The Cameroonian Struggle to Change the Imposed Anachronistic System

By: Janvier Tchouteu

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Cameroon, the microcosm of Africa, a riddle wrapped in an enigma, the former German colony that was partitioned between Britain and France in 1916, the launch pad of the Free French Forces composed mostly of Africans that went on to pin down the German military legend General Rommel in the Libyan Desert in 1942 and that found itself at the forefront of the liberation of France from German occupation in 1944; Cameroon, the place where its nationalists of diverse ethnic and religious background sought to reunite the territories of the former German colony (British Cameroons and French Cameroun), a political cause that sparked the ire of France that went on to ban the pro-reunification and pro-independence party in a move, sparking off a fifteen-year war of liberation that ended with the defeat of the nationalists and the imposition of an unrepresentative system under the French puppet leadership of Ahmadou Ahidjo. The unrepresentative system is represented today by the 31-year old regime of Ahidjo’s hand-picked successor Paul Biya. Cameroonian politics is like a battlefield made up of quicksand, where the country’s sure-footed nationalists are finding it difficult to realize the dream and ideals of The New Cameroon, where the so-called established opposition is an appendage of the system, and where more than 80% of the population believe nothing is going to change and so act accordingly by distancing themselves from the system’s charade called elections by not participating in the electoral process.