Standing Fast: Is Anything Going On?

In case you missed it, a large chunk of Southern Cameroon descended into civil unrest last week.  It started ostensibly as a taxi driver strike in Yaoundé and Douala over rising fuel prices on Monday, February 23, but after a couple days, it evolved (or one could say devolved) into anger over President Paul Biya's desire to change the Cameroonian constitution to allow him to run for president again in 2011 and a general backlash against the vastly corrupt RDPC, Biya's party.

 

When the strikes were first announced, Peace Corps activated its "Emergency Action Plan" (EAP), a plan with code words and consolidation points when the merde hits the ventilateur, and we were on the first of three stages, "Alert."  The Alert stage is like Homeland Security's color-coded warning system: don't panic, whatever you do, do not panic, stay where you are, notify us if you see any Arabs with guns.  However, by Wednesday, February 28, the taxi strike was over, but then apparent general chaos ensued in certain cities.  There were looters, roadblocks, political protests, and police and gendarmes with itchy trigger fingers.  Yaoundé, Douala, Bamenda (things there sounded especially bad), Baffoussam, and Buea were the most affected cities.  For a couple days, the cities were entirely shut down.  Businesses were closed, and in addition to the sporadic violence, there was an eerie "ghost town phenomenon."  All told, at least 20 people were killed and hundreds arrested.

 

By this time, Wednesday the 25^th, Peace Corps put us on the second step of the EAP: Stand Fast, loosely translated as, "We really have no idea what is going to happen."  (We were also on stand fast during the weekend of municipal elections in July, but that seemed to be a "just in case" measure.)  While Alert is basically saying things could be a little dicey, Stand Fast means you can't leave wherever you are until further notice, and if you're at post, which I was (like a good PCV), you're supposed to pack an emergency bag and take inventory of all your crap, especially if Peace Corps Cameroon owns it.  Priorities.

 

(Now this is the part where I tell you how disconnected from the South the Grand North is.  According to the BBC World Service and Radio France International, "the entire country" was affected by these strikes/protests/riots.  They forgot to mention that Cameroon is more than Yaoundé, Douala, and the Anglophone provinces.  While there were whispers of potential strikes and protests happening up here, nothing materialized and life was going on as usual; weekly markets and transportation were running like normal.  If you didn't listen to the radio, you would have no idea that the South was shut down for a week.)

 

On the second or third night of the strikes (the 24^th or 25^th), Son Excellence Paul Biya made a speech urging calm and peace and said the demonstrations were being organized by "apprentice sorcerers."  Despite this spiel, Biya didn't really do much to quell dissent.  (Calling opposition party officials names doesn't usually help.)  Even though the taxi strikes were called off by syndicate leaders Wednesday, anti-government protests and looting continued, spreading past Yaoundé and Douala to the West and North-West provinces.  At some point over the weekend, all the PCVs in the NW were consolidated in Yaoundé (How?  I have no idea.  I decided it was due to white man sorcery.  No apprentices here, bitches.), and selected PCVs in the affected provinces went to their provincial consolidation points.  By Wednesday, March 5, however, things were normalized enough that PC downgraded us to Alert, and PCVs that were consolidated could start returning to post.

 

(Now this is the part where I tell you how disconnected from the South the Grand North is – again.)  There are a couple disconcerting things about this whole situation.  Primarily, we really had no idea what was happening.  Peace Corps did a good a job as they could keeping us informed – I was impressed – but being in a rural village in the North province doesn't help you know what's going on.  I was mainly worried that we, the Grand North PCVs, might be evacuated for events that were taking place hundreds of miles away.  (Around Friday and Saturday, the 29^th and 1^st, the chances of civil action coming to North still seemed possible, another reason to be anxious.)

 

The second thing that is worrying is that whatever happened last week couldn't possibly be the end of it in my opinion, even if they won't be manifested in the same manner.  The issues that were being raised aren't even close to being resolved, and if anything, it only reinforced the complete disconnect between Paul Biya and his RDPC cronies and the populace.  Even with the state-run media underreporting the details of the protests and trying to undermine the opposition, one could tell that something serious was happening.  (CRTV, the government's radio/TV station, referred to the looters as "the manipulated" and "angry youths," which maybe they were, but it only ignores the real issues.)  Biya never mentioned once the constitutional amendment in his speech and only antagonized the opposition by claiming that Cameroon has fully functioning democratic systems in place (and by calling them names, of course).  However, Biya benefits from two things: one is that the general public is surprisingly docile and conciliatory when it comes to the government.  People always like to say that Cameroon has been very peaceful for an African country, and it's true, even though people here have more than enough reason to go apeshit if they wanted to.  Also, the RDPC apparatus is strongly entrenched; it's been in power for 25 years, so they're not going to roll over easily.  Biya's political strategy has been to neutralize any opposition, and it's been very effective.  (The only opposition with teeth is the Social Democratic Front centered in the Anglophone provinces.)

 

All of this upheaval – to choose a metaphor, it's like a burp of protests – is interesting, especially given that Cameroonians have been really complacent for a long time, and these demonstrations (or chaos, I'm still not really sure) might just be scratching the surface.  But then I think about it for a second longer: it might be interesting, yes, but I'm living here.  It's not like I'm reading this in the New York Times from my living room couch in Kennesaw.  I was just in Yaoundé, Douala, and Buea, the places where the burps happened, in December and January.  I'm just on my little foreign sojourn that by chance put me in Cameroon, but people here are dealing with real issues in the actual place they live.  These burps reinforce that I'm just a temporary resident and the issues that Cameroon has to deal with existed before I came and will still be here when I leave.