ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the failure to sustain and respect Cameroon's dual colonial heritage has been one of the major obstacles that continues to dog the country's transition to genuine multiparty democracy. It deals with a brief discussion of the genesis of that dual heritage and how the framers of the 1961 federal constitution supposedly crafted the document with a view of preserving, to a certain degree, the differences between the two entities. That is followed by an examination of the different ways that the federation's first head of state, Ahmadou Ahidjo and his successor Paid Biya, were able to exploit the loopholes in the 1961 constitution and subsequent constitutions to undermine Cameroon's dual heritage, and why Anglophones were silent until the 1990s. The chapter discusses the impact of the legalization of multiparty politics in December 1990 on efforts by Anglophone Cameroonians to redress many of the inequalities and problems that they have endured since reunification.
