Report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the administration of the British Cameroons / issued by the Colonial Office.

  • Great Britain. Colonial Office.
Date:
[1936]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the administration of the British Cameroons / issued by the Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/170 (page 17)
    islands to the south of Rio-del-Ray, known as the Fishtowns, which is visited each dry season by large numbers of fishermen from the Calabar Province in Nigeria. These temporary in¬ habitants speak Efik, a language strange to the people of the Cameroons, with whom they have no natural or other affinities. They do not acknowledge the Native Authority or the courts of the Victoria Division, and beyond grudgingly paying their tax money, have no dealings with the Cameroons Province. Proposals have now been made that these people should in future pay tax in their homes in the Calabar Province, and thereby discharge their full liability under the Native Revenue Ordinance. 34. The Bakweri Native Authority area consists of 63 Bakweri villages, with a total population of about 11,500, occupying approximately 100 square miles of the southern and eastern slopes and foothills of the Cameroons Mountain, mostly at an altitude of 2,000 to 3,000 feet. Their organization is essen¬ tially democratic, each village having a village head and council of elders and sending representatives to the central clan council which meets at Buea under the chairmanship of Chief Endely, the District Head. Large tracts of land which once belonged to the Bakweris were expropriated for plantation purposes in the years before the War, the natives being assigned definite reservations in which to live and farm, and many but not all of the Bakweri villages were affected by this policy. The cultivation of cocoyams, the principal crop, is in the hands of the women. The men are poor farmers, but own numbers of pigs and other livestock, and appear fairly prosperous, there being a ready sale for their produce and livestock to the labourers on the plantations both in the Cameroons and on the neighbouring island of Fernando Po. 35. The Balong Native Authority area, mentioned in para¬ graph 30 above, consists of a group of four villages, separated from the main portion of the Balong clan, which is found in the Kumba Division and in the territory under French Mandate. Formerly the sole Native Authority of the area was Chief Fritz Mukete, but in consequence of an investigation made in 1935 it now consists of Chief Mukete and a council consisting of the elders of all four villages and representatives of the large stranger population, which outnumbers the original Balong inhabitants. This organisation accords with the democratic outlook and customs of the forest peoples and being rooted in their indigenous institutions is a source of great satisfaction to them. The new Balong treasury was opened on the 1st of April, 1936, and the council now meets once a month at Muyuka to discuss local affairs. Chief Fritz Mukete as District Head receives a salary of £36 a year.