Since the UK Government saw British Southern Cameroons as economically not valuable to Britain and as a potential future liability to the Bank of England, one would have thought that Britain would, to say the least, leave the territory to rot in its presumed poverty. But the UK Government chose to adopt a policy that consisted in throwing the territory to the dogs. The Colonial Secretary, Mr. Iain Macleod, informed his listeners of the UK “transfer of sovereignty” over British Southern Cameroons to Cameroun Republic. Several confidential Colonial Office memoranda emphasized the UK “handover” of British Southern Cameroons to Cameroun Republic. Indeed, the British Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Mr. Hugh Fraser, in a formal statement to the House of Commons on 1 October 1961 informed a somewhat perplexed but resigned House that British Southern Cameroons had already been “transferred” by the UK to Mr. Ahidjo, President of Cameroun Republic. Evidently, the UK Government showed no concern for the fate of the people and territory of British Southern Cameroons entrusted to its care by the international community. For all it cared, the territory could be grabbed by whoever wanted to and its people exterminated. Lord Perth, the British Minister of State in an unexplained outburst of frightening hostility and murderous hatred sneered: “the Southern Cameroons and its inhabitants are undoubtedly expendable.”   

There is therefore overwhelming evidence that neither the British Government nor the United Nations acted in the best interest of the people and territory of British Southern Cameroons over whom they had assumed obligations under international law. Both betrayed the ‘sacred trust of civilization’ assumed by them in respect of the people of British Southern Cameroons.

This Op-Ed piece is from a paper presented at the 21st Annual Conference of the Wisconsin Institute for Peace & Conflict Studies on the theme: “Re-examining Human Rights,” Marian College of Fond du Lac, University of Wisconsin, 3-5 November, 2005.

See our next issue for Part 2 of “A Trust Betrayed: The Transfer of British Southern Cameroons to a Successor Colonialist.”