This study explores the predicament of Anglophone Cameroon - from the experiment in federation from 1961 to the political liberalisation struggles of the 1990s - to challenge claims of a successful post-independence Cameroonian integration process. Focusing on the perceptions and actions of people in the Anglophone region, Atanga argues that what has come to be called the 'Anglophone Problem' constitutes one of the severest threats to the post-colonial nation-state project in Cameroon. As a linguistic and cultural minority, Anglophone Cameroonians realised that the Francophone-led state and government were keener in assimilation than in implementing the federal and bilingual nation agreed upon at reunification in 1960. Calls for national integration became simply a subterfuge for the assimilation of Anglophones by Francophones who dominated the state and government. The book details the various measures undertaken to exploit the Anglophone regionís economy and marginalise its people. Principally the economic structures meant to facilitate self-reliant development were undermined and destroyed. Institutionalised discrimination took the form of the exclusion of Anglophones from positions of real authority, and depriving the region of any meaningful development. With the advent of multi-party politics, most Anglophone Cameroonians increasingly have made vocal demands for a return to a federation, in order to adequately guarantee their rights and recognition for them as a political and cultural minority. Actively encouraged by France, the Francophone-led regime in Cameroon has refused to yield to such demands, despite the grave danger of violent conflict and possible secession.

This study explores the predicament of Anglophone Cameroon from the experiment in federation from 1961 to the political liberalisation struggles of the 1990s to challenge claims of a successful post-independence Cameroonian integration process. Focusing on the perceptions and actions of people in the Anglophone region, Atanga argues that what has come to be called the Anglophone Problem constitutes one of the severest threats to the post-colonial nation-state project in Cameroon. As a linguistic and cultural minority, Anglophone Cameroonians realised that the Francophone-led state and government were keener in assimilation than in implementing the federal and bilingual nation agreed upon at reunification in 1960. Calls for national integration became simply a subterfuge for the assimilation of Anglophones by Francophones who dominated the state and government. The book details the various measures undertaken to exploit the Anglophone regions economy and marginalise its people. Principally the economic structures meant to facilitate self-reliant development were undermined and destroyed. Institutionalised discrimination took the form of the exclusion of Anglophones from positions of real authority, and depriving the region of any meaningful development. With the advent of multi-party politics, most Anglophone Cameroonians increasingly have made vocal demands for a return to a federation, in order to adequately guarantee their rights and recognition for them as a political and cultural minority. Actively encouraged by France, the Francophone-led regime in Cameroon has refused to yield to such demands, despite the grave danger of violent conflict and possible secession.

This study of Cameroon captures, with fascinating detail and insight, the growing disaffection with the sterile rhetoric of nation-building that has characterised much of postcolonial African politics. It focuses on the resistance of Anglophone Cameroonians to nationhood, which is being pursued to the detriment of minority identities.

Against a disturbing political backdrop and through an in-depth appraisal of selected illustrative texts from major genres—poetry, prose, and drama—Emmanuel Fru Doh presents the origins and growth of a young but potent literature. To him, Anglophone-Cameroon literature is a weapon in the hands of an oppressed English speaking minority in his native Cameroon, Africa, who were unfairly manipulated by the United Nations and Britain into a skewed federation in the name of an independence deal.

While neoliberals typically view civil society organizations as vital channels for the implementation of economic and political reforms, they are also inclined to blame the politics of belonging for the poor record of these reforms. Piet Konings rejects such notions and argues that the relationship between civil society and the politics of belonging is more complex in Africa than Western donors and scholars are inclined to admit. He argues that ethno-regional associations and movements are more significant constituents of civil society in Africa than the conventional organizations that are often uncritically imposed or endorsed. He shows how the politics of belonging, so pervasive in Cameroon, and indeed much of Africa, during the current neoliberal economic and political reforms, has tended to penetrate the entire range of associational life, and he calls for a critical re-appraisal of prevalent notions and assumptions about civil society in the interest of African reality.

Thousands of Cameroonian women played an essential role in the radically anti-colonial nationalist movement led by the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC): they were the women of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women (UDEFEC). Drawing on women nationalists' petitions to the United Nations, one of the largest collections of political documents written by African women during the decolonization era, as well as archival research and oral interviews, this work shows how UDEFEC transcended ethnic, class, education and social divides, and popularized nationalism in both urban and rural areas through the Trust Territories of the Cameroons under French and British administration. Foregrounding issues such as economic autonomy and biological and agricultural fertility, UDEFEC politics wove anti-imperial democracy and notions of universal human rights into locally rooted political cultures and histories. UDEFEC's history sheds light on the essential components of women's successful political mobilization in Africa, and contributes to the discussion of women's involvement in nationalist movements in formerly colonized territories.

The last 6 years have witnessed a period of considerable unrest in Cameroun. In 2016, protests within the minority Anglophone regions, against the obligatory use of French in court rooms and schools, were violently suppressed. This, combined with decades of marginalisation by successive Francophone governments, led to calls for secession – the creation of an independent nation of Ambazonia.This book offers a theological reflection on this escalating crisis, examining whether nationalism might be considered a tool of liberation in this particular African context.