This is an important step. President Emmanuel Macron officially recognized that France had led “A war” In Cameroon against insurrectional movements before and after the independence of 1960, in a letter to his Cameroonian counterpart, Paul Biya, made public on Tuesday August 12. A word hitherto absent from official speeches, again pointing out of the head of state to introduce more transparency in French colonial history.
“It is up to me to assume today the role and responsibility of France in these events”underlines Emmanuel Macron in the mail, thus acting a memorial turning point between the two countries. The French president thus endorses the conclusions of a report of historians who had been given to him in January and which has “Clearly highlights that a war had taken place in Cameroon, during which the colonial authorities and the French army exercised repressive violence of a multiple nature ».
“Strengthen the relationship”
In July 2022, Emmanuel Macron had announced in Cameroon the launch of works of a Mixed Franco-Cameroonian commission aimed at shedding light on the fight of France against independence and opposition in Cameroon between 1945 and 1971. The report of this commission, chaired by historian Karine Ramondy, is part of the memorial policy of the French president.
The report on Cameroon and research called to prolong it “ will allow us to continue building the future together, to strengthen the close relationship that unites France and Cameroon, with its human ties between our civil societies and our youths ”he said. This document of more than a thousand pages studies in particular the shift in the repression of the French colonial authorities to a real « guerre ». Taking place in the south and west of the country between 1956 and 1961, it undoubtedly made “Tens of thousands of victims”according to historians.
Independence without “net break”
The report underlines that “Formal independence (Cameroon in January 1960) is absolutely not a clear break with the colonial period ”. Ahmadou Ahidjo, Prime Minister then President in 1960, set up in place “An autocratic and authoritarian regime with the support of the French authorities, represented by advisers and administrators, who grant their blank to the repressive measures adopted”according to historians.
The current president, Paul Biya, 92 years old and in power for forty-two years, was a close collaborator of Ahmadou Ahidjo in the 1960s, until it became Prime Minister in 1975, before accessing the presidency from 1982. Emmanuel Macron, who suggests the creation of a dedicated working group between Cameroon and France, ” undertakes that the French archives are made easily accessible to allow the continuation of research work ”.
