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History and Government
History: In the first century, the Sao people settled around Lake Chad and it is from them that much of the country’s remarkable sculpture originates. Present-day Cameroon was at the heartland of an area that extended into Nigeria under the control of the Duala people. An estimated 200 distinct ethnic groups live in the region, the largest of which is the Bamileke, a Bantu-related tribe occupying the west and centre of the country. Equatorial Bantu live in the area between the Congo basin and the plateaux of the interior. Small hunting bands of pygmies (the original inhabitants of central Africa) dwell in the remote southern forests.
Contact with Europe was first made in the 15th century with the arrival of the Portuguese. The area later became a German protectorate in the 1880s. But after Germany’s defeat in World War I, Cameroon was divided between Britain and France under a League of Nations (and later a United Nations) mandate instituted in 1919. French Cameroon achieved independence in 1957 under the control of the principal pro-independence party, the Union Nationale Camerounaise (UNC). In 1961, a plebiscite was held to decide the future of British Cameroon: the northern provinces voted to become part of Nigeria, while the south opted for union with French Cameroon. A centralised political and administrative system was introduced with the veteran northern politician Ahmadou Ahidjo as President.
In 1975, Paul Biya, the country’s dominant political figure in recent years, took up his first major appointment as prime minister. When Ahidjo stepped down of his own volition in 1982, Biya was chosen as his successor. Since then, as head of the UNC and its successor party, the Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais (RDPC), Biya has achieved political domination over Cameroon, seeing off the two major threats to his rule. The first of these came in 1984 when Ahidjo, discontented with the direction of his successor’s policies, launched a military coup. It failed. In 1992, the leader of a two-year-old semi-legal opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), John Fru Ndi, presented a major challenge to Biya at the year’s presidential election. Biya eventually claimed the election under uncertain circumstances; Fru Ndi was put under house arrest amid a state of emergency.
At the latest poll in 1997, Biya took no chances, and secured 93 per cent of the poll against two nominal candidates. Fru Ndi’s party, the SDF, is now ensconced as the main opposition party and commands the largest minority bloc in the National Assembly. In general terms, opposition to Biya is concentrated in the north, among the Muslim communities, and among anglophone regions, which fear discrimination at the hands of the predominately francophone regime. During 2002, tension between the two language groups reached a serious level.
Cameroon joined the Commonwealth in 1993 but also maintains a close relationship with France (not least through membership of the CFA franc zone). Relations with Nigeria, Cameroon’s powerful neighbour, have been awkward as the result of several outstanding border disputes (linked in part to control of the oil-rich Niger delta): the main one, involving an area known as the Bakassi peninsula, is under international mediation but has seen occasional small-scale military clashes between the two sides. Cameroon has also itself been involved in mediation in Togo in the dispute between the Government and its opponents.
Government: The President and the 180-seat Assemblée Nationale (National Assembly) hold executive and legislative power respectively. Both elected for five-year terms. Further revisions to the existing 1972 constitution allow for the introduction of a second National Assembly chamber at a later date.
Copyright © 2003 Columbus Publishing Ltd.
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