Southern West Cameroon Revisited Volume Two. North-South West Nexus 1858-1972

This book argues that Southern Cameroons up to the late 1960s had extensively developed an evolved mature political culture. It was amazingly led by a range of: simple visionary austere honest peace-loving and realistic leaders almost without exception; vintage products of their epoch. Distinguished by good governance; throughout it organized frequent free fair and transparent elections peaceful handover of power and enjoyed free primary and adult education. It was further crowned with an ideal efficient civil service literally corruption free. In fact the period 1955-1968 in the history of Southern Cameroons qualifies as a Golden Age for that nostalgic state whose citizens were repeatedly referred to as nice peace loving loyal good and hospitable people by administrators missionaries visitors and those who got to know them closely. The most remarkable observation however was that finally made by Malcolm Milne the greatest critic who noted that during his last couple of years in the Southern Cameroons administration he dealt with: People of high intelligence who knew exactly what they wanted. Of the civil servants he maintains that they had greatly enriched his time in the colonial service; There was something very special about that corps; their service was their watch word. This superlative description by Malcolm Milne was being made of a combination of the people of the present North and South West Regions whom he saw as a socio-cultural economic and political unit. It is therefore obvious that from 1955 - 1968 Southern West Cameroon came close towards becoming an ideal state.