Call for papers Cameroon: the stationary State

2020

Since 2017, English-speaking regions of Cameroon have witnessed armed conflict in its towns and villages with far-reaching repercussions. This is perhaps one of the worst endogenous armed conflicts in Cameroon since independence in 1960 and reunification in 1961. What is even more engrossing to the mind has been the question as to how corporatist movements initiated by Cameroon Anglophone common law lawyers and teachers soon vitiated into armed confrontation on a scale that can only be compared to anti-colonial movements in French Cameroon from the 1940s to the 1960s. From this basic premise, this paper contends that the armed conflict witnessed in the Anglophone regions since 2017 did not emerge from a vacuum. It has been in gestation in the form of “everyday” resistance since at least the 1970s. The armed conflict has been a concomitant feature of historical milestones marked by accumulated grievances and frustrations, gelled by the growth of ‘Ambazonism’, propagated as the twin p...

Afrika tanulmányok /, 2023

Cameroon has been plunged into a devastating civil conflict since December 2017 when President Paul Biya declared war on secessionists after the killing of four soldiers and two police officers in the South West Region. This paper approaches the Cameroon Anglophone Crisis from the theoretical premise of remedial secession. It argues that the evolution of the crisis from a moderate return to federalism pursued by "Sisiku" Agbor Felix Nkongho to the radical secession espoused by "Sisiku" Julius Ayuk Tabe can be understood within the framework of remedial secession. The cogency of this argument is examined against efforts made by the Cameroon government to tackle the crisis and the concept of territorial integrity. This paper concludes that the protracted nature of the conflict reflects the theoretical impasse between remedial secession and territorial integrity.

Everyday State and Democracy in Africa: Ethnographic Encounters , 2022

This chapter is about everyday encounters with the state in Cameroon. Specifically, it discusses my encounters with the state security actors at checkpoints in a context of war: the civil war in the two Anglophone provinces (the North West and South West Regions). Focusing on my experiences of military checkpoints and identification documents such as the national identity cards (hereafter ID cards) as crucial material objects that mediate everyday life in these settings, I recount and discuss my encounters with this Cameroonian state during my recent travels there in 2018 and 2019. What I describe are snapshots from my travels (especially my experiences in May 2018) in parts of the two English-speaking provinces. Since 2017, these two regions have been plunged into a deadly civil war, over separatist claims by a marginalized and resentful Anglophone minority whose youthful militants seek to establish a new Anglophone ‘Federal Republic of Ambazonia’ apart from the Francophone-dominated country of Cameroon.1 My experiences are embedded in this context of violence and predation . This chapter contributes to the literature on mobility, political violence, and the state in Africa. Since at least the 1980s, a vigorous and enriched literature has developed (especially in anthropology) on the state. Several studies in this register examine the state in its bureaucratic and colonial3 as well as postcolonial4 and aesthetic forms. In recent years, a focus on mobility as well as on roads and government identification documents like identity cards and passports, have been important to the discussions on the materiality of the state, sovereignty, and biopower. I situate my chapter within this line of anthropological discussion on roads, government ID documents, and mobility. In my analysis of the situation in Cameroon, I focus primarily on my own encounters with and experiences at checkpoints established by the security forces of the Cameroonian government within the Anglophone war zone. I examine the dynamics of what I describe generically as a garrison state mentality that defines the everyday state in Cameroon.

Jounral of Asian and African Studies, 2013

The following paper uses the case-study of Cameroon to examine how critical donors can shield their close allies from pressure to pursue political liberalization. As the wave of democratic reform swept through Africa in the early 1990s, similar to that going through North Africa and the Middle East today, domestic opposition pushed the ruling clique in Cameroon towards pluralism. However, in this case, instead of encouraging democracy, France helped President Paul Biya to maintain his grip on power. As will be demonstrated, massive amounts of French aid helped the regime survive both internal and external pressure for change. Under a political conditionality approach other secondary donors tried to use their foreign assistance to help push for liberal-democratic reforms in Cameroon. However, such efforts are frequently undermined by what the donor perceives as its self-interest. This research attempts to illustrate this general point by examining the relationship between Cameroon and France and the maintenance of authoritarianism in the defense of common interests.

Amongst the challenges that faced the post-colonial state in Africa, was how to consolidate national unity in the midst of diversity and ethnic divisions (Ottaway, 1999:299). Attempts at resolving this problem in Cameroon have spanned across federalism, one-party rule, regionalism and outright centralisation of political power. This centralisation of power is evident in all facets of public life in the country. This paper explores the features of centralisation of political power in Cameroon and ascertains the extent to which this is thwarting peace and stability in the country. It reveals that personalisation of power, disregard for constitutional provisions and a strong correlation between the ruling party and the state, form the core elements of the Cameroonian society. This has degenerated into a denial of popular sovereignty, gerontocracy and an apathetic and disillusioned citizenry, leaving the country a breeding ground for deadly conflict. The study recommends the need to decentralize the highly centralised Cameroonian society; the need for leadership to enforce the provisions of the constitution so as to regain the trust of the masses; and the need to respect rule of law. It concludes by hinting that perhaps a social uprising is an idea whose time has come in Cameroon.

Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, 2019

Legal scholars and other social scientists agree that political violence comprising assaults on civil and political liberties may occur in the context of contentious politics. Unfortunately, there have been instances in history where such politics is marked by intermittent attacks against people's rights and freedoms. Such attacks occur when politics has gone sour, and there are times when the violence exceeds the bounds of what is acceptable. From the documented atrocities of Nazi Germany, the horrendous crimes of the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in the former Yugoslavia, the outrageous crimes perpetrated during the genocide in Rwanda, the shameful and despicable inhumanities inflicted on the people of Darfur in the Sudan, and the violence in post-electoral Kenya, to the bloodshed in areas like Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, etc, violent conflict has punctuated world history. Added to this list of countries is Cameroon, which in the la...

International Affairs and Global Strategy, 2018

This article studies the security challenges of Cameroon and their effects on France-African relations. The rise of former colonized states such as Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa and China reveals that it is possible to rise above any national security problem to unthinkable wealth and prosperity. As post modernity evolves, it provokes several nation states to battle hard to overcome endemic derailments such as corruption, ethnic violence and segregation in order to catch up with the pace of globalization. Furthermore, it is very important to understand the very effects the derailments in the social and political economy of Cameroon and what is needed to make the necessary shifts and adjustments. This study will endeavor to uncover the varying security challenges that bound Cameroon considering the cross check of the existing relations between the challenges and state institutions. Moreover, the study shall analyze the effectiveness of the institutions and critically look at how they address issues of national interest as Cameroon matches forward to its 2035 Grand Ambition propaganda. This paper will explore Buzan's conceptual framework of security, the history of Cameroon, the domestic security challenges of Cameroon and the counter security measures put in place.

International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Research, 2019

This research examines the unease expressed by the Anglophone minority people of Cameroon, as a result of alleged marginalization by the Francophone majority. Discontent had been gathering momentum for decades in different forms. However, things came to a head following a strike staged by Anglophone lawyers and teachers in 2016, to which the government responded with repression. Since then, the situation has escalated and led to an armed conflict with separatist fighters taking over the struggle and claiming to fight for a separate republic for the Anglophones known interchangeably as "Ambazonia" and "The Southern Cameroons". The paper uses a combination of historical and archival secondary sources, and the technique of observation, backed by qualitative analysis, to examine the dynamics of the conflict, both overtly and covertly. The findings reveal that there is indeed an identity crisis among Cameroon`s Anglophone peoples visa -vis their Francophone counterparts. The study concludes that the root cause of the problem lies in the colonial past of the two peoples and offers recommendations that can lead to peaceful coexistence.

The Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon: A Geopolitical Analysis, 2019

Anglophone Cameroon is the present-day North West and South West (English Speaking) regions of Cameroon herein referred to as No-So. These regions of Cameroon have been restive since 2016 in what is popularly referred to as the Anglophone crisis. The crisis has been transformed to a separatist movement, with some Anglophones clamoring for an independent No-So, re-baptized as "Ambazonia". The purpose of the study is to illuminate the geopolitical perspective of the conflict which has been evaded by many scholars. Most scholarly write-ups have rather focused on the causes, course, consequences and international interventions in the crisis, with little attention to the geopolitical undertones. In terms of methodology, the paper makes use of qualitative data analysis. Unlike previous research works that link the unfolding of the crisis to Anglophone marginalization, historical and cultural difference, the findings from this paper reveals that the strategic location of No-So, the presence of resources, demographic considerations and other geopolitical parameters are proving to be responsible for the heightening of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon and in favour of the quest for an independent Ambazonia. This article however upholds that the No-So is still part of Cameroon's territorial space, considering the fact that Ambazonia is not internationally recognized as a sovereign state.

Journal of the African Literature Association, 2020

Since September 2017, the English-speaking peoples of the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon have been subjected to unprecedented repression of genocidal dimension by the Biya regime that needs to be unpacked. What precisely led to this ugly situation which has come to be known as "the Anglophone problem?" This article sets out to lucidly capture the Anglophone problem in such a way that it is seen as a legitimate, legal, authentic and concrete statehood problem-deserving national and international attention. I therefore posit cogently that the Anglophone problem is a nationhood issue that emerged after unification with the Francophone Cameroun Republic in 1961. The problem is caused by the systematic and unilateral attempts by the hegemonic Francophone regime, within the Jacobin logic, to dismantle the statehood identity of Anglophone Cameroon since 1961. By steadily destroying the Anglophone state through multiple dubious mechanisms, Anglophone fell prey to Francophone colonization, militarization, marginalization and assimilation. The birth of the self-proclaimed Anglophone state of Ambazonia in 2017 is the apotheosis of the statehood crisis. Hear the voice of the Mighty God Let my people go! Yes the Lord said 'go down to Yaound e Way down in Yaound e land Tell all the Biya fratricidal fraternity Let my people go! 1

1996 and 2006 were two milestones in the political history of Cameroon. They represent, respectively, the establishment of a one-party system in the country and the parliament’s passing of bill that created an independent body to organize country’s elections. The road followed by Cameroon, when compared to those of most African countries, notably Niger and Benin, seems to be different in regards to what political framework was chosen. Analyzing discourse from Cameroonian newspapers in comparison with similar events in Benin and Niger, the article shows that since 1966 the country’s rulers have laboured to create a ‘Cameroonian exception’ to its method of governance, with the eventual aim of having a Cameroonian model of democracy. In reality, the hidden aim has been to perpetuate the domination of the state party in the political landscape of the country.

Cameroon is a complex ‘nation’ composed of two colonial polities—British West Cameroons and French East Cameroun—whose questionable ‘birth’ by way of UN plebiscites has resulted in linguistic, cultural, and economic cleavages. Cameroon is however not unique in the web of postcolonial African narratives, for the awakening of Africans to the stark reality that their freedom could not be handed to them by the very forces that aimed to extract the resources of their lands and the labor of their bodies to oil the world capitalist machine was met with attempts at psychological disarmament by the colonizer, the violent elimination of leaders who championed the collective interest of the populace, and their replacement by coopted leaders who preferred semi-sovereignty and riches to liberation and poverty. The divisive politics engineered by the Cameroonian state has led to the politicization of identities, resulting in a fractured polity separated by linguistic nationalisms. State power is deliberately exercised over the masses to their own detriment, as local elites are coopted by the state and national problems are placated by clientelism. These constructed and politicized identities have engaged Cameroonians in cognitive falsities distracting them from the social and economic erosion occurring right before their eyes.

Technological advances has decentralised public communication through networked digital communication. The present paper seeks to make a critical analysis of the contradictory discourses and conversations on Facebook about ways of resolving the Anglophone problem crisis and on the future of the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. Since November 2016, the Anglophone populations have embarked in civil disobedience against the Government of Cameroon over the latter's alleged slowness or refusal to address their grievances. After some attempts to create and platform for dialog with the protesting parties, and due to continuing civil disobedience in the North West and South West Regions in Cameroon, the Government of Cameroon decided to disconnect the internet between January and April 2017 in the two regions. It was alleged that secessionists in the diaspora used the social media to disseminate their messages and manipulate the populations through fake information. This paper makes a critical discourse analysis of trolls, and polarized conversations and discourses by Anglophones Activists on Facebook regarding the socio-political crisis that has been wrecking Cameroon since the end of the year 2016. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a methodological and theoretical approach, and nationalism as the ideology, this study shows that there are two opposite views defended by Anglophones on this social media platforms: the separatists' and the pro-unionists' positions. On the one hand, the separatist activists through their Facebook posts discourse to repudiate the pan-Cameroonian identity which they associate to Francophonisation and cultural assimilation, and promote a separate Anglophone nationalism. On the other hand, the pro-unity Anglophone activists defend national unity and reject the secessionist discourse, thereby reproducing and expressing their adherence to the Pan-Cameroonian identity. This study will try to go beyond linguistic elements analysis to include a systematic construction of the historical and political, sociological and/or psychological dimension in the analysis and interpretation of specific texts/discourse.

Many scholars qualify Cameroon as the savviest place to stay and invest in the sub-region owing to its unperturbed peace, and that since the independence of French Cameroon and its reunification with British Southern Cameroons in 1960 and 1961 respectively, only the petty show-offs of the Nigerian forces in the peninsula of Bakassi unrewardedly tried to change the status-quo. But this assumption has been brought to book by recent events and the accounts of more critical scholars on the Cameroon-tranquility thesis. This paper - written on the basis of secondary and primary data (military intelligence data for that matter), and actor and observer’s account - falls in line with the latter approach. It argues that the Cameroon military might has never been tested by a serious foreign armed challenge until the rise and the internationalization of the Boko Haram. For it was only then that Cameroonians (civil and the military alike, gripped by the insecurity fever) understood what it meant to be dared in an unremitting and deadly manner by a sturdy and impulsive enemy that cost the entire nation-state huge human and material resources. Cameroon (the northern regions for that matter) was classed as one of the “no-go areas” in the world. This protracted nightmare impelled a sustained domestic and foreign effort against this sect with the sole aim of bringing the sad story to a final end. Keywords: Security crises, peace, prolonged nightmare, Sustainability, Assemblage, Boko Haram, Cameroon