Suspecting Change in Cameroon: Slums Improvement and the Logics of Belonging in Yaoundé

Abstract Based on an ethnographic storytelling research, this article analyses the tensions surrounding the land tenure measures of the Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme ( PSUP ) in a slum of Yaoundé. The aim of the programme was to make sure that the property owners residing near roads and those in swampy areas renovate their houses failure to which would make them rent the newly renovated houses ‘of their own’ by PSUP . The article shows that this measure failed, not because of the failure of the government or the intrinsic opposition of the inhabitants to change, but because the PSUP indirectly attacked the land relations and the logics of belonging. This led to latent tensions in the form of suspicious relations between ‘autochthons’ and ‘allogenic’ inhabitants, suspecting each other of ‘malicious’ intentions. This economy of suspicion spreads by attacking the state promoters of the PSUP who were accused of plotting an invasion of the area for the benefit of specific groups and communities. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold. On the one hand, against the idealistic trend that insists on the peaceful nature of development mechanisms, it shows that conflicts are inherent in any process of social change. On the other hand, contrary to studies that consider land and inter-ethnic conflicts as essentially marked by brutal and physical violence, it shows that there are forms of insidious violence that accompany the processes of change in land regularisation.