The capture of Ruben Um Nyobé
In July 1958, a new face joined Ruben Um Nyobé’s dwindling band, one Théodore Mayi Ma Matip. He had been an activist in Douala before the riots of 1955, when he was arrested and jailed. On his release, he expressed a strong interest in joining the maquis underground movement, despite the objections of some in the circle who suspected Ma Matip of having been “turned” by the French while in jail.
For some reason, Um Nyobé also seemed keen for him to be part of his inner circle. Perhaps he thought that Ma Matip, who was the son of an important clan chief, would enhance his political prestige. Perhaps he valued Ma Matip’s reputed skills as a diviner.
During the spring and summer of 1958, the French were eliminating then Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC) cells one by one. The commander of the Organisational National Committee, the UPC’S armed wing, Isaac Nyobé Pandjock, aka “Le Général”, was assassinated during an ambush. Many fighters laid down their arms.
Yet still the French couldn’t catch Um Nyobé. A former policeman involved in the hunt for Um Nyobé remembers how hard it was to track him down, as if the UPC leader had made a special pact with nature. As if the Bassa policemen, guides and informers who were working with the French army were somehow hunting their own shadows and plunging a knife into their own hearts. At every turn, fate seemed to conspire against them.
Um Nyobé’s friends called him Mpodol, the Prophet.
But fate was playing a dark game. In August, the French captured a senior member of the UPC, who gave them with a detailed report on the organisation of the maquis.
On the morning of September 10, a contingent of paratroopers and tirailleurs (an African soldier in the French colonial army) , led by Captain Guillou, apprehended Um Nyobé and his entourage in the forests of Hop Béa. They saw the UPC leader sitting in a small grotto and opened fire. Some of Um Nyobé’s followers, including his son Daniel Um Nyobé, who was trying to shield his father, were killed instantly. Others, including Um Nyobé’s closest aide Jean-marc Ngambi and his partner Marie Ngo Njock, managed to escape. The army caught up with them later in the day and slit Njock’s throat in front of her son and her daughter.
Mayi Ma Matip, who had begun the day by consulting his oracle and declaring that it would pass without incident, had answered a convenient call of nature just before the soldiers arrived and was nowhere to be seen.
Guillou took Um Nyobé prisoner and organised his transfer to army headquarters in Yaoundé. After an interrogation during which he refused to give up the armed struggle in return for a reduced sentence or even a pardon, Um Nyobé was taken out into the yard and shot by a firing squad. The order had come straight from France.
His body was taken back to Eséka in Sanaga-maritime, where he was officially declared dead. Pictures were taken, a tract was quickly printed and distributed nationwide, radio stations and newspapers were informed, and the people learned that their voice, their Mpodol, their Prophet, was gone. The body was disposed of in an unmarked tomb of concrete.
An edited essay extract by Andy Morgan on Um Nyobé’s politics and his connection to Blick Bassy