Gaullist Africa: Cameroon Under Ahmadu Ahidjo

The aim of this book is to provide an accurate account, combining academic critical analysis and polemical writing, of a chapter of Cameroonian history; and to place individual contributions and discussion into a framework which elucidates French/African connections. The essays sketch France's colonial impact in Africa and the complex post-colonial relationship between France and Africa as a direct consequence of Gaullist rule in France. Characterisations of the regime of Ahmadu Ahijo show how it fits into a particular pattern of French neo-colonial polity, and illustrate Cameroon's adopted solution to operating such a system. The editor extrapolates to comment on the social consequences of dictatorial rule in Africa, and the importance of the Gaullist strategy in explaining the pattern of political power in ex-French Africa. He includes writings from the exiled Cameroonian novelist, Mongo Beti, for their relevance to debates about intellectual freedom and expression, and the tendency of the establishment to distort the truth about Ahidjo's Cameroon. There are notes on the central role of military tribunals, brutalities and torture, and prisons and concentration camps; issues which were casualties of the belief that they were inevitable concomitants of political integration and nation building.