter to the French administration on 25 July 1954, firmly disavowing any ties to the movement against Paraiso, and claiming instead that it was Kwette and Mongo who were behind the opposition, and that Mongo, his mortal enemy, was dedicated to his destruction. Beyond mud-slinging and political zigzagging, the motion against Paraiso did not yield any results with regard to the nomination. The entire incident was put to rest when the administration claimed to have received retractions similar to Boum’s from other chiefs, and thus deemed the affair closed, ‘enabling Mr Paraiso to begin exercising his new functions with full freedom’.57 The Paraiso incident highlights how ethnicised discourses and coalitions were used by the political elite to promote a narrow set of self-serving interests. This same political elite avoided any open involvement in anti-colonial agitation for fear of losing their positions of privilege. Thus, the spread and growing popularity of the ethnic associations and the emergence of a strong discourse of ethnic alliances in New Bell during the postWW II era ultimately served as a check on the radicalisation of the quarter’s residents through association with the UPC. Vocal opposition to the nationalism of the UPC was often part of the strategy employed by local chiefs who sought to maintain favourable relations with the French.58 While some of the ethnic associations joined in the struggle for more political freedoms toward the end of colonial rule, most remained conservative in nature and deeply opposed to the radical politics of the nationalist movement.59 With UPC activity cutting across ethnic lines, and ethnic coalitions and associations leading to a hardening of these divisions, moments of convergence and divergence can be identified in the political action of New Bell residents in the final years of colonial rule.60 Immigrants dissatisfied with their economic and political circumstances were drawn to both pan-ethnic nationalist ideologies and ethnic associations seeking more
Nationalism and ethnicity
particularist agendas. In both options, the community of strangers living in New Bell became more prominent participants in the political sphere and drew the attention of the colonial regime. Political unrest in the post-WW II years aroused colonial concern and initiated an information-gathering campaign on New Bell.
New Bell and colonial consciousness The riots of September 1945 served as a rude awakening for the French administration, and from this point forward the administration realised that it was no longer prudent to sideline the strangers’ quarter within colonial consciousness or policies. New Bell thus earned a new significance as a potential threat to security in Douala; in addition, the growing need for manpower in the city at this time also contributed to an increased interest in the inner workings of the quarter as a reservoir of labour. As colonial plans for development and modernisation expanded during this period, so too, did the need for a reliable and continuous supply of labour. Thus colonial policy in New Bell sought to simultaneously preserve an aura of control over public space in the city and to establish circumstances within which immigrants would make themselves permanent members of the official workforce. This dual agenda could be seen in the French administration’s response to the 1945 riots. On the surface, this response was one of unequivocal punishment. Ten days after the riots, the administration announced the sanctions to be taken: a collective fine of 500 000 francs was imposed on the indigenous population of the city in order to finance the repair of the girls’ school in New Bell. Furthermore two chiefs from New Bell – Marcus Etemé of the Yaounde population and Simon Djengue of the Bamileke – were to be expelled from the city and posted to distant regions. These two chiefs were punished ‘for having favoured the troublesome acts committed by their constituents, and for not informing the Chief of the Region of the preparations for these events, of which they could not have been ignorant, and for leading the rioters to believe in their support for the actions taken as a result of their complete inaction during the course of events’.61 The punishment of the chiefs appears particularly harsh when considering the many years of service these two men had given to the administration. Both had been appointed in 1922, with Etemé representing the Yaounde people and also serving as chef supérieur and Djengue representing the Bamileke; each had thus served for 23 years under the French. Following their expulsion, they both wrote protest letters to the administration, claiming complete ignorance of plans for rioting before the strikes, as well as their powerlessness to stop the violence. These protests fell on deaf ears and the administration carried out its decision to depose them.62 Despite this outward display of uncompromising condemnation of the New Bell rioters, the French administration adopted a more introspective approach behind the scenes. For the first time, it considered the impact of ongoing hardship on the lives of New Bell residents, and acknowledged that the 1945 riots were an expression of frustration rooted in long-term economic and social difficulties facing the immigrant community:
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You realise that the situation of food in the city of Douala is one of the essential factors in preserving the public peace. The latent discontent we have seen among the salaried workers and bureaucrats in the maritime capital is linked, in large part, to the supply problem. The abundant and ongoing flow of agricultural products to the Douala market is, more than ever, a primary condition for the social order. It is therefore, I repeat, an imperative and urgent necessity . . .’63
The focus on New Bell was not only vital to preserving the public calm, but increasingly necessary as the French administration faced a growing demand for labour. Riots erupted exactly when development and modernisation plans were being considered. The administration soon realised that the gulf of knowledge and communication separating it from the labour force deeply endangered the possibility of successfully undertaking any large public works requiring a significant supply of manpower. Consequently, the administration promoted an agenda to examine, map and improve the quality of life in New Bell. The first step was taken in 1946, when the administration in Cameroon commissioned Jacques Guilbot to conduct a study of labour in Douala. Guilbot’s work culminated in the publication of ‘Petite étude sur la main-d’œuvre à Douala’, which was, according to Cooper, one of the earliest of its kind conducted in French Africa.64 Roland Pré followed a similar course of action when he took office nearly a decade later, commissioning the Diziain-Cambon study of social problems in New Bell.65 These scientific studies of labour in Douala were part of a broader trend, increasingly evident throughout post-war Africa. Across the continent, the surge in colonial efforts to scrutinise urban populations, and particularly the labour force within them, was linked to modernisation schemes formulated during the period. As Cooper wrote, ‘the scholarly study of wage labour and African urbanism began to be a sustained enterprise’.66 Following WW II, colonial regimes found it increasingly difficult to justify an unending rule over African populations, and proposed instead programmes of modernisation and ideologies of gradual independence, justifying the extension of the European administration until Africans had learned to govern. Cooper argued that modernisers claimed this right to govern Africa for a time ‘on the basis above all of their knowledge; they knew what Africa should be like when it governed itself ’.67 Guilbot’s findings on the labour force revealed that the study was a first step in a more effective exploitation of this manpower for colonial profit. His work began by evaluating the extent to which the labour force in Cameroon had successfully adopted and integrated the modernisation efforts of the French on a professional level. He then concluded with speculations aimed at explaining the lack of reliability, widespread laziness, and low productivity among the workforce of Douala, and suggests ways to rectify these problems. Guilbot’s study was far from objective in its portrayal of New Bell’s workers, as is evident in his concluding remarks: ‘As we have seen, nothing will stop the Blacks from adapting to a modern lifestyle, if they acquire the necessary moral qualities’.68 Nonetheless, despite its narrow scope of inquiry and racist underpinnings, Guilbot’s work represented a new approach toward the population of New Bell within colonial consciousness. The quarter, once excluded from the borders of Douala proper, was now situated at the centre of scientific inquiry and colonial scrutiny.
Nationalism and ethnicity
Perhaps the most significant advance in the colonial knowledge of the strangers’ quarter came with the completion of the first census of the quarter, taken in 1955.69 The census included detailed maps of each neighbourhood in New Bell, the first ever drawn of the quarter. Colonial officials conducted a house-to-house survey and gathered statistics on ethnicity, age, marital status, educational background and professions in each household. It is significant to note the large preponderance of Bamileke in most of these quarters, testimony to the massive migration from the western highlands and an indication of the roots of ethnic tensions during this period, as the earlier balance of power between groups was upset by the clear numeric dominance of Bamileke at the end of the colonial era. Equally important was the overwhelming majority in each quarter of single men and women between the ages of 15 and 30 who declared their professions as unemployed, undeclared, or self-employed commerce. While the census helped the French administration to improve its knowledge of the immigrant population, the findings ultimately confirmed that the majority of strangers were not yet living the life the administration had intended for them. This knowledge came too late, however, for the authorities to take any effective action to change the situation. The administration needed both resources and motivation to improve conditions in the neighbourhood, and these were in short supply. Thus, the population of New Bell continued to experience the impact of colonial ambiguities vis-à-vis the quarter. The desire to know more about New Bell was never translated into any significant efforts to improve the lives of those living there.
Obstacles to urbanisation in New Bell A look at the French administration’s failures in implementing much-needed urban renewal in New Bell serves to demonstrate how little change there had been as far as colonial action in the quarter was concerned. While the administration exhibited more anxiety about New Bell in the post-WW II years, there was no deep and lasting realignment of political, economic or physical landscapes of the city to empower the community of strangers. The deteriorating conditions in the strangers’ quarter required an effective leadership that could lobby for needed investment and renovations. Even the French realised that the appointed local chiefs were lacking in authority and popular support.70 But the Duala continued to maintain a position of privilege within local political structures, and succeeded, through an alliance with the European business community, in blocking the administration’s efforts to democratise the Douala municipal government until very late in the colonial era.71 Despite formulating a proposal in 1947 for an elected municipal council based on universal suffrage, the French administration capitulated to Duala and European pressures and implemented its plan for political reform in the Douala local government only in 1955. By this time, however, other Duala manoeuvres had stymied any colonial plans for improving conditions in New Bell. Already within the framework of FIDES, the French administration made plans for much-needed urbanisation in New Bell, including renovation and modernisation of the quarter’s infrastructure. A network of roads and sewers were urgently needed, as
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was running water.72 The administration believed that urbanisation work would be far less contentious than it had been in the Duala quarter because, as one official noted, ‘we will have far less problems expropriating land in a quarter where there are no land titles’.73 What the administration did not anticipate, however, were the Duala claims of ownership over New Bell land. Duala plantation owners, deeply dependent on export trade, experienced steady economic decline beginning with the Great Depression.74 According to Austen and Derrick, restrictions on cocoa exports during WW II had only compounded the impact of the Depression on the Duala economic position. As more and more Duala abandoned their capitalist ventures in rural areas, urban real estate became the sole ‘basis for maintaining some form of economic prominence’.75 Subsequently, in the post-war era, the French administration’s decision to modernise New Bell began with an attempt to clarify the legal status of property and this opened a window of opportunity for the economically strapped Duala. Once the administration raised the question of land ownership in New Bell, the Duala (‘as stubborn as ever’, claimed one official) demanded official recognition of their proprietary claims on the land in the quarter.76 Though the Duala had no desire to live in New Bell themselves and continued to relate to the immigrant quarter as kotto land fit only for slaves, the recognition of their legal ownership over the land was crucial to their economic interests.77 Once declared the historical and legal owners of land in the strangers’ quarter, the Duala could lay claim to significant sources of much-needed revenue as landlords over the community of strangers. Oral informants from New Bell recalled this Duala manoeuvre with considerable hostility, and some attributed the start of ethnic tensions in the city to this incident. One resident argued, ‘The relations between the groups were good in New Bell. It was only when the Duala started making claims on the land that there were problems’.78 Duala motives did not go unnoticed; one informant claimed: ‘It was only after they sold their beautiful quarter that they wanted to recuperate the land in New Bell’.79 The conflict between Duala and immigrant interests over the land rights fuelled some pre-existing resentment within the immigrant community toward the Duala elite and their condescending attitude toward the community of strangers, as can be seen in the following remarks of another informant: The Duala wanted their land back because they simply did not want to hear the strangers talking anymore. But it was impossible to ask the strangers to leave after they had maintained the city of Douala. They could not be cast out as a reward for their hard work here. In fact, it is the Duala who should compensate us for all we have done. Since that was practically impossible, the Duala had to just give up in the end.80
In fact, the Duala did not give up, and a solution to the conflict over land rights in New Bell was never found. The Duala signed an agreement in 1954 authorising extremely limited public works in the quarter, but a complete and effective renovation and modernisation of the New Bell infrastructure was never undertaken.81 The question of land ownership in New Bell also remained unsolved, further denying residents a potential
Nationalism and ethnicity
financial resource. Ultimately, the French administration avoided undertaking the desperately needed urban renewal by working around the problem. The administration performed a minimum of cosmetic changes, and demonstrated that its attitude toward New Bell was essentially unchanged. The strangers’ quarter and its residents would remain low on the list of colonial priorities. The physical environment of present-day New Bell is imprinted with the French administration’s inaction, and the experiences of residents in the quarter are still defined by their marginalisation from minimal resources. This collective disempowerment has, at moments, given birth to an imagined solidarity, as can be seen in the above responses of informants concerning Duala land claims. Throughout the last decade of colonialism, the community of New Bell experienced deep cleavages along ethnic and political lines, but there were also ongoing expressions of cooperation and understanding among immigrants as they collectively faced injustices. But unlike the radical nationalist movement crushed by the hard hand of colonialism, the pan-ethnic community of New Bell has continued over time to provide immigrants with a framework from which to respond to the larger world and with opportunities to overcome their disempowerment. The community has therefore continued to play a significant role in shaping the lives and identities of those who have participated in it.
Notes to Chapter Six 1 Descriptions of the events of 24 September 1945 can be found in the following sources: R. Joseph, ‘Settlers, Strikers, and Sans-Travail: The Douala Riots of September 1945’, Journal of African History 15 no. 4 (1974):669–87; ANC-FF APA 11252/C, Évènements de Douala, September 1945; Moumé Etia, Cameroun: les années ardentes, 61–68 and Annexe 3; Gouellain, Douala, 265–66. 2 Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 178. 3 LeVine, The Cameroons: From Mandate to Independence, 143. 4 M-R Atangana, Capitalisme et nationalisme au Cameroun: au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale, 1946–1956 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1998), 41. A similar observation is made in Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 160. 5 Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 142. 6 Gouellain, Douala, 283. 7 Atangana, Capitalisme et nationalisme, 105. 8 Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 176. 9 R. Cartier, ‘En France Noire avec Raymond Cartier: la France sème ses milliards, les africains disent: c’est bien tard’, Paris-Match 384 (18 August 1956), 35, quoted in Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 393. 10 Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 107. 11 Climats, 442 (June 1954), 3, quoted in Atangana, Capitalisme et nationalisme, 239. 12 Gouellain, Douala, 276; Atangana, Capitalisme et nationalisme, 236. 13 Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 160. Joseph relies on the 1956 study of New Bell by Diziain and Cambon, Étude sur la population du quartier New Bell à Douala, 13. 14 Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 8. 15 Ibid.
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The Strangers of New Bell 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48
49 50 51 52 53 54
Ibid., 49. ANC-FF APA 10388/B, Inspection du travail, 1945. Interview with Assama. Joseph, ‘Settlers, Strikers, and Sans-Travail’, 674. ANC-FF APA 10208/C, Rapport des agents, 1 June 1946. Quoted in Gouellain, Douala, 261, Subdivision de Douala, Rapport Annuel, 1942. ANC-FF APA 10780. ANC-FF APA 10209/3, Agitation à Douala 1945–46, 14 September 1945. R. Joseph, ‘National Politics in Postwar Cameroun: The Difficult Birth of the UPC’, Journal of African Studies 2 no. 2 (1975):207–11. Joseph, ‘National Politics in Postwar Cameroun’, 218; Moumé Etia, Cameroun: les années ardentes, 82. LeVine, The Cameroons, 147–48. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 241–42. ANC-FF APA 11310, Incidents de Douala 1949. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 268. LeVine, The Cameroons, 154. Ibid., 156. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 266–68. R. Joseph, ‘Ruben um Nyobe and the “Kamerun” Rebellion’. African Affairs, 73 no. 293 (October 1974):428–48; quotation is from 429. Jospeh, ‘Ruben um Nyobe’, 447. A. Mbembe, ‘Domaines de la nuit et autorité onirique dans les maquis du sud-Cameroun (1955–1958)’, The Journal of African History 32 no. 1 (1991):89–121. Le Vine, The Cameroons, 149. Ibid., 149. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 357–59. Quoted in Ibid., 259. LeVine, The Cameroons, 155. Atangana, Capitalisme et nationalisme, 77. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 174. ANC-FF 6 AC 5, Director of Political Affairs to Chef de Région, Ntem, undated (mid-1949), quoted in Joseph, ‘National Politics in Postwar Cameroun’, 228. LeVine, The Cameroons, 151. R. Austen, ‘Tradition, Invention, and History: The Case of the Ngondo, Cameroon’, Cahiers d’études africaines 126 no. XXXII-2 (1992):285–309. Austen, ‘Tradition, Invention, and History’, 298. ANC-FF 2AC 802, Betis Association de Douala, 1949. See, for example, ANC-FF 3AC 1142, Société de secours mutuel Bangoua; 2AC 8891(8), Union Fraternelle Bikok, 1954; Foulbes de Douala 1955 (file number unknown); APA 11522/B, Association de populations musulmanes; 2AC 42, Jeunesse Beti de Douala. ANC-FF 2AC 1509, New Bell Paraiso Affaire, Rapport no. 64/CQE, 25 July 1954. M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 8. F. B. Nyamnjoh, ‘Cameroon: A Country United by Ethnic Ambition and Difference’, African Affairs 98 (1999):101–88; quotation is from 106. Interview with Paraiso. Interview with Gouzou. Interview with Cosme Nicholas Padonu, New Bell, Douala, March 1999.
Nationalism and ethnicity 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69
70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81
ANC-FF 2AC 4200, Paraiso – Tribunal Coutumier de New Bell, 3 July 1954. Ibid., 12 July 1954 and 25 July 1954. ANC-FF 2AC 1509, New Bell Paraiso Affaire, 25 July 1954 and 14 August 1954. See for example, notes from the meeting of the Union Fraternelle Bikok, 30 November 1954, in ANC-FF 2AC 8891(8). Atangana, Capitalisme et nationalisme, 78. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 166. ANC-FF APA 10209/14, 5 October 1945. ANC-FF 1AC 1813/2, Letter of protest from both chiefs, 2 October 1945 and 8 October 1945. ANC-FF APA 10780, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, le chef de la Région du Mungo, 8 July 1946. Guilbot, Petite étude sur la main-d’œuvre à Douala; Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 371. Joseph, Radical Nationalism, 292. Cooper, Decolonization and African Society, 369. Ibid., 376. Guilbot, Petite étude sur la main-d’œuvre à Douala, 76. Census results can be found in the following ANC files entitled, ‘Quartiers Douala, Population recensement du Quartier’: 2AC 9239, Congo; 2AC 9241, Congo – Banyangui; 2AC 9245, Babylone; 2AC 9246, Mbam Ewondo-Bamileke; 2AC 9244, Ndjong Mebi; 2AC 9242, Nyongmondo; 2AC 9240, S´négalaise; 2AC 9243, T.S.F. Gardinier, ‘Political Behavior in the Community of Douala, Cameroon’. Ibid., 20. Gouellain, Douala, 308–9. Région du Wouri. Douala. Commission municipale, séance du 12 janvier 1952, quoted in Gouellain, Douala, 309. Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 166–68. Ibid., 178. Gouellain, Douala, 310. Austen and Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroon Rivers, 179. Interview with Ongono. Interview with Mbita. Interview with Biloa. ANC-FF 1AC 8639, New Bell Urbanisme 1954, Rapport: Travaux d’urbanisme de New-Bell, Douala, 19 November 1954.
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SEVEN Conclusion
The last decade of colonial rule in Cameroon, and in New Bell in particular, witnessed an increasing public engagement with discourses on citizenship. The colonial extension of new rights and entitlements was accompanied by growing competition for them and this led groups and individuals to develop or clarify their position on who was a legitimate beneficiary of these rights and resources. Questions about who was Cameroonian became increasingly pressing, and the debates gave way to social and political realignments with lasting consequences. Though the political power elite in New Bell embraced and frequently even promoted ethnic rivalries, they were also known to recoil quickly from any contentious ideas when these threatened their own favourable position in the colonial order. This manipulation of ethnic alliances on the one hand, and the refusal to identify fully with subversive movements and ideas on the other, were typical manoeuvres of political elites in the era of decolonisation in Africa, and were carried over into the era of independence. For New Bell residents, this resulted in increased exposure to a public discourse reflecting more fixed borders and heightened tensions between groups, as well as a perpetual refusal of those in power to spearhead revolutionary changes. The Paraiso incident (see Chapter 6) was significant not for what the protest achieved, but rather for what it revealed about elite political culture and the discourse on identity in the era of decolonisation. Within this discourse, a Cameroonian identity is constructed as a gate-keeping device, utilised to exclude and differentiate, but of very little meaning on its own, and characterised by statements such as, ‘Dahomean customs are quite different from Cameroonian customs’. But in writing a history of the strangers of New Bell, it is not the elite discourse or political intrigues that are ultimately of relevance. The Paraiso incident is significant because it brings into clear focus the gap between the political agenda of the elite, and the everyday experiences and struggles of New Bell residents. Very little was at stake for New Bell residents in the seemingly important debate on Cameroonian identity in the context of the Paraiso incident; indeed the whole matter was dropped when the chiefs’ salaries were endangered. Thus, the Paraiso affairs yields an accurate representation of the ongoing absence of the strangers of New Bell – from the broad political discourse in the eras of decolonisation and independence, and their articulations of community and solidarity. 136
Conclusion
The strangers of New Bell are not unique in their continuing marginalisation. From the dawn of independence historians and political scientists have attempted to explain the weakness of Cameroonian nationality and identity. The power elite has failed to promote a vision of unity behind which Cameroonians can rally, focusing instead on plundering resources and quelling unrest with strategic handouts to those who support them. Disappointment with the Ahmadou Ahidjo regime (1960–1982), and later with the rule of Paul Biya, who became president in 1982, has led scholars to criticise the political leadership for promoting regional and ethnic competition in order to defray criticism and ensure its longevity as the ruling power.1 The elite system is, however, deeply entrenched, so that its dismantlement can hardly be envisioned. According to Francis B. Nyamnjoh, no one anticipates that those enjoying despotism will easily surrender their privileged position: ‘because they each have a bit of the system in them, . . . it becomes very difficult to contemplate the system’s undoing without in a way contemplating one’s very own undoing’.2 Despite remarkable levels of corruption (Cameroon was designated the most corrupt country in the world in 1998) and the perpetuation of severe inequalities and injustices, there is a seeming complacency on the part of the people of Cameroon. Scholars have attempted to understand what prevents Cameroonians from engaging in organised and sustained efforts to overthrow the current system.3 The focus on ethnic rivalry has arguably deflected attention from the central government and its responsibility to treat all the people equally.4 But Cameroonians employed various mechanisms to relieve the unfulfilled expectations they have had of the power elite, and to overcome their lack of access to minimal resources. Many, says Nyamnjoh, ‘keep a garden, do some farming, indulge in formal or informal trading, and/or depend on supplies from relations in the village who in turn look up to them for some of the benefits of being in the city. There is also embezzlement and money doubling . . . prostitution and concubinage’.5 To this list of coping strategies, Mbembe has added the use of laughter, play and metaphor.6 This study of the immigrant community in colonial New Bell has revealed that these tactics are not present-day innovations. The history of New Bell has helped us to understand the early lives of many these practices. In describing the dynamics of existence and survival of Africans under colonial rule a deeper perspective of the predicaments and options they face as postcolonial subjects is achieved. Mbembe has portrayed the postcolony as made up of not one, but several public spaces, and ‘the postcolonial subject has to learn to bargain in this conceptual marketplace . . . Subjects in the postcolony . . . have to have marked ability to manage not just a single identity, but several – flexible enough to negotiate as and when necessary’.7 In the face of a governing body that has largely failed to inspire its people with a sense of common unity, Cameroonians have adopted alternative visions of community and belonging that have facilitated their survival and participation in public culture. This study of colonial New Bell has attempted to reveal the historic background of the post-colony as described by Mbembe, and to uncover early examples of Cameroonians formulating and negotiating collectivities and identities in navigating public spaces.
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Living in the shadow of colonialism, New Bell immigrants forged solidarities as a coping strategy in a volatile environment, and in doing so constituted an opposition to colonial hegemony. Linda Martin Alcoff has argued that: Self-determination remains the praxis of resistance, even while we relearn the true ways in which identities are formed and the realistic possibilities of autonomy in a world whose interdependence is not only economic and environmental but, just as importantly, cultural and social. The imperialist habit of presumptiveness to speak for others, to set their goals and priorities, and to dictate their values and economic practices may be unlearned through, finally, a recognition that identity makes a difference.8
The history of the New Bell community provides an historic view of the long-established practice of strategic cooperation between strangers, as they have participated in semiautonomous public spaces not fully seen or controlled by those in power. In studying the formation of localised identities as well as their fluidity, we can better understand how the post-colonial subjects cope with their complex environments. Thus, strategies employed in colonial New Bell continue to hold appeal; indeed, Mbembe described postcolonial identities as ‘constantly “revised” in order to achieve maximum instrumentality and efficacy as and when required’.9 This study has argued that the construction of experiences and identities cannot be separated from the construction of space. While Jean and John Comaroff have argued that histories, particularly colonial histories, ‘take place’,10 urban histories in Africa have not always been about places. Yet it has been shown that it is impossible to represent the history of Douala’s immigrant community outside the context of the place in which immigrants lived, New Bell. Taking an urban neighbourhood as a unit of analysis, we have seen how experiences and communities coalesced around and within physical spaces. The physical distance separating New Bell from the city centre enabled both the German and French administrations and the Duala elite to perpetuate constructed notions of cultural and social difference between themselves and the immigrant population. From the perspective of the immigrants, it can be seen how the shared occupation of a common space enabled them to imagine and exploit a fluid set of alliances and connections, and to construct identities deeply grounded in New Bell. Thus space must constitute a primary category of analysis in the history of this urban community; histories of people are inextricably woven into the history of places. Against the backdrop of a research agenda that privileges place as a category of analysis, the choice of New Bell is significant because, as a place, it has been historically messy – not necessarily in the sense of physical untidiness, although that aspect of the quarter is certainly a part of it. Multiple and conflicting powers have avoided transforming the quarter into a fixed and easily discerned entity, characterising and defining places in the modern world. On the contrary, most forces acting upon New Bell in the colonial era benefited from perpetuating New Bell as a non-place. The French administration excluded New Bell from the Douala municipality in 1925, and did not have an official map or census of the quarter until 1950. The Duala preferred postponing any decision
Conclusion
regarding land titles in New Bell, fearing an official rebuttal of their claims of ownership over the quarter. And immigrant residents of the quarter continually exploited perceptions of New Bell as ‘the bush’ – a nondescript reference to an uncontrolled and uncolonised African space. In fact, this study of New Bell merely highlights the complex process of place-making and community formation as it has unfolded in colonial and post-colonial cities everywhere. The contestation of colonial power in cities uncovered the unexpected weakness of colonial regimes in their seat of power, and the study of the ‘struggle for the city’ has revealed some basic dynamics in the negotiated relationship between colonisers and colonised. In the case of New Bell, previous studies have focused on locally based resistance to colonial rule in the form of nationalist uprising. This study has attempted to define resistance more broadly, and to view the creation of local group identities and collective actions as a form of self-determination and disengagement from or defiance to the colonial agenda. Through negotiation, manipulation, coercion, and even coincidence, colonial cities gave birth to unlikely alliances. Cities, and particularly colonial cities, are historic sights of ‘cultural diversity, syncretism, and dislocation’.11 Life in the city provided immigrants with opportunities to forge alliances cutting across ethnic, class and gendered boundaries, enabling individuals and groups to cope with or defy their marginality in colonial consciousness. The New Bellian solidarities that emerged in the strangers’ quarter during the colonial era continue to hold much relevance to residents of the quarter. This is in part a reflection of a weak national identity. But the salience of the New Bell collective is also largely due to the ongoing marginalisation of the community from those in power. It has been shown that throughout the colonial era, residents of New Bell needed local-based communities to combat their lack of power. This was the case until the end of the colonial era, despite some significant changes in the political and social status of the quarter in the late colonial era. The increase in colonial attention directed at the quarter, and the nationalist mobilisation of some New Bell residents in the post-war era notwithstanding, by the end of the colonial era the first-hand experiences of New Bell residents more closely reflected a continued legacy of marginalisation, temporality, and disengagement than one of incorporation. Colonial efforts toward New Bell remained in the realm of the insufficient and incomplete. And independence has brought little relief. On the contrary, the New Bell residents who were interviewed complained over and over again of a steady deterioration of conditions as governments led by Africans perpetuated the colonial lack of initiative in developing and improving conditions in the quarter. As a result of this lingering legacy, the physical space of New Bell bears the imprint of colonialism more clearly now than it did immediately following independence. The origins of the quarter as an African space lying just beyond colonial control and surveillance have found expression today in a space characterised by long-term neglect and disarray, rendering the lives of inhabitants replete with hardship. Thus, continued occupation of this deteriorated physical space has ensured the salience of the collective experience of New Bell residents. This point
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was driven home to me at the end of interviews, when I posed the question, ‘Is there anything else you would like to add?’ Some informants took this opportunity to describe the immense difficulties of life in New Bell today; as one woman answered: ‘We suffer a lot here, we are penniless’.12 The constant decline in conditions in the quarter over time has even led some informants to fondly recall the colonial era. This could be seen in the romanticised memory of one man as he described colonial New Bell: ‘There was no malice, no filth, and even the mosquitoes which you have everywhere now, you did not have them then, not even one. Life was beautiful and easy. New Bell is remembered by all who lived in Douala during the colonial period’.13 Romanticism is perhaps the most accessible strategy available to residents coping with New Bell in the post-colonial era, but this review of the quarter’s past has revealed that the community of strangers of New Bell have continually imagined and embraced alternative visions to their realities. The past experiences of New Bell residents reveal the vast distance separating New Bell from the narratives of progress and civilisation that sustained both colonialism and independence – a distance that was not only created by hierarchies of power and knowledge situated outside the quarter. The community of strangers of New Bell devised an uneven and contradictory approach toward colonial culture and knowledge, and continued to weave alternatives within the confines of physical space and material resources. Turning to the future, any forecast can count on the lasting impact of imagination, as residents struggle and defy the limits to their power in the ongoing remaking of New Bell.
Notes to Chapter Seven 1 See, for example, J-F. Bayart, L’état au Cameroun (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1979); Y. Monga, ‘“Au village!” Space, Culture, and Politics in Cameroon’, Cahiers d’études africaines 160 (2000); Nyamnjoh, ‘Cameroon: A Country United’, 101–18; A. Mbembe, ‘Provisional Notes on the Postcolony’, Africa 62 no. 1 (1992):3–37. 2 Nyamnjoh, ‘Cameroon: A Country United’, 101–18; quotation from 112. 3 This question was posed by Nyamnjoh, ‘Cameroon: A Country United’, 105. 4 See, for example, Monga, ‘“Au village!” Nyamnjoh, ‘Cameroon: A Country United’. 5 Nyamnjoh, ‘Cameroon: A Country United’, 117. 6 A. Mbembe, On the Postcolony (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). 7 Ibid., 104. 8 L. M. Alcoff, ‘Introduction’, in Identities: Race, Class, Gender, and Nationality, ed. L. M. Alcoff and E. Mendieta (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 1–8; quotation from 7–8. 9 A. Mbembe, ‘The Banality of Power in the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony’, Public Culture 4, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 1–30; quotation from 5. 10 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, I, 204. 11 M. Featherstone, ‘Localism, Globalism and Cultural Identity’, in Identities: Race, Class, Gender, and Nationality, ed. L. M. Alcoff and E. Mendieta (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 342–59; quotation from 353. 12 Interview with Jacqueline Kemayou, New Bell, Douala, March 1999. 13 Interview with El Hadj Souleiman Moumi, New Bell, Douala, December 1998.
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