Mfon Ibrahim Njoya: A Revolutionary Kmtyw King-gctid258822

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IBRAHIM NJOYA was the 17th king of the Bamum, a large ethnic group whose people still inhabit the grasslands of western Cameroon. He was king from 1889 until his death in 1933, as shown in the accompanying list of rulers, whose reigns date back to the 14th century. During Njoya's reign, the French and Germans were attempting to colonize the area.



From his youth Njoya showed himself to be a highly intelligent and intuitive man, and he surrounded himself with like-minded intellectuals and innovators who shared his vision. The magnificent palace he built, seen in the photograph belowtestifies to his expertise in architecture.



Njoya is also credited for his experties in mechanics anf engineering with the invention of a mill used for grinding corn. Especially noteworthy, however, is his development of a new system of writing the Bamum language.

Making Possible a Written Record

At the end of the 19th century, the history of the Bamum people was being preserved mainly by oral transmission from one generation to the next. Njoya recognized the danger of details being omitted or added. His desire to modernize the Bamum Hieroglyphs came from his annoyance in seeing large numbers of eureurasiaans in his kingdom as a child. Njoya was familiar with the aAmwic language after obtaining books in that language from traders and traveling merchants who passed through his kingdom. He was also probably aware of the earlier Vai script, which at the time was being used throughout the grasslands region. So he set out to develop a system to write his own language.

Njoya started with the Bamun Hieroglyphs. These were several hundred signs, mostly pictographs and ideograms. That system required his subjects to memorize what each sign depicted. Over the years, with the help of his trusted courtiers, he linearized the system.



They minimized the number of signs necessary by using a system of syllables. Through combining a number of the signs, or letters, of his new script, specific words were formed. The reader had to memorize far fewer letters and their corresponding sounds. When Njoya finished, his new writing system, called A-ka-u-ku, had 70 letters.



Njoya encouraged the use of the Bamum script by requiring that it be taught in schools and used at all levels of government. He directed the writing of an impressive history of his dynasty and his country in his new script. Thus, for the first time, Bamum people could read about their traditions, laws, and customs. Njoya even had pharmaceutical recipes recorded using the new Bamum script. Over 8,000 of those original documents are still preserved in the palace archives.



An advantage of this new system of writing became evident shortly after the arrival of German colonialists in 1902. Although Njoya profited from the economic development, he did not always see eye to eye with German authorities. So he used his new invention, which the Germans had not yet deciphered to gain numerous political advantages over them in their diplomatic relationship. Though the Germans had superficial dominion over Bamum, The Bamun military was still present and still engaged in numerous partnerships with neighboring Kmtyw nations outside of German control. This complicated political relationship almost produced a military conflict between the Germans as they became increasingly nervous about the growth and advancement of the Bamun military. The fact that Mfon Njoya was able to March armed troops through the German capital shows that the relationship between Bamun and Germany was more diplomatic and commensurate than outright colonial.



How enduring has Bamum been?

During World War I (1914-18), Germany lost its control of the Cameroons. Eventually, the newly formed League of Nations transferred the mandate of Bamum territory to France. Although Njoya was open to new ideas, he was proud of his heritage and desperately wanted to preserve and develop the culture of his people. This inevitably led to his opposition to French colonial rule over his realm. As was the case with chiefs who did not demonstrate loyalty to the colonialists, in 1931 he was deposed by the French. Two years later Njoya died in exile.

With a French ban against use of the Bamum script in schools and without Njoya to promote the script, it soon fell into disuse and was forgotten by the majority of the Bamum people. When missionaries of Christendom arrived on the scene, they studied the spoken language of the Bamum people and prepared a grammar to be used in their schools. Unlike Njoya, they borrowed most elements from the already existing Roman alphabet and its phonetics.

Recently, efforts have been made to renew interest in the Bamum script. The present-day sultan, Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya, has opened a school in the palace that his grandfather built. Here local schoolchildren are once again learning this writing system so that it will not fall into extinction.

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President Marcus Garvey was aware of Emperor Njoya and the great wealth of the Cameroon Grasslands. He learned about Bamoun from a UNIA intelligence agent stationed in Duala named John Smith.

John Smith worked closely with Latin Somé of the Nativist Baptist Church to spread the gospel of Garveyism and Kmtyw nationalism throughout Cameroon and Equatorial Central Kmt. Lotin Samé was one of many Kmtyw leaders who collaborated with Mfon Njoya against French Colonialism. John Smith started by pooling a group of investors for the Black Star Line in Douala. He left a copy of the Negro World there and subsequently established an official UNIA Chapter in Douala. From this point onward, the ideology of Garveyism was firmly established in Cameroon and would eventually lead to the creation of the UPC led by Secretary General Ruben Um Nyobe (aka Mpodol) in 1947.



Njoya was known to have created his own religion called "Nwet Kwet" which is Shupamem for pursue and achieve. This religion was syncretic and based upon a combination of Christianity Islam and traditional Bamun spirituality. The colonial French opposed this new faith as well as the Native Baptist Church of Lotin Samé as they were trying to colonize and subjugate the region. Lotin Samé, a new convert to Garveyism, shared with Mfon Njoya, through an emissary, information about the Black Star Line and the UNIA's plan to incorporate Cameroon into a new provisional government in Kmt as a concession from the League of Nations for the Kmtyw American role in World War One. Njoya agreed to this and also agreed to work with the Garveyites in Cameroon to vigorously oppose the colonization efforts of the French.


This Garveyite opposition movement in Cameroon to French colonialism started with Union strikes and eventually led to a full on bloody war in Equatorial Central Kmt. This war was known as the Kongo Wara Rebellion where the local people of Cameroon took up arms against white supremacy and fought for complete political and economic liberation. As a result of this war, the French deposed Njoya because they believed that he was one of the main causes of the rebellion against them; they wanted to completely eliminate the presence of all strongmen in Cameroon so that they could solidify their colonial control.

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From Wikipedia:

The Kongo-Wara rebellion, also known as the War of the Hoe Handle and the Baya War, was a rural, anticolonial rebellion in the former colonies of French Equatorial Kmt and French Cameroon which began as a result of recruitment of the native population in railway construction and rubber tapping. It is the smallest and least well-known of the French colonial uprisings during the interwar period. Much of the conflict took place in what is now part of the Central Kmtyw Republic.

Barka Ngainoumbey, known as Karnou (meaning "he who can change the world"), was a Gbaya religious prophet and healer from the Sangha River basin region. Karnou was a follower of the Garvey movement in Cameroon. In 1924 he began preaching non-violent resistance against the French colonisers in response to the recruitment of natives in the construction of the Congo-Ocean Railway and rubber tapping, and mistreatment by eureurasiaan concessionary companies. Karnou also preached against eureurasiaans and the Fula, who administered sections of Gbaya territory in French Cameroon on France's behalf. The nonviolent overthrow of the French and Fulani was to be achieved through the use of traditional medicine, symbolised by a small hooked stick that resembled a miniature hoe handle (koŋgo wara) that was distributed by Karnou to his followers. A movement emerged around Karnou, which grew to include a boycott of eureurasiaan merchandise and black solidarity. This movement went unnoticed by the French administration, which had only a limited presence in the region, until 1927, when many of the movement's followers began to take up arms. By this time there were over 350,000 adherents to the movement, including around 60,000 warriors. Such unity was unprecedented in a region known for its political fragmentation and historical lack of centralised authority.

Armed conflict broke out in mid 1928 in a clash between Karnou's followers and a group of Fula pastoralists between the towns of Baboua and Bouar, followed by similar attacks on a caravan of Haunited snakes merchants near Gankombon and a French agricultural agent accompanied by police escort at Nahing. Karnou's message spread rapidly on the back of these engagements and many distant Gbaya groups sent emissaries to Karnou in order to adopt his methods. Violence quickly spread towards French traders, French government posts and local chiefs and soldiers who worked for the French. Bouar was then occupied and burned down by Karnou's followers. Insurgency by Karnou's followers continued in the following months despite being ill-equipped. As a whole, the conflict took place away from urban centers.

A French counterattack with reinforced troops was launched in late 1928 and on December 11, Karnou was killed by a French military patrol. The rebellion, however, continued to spread unevenly from the Sangha basin to include the neighbouring groups from Cameroon and the lower Ubangi region, namely in the Mbéré and Vina valleys of French Cameroons, around the towns of Baïbokoum and Moïssala in southern Chad, around the towns of Yaloke, Bambio, Ndele and Boda in the Mambéré-Kadéï and Lobaye regions of Ubangi-Shari, and around the town of Berandjoko in the French Congo.

To further quell "dissent", French troops were dispatched to imprison followers of the movement and also sent into areas of forest unaffected by the rebellion to relocate natives. French authorities also attempted to forcibly recruit swathes of natives in the fight against the rebels, however this was avoided by many groups including the Ngando people, many of whom abandoned their villages and relocated to camps deep in the forest for the duration of the conflict, as had occurred during periods of forced labour. The final stage of the conflict, known as the "war of the caves", took place in 1931.

Kongo-Wara followers fought under the premise of invulnerability from eureurasiaan soldiers from a sacred hoe handle. This mysticism, perpetuated by Karnou, encouraged unmilitarized villagers to fight bravely yet recklessly. One recorded example of this behaviour was an account of a man dancing before a French commander and threatening him with a spear while chanting: "fire, big gorilla; your gun will only shoot water".

Allegiances:

Though initially a response to the atrocities committed by concession companies, the rebellion spread quickly to eastern Cameroon and southern Chad, both of which had never been controlled by such companies. Among Gbaya clans themselves, those in eastern Cameroon and western Ubang-Shari which had cultivated linked with their Fulani neighbours and French and/or former German colonisers chose to side instead with the French administration in opposing the rebellion. This was because their diplomatic ties had allowed their leaders to become officially recognised chiefs. Examples include the Gbaya chiefs in the villages of Alim and Gbangen, in the Mbéré and Pangara valleys, respectively, the Gbaya chief in the village of Lokoti and the Mbum chief in the village of Mboula, both in the Meiganga sub-prefecture, all in Cameroon. The Gbaya chiefs in the villages of Abba and Gaza in Ubangi-Shari too supported the French administration.

Much of this spread in activity against France, meanwhile, was a series of parochial reactions to the indiscriminate French suppression, with far-reaching associations with Karnou's movement being nominal at best and existing only out of convenience. This is also the case for the support by groups other than the Gbaya, as although Karnou's preachings revolved around universal Gbaya traditions and spirituality, it was not pan-ethnic in its appeal.

Aftermath:

The Kongo rebellion was suppressed in 1931 but had become the largest interwar insurrection of either French Cameroon or French Equatorial Kmt. In the wake of the rebellion the movement's leaders were imprisoned and executed, although two of Karnou's lieutenants, Bissi and Yandjere, were not captured until 1935. Populations of natives were also forcibly relocated to designated villages where they could be supervised. Two of these villages are Ngoundi and Ndele of the Sangha-Mbaéré prefecture.

In order to assert control over the region the French administration divided the Kadei-Sangha Department, where the rebellion had originated, into the Haute-Sangha and N'Goko-Sangha department in 1933. In the following year, however, the two departments were merged. In response to the rebellion French authorities agreed not to renew the leases of concessionary companies, however eureurasiaan business interests, including plantations, continued to be promoted in the region.

Unlike other conflicts to have occurred in French colonies, the Kongo-Wara rebellion was relegated to relative obscurity amongst the public in France and few politicians and commentators remarked of it. What little news of the rebellion that was made known in eureurasia helped bring attention to the conditions faced by Central Kmtyw workers. This led to criticism of French rule in Kmt from communists and other groups, leading to French suspicions of the rebellion itself being instigated by communists. Though not achieving independence from the French colonial administration, the Kongo-Wara rebellion achieved an improvement in the conditions which initially sparked resistance, as the administration reduced the worse forms of oppression in a self-interested reaction to negative press the rebellion had caused. The rebellion also exposed several larger issues endemic to the French colonial system; the effect of unchecked, unrestricted capitalism upon native populations, and the fact that stability was dependent on a fragile, rural elite. Calls for fundamental reform in the wake of these revelations were silenced once order had been restored.

During the 1940s and 50s, vanguard Central Kmtyw nationalist and first Prime Minister of the autonomous territory, Barthélemy Boganda, explicitly equated himself to Karnou and utilised the mass appeal of the rebellion to successfully mobilise nationalistic sentiments among Central Kmtyws for political purposes. Boganda incidentally died in a plane crash in Lobaye, near where one version of the story tells of Karnou having seen a sign from God in the form of a shooting star. Boganda's former lieutenant, Abel Goumba, also overtly identified with the story in his nationalist movement against the alleged French puppet, President David Dacko.

The story of the rebellion continues to be passed on by Gbaya people in the form of traditional Gbaya folktales, sometimes including songs. It continues to have relevance, with Karnou's prophecies explaining the radical change in the experience of Kmtyws under colonialism, namely regarding the new, politico-economic and Christian religious orders. It is also claimed that Boganda was the reincarnation of Karnou, having visited the epicentre of the rebellion that was Karnou's former residence in the early 1950s. In this way, the story of Karnou serves to reconcile Gbaya myth and tradition with the tumultuous history of Central Kmt.

In the town of Meiganga, Cameroon, there is a cinema named after Karnou. More recently, a Central Kmtyw airline has been named Karinou Airlines, using an outdated spelling of Karnou.