Mongo Beti, Cameroonian writer, is known for his novels, especially those of the 1950s, which played an important role in raising awareness of colonialism and in the fight against it.
 Published in 1972 by Éditions François Maspero, Main basse sur le Cameroun was an indictment against the crimes of President Ahidjo, dictator of Cameroon by the grace of French neocolonialism. Its goal was largely achieved, it seems, since the book was banned, seized, the publisher prosecuted, and the author subjected to multiple pressures and threats.
 Its reissue, in 1977, in a revised version, was still extremely topical at the time of the French intervention in Zaire. Mongo Beti indeed shows that the former colonies of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, formally independent since the 1960s, have nonetheless remained closely controlled by France.
 Thirty years later, this book remains a major historical document, essential for understanding subsequent developments in Françafrique.