Racial Chauvinism and French Assimilation Policy in Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy

                                      -Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy

The French  were forerunners in defining the concept of universal modern human liberty. With thinkers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, the French stood far ahead of others in advocating human rights and freedom, but one wonders exactly what they were doing trying to make French men of Africans in their colonies.

It is easier to talk about universal justice and human freedom and put them down in black and white, but the practical aspect is always a huge challenge. The American Declaration of Independence written as far back as 1776, for instance, foregrounds the equality of all men: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these rights are Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.’ (Declaration of Independence). It is perhaps ironical to note that  this beautiful diction about unalienable rights did not apply to the Black man in America who were held in the chokehold of slavery then; an injustice which continued well into the 18th century. Even after slavery was abolished, segregation laws rose to deny the Black man equality and freedom. In George Orwell’s parlance, it was a case of ‘All animals are equal but some are more equal than others’. Clearly, it was easy to promulgate the ideas, but it was always a problem when it should be applied to people of other races.

When the French came up with a policy to make French men out of Africans otherwise known as the Assimilation policy, it infringed on the right to identity which comes with the right to life. Superimposing French culture and values on Africans denies their very right to identity and existence. Africans were treated as wet malleable clay subject to French modification. Additionally, there is no way to implement a policy that moulds Africans if the French citizens themselves fail to accept the ‘Frenchness’ in Africans. Using the experience of Toundi or Joseph (the main narrator), Oyono ridicules and exposes the rottenness of the assimilation policy.

Born into a cultural and traditional colonial French Cameroon, Toundi grows up to admire the white man and his ways against his parents wishes and warning. To escape punishment at home, he chooses service to a white priest (Father Gilbert) whom he begs to take him in. But he would soon find out that the so called perfect white world he yearns for is but figment of his imagination. Following the death of the Priest who took him in, he finds favourable employment with the white district commander. Knowledge of an immoral secret and a feeling of guilt on the part of his employer’s wife builds resentment against him and sets his life in jeopardy as he is wrongly accused of conniving with an African maid (assumed to be his woman), who steals her white master’s money. He is brutally punished in an attempt to force him to confess the whereabouts of this assumed lover. Finally, he escapes to Spanish Guinea where he finally meets his end.

Toundi or Joseph is a representation of the Assimilated African. He has been given French education, taught to speak, read, and write in French while serving Father Gibert. He had even become a devoted catholic.

As his mother had once warned, One could perhaps label Toundi as Greedy as he is a willing participant in his conversion to a Frenchman. He yearns for the kind of life his white masters have. On receiving his first handshake from a white woman ( his master’s wife), he writes:

My happiness has neither day nor night. I didn’t know about it, it just burst upon my whole being. I will sing to my flute, I will sing on the banks of river, but no words can express my happiness. I have held the hand of my queen whose hair is the colour of ebony, with eyes that are like the antelope’s, whose skin is pink and white as ivory. A shudder ran through my body at the touch of her tiny moist hand. She trembled like a flower dancing in the breeze. My life was mingling with hers at the touch of her hand. Her smile is refreshing as a spring of water. Her look is as warm as a ray from the setting sun. It nether you in a light that warms the depths of the heart. …(47)

If this were mere lust, it would be understandable, but it is far beyond that. To Toundi, the white woman is an epitome of  flawless beauty, but he soon realizes that her beauty comes with the blemish of immorality. Again, when his master’s wife urges him to ‘buy’ a wife and start a ‘big’ family’, Toundi responds with: ‘“Perhaps, madame, but my wife and children will never be able to eat and dress like Madame or like white children.”’ All Toundi wants is to live in a white world.

The novel  reason why the assimilation policy failed was due to racial chauvinism on the side of the native French citizens. They thought of themselves as higher and could never see Africans as equals and fellow French men. The result of this was a failed integration. You could see this in Father Vandermayer’s vicious treatment of African Christians. It is also expressed in the fact the native French man only addresses Africans with ‘Monsieur’ in derision. When Toundi wishes for a white wife, and children who behave like white children, his master’s wife finds it absurd

And thinks he ought to be content with being a houseboy: ‘…Everyone has their position in life. You are a houseboy, my husband is a commandant… nothing can be done about it.…’ (56). But what is wrong if the houseboy wants the life of a commandant? As with Oliver Twist, would it be a crime to yearn for more? Is that not what the assimilation policy is about to make equals of Frenchmen and Africans?

Madame’s dislike for Toundi springs from the fact that he knows about her secret affair with Monsieur Moreau and has discovered her stash of used condoms. To her, Toundi was beneath her and should not have one up against her as he did. Hence, she does not hesitate to let her husband give him up when the very first opportunity presents itself, despite his impeccable record of never stealing from the commandant.

To further buttress this indignation at Africans trying to climb up the social ladder, in the very first meeting attended by the commandant’s wife at the European club, Gullet; a French colonial officer; expresses resentment at the fact that native Africans were gaining higher status in the French society.

    ‘Poor France,’ said Gullet again. ‘Natives are now Ministers in Paris!”

    ‘M. Ferdinand was the first to voice it.

    ‘What is the world coming to?’ echoed Gullet.

    ‘Then they talked about the need for a coup d’état to regenerate France. They spoke of their kings, about someone called Napoleon. … Everyone was astonished when Madame said that the step-father of an Empress they called Josephine was a Negro.

   So they talked about natives again …the Yellow Peril hadn’t been averted yet, and here was the black peril already looming up. … what would happen to civilization? …(52-3)

So deep was their fear of the black race being on equal pedestal with them that they would gladly welcome a coup to halt the Assimilation policy and reestablish dominance over Africans. Given this kind of attitude from the French, there was no certainty that the Assimilation policy would work.

But then, if the French actually believed their civilization was perfect and far superior to that of the Black Africans, Oyono punctures that belief and points out to us that it is a blatant lie. It could not be superior civilization where matured men as the commandant went about uncircumcised (male circumsicion was a sign of manliness in several African cultures). It could not be a higher society where men are emasculated and cockolded as in the case of the commandant’s wife by M. Moreau. The commandant wife is unable to control her sexual urge and gets down with a white lover from the ‘gutter’ as the commandant views Monsieur Moreau. The commandant’s wife was Oyono’s scapegoat being from the upper echelon and the wife of the highest authority in the setting. The commandant is subjected to ridicule by his native subjects who call him ‘Ngovina ya gal a ves zut bisalak a be met ya (…the commandant whose wife opens her legs in ditches and in cars)’. (98). It is even more absurd that the  Commandant has come to accept his wife promiscuity as a norm that he must accept. French men are shown as weak and effeminate; they would get emotionally drained, shoot, and kill each other over women who even the natives would look down on … To the Africans, A woman is a cobof maize for any mouth that has its teeth.’ (71) should we still ask which of the two party has a stronger and admirable cultural civilization.

I might not catch myself reading this novel a second time for three main reasons. The first being that the narrator is mainly a passive participant and observer in the story. He does nothing to avert the disaster which befell him or challenge that which was imposed on him. Secondly is the dairy like narrative style of the story which makes the plot feel somehow disjointed (although it was not really so). Lastly is because I am reading a translated version of the story from the French, and as such most of the humour is lost on me.

In conclusion, despite coming up the ideas on Modern universal concepts of freedom, the French policy of assimilation in colonial Africa could not manufacture Frenchmen out of Africans (and it should not) because it was heavily  laced with racial chauvinism.

©️ Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy 2026