Hanging onto the Lion’s Mane: 50 Years of Anglophone Frustrations with Cameroon’s National Football Team

Culled from Foot for Thought: 50 Years of Football in the Southwest Region & Anglophone Cameroon, forthcoming book by Tanjong Ashuntantang.

The day was Sunday October 1, 1961. The venue was the Hippodrome Stadium in Yaoundé. The event was a football match organized to commemorate the Reunification of the British Southern Cameroons and the French-speaking La République du Cameroun to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon.
Humphrey Mosenge, one of the leading West Cameroon players, greeting President Ahidjo during a match between the Southwest province and Littoral in the 1970s

The game pitted a squad tagged “La selection Nationale” (i.e., the national football team of the new nation) against a selection of Cameroonian nationals based in the Diaspora. The guest of honor was Ahmadou Ahidjo, President of the newly formed Federal Republic of Cameroon.

When the opposing teams lined up before the kickoff, there was no “Southern Cameroonian” on either side. One would have expected that such a game would involve teams from East Cameroon and West Cameroon or at a minimum, that “La Selection Nationale” would also include players from West Cameroon. Alas! This was not the case. This begs the question: Were the East Cameroonians celebrating the conquest of Southern Cameroons or were they celebrating the union of the two Cameroons? If it was the latter, then the absence of “Anglophones” at the Hippodrome that Sunday was akin to preventing a bride from attending her own wedding. Signs of West Cameroon/Anglophone marginalization in the new federation were already emerging…

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Comments

[Va Boy]

Excellent research.
Those who do not get the idea based on politics, economics, culture and so on get it.

Extrapolate these findings to every domain, and you would appreciate that we are like a person with an elephant sitting on his chest. It is a miracle that we have survived despite the relentless stifling by these...

[Va Boy]

Who are the two suits watching?