The Bakweri Land Restitution Process: An analysis of the Procedure to Return Land to the Bakweri in the Buea Area

Abstract

The expropriation of native land and the establishment of private plantation agriculture in the Cameroon Mountain region during the period of German colonial and British trusteeship (up till the late 1940s) and the subsequent incorporation of the latter as a public company by the British handed (as the Common Wealth Development Corporation to become Cameroon Development Corporation over the years) down to successive governments in Cameroon has been the object of claims for restitution over the years. These protracted claims lasting from the 1940s to the 1990s resulted in a government led restitution process in the 1990s that has been marred by trends towards new types of problems over equity in redistribution, an apparent re-alienation, exclusion and marginalization of the supposed beneficiaries either collectively as constituencies, kin groups and social categories (women, youth, poor, vulnerable) or as individuals. This article seeks to investigate this restitution process in order to have a better understanding of the process as laydown and practice. The study combined ethnographic, documentary/archival and social survey designs, which led to the exploitation of administrative text and correspondences and ethnographic interviews with stakeholders in the restitution process (administration at national and local level, local elites and authorities, and the management of CDC) were carried out. The findings revealed that absent of a legislative act or the fact the current modalities is limited especially on issues of redistribution have marred the entire process. It has given room for manipulations, corruption and the problems of re-alienation of the ceded lands by influential persons.