Tiko, Cameroon – On a warm day in Mudeka, an English-speaking village across the river from Cameroon’s Francophone region, supercentenarian Atemafac Anathasia Tanjuh pieces together snippets of her childhood memories.Tanjuh, whose family says she is about 120 years old, is one of the last living witnesses to European colonial rule in Africa and her Bangwa people’s fierce resistance against German colonisation.
“They imposed their rules on us,” Tanjuh said, surrounded by one of her five surviving children and some great-grandchildren, her voice laced with both nostalgia and resilience. After European powers split up Africa during the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference, Cameroon became a German protectorate until after World War I (WWI), when it was carved up between Britain and France.
Tanjuh said her people endured harsh times under the Germans, but the true weight of imperial rule grew much heavier under the French and British – the remnants of which leave Cameroon deeply divided and at war today. Advertisement
When the English and French first partitioned the country in 1919, Tanjuh’s community found itself torn apart.
“We could no longer move from Fontem [which was under British rule] to the market in Dschang [which was under French rule], where I used to go to sell cocoyam and palm kernel,” she said. The divisions severed ties with their historical trading partners and relatives on the other side.
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