The Wear and Tear of Bafanji-Balikumbat Wars, 1990-2000

Hongie Godlove

Department of History

University of Douala, Cameroon  

E-mail: nhongiegodlove@yahoo.com

Abstract

Boundary conflicts between communities have made headline news in Cameroon since the dawn of multipartysm. Balikumbat and Bafanji villages in the Ndop plain, which are neighbours, have been the epicenter of such crises. While Balikumbat shares borders with Bamali in the north, Bamunkumbit in the west, Bambalang in the east and Bafanji in the south, Bafanji is bordered in the north by Bagam, south by Balikumbat, west by Bamunkumbit and east by Bambalang.  Prior to colonialisation, these villages hunted, fished, tapped and farmed across land limits that were mostly determined by natural features such as rivers, deep valleys, forests and swamps. Claim of sovereignty over a territorial piece was absent and occupation of a parcel of land was more temporary due to the practice of shifting cultivation. However, with colonialism, the Germans established formal boundary between Bafanji and Balikumbat in 1910, later traced and demarcated by the British in 1933, and confirmed with slight modifications by the post-colonial administration in 1969. Obviously, demographic explosion rendered land an issue of contention between these communities hence land usage changed from need to greed. This new paradigm in land custom resulted in border crises whose politicization with the advent of multipartysm produced two cataclysms between both villages in the 1990s. This paper intends to argue that these wars between Balikumbat and Bafanji brought perils and ruins to the area and peoples. Primary, secondary and oral sources were used to get the data while chronological and analytic methods were used to weave the findings.