Charles Atangana - Early Career

Early Career

In August 1900, the commander of German forces at Victoria (present-day Limbe) appointed Atangana interpreter for 500 Bulu hostages, who were being pressed into labour. Atangana kept the post for six months and took up extra duties as a nurse. The colonisers next sent Atangana to Buea to work as an office clerk. At some point between the end of his schooling in Kribi and the end of his service in Victoria, Atangana met Marie Biloa, a woman from a village called Mekumba. Although she was a little older and living as a kept woman by a German functionary, Atangana married her. She would eventually bear him two children: Jean Ndengue and Katerina (or Catherine) Edzimbi.

Atangana was a devout Christian, and he supported the church throughout his life with land and gifts. He opposed popular Beti syncretist practices, and he was an opponent of an Ewondo initiation rite called the Sso; his efforts led to its eventual eradication from Beti society. In 1901 he secured land for the Pallottine Fathers to build a mission in Jaunde, thus opening East and South Kamerun to Catholic proselytisation. Nevertheless, Atangana supported traditional Ewondo customs on marriage. On widows, he said,

My colleagues and I . . . can only reply in demanding the upholding of custom, which requires the widow to be the property of the heir until her liberation, which can only take effect after the return of her bridewealth. She must remain with him as long as this return is not made.

Early in 1902, the colonial government appointed him their representative to the Ewondo people, and interpreter and clerk for the Germans posted in Jaunde. He was tasked with organising a census and tax collection system. He chose 300 headmen to be tax collectors, of whom the Germans approved 233. Atangana negotiated a cut of 5% for the collectors, much to their delight.

Hans Dominik became the Jaunde post commander in 1904. For the next six years, Atangana accompanied him on at least fifteen administrative patrols and probative excursions. Atangana proved an astute diplomat, in one case negotiating with a group of rebellious Manguissa and thus averting a confrontation between the tribesmen and the Germans. Atangana helped open posts in such wide-ranging places as Bafia, Abong-Mbang, Mouloudou, Ngaoundéré, Garoua, and Maroua. The Germans largely kept themselves segregated from their African subjects, but Dominik and Atangana defied these standards and grew close, even dining together in the same tent on occasion. Back in Jaunde, Atangana gained responsibilities valued by the regime, such as overseeing a poll tax in October 1908.

In 1907, members of the Mvog Ada sublineage revolted against the colonial government over Atangana's appointment as their official interpreter. The plot included a conspiracy to poison Atangana, but word leaked to him. He informed his masters, and on 11 April, six plotters were put to death and two others imprisoned.

Dominik died on 16 November 1910. That same year, Atangana returned to Jaunde and received an administrative post, perhaps as head of the Ewondo-Bane court, which resided over civil disputes and small claims and was the conduit through which the Germans transmitted communiqués (and gauged the response to them). However, he resigned the post when the head of his sublineage died; Atangana took over as headman of the sublineage and Mvolyé village.

In late 1911, Atangana voyaged to Germany to teach Ewondo at the Colonial Institute of the University of Hamburg. He stayed there for about one year and transcribed Ewondo history and folklore for translation into German. His writings eventually became the Jaunde-Texte, an important source document on Ewondo history and culture. In 1913, he met Kaiser Wilhelm II in Germany and Pope Pius X in Rome. He returned to Kamerun the following year.