This was one of our biggest and darling projects located in the former British Southern Cameroon. This establishment created jobs for thousands of its citizens and even after independence, it stood as the largest employer, directly employing more people than the state of Cameroon.
Workers enjoyed many facilities such good houses, health, clubs, rest houses, lights, workers shops and so on. With each and every workers camp having a power house for energy, life was better. Workers could take anything they needed from the shops and deductions done at the end of month. C.D.C clubs usually pull the attention of the entire town on pay days.
During holidays students were given advantage of holiday jobs, and at the end of holidays one was proud in one way or the other to help their parents. Aside from the direct benefits in employment terms, it generated huge tax revenue, and brought in foreign currency through the export of semi processed products like rubber. This farming corporation was truly a behemoth in Southern Cameroons and a pillar of symbolism to our identity.
Today the corporation has been raped and ruined completely by the La. Republic of Cameroon and the process started immediately after annexing us in 1961. As one of the last strategies of breaking it completely, they decided to create as many chiefs as they can and have over the years pretend handing over their land by carving out sections of land once cultivated for crops by the CDC, but behind this scheme, the French Cameroon authority implanted administrators takes the best and larger chunks of these former farm lands.
The sad irony behind this de-agriculturalization of Southern Cameroons is that, the Cameroonian authorities is working daily to develop plantations in their French part of the country, newly planted and young development crops in CDC are increasingly destroyed with pretext of returning lands to the people whilst foreign companies such as Demonte are encouraged to expand farms the French section of the country. Do these people look like one we can live with? The answer is NO.
The defensive war of liberation being waged now is kneejerk reaction to decades of silence and calculated wars the French Cameroon authority has waged against the institutions, education, culture, economy, health and socio political fabric of Southern Cameroons. Southern Cameroonians by default are peace loving people but as they say, even a limbless human would fight back when pushed to the war. Southern Cameroonians has long been pushed to the wall and fighting is the only option.
Author: Michael Jingwa Forji – London, United Kingdom.
