Democracy in Cameroon Hinges on Youth Participation

Kah Wal­la

Kah Wal­la, a mem­ber of the Cameroon oppo­si­tion movement

My wife and I trav­eled to Cameroon in April this year to vis­it friends that we had made on a trip in 2010.  Being our sec­ond trip to Cameroon, we saw dif­fer­ent aspects of the coun­try than we had previously.

The fol­low­ing is a brief descrip­tion of how we per­ceived the cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment in Cameroon and the effect it is hav­ing on the prospects of eco­nom­ic growth, democ­ra­cy, and education.

In this post, I look at democ­ra­cy in Cameroon.

Democ­ra­cy is a won­der­ful con­cept. Many Cameroo­ni­ans embrace the idea but laugh at the prospects of democ­ra­cy sur­viv­ing in Cameroon.

After many con­ver­sa­tions with the youth, I’ve learned that they are scared to protest against the cur­rent regime for fear of los­ing their lives. I can­not blame them. In my mind, soci­ety is polit­i­cal­ly docile at this point. Paul Biya has been Pres­i­dent for so long, that every­one seems to have accept­ed his posi­tion in one-way or another.

Most of the oppo­si­tion under­stands that Paul Biya will not lose a ‘democ­rac­tic’ elec­tion dur­ing his tenure. Paul Biya will die as the Pres­i­dent of Cameroon. Only after his death, will Cameroon be giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to change the sta­tus quo overnight, yet this will be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to orches­trate with­out inter­na­tion­al inter­ven­tion or a rare excep­tion in the human race, of the likes of Nel­son Mandela.

I am not sure how democ­ra­cy will be more real­is­ti­cal­ly attained in Cameroon. I would like to sug­gest that democ­ra­cy flow up from the local and region­al lev­els. How­ev­er, for this to work, the edu­cat­ed youth will need to be vocal.

Some­day, Cameroon­ian youth will need to voice their opin­ions at a nation­al lev­el like the youth of Chile are doing today, but it will be safer to start the move­ment local­ly. The risk of gov­ern­ment retal­i­a­tion will be weak­er in small­er vil­lages. Only after the change is expe­ri­enced at a local lev­el, will peo­ple be able to orga­nize and push for change nationally.

In short, I strong­ly believe that a more just sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is com­ing to Cameroon, but it will be up to the youth to fight for their rights.