A senior member of Cameroon’s Parliament on Tuesday called on the international community and the government to be more “objective” in resolving the conflict in the two English-speaking provinces of the West African country.

The remarks by Enoh Tanjong, the eldest member of Cameroon’s National Assembly, is believed to be made to show the stance of the Parliament for the first time since the armed conflict started in 2017.

“Solidarity and objectiveness of the international community and the government are fundamental in resolving the conflict,” he said while denouncing “in the strongest terms” the violence perpetrated by “gunmen” in the troubled regions.

“The international community particularly has to be more objective in assessing the political tensions in Cameroon,” Tanjong said as the new parliamentary session opened.

According to the United Nations, more than 430,000 people were internally displaced in the clashes between the government forces and the armed separatists seeking to create an independent nation in the English-speaking Northwest Region and Southwest Region.

“For once the dean (eldest member of parliament) has decided to mention the crisis in the Northwest and Southwest regions. I hope this is the beginning of many things to happen. We need peace to become a reality in Cameroon. This session might be very decisive,” another member of the National Assembly, Joseph Mbah Ndam, told Xinhua.

The parliamentary session, which will last through April 12, is widely expected to come up with a blueprint to end the conflict. It will also elect a new executive bureau for the National Assembly and the Senate, the upper house.

Xinhuanet

What started as a struggle for sovereignty by citizens of southern Cameroon has spiraled into a full-blown crisis. Rebel groups seeking an end to what they consider domination of the anglophone south by the francophone north have taken up weapons against the government’s security forces, causing hundreds to die while tens of thousands are forced from their homes.

Factories have been shuttered, roads have become impassable, warehouses have been destroyed, and truck drivers are routinely kidnapped for ransom.

The current crisis heated up in 2016 when activists in Cameroon’s western provinces protested the official use of the French language in these predominantly anglophone regions.
In the past two years, those protests have turned deadly.

A prominent Cameroonian scholar and professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Achille Mbembe, observes that Anglophone Cameroonians “don’t feel there is a place for them in the current administrative and political order in the country.”

People complain about being marginalized because the administration doesn’t speak their language, Mr. Mbembe says, adding that the controversy over language is an expression of deeper, long-held grievances around good governance and equitable political and social representation.

Humanitarian problems

UN Secretary-General António Guterres in September 2017 urged Cameroonian authorities to “promote measures of national reconciliation aimed at finding a durable solution to the crisis, including by addressing its root causes.”

In her report to the 39th session of the UN’s Human Rights Council last September, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet mentioned the crisis in Cameroon: “Fighting has intensified in the so-called anglophone regions between security forces and armed groups.

“The government has not acted to promote the conference on dialogue suggested by religious leaders, and there is still no mechanism in place which could envisage a halt in hostilities in the short term.”

Approximately 437,000 people are internally displaced across the affected provinces, said David Malan of the local Norwegian Refugees Council Office in an interview with Africa Renewal.
Most displaced people are taking refuge in remote rural areas or in surrounding bushlands and forests, several humanitarian agencies confirmed. Mr. Malan added that “getting them needed help has proved challenging.”

Business

Cameroon’s GDP growth had been projected to reach 3.8% this year, a rebound from the previous year, due to an increase in natural gas production. That goal is now likely unattainable.
The country’s economic growth “depends on the government’s ability to successfully handle the violent secessionist conflict in the two anglophone regions,” the World Bank stated last October.

The western provinces, hotbed of the crisis, produce cocoa and coffee, the country’s two main agriculture exports. Oil production, which accounts for an estimated 40% of the country’s GDP, mostly takes place in the coast of the Southwest Region.

Groupement inter-patronal du Cameroun (GICAM), an association of business leaders, declared in September that violence in two anglophone regions in the west of the country was forcing companies to halt operations.

Due to the crisis, GICAM estimates total loss of revenue as of October 2018 to be about $470 million, while 13,000 jobs, mostly in the agricultural sector, have been or are about to be lost.

Regional concerns

While fighting so far is within Cameroonian borders, there are fears its escalation could destabilize all of Central Africa and parts of West Africa.

Cameroonian refugees have begun moving to border communities in Cross River State in the south of neighboring Nigeria. They arrive nearly destitute and eke out a living in low-wage jobs.
They are mostly young people and women who have witnessed violence firsthand. “I could not take any clothes. There was shooting—they killed my uncle and shot my cousin,” a 39-year-old mother of four told UNHCR, in a story published on the refugee agency’s website.

Janet Obi, who used to trade in cocoa and clothes back home in Cameroon, is now tending cornfields in a village in Nigeria, the Qatar-based media company Al Jazeera reported in August.
“I get paid between 500 to 1,000 naira [$2 to $4] a day,” Stella Obi (no relation of Janet) told Al Jazeera as she worked the soil in a small vegetable field. “I never tasted this kind of suffering when I was in my village in Cameroon.”

These refugees are “employed as cheap day labourers, mostly in cocoa fields,” Chiara Cavalcanti of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) told Africa Renewal. Just as it is for western Cameroon, cocoa is Cross River State’s main commercial agricultural product.

Meantime, rights groups continue to denounce both the activities of the separatists and the central government’s tough response. Political observers warn that government crackdowns may exacerbate the situation.

Cameroon gained independence in 1961 and operated a federal system comprising two former UN trusteeship territories: French Cameroun and British Southern Cameroon. In 1972, the federal state was abrogated in favour of the United Republic of Cameroon, which was later renamed Republic of Cameroon.

In 1990, the first All Anglophone Conference was held in Buea, the historic capital of British Southern Cameroon. The participants called for a return to a federal state by April 1993, deeming the federal arrangement a better option than the prevailing unitary system.

The dream of a federal government did not materialize, sparking complaints over the years by people in the western regions that they were being marginalized by the central government.
Although the government has made efforts to address the situation by promising an inclusive approach to governance, few or no actions seem to have been taken, which prompted the latest protests and the ensuing violence.

The Catholic Church steps in

The Catholic Church recently renewed its calls for dialogue. “The Catholic Church can help break this dangerous stalemate,” suggests the Brussels-based international policy research group International Crisis Group (ICG).

Some 30% of the Cameroonian population is Catholic, giving the religious body clout to bring the warring parties to a peace table, the ICG believes.

Still, there appears to be divisions between anglophone and francophone clergies. Those divisions “stand in the way of [the Catholic Church] playing a constructive role,” notes the ICG.
To resolve the crisis and bring stability to the country, Mr. Guterres indicated his preference for a “genuine and inclusive dialogue between the government and the communities in the South-West and North-West regions.”

Culled from NewsGhana

On August 31, 2006, my friend Bate Besong wrote a dedicated poem titled “Why we laugh at politicians and give them names”.  That poem and its premonitory message impels me to struggle to find the underlying message behind the poem dedicated to me by a friend with whom I spent time discussing everything from literature to history, law, Marx, Osageyfo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Nwalimu Nyerere, CLR James, Marcus Garvey, politics generally, cultural issues, religion, maths, music etc.  On occasion, he talked to me about many of his students whose potential intellectual bravery and literary ingenuity he admired. One of the names he mentioned was Dr Joyce Ashuntangtang.

Why do I bring up this name among others in this brief memorial statement?  The name surely came up many times, but he first mentioned her name when we discussed the show of shame which is celebrated in Cameroun March 8, every year as the “Women Day”.

Bate Besong and I opposed the celebration of March 8, in ways that portrayed the African woman as hypnotised political tools.   He opined that a celebration of the African woman should be in the systemic and societal recognition of women and their contribution toward human development.  He hoped for a new generation of women intellectuals whom he believed will challenge the operating political, social and cultural order.

Bate Besong died on 8th of March 2007 the day set aside every year for showcasing the collective enslavement of women by the Cameroun systemic crime syndicate.  This was not the intendment of the Peking Women Conference nor that of the international community that decided to use the ceremony every year to raise awareness on women related issues and women contributions as equal partners in efforts to protect and promote universal human values without discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality or any discriminatory basis whatsoever.  The Cameroun ceremony is the opposite of what the international community intended.

At the time of his death, I was not aware of the poem he dedicated to me and the underlying message in the poem.   Our revulsion for the treatment of women by the crime syndicate so-called new deal, and the sycophantic submission of the population and the bastardising of scholarship and faculty admission that we discussed and despised has not abated.  I have watched the younger generation whom Bate Besong told me about and his predictions are true.  So therefore, was Bate Besong a Prophet?   In the context of present-day commercial religion and prophesy, BB would never accept this title.  BB went into the originality of the grassroot authentic creativity of some pathfinders to support his prediction that the challenge to the pervasive influence of contemporary Africa status quo will come from the grassroots, his students and their contemporaries.

We both agreed that a musician of Kalabari origin in the Nigeria Delta called Cardinal Jim Rex Lawson fitted in this category.   Cardinal Jim Rex Lawson challenged the highlife music status quo in his time, imposing respect and recognition from highlife musical giants like E.T, Mensah, Bobby Benson, Victor Olaiya, Roy Chicago, EC Arinze, Chief Osita Osadebe. He died at the age of 32 after changing the face of highlife music and eternalising his musical genre for eternity. The religious and cultural messages conveyed through his music which he sang with passion at times made him cry on stage accompanied by his ever-increasing audience.  Yet the music and the messages he delivered were the products of his work of art, some of which he composed on stage. While in Port Harcourt attending the conference of the African Bar Association, I requested and met Chief Tony Odili aged 93 and still and performing, the renowned percussionist of the Rex Lawson band. He confirmed in reasonable detail, what Bate Besong told me about Rex Lawson and his revolutionary change of the status quo in the Nigerian and West African highlife music. Nigerian gospel music is a derivative of the Rex Lawson highlife music revolution.

In the poem dedicated to me, Bate Besong in poetic form reminded me not to forsake the liberation struggle.  He again raised our collective worries that years of enslavement and mental slavery had ruined generations of intellectuals and so-called elite on whom the people placed their hopes for liberation, freedom and independence.  He like me believed that the peoples ‘moment would come when terror, fear and death will rather than scare the people, embolden them to take back their destiny, freedom and independence.   As if to bid me and everyone goodbye, he in conclusion, enjoined us:

“No one should ask why things are as they are

These questions will be answered at the right time”

That right time is here for all to see and nothing will stop the wind of liberation and freedom which is blowing over the land.   The relics of the old social order is fighting back through terror, treachery, corruption, criminality, distractions, confusions and all manner of sideshows.   But Ground Zero and the generational liberators whom Bate Besong identified are out in arms fighting to win. And win they shall. Not the politicians whom Bate Besong came to distrust and made their treachery the subject of his premonitory poem to me. No not them.  Their betrayal of the peoples’ aspirations has exposed them for what they have always been.  This critical peoples’ moment when long deferred questions are finally been answered at the right time as BB predicted will consign them to ignominy and derision.  This is also the moment to know “why we laugh at politicians and give them names” and for them to take stock of their treachery and the futility of their Iscariot politics of thirty silver and the unconscionable complicity in the extermination of  their own people to satisfy the blood feeding of a vampiric dictator.

This memorial message should have been posted on March 8, 2019 but in honour of the greatest revolutionary and visionary seer of our times Dr Bate Besong, the judgment of the Abuja High Court exposing another international conspiracy and  violations which like the McCleod Slave deal or bazaar aimed to stifle our march to freedom, it is but appropriate to place my considered opinion  on the judgment in honour of Bate Besong the liberator, the Obasinjong warrior, the seer, and may I with his permission, call him the genuine prophet at the service of freedom and liberation of the sovereign people of the Southern Cameroons/ Ambazonia.

By Chief Charles A Taku

The current crisis in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions has raged since late 2016 with protests over perceived marginalisation by the Francophone majority morphing into almost daily clashes between security forces and armed separatists.

“There’s a very serious national crisis going on, but I believe the government needs to be more serious in how they address it,” said Nagy.

“I’m not sure, and I hope I’m wrong, that the government realises just what a serious problem it is,” added. “Even though there have been some policies announced by the government – in my view, they have been more symbolic than active.”

The US cut some military assistance to Cameroon in February over concerns about human rights violations allegedly committed by the Cameroonian military.

The country has been seen as a key security partner for the US and some 300 troops are based in the northern town of Garoua in an effort to fight hardline Islamists in the north of Cameroon.

“I think it could be settled relatively quickly,” said Nagy, in discussion of the Anglophone crisis. “A couple of positive steps would be if the people in the north west and south west could directly elect their governors.”

The American diplomat, referring to regional governors who are Francophone, said it would be unlikely that officials would be French speakers if Anglophones had more say over their own governance. Nagy also suggested that the security forces operating in the Anglophone regions “need to speak English”.

A conference bringing together all sides involved in the crisis would be “very positive”, according to Nagy. It would need to be “endorsed by the highest levels of government”.
RFI

On 22 October (weeks after the polls opened on 7 October), it was finally confirmed that 85-year-old President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, will serve another term in office. Voter turnout was very low; and in the urban centres of Douala and Yaoundé, the leadership of the working class was nowhere to be seen – despite widespread hatred of the Biya regime. Moreover, violent unrest in the Anglophone regions made any kind of democratic process there impossible, and tit-for-tat skirmishes between state troops and separatists have aroused fears of a new civil war that could plunge the country into barbarism.

This was an election marked by fraud, violence and voter apathy: all of which played a role in the outcome. Despite the unpopularity of the Biya government, the masses had no faith in the weak, divided opposition candidates, none of whom offered a credible alternative to the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM). Nor did they pose any solution to the economic problems of underemployment and poverty, resulting from falling oil prices, the burden of foreign debt and endemic corruption.

Biya currently maintains his grip on power thanks to the CPDM’s total dominance of the state apparatus; economic and military support from imperialist governments (particularly France and America); and by buying off traditional tribal leaders – the reactionary “elites” who command significant authority among Cameroon’s more backward, rural layers. Most importantly, Cameroon’s working class and peasantry lacked a political leadership capable of taking advantage of people’s desire for change. However, president Biya is sitting on a powder keg, and his increasingly repressive efforts to hold onto power and quell the Anglophone question are provocations to the masses.

A farcical election

When the results were released, Biya rejected calls for a re-run from opposition parties, insisting the elections were free and fair. He went so far as to send fake representatives from Transparency International to be interviewed on the state-run Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) and attest the elections were conducted justly.

This stunt was a capstone to a farcical election, in which Biya took the majority of votes in all but one of Cameroon’s 10 regions, losing out to Maurice Kamto of the Cameroonian Resistance Movement (MRC) by a small margin in the Littoral region: home to the economic capital, Douala. Despite prematurely declaring victory, Kamto claimed just 14.2 percent of the official vote share. Joshua Osih, candidate of the main opposition party (the Social Democratic Front) came fourth, with 3.35 percent. After the official results were announced, hundreds of Kamto’s (mostly young) supporters in Douala mounted a furious protest against Biya, complaining that their candidate had been cheated. This and smaller protests in Yaounde and Bafoussam were quickly contained by the police, with witnesses reporting that protesters were beaten and dragged through the mud.

After the results, hundreds of opposition supporters mounted a furious protest against Biya

Doubtlessly, Biya rigged the race, making full use of his control of the media to ensure that all political opposition was pushed to the sidelines. In 2018, the government expanded its surveillance networks across social media, to shut down opposition campaigns and promote its own propaganda. The CPDM also used a tactic of setting up over 20 phony “opposition” parties, which all switched their support to the incumbent at the last minute. Biya was so confident of victory that he barely bothered to campaign, organising only one rally in the northern region.

Additionally, there are reports that opposition candidates were harassed and thrown out of polling stations by the CPDM’s goons. The CRM has claimed that 42 people, including party officials, were arrested over the course of the election and are still being detained. Among these is Michele Ndoki: a lawyer who defended Kamto at the constitutional council after he accused Biya of fraud and ballot-stuffing in favour of the CPDM. Biya also co-opted and bribed tribal leaders to whip the vote in the more backward layers of Cameroon’s 45 percent rural population.

However, most telling of all is the fact that official voter turnout was 53 percent, compared to 68 percent in 2011 and 80 percent in 2004, revealing a lack of enthusiasm for any of the candidates. As one voter quoted in Reuters put it: “I voted for the opposition even though I did not trust them.” The low participation is also explained by the fact that tens of thousands of people were simply unable to take part due to insecurity in English-speaking Cameroon, in which the separatists aggressively enforced an election boycott. As a result, voter turnout in the country’s two Anglophone regions was as low as 5 percent, according to the International Crisis Group.

Weak and divided opposition

Cameroon is an extremely diverse and divided country. Aside from the Francophone and Anglophone question, it also comprises numerous ethnic groups, including the Bamileke and Bamoun (considered the economically dominant ethnicities); as well as Beti, Makaa, Fulani and Kirdi. These communities all have traditional tribal leaders and loyalties that Biya has historically exploited to the full. Without a class movement to cut across these lines, ethnic and national divisions resulted in a weak and divided opposition, with the anti-Biya vote split between eight presidential candidates, most of whom represented different regional bases rather than presenting distinct political programmes.

The ruling CPDM party is a bourgeois, Francophone outfit that has been in power since Cameroon gained independence from the French in 1960. The party and its then-leader, Ahmadou Ahidjo, were installed by the French authorities (originally as the Cameroon National Union) to preserve their interests in the country and repress radical, Anglophone independence parties like the UPC. It has maintained an iron grip on power ever since. It dominates the national assembly (with 148 out of 180 seats) and continues to play the role of loyal servant to (particularly French) imperialism. The CPDM and Biya (who assumed power in 1982) are deeply unpopular amongst Cameroonians, with a poll conducted by Nkafu Policy Institute putting the president on a 30 percent approval rating.

However, the opposition parties are even less popular. The CRM (which received 12.65 percent approval in the poll cited above) was founded in an abortive attempt to unify the anti-Biya vote across ethnic, language and class lines. Its 2008 founding document, “Visions of Society” is a vague and confusing jumble of nationalist, populist and liberal ideas, with no clear political or economic programme. It promises “modernisation”, an end to “right and left” divisions in politics and the promotion of “traditional values”. The document also espouses a neoliberal, anti-worker agenda. It proposes lengthening work days, lowering wages and introducing more “flexible” labour, to make the Cameroonian economy more competitive.

The CRM candidate, Kamto (an Anglophone academic, lawyer and former minister), was hoping for support from his home region in the west, the Anglophone far-north and the cities in the south (including Douala and Yaoundé). However, the Biya government has long since bought off the tribal chiefs in the north and the CRM’s vote was split with the SDF in the west. More importantly, despite populist promises to “resolve the Anglophone question” and “modernise” Cameroon’s crumbling infrastructure, the party’s neoliberal programme failed to galvanise the working class or peasantry, and its support was limited to the urban petty-bourgeoisie.

The SDF has historically been the main opposition party in Cameroon. It was founded after the introduction of multi-partyism, following a bloody political struggle in the 1990s. It traditionally had a strong Anglophone base. However, the SDF has gravitated away from Anglophone liberation in recent years, moderating its position in an attempt to broaden its appeal amongst Francophones (though not by reaching out to Francophone workers with economic reforms.) While it originally stood for succession, the party is now officially in favour of a four-part, federal state. This has angered the party’s Anglophone base, and driven many of them into the armed separatist struggle. Biya has further undercut support for the SDF by playing divide and rule between Anglophone elites in the southwest and the party’s political leaders in the northwest.

Joshua Osih of the main opposition party (SDF) received 3 percent of the vote share, compared to 11 percent for the SDF in the last elections

Despite nominally representing an Anglophone voice in the national assembly, the SDF is a shadow of its former self and commands little authority amongst the masses in either the French or English-speaking regions. Its vote share collapsed from 11 percent in 2011 to 3 percent this time around. It lost millions of votes due to the record-low Anglophone turnout, and received half the votes of third-place candidate Cabral Libii: a liberal, bourgeois lawyer with a sizable social media following but no actual policies.

Moreover, despite belonging to the Socialist International, the SDF was never a workers’ party in any practical sense. It is based largely on the urban middles classes (particularly teachers and civil servants), and in its early years entirely focused on democratic demands against Biya’s repressive regime rather than fighting for economic or social reforms for Cameroonian workers and peasants. The party’s 1990 “Constitution and Manifesto” and 1991 “Proposals on Devolution of Power” prominently enshrined a free market economy and the right to private property. Their 2018 presidential candidate is a business owner who has had relations with Biya: renting the president and his family private aircraft via one of his companies. This only reveals that the SDF and Biya are agents of the same ruling class. Unsurprisingly, the SDF utterly failed to exploit the simmering hatred for the status quo in these elections.

In despair at the hopeless opposition, ordinary people are drawing increasingly desperate conclusions. In Douala and Yaoundé, dozens of young people interviewed by the Crisis Group prior to this year’s elections stated that: “since the government and opposition are both against us, we might as well spoil everything so that nobody wins”, and that Cameroonians must “make themselves heard by doing what the Anglophones are doing.” This is now the mood on the streets: the potential for civil unrest is building even as Biya tightens his chokehold.

Economic crisis

Biya’s increasingly repressive grip on power must be understood in the context of Cameroon’s ongoing economic crisis, that places him on an increasingly unstable footing. GDP growth in Cameroon is falling and the cost of living is increasing. The main culprit in recent years has been volatile oil prices, which despite bouncing back to $64.60 a barrel in 2018, fell as low as $44.00 a barrel in 2016. Cameroon’s oil (mostly off the coast of the Anglophone southwest) accounts for nearly 40 percent of the country’s exports, compared to 30 percent for agricultural products. The dips in oil prices have wreaked havoc on the lives of the Cameroonian masses and have deepened resentment against the regime.

In general, Cameroon’s economy is very underdeveloped. 70 percent of the country’s workforce is employed in agriculture, compared to only 13 percent in industry and 17 percent in services. While the government has attempted to modernise agricultural production in recent years, millions of Cameroonians are still producing food and cash crops using traditional farming techniques that are arduous and inefficient, resulting in low yields. This lack of development means Cameroon has a large peasantry, mostly under the sway of tribal elites.

Cameroon’s economy is very underdeveloped. 70 percent of the country’s workforce is employed in agriculture, many of them using traditional farming methods

Corruption and foreign debt are major factors in Cameroon’s economic backwardness. Cameroon saw a huge amount of “capital flight” after achieving independence ($57bn between 1970 and 2012), with the bulk of that money being embezzled by government officials. This corruption (combined with a fall in oil prices) provoked a major economic crisis in the 1980s. Biya responded with massive cuts and privatisations in the public sector (amounting to an 18 percent reduction in government spending). He also accepted loans from the World Bank, the African Development Bank, France, Germany and the United Kingdom; as well as a £150m aid package from the IMF. From the 1990s onwards, Cameroon has taken on further loans, including a new economic and financial partnership agreement with the IMF in 2016.

All this accumulated debt has resulted in decades of hardship and misery for Cameroonians, who have been made to bear the burden of the economic crisis. In order to pay off its loans and meet the terms of its international lenders, the government has continued to restrict public spending. After the latest IMF package, Biya reduced domestic investment from 8 percent of GDP in 2016 to a projected 6.6 in 2019, which has only exacerbated long-standing social and infrastructural problems. Many roads are nigh-unusable, cuts to public education have considerably reduced the growth of literacy rates, and healthcare is of a very low quality. Moreover, despite an official unemployment rate of 4.4 percent, fewer than 18 percent of Cameroonian adults earn more than 200,000 FCFA ($400 USD) a month.

Meanwhile, Biya and high-ranking officials continue to leech off the state and enjoy lavish lifestyles at the public’s expense. Aside from his luxurious presidential palace in Yaoundé, Biya spends a great deal of time on “private trips” to the five-star Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva. This hypocrisy has only intensified the masses’ loathing towards the CPDM.

A new civil war?

The Anglophone question has cast a shadow over this election, with the majority of Cameroonians (65 percent) regarding it as the greatest threat to the country’s national security. English-speaking Cameroon has seen ever-deepening repression, along with centralisation of power to French-speaking Yaoundé under Biya’s presidency.

The Anglophone crisis cast a shadow over the election: a new civil war is on the cards in the southwest

A flashpoint came in 2016, when protest marches by Anglophone teachers and lawyers over the enforced use of French in classrooms and courts were met with gunfire from state troops that left 17 protestors dead. A ramping-up of tensions culminated in the declaration of the independent, Anglophone state of Ambazonia on 1 October 2017 by the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF). Biya’s response was immediate and brutal. He shut down the internet in the southwest for a period of 93 days, and sent in American and Israeli-trained special forces (the Rapid Intervention Battalion or ‘BIR’) to quell the Anglophones. This has resulted in escalating skirmishes between Anglophone separatists and Biya’s troops, with hundreds dead already, thousands displaced, and accusations of atrocities on both sides (including the murder of women and children).

All the ingredients exist for a civil war on the southwestern border between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon. With the memory of the Biafran War in neighbouring Nigeria still haunting many Cameroonians, this is a terrifying prospect. However, despite Biya’s attempt to lean on sectarian hatred against Anglophones, most of the country’s population (85 percent) are opposed to the government’s use of force in suppressing the separatists and believe that dialogue and negotiation should be pursued. It is clear that the Cameroonian masses have no taste for bloodshed, but with Biya still in power and no unifying class movement to cross language lines, any chance of a peaceful resolution appears remote.

The role of imperialism

Another factor explaining Biya’s grip on power is the support he receives from imperialist governments. His vicious handling of the Anglophone question has been met with a deafening silence from the west. In part, this is because the US has leaned on Biya and the Cameroonian military to help fight the Islamic terror group Boko Haram, who have a foothold in the north of the country. As a result, the United States has dished out more than $220m in military and security funding to Cameroon since 2012, via the State Department and the Pentagon. Cameroon has also historically represented one of the more stable governments and trading partners in the region. As such, aside from helping to arm and train Biya’s shock troops in the BIR, the Americans have also assisted Biya’s regime by continually rescheduling Cameroon’s debt obligations.

France remains the most important imperialist power in Cameroon, reflected in its strong support for Biya

However, France remains the most important imperialist power in Cameroon, reflected in its strong support for Biya in the 1992 elections, where the SDF nearly won the presidency. In that race, it is rumoured that French secret police fabricated incriminating documents linking SDF candidate Fru Ndi to illegal arms deals. Also, the French ambassador, Gilles Vidal, and other officials undertook a number of missions to one of the SDF’s few Francophone strongholds (the West Province) to ‘persuade’ the Bamileke elites to distance themselves from the SDF. The French also encouraged Biya to create satellite parties with Bamileke leaders so as to weaken local support for the SDF. It has even been alleged that France and the CPDM were conspiring to set up a Bamileke front in the SDF to create disorder within the party by playing on internal ethnic divisions.

The French rely on Biya and the CPDM to safeguard their exploitation of Cameroon’s rich natural resources. For more than 30 years, the French company Total controlled 75.8 percent of oil exploitation contracts signed via Cameroon’s state-run National Hydrocarbons Company (SNH). It also had shares in the National Refining Company (SONARA) and the Cameroon Oil Depots Company (SCDP). In 2010, Total sold its interests in Cameroonian oil to the Franco-British company PERENCO, which, today, is the leader in the exploitation and production of oil in Cameroon. Biya is more than content to allow these bloodsuckers to plunder his country’s oil reserves: so long as he and his cronies are compensated and maintained in power.

Imperialist exploitation of Cameroonian oil is also a major driving force behind the Anglophone question. Aside from state repression of the Anglophone identity, the English-speaking regions of Cameroon have provided the bulk of the country’s economic production, but see systematic under investment compared to the Francophone regions. In 2017, the two Anglophone regions were allocated a combined $153m of the country’s Public Investment Budget. Meanwhile the country’s south (Biya’s home region) was allocated more than $225m, despite having a far smaller population. Resentment towards this policy has fuelled the violent separatist movement.

The unions and the 2008 movement

Given all the anger and frustration from below, where is the political leadership of the working class? While Cameroon has a national trade union federation (the Confederation of Cameroon Trade Unions), it is a weak and corrupt body that has largely prostrated itself to the Biya regime. The most economically important layers of the Cameroonian working class – the oil workers in the southwest – are positioned around and off the coast, divided from the rest of the class. The most organised sector are the transport workers, who have provided some of the most resolute opposition to Biya’s authority in the last decade.

The 2008 anti-government protests cut across sectarian lines

By far the most important action by transport workers was a strike in February 2008, which provoked the most serious civil unrest since the 1990s. The dispute began with a strike on 25 February, ostensibly against extortionate parking fines and rising fuel prices. However, workers were also protesting against a planned constitutional amendment that would abolish presidential term limits, thus allowing Biya to run for office indefinitely. This was correctly identified as an attempt by Biya to ensure his rule for life, and the transport strike rapidly drew in very wide layers of the population (particularly the youth) enraged at this manoeuvre, amidst a list of other grievances. As Janet Garvey, then-US ambassador to Cameroon, commented:

“Frankly, the frustration of the people had boiled over… There was anger over the constitutional amendment, unemployment, corruption and a whole host of other problems… Both the Francophones and Anglophones were protesting.”

The movement was a reaction against the hated Biya regime and its imperialist backers, reflected in placards carried by demonstrators that read: “Biya must go,” “Down with France”, “No Life President.” It encompassed Anglophones, Francophones, Bassa, Bamileke, Ewondo, etc. and spread across 31 municipalities and half of the country’s provinces. By 26 February, a state of emergency was declared and Biya responded with a brutal clampdown that left 100 dead and resulted in 1,600 arrests. In the end, the leaders of the transport union confederation refused to provide a political leadership to the movement, and withdrew their support in exchange for very minor concessions.

Biya’s amendment passed on 10 April, leaving the youths who led the struggle severely demoralised. However, this was a highly significant event that showed the capacity for Cameroonians to transcend sectarian divisions and unify against the despised CPDM. All that was lacking was a working-class leadership to harness the energy from below, armed with a socialist economic programme capable of carrying out the people’s demands. Today, this essential ingredient is still lacking, but the urgent desire for change remains.

The need for a workers’ party

Despite achieving an overwhelming ‘victory’ in these elections, there is dynamite in the foundations of Biya’s regime. His repressive measures are a sign of weakness, not strength. As evidenced by his sending in riot police to lock down Douala and Yaoundé on the day the official results were released, he clearly fears the anger of the masses and has limited confidence in his own authority.

Decades of economic attacks and political repression against the Cameroonian working class and peasantry are bound to find their expression sooner or later, as in 2008. At some point the conditions suffered by the masses will produce a genuine, mass movement from below. This, in turn, could force Biya out of power. As we have seen in several African countries in the recent period, when the masses move in a decisive way, the regime is forced to remove the figurehead in the hope of holding back the movement. Biya’s mishandling of the Anglophone crisis could also lead to him being regarded as a liability by the bourgeoisie. Under these circumstances, he could go the way of Mugabe in Zimbabwe. For now he is stubbornly holding on to power.

Biya does not have the support of the masses, but they see no alternative. The masses do not support a civil war, but the situation is out of their hands. A workers’ party and movement are needed urgently

What has to be stressed is that the removal of one individual is not sufficient to solve the burning social and economic issues facing the Cameroonian masses. While the call for Biya to go can rally a large layer of the population, any meaningful, long-term solutions to Cameroon’s economic and political problems can only come from a socialist movement, capable of uniting the country’s various peoples and social layers on a class basis. For instance, while Marxists respect the right for democratic self-determination for the Anglophones, any separation based on ethnic or national lines that does not pose the problem in class terms, given the myriad of different tribal, ethnic and linguistic groups in the country, could result in a bloodbath. The shambolic opposition in these presidential elections demonstrates the necessity of a workers’ party – with a bold and clear political programme – to galvanise ordinary Cameroonians against Biya, the tribal elites and their imperialist masters.

It is evident that the CPDM does not have the support of the masses. It stays in power because right now the working masses see no alternative. Equally, they do not support a civil war in the southwest, but the situation is out of their hands, and rapidly spiralling out of control. The situation in Cameroon strongly poses the question: socialism or barbarism?

Source: Marxist.Com

In the aftermath of recent elections in Cameroon, instability has increased, with a factional struggle opening up between different sections of the ruling class. President Paul Biya of the ruling CPDM, who retained power in 2018, has ramped up political repression, arresting opposition leader Maurice Kamto and intensifying his suppression of the country’s Anglophone minority.

All of this is taking place against a backdrop of general decrepitude for Cameroonian society, which is suffering from years of underinvestment, slowing economic growth and widespread decay. Meanwhile, Biya and Kamto (both of whom are cut from the same bourgeois cloth) are increasingly leaning on different sets of imperialist powers, as China is starting to muscle into territory formerly wholly dominated by Western imperialism. The former Defence Minister, Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, was also detained today (6 March) as part of this spat within the ruling class.

The Biya regime has been a loyal ally of Western (and particularly French) capitalism since taking power in 1982. In recent years, Biya has also been a military ally of the United States against the Islamic terror group, Boko Haram. However, Cameroon is also an important country from the perspective of Chinese imperialism. It is a key part of Beijing’s One Belt, One Road project in Central Africa. As such, China is beginning to extend its influence in Cameroon (as in neighbouring Nigeria).

China’s presence means Western imperialism is pushing back against it by simultaneously pressuring Biya to keep his distance from Beijing, and by supporting other elements in the ruling class. Biya is trying to balance between different imperialists, while Kamto is seeking to make himself more attractive to the West by offering his services against Biya. In spite of all of his anti-regime demagogy, however, Kamto is not seen as a genuine political alternative by Cameroonian workers and peasants.

Cameroon’s capitalist malaise

The masses in Cameroon are suffering immensely, and it seems there is no way out. The Anglophone crisis (which threatens to erupt into a full-blown civil war) is just the latest expression of long-term degeneration of volatile and degenerate Cameroonian capitalism.

Cameroon is a weak, oil and mineral-based export economy, which has been feeling the slowdown in world trade and the Chinese economy: two key factors that previously kept oil and mineral prices up. While the country’s debt-to-GDP hovered around 10-12 percent until 2014, it has now shot up to 35.7 percent, after oil prices dived in 2014.

The masses in Cameroon are suffering, and it seems there is no way out. Biya and Kamto are cut from the same cloth / Image: Robert Prince

The increased debt is also limiting Biya’s room for economic maneuvers. To meet the terms of new IMF loans, Biya has carried out austerity, including a reduction of government spending from 8 percent to 6.6 percent of GDP from 2016 to 2019. Schools, hospitals and infrastructure are in a chronic state of under investment. Meanwhile employment rates are stagnant and so is development in production (70 percent of Cameroon’s working population is still employed in the low-tech agricultural sector).

The ruling class is far more interested in reaping super-profits from the oil industry than in investing in actual production. All the while, the parasitic Cameroonian bourgeoisie and political elite spend billions made via corrupt deals on private jets and palatial accommodation (usually abroad). Billions more are lost to so called “capital flight”; which, in this context, simply means open theft of public funds.

In order to stabilise his rule, Biya has covered his austerity with anti-Anglophone nationalist hysteria, and his cuts disproportionately target the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. These nationalist attacks have in turn fueled a separatist crisis. Despite being the source of most of Cameroon’s wealth, the oil-rich Anglophone regions are made to swallow the deepest cuts, on top of social and political repression. And more austerity is likely to be on the way, as creditors such as the IMF, wary of the state of the economy, are demanding even more cuts in the 2019 budget.

All these factors have contributed to the pauperisation of the Cameroonian working class. Despite a small increase in GDP growth in 2018 (3.8 percent versus 3.5 percent in 2017), population growth has meant that about 30 percent of Cameroonians remain in poverty, while Biya, Kamto and their cronies in the ruling class grow fat.

China encroaches

The main factor in the recent political struggle between Biya and Kamto is the increasing presence of Chinese imperialism in Cameroon. Beijing is coming to regard Cameroon as a key African foothold, especially because the country is not seen by US imperialism as fundamental to its sphere of influence. Sino-Cameroonian trade has increased tenfold in a decade, China is now Cameroon’s biggest export partner after France, and it dominates the Cameroonian construction and infrastructure sectors.

Beijing is clearly attempting to court Biya and pull him away from the West. He was invited for a three-day state visit to China in March 2018, and visited Beijing again in September at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, where President Xi Jinping pledged a $60bn package of aid, investment and loans to Cameroon. Meanwhile, Beijing has forgiven $174m of Cameroon’s debt between 2007 and 2019. This bribe is only a tiny sliver of the approximately $3bn Cameroon owes to China, which shows how Chinese finance capital has begun to creep into the void left after France decreased its engagement with its former colony.

The main factor in the recent political struggle between Biya and Kamto is the increasing presence of Chinese imperialism in Cameroon, which is starting to lean on Biya / Image: fair use

The string of debt write-offs are actually on loans obtained to fund construction by Chinese companies in Cameroon, meaning Beijing is subsidising its own development projects: a small price to pay for a major African foothold. China has been using its financial muscle throughout Africa, taking key assets and infrastructure as collateral when countries are not able to repay their debt. Of course, if it is up to China alone, Cameroon will not escape this fate.

China has also been exploiting Cameroon’s rich gold reserves for the past several years, often illegally, and utilising methods that destroy surrounding farmland and leave behind trenches that cause fatal accidents and trigger landslides. This has resulted in a huge amount of anger and resentment from the population. The Forests and Rural Development Association (FODER) in Yaounde claims that the Biya regime has been sending in the army to protect Chinese mining companies from enraged locals.

The nations’ relationship reached a watershed in 2011 when China committed billions of dollars to finance a new sea port in the fishing town of Kribi. When completed in 2035, it will be the biggest deep-water port in the region. This investment shows Cameroon’s strategic importance to Beijing’s ambitions in Africa. The Kribi port will extend the reach of the so-called New Silk Road: that is, China’s plans to construct an international trade network based on Beijing’s interests.

Kamto: wannabe Western lackey

With Biya drifting closer to China, the West is trying to defend its own position. It is therefore leaning on other forces within the Cameroonian ruling elite. Kamto (who came second in the presidential elections, with around 14 percent of the official vote) has been offering his services to the West. But he lacks any real support on the ground. As part of this factional struggle within the ruling class, Kamto was arrested by Biya’s troops on 28 January. He is now being held at the Special Operations Unit in Yaoundé, from which he sent a message criticising the Biya government for his “illegal and arbitrary” detainment. Despite this language of martyrdom, Kamto is a consummate opportunist, and until 2011 he was actually Biya’s Minister for Justice in the CPDM. He is made of the exact same stuff as the sitting president. The Cameroonian masses are not blind to this. This was underlined by the fact that attempted protests against Biya’s re-election and Kamto’s imprisonment have been complete flops.

While Western imperialism does not currently see Kamto as a convincing replacement for Biya, he is still a potentially useful pawn

Kamto thought he could demagogically unite the weak and atomised opposition parties of Cameroon (of which there are over 200) under the single, “anti-Biya” banner of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM). Aside from a vague promise to resolve the Anglophone crisis with “dialogue”, the CRM’s political programme was little different from that of the CPDM. It also included a number neoliberal policies Kamto hoped would appeal to Western imperialism, including the need for more “flexible” labour and “modernisation” of the economy (i.e casualisation of labour and privatisation). Kamto also probably thought that his friends in the West would position him as Biya’s successor and see him as a trustworthy ally, given the president’s drift towards China and Kamto’s esteemed status as a former chairman and special rapporteur with the U.N.

He was mistaken. The US did not do much to support the CRM, while France continued to back its traditional party. Biya’s victory was never actually in question, especially with the Anglophone separatists enforcing a voting boycott, which resulted in an extremely low turnout by English-speaking voters (who tend to be most critical of Biya). Western imperialism is not seeking regime change in Cameroon. As it stands now, they are merely trying to maneuver to get more concessions from the existing regime.

The Anglophone crisis continues

While all this is going on, Biya’s heavy-handed approach is turning the Anglophone crisis into an uncontrollable conflagration. More than 430,000 people have been displaced and hundreds killed over the course of the conflict, with reports of atrocities by both the separatists and Biya’s Special Forces.

Neither China nor the West want this situation to get out of hand. They would all prefer stability. But while China and France have been relatively silent about the affair, the US has threatened to pull military support, training and equipment from Cameroon. Laughably, General Thomas D. Waldhauser, leader of United States’ Africa Command, claimed this was due to Biya’s “atrocities”. But the US has never batted an eye at Biya’s political repression up until now, and this new measure is probably another attempt at putting pressure on Biya.

The West is also using the arrest of Kamto as part of this game. The U.N. Secretary General and the International Law Commission have threatened that Kamto’s “continued detention will lead promptly to a comprehensive reevaluation of U.S. military and other assistance to the Cameroonian government.” Meanwhile, the EU (via its mouthpiece in Cameroon, Federica Mogherini) condemned the “arrest and prolonged detention of several leaders of an opposition party, including its leader Maurice Kamto”. The statement calls for an end to “human rights violations in the north-west and south-west regions of Cameroon… through an inclusive political dialogue and in a context of respect for fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.” It ends with a subtle threat, referencing “the foundation for the partnership between Cameroon and the EU, for the benefit of all Cameroonians” being based on these ‘values’ and concluding “the EU will support any initiative in this direction” (my emphasis).

While Western imperialism does not currently see Kamto as a convincing replacement for Biya, he is still a potentially useful pawn. By portraying their old ally Biya as a bogeyman building up Kamto as a martyr, they could try to lean on him to balance Chinese interests, and keep their options open in terms of succession when the 82-year-old incumbent is finally off the scene.

The masses need an alternative!

Cameroonian capitalism is rotten to its core. It is incapable of showing any way forward for the poor workers and peasants of the country. But although Biya’s decrepit, 37-year regime is long overdue to be overthrown, Kamto is no alternative. He represents the same system and the same ruling class as Biya. This explains why the masses have yet to enter the scene: they do not see anyone offering solutions to the dire social problems in Cameroon, and do not trust any of the political representatives on offer. Between the imperialist tug-of-war and squabbles within the ruling class; the working class and poor can only lose out.

A radical revolutionary movement, organised on class lines against the ruling elite and imperialism, is the only way forward

At the same time, there is no real workers’ party and no real labour movement, unlike over the border in Nigeria. The last major strike (prior to the teachers’ walkout by Anglophones in 2017) was in 2008, and even that wasn’t led by the feeble Confederation of Cameroon Trade Unions – it was a grassroots action led from below. In these conditions, along with the general economic decline, the stage is taken over by different imperialist forces, along with opposing sections of the degenerate, parasitic bourgeoisie, who have no issue with wreaking havoc in the country to pursue their own narrow interests.

What is needed is a radical revolutionary movement, organised on class lines, to unify the Francophone and Anglophone working class and poor around social demands against the Biya regime and the rest of the rotten ruling class. Beyond that, it is necessary to build a workers’ party that will channel the desire for change into a programme of action. This is the only way forward.

Source: Marxist.com

In Cameroon, humanitarian aid to victims of fire disasters, bad weather and citizens displaced by the Southern Cameroons crisis or the war against Boko Haram are currently in a multiple. By some strange happenstance, this aid is systematically attributed to the 86 year old President Biya who has been more than 36 years in power.

Cameroonians have constantly been fed stories like “The Head of State sent me to support the victims of the Congo market fire. He sent an envelope of 32 million FCFA for the 162 victims” said Paul Atanga Nji the Minister of Territorial Administration recently in Douala, 4 days after the fire that devastated the Marche Congo, one of the oldest in the economic metropolis.

A few months before, some funny material was offered to displaced Southern Cameroonians and that aid was also given in the name of the Head of State. The CPDM crime syndicate has shown the so-called generosity of President Biya several times to the victims of Boko Haram’s abuses.

Recently, there has been under-the-table talk from many Cameroonians who are questioning the source of Biya’s money which he uses to systematically help everyone in the country? Some French Cameroun political commentators have however opined that the Cameroonian dictator gets his money from the state coffers. Many in the divided country now say it is state aid that the corrupt authorities have all along been attributing to the President of the Republic in a country where the Head of State is the central figure around whom everything turns!

By Sama Ernest