1. Enrich yourself, your family and your allies. Don’t listen to those who tell you that amassing a personal fortune is the old-fashioned way. Just as you need a monopoly on violence, you need a monopoly on wealth creation. You and your family must live in the style commensurate with a sovereign national leader: the mansion and private jet are de rigueur if you are to be taken seriously as the power in the land. You need to sustain an expansive patronage network, and you need the cash to ensure your allies are well rewarded and your enemies are … well neutralised.

2. Build a complex and ruthless security system with competing spy agencies over which you have total control. Your system has two goals: to ensure that your subjects know that any attempt to organise against you would be met with stern measures, including extreme violence; and to keep you fully informed of what allies and rivals are doing at all times. Only a multiplicity of agencies – some spying on each other, but all reporting to you directly – will provide the actionable intelligence essential to your survival.

3. Adopt an overarching ideology that combines a sense of hope and nationalism, such as ‘African developmentalism’. This gives your regime the legitimacy it needs. You are a populist leader – never a dictator. The late lamented Mobutu Sese Seko stole and repackaged the ideas of anti-imperialist Patrice Lumumba, which enabled him to posture as a doughty nationalist. You must freely distribute – in the style of Mao and Stalin – millions of books of your deeply held beliefs. Organise mass rallies where people chant your slogans. Ensure that you bring musicians and singers. Remember: ideology plus bread and circuses.

4. Your role as commander­-in-chief of the armed forces is your most important job. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, said Mao. Organise military parades regularly and allow public holidays for the purpose. Attendance by civil servants should be compulsory. Make sure you wear a full dress uniform bedecked with medals. Boost military spending massively and display your latest tanks and missiles at the parades. Ensure your generals fear and respect you. Reward loyalty with extreme generosity and repay any sign of treachery with extreme violence.

5. Buy the business elite and bribe their foreign friends. Win over top business people with contracts and concessions as long as they pay off your family and allies. You need friends of convenience in the business world to create a class that has a vested interest in your regime. Offer them monopolies in key sectors and make them pay you a percentage of their earnings. Did you say Cosa Nostra? Big foreign companies are even easier. Promise them legal protection and discretion, and they will aid and abet any business malfeasance as long as its lucrative.

6. Get smart about information. Invest heavily in fake news and propaganda against your enemies, and ensure the national story is your story. The internet can be your friend if you are canny. Pay your supporters to defend you and trash your enemies online. Play down accusations of censorship and paternalism. Instead be selective and just block specific publications and programmes that could threaten you. Filter the internet and pay hackers to attack opposition websites. Bribe journalists. If they won’t accept, find friendly businesses to take over the media companies. And if you really have to, occasionally shut down the internet.

7. Co-option is better than repression. Most opponents have a price, so find out what it is and make them an offer. Pick off your opponents one by one. Send in your bad cops, then be the good cop with an offer of a job – maybe to set up a committee to consider the reforms they are demanding. Show them how much more comfortable life can be inside the tent. Your goal is to divide their organisations and attack their credibility. There is nothing more demoralising for an opposition movement than to see one of its key leaders consorting with the president-for-life.

8. Blame the outsiders. Unite your people against the hidden hand of the enemies who threaten your dear country. When the power goes off or the harvest fails, go on state television and announce a search for the foreign saboteurs. If problems continue, nationalise a few foreign companies or seize their assets and hand them to your local allies, all patriots to the core. Organise a few show trials of selected saboteurs. Step up immigration controls.

9. Lie about the economy. Make sweeping announcements of change and promise everyone a brighter future. In the short-term, explain that we will all have to make sacrifices for the common good. Baffle people with lies, damned lies and statistics. Commission state television documentaries on the phenomenal increase in farm and industrial production. Blame at least some of the shortages on the diversion of resources towards our redoubtable national defence industry. Accuse the whining complainants of lacking patriotism.

10. Incumbency and patience are everything. You have the power. Stay on the throne and wait out your opponents. With the accumulation of power over a long period comes a sense of inviolability. This disturbs those around you, especially the ones foolish enough to harbour thoughts of succeeding you. Once in a while, sit them down and explain the realities of power. You have seen off all the most determined opponents for the betterment of your country … and of course for the defeat of its sworn enemies.

Culled from The Africa Report

From 16 January to 7 February, Cameroon hosted the African Nations Championship. Some games were played in the town of Limbe in the South-West region, which is in the grip of an armed conflict between government forces and secessionist militias.

The absence of secessionist violence during the championship may have given the impression that the Anglophone crisis had been resolved – but that isn’t true.

After four years of conflict, the figures are telling: refugees rose from 20 485 in January 2018 to 63 235 in January 2021. In November 2020, the number of internally displaced people stood at 705 000 compared to 679 000 a year earlier. This is paradoxical as secessionist armed groups have struggled to exert military control over the North-West and South-West regions, even if their social hold is real.

Cameroon and neighbouring countries

Defense and security forces have managed to contain secessionist groups’ territorial footprint, particularly in urban centres. National forces are using people’s fear of the separatists’ criminal activities against these groups.

Despite these favourable developments, the growing number of refugees and displaced people indicates a volatile security situation in the regions. Moreover, Cameroon’s partners are increasing the pressure on the government to find a political solution. Local political actors and activists seeking to embarrass the government have echoed these calls.

Cameroon’s approach to the crisis has always encompassed both political and military dimensions.

At stake here is the quality of the political agreement on offer and the impact of solutions favoured by the Cameroonian government to date. Although the military has achieved results, abuses against alleged separatists by security forces have tarnished Cameroon’s reputation internationally. The government’s prioritisation of military responses has probably swollen the ranks of secessionists to the detriment of those actors advocating for a federal state as the solution.

Any political solution must prioritise the active minorities who are preventing the return of stability

Up to 2016, most English-speaking citizens favoured a Cameroonian nation, regardless of the political regime. Today it’s clear that prioritising military action won’t resuscitate the fragile sense of national belonging of many English-speaking Cameroonians. Instead, the military response has likely crystallised the ‘imagined English-speaking community,’ which will undermine any recent gains in the future.

Cameroon’s efforts at finding a political solution haven’t been fruitful. Separatist fever persists despite various efforts such as commissions to promote bilingualism and multiculturalism, disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration, the establishment of a special status for English-speaking regions, and sentencing separatist leaders.

Both the method and scope of these measures are to blame. Rather than holding talks with the insurgents, the government came up with the steps unilaterally. The national dialogue organised in October 2019 also suffered from a lack of prior consultation. Any political agreement will need the support of a majority of stakeholders to be sustainable.

A lasting solution to the Anglophone crisis requires a change in Cameroonian political practice, which is based on the myth that the government and civil service are infallibile. Government officials see themselves as above the people, who they consider as subjects to be ‘administered’ rather than citizens who can manage their own affairs.

Few secessions have resulted from military victories, but rather a shift in external political dynamics

In terms of scope, the political handling of the Anglophone crisis has mostly followed the ‘administrative’ path that characterises Yaoundé’s political culture. Indeed, the symbolic provisions of the English-speaking regions’ special status were considered inadequate because they benefited only the administrative elites concerned.

The conflict in the North-West and South-West isn’t driven by these elites but by poor and relatively educated young men. These youth are determined to fight with rudimentary weapons against well-armed and trained defense forces. They also clash with elites who they accuse of having little concern for their fate. Any viable political solution must prioritise these active minorities who prevent the return of stability in the former Southern Cameroons.

Military successes shouldn’t lead Cameroon into complacency. South Sudan’s experience indicates that few secessions in Africa have resulted from military victories but rather a shift in external political dynamics. Cameroon faces a situation in which military gains are nullified by mounting pressures for political negotiations from outside the country.

To date, Cameroon’s fight against separatist forces has benefited from the leniency and even cooperation of the Nigerian government leadership. There is no guarantee that this situation will endure, particularly as the new United States administration could take a tougher stance on human rights.

Recent military gains are likely to be nullified by external pressure for political negotiations

To revive national cohesion, Cameroon’s government needs a political solution that encourages active minorities to lay down their arms and turn away from secession. For this to happen, the administrative half-measures put in place must end, and the problem treated with more than lip-service and slogans. Rejecting a return to federalism in the name of territorial integrity is one such slogan often used by civil servants and government representatives.

More than ever, dialogue with all sectors of the English-speaking minority and even the option of federalism must be on the table. Cameroon must avoid sacrificing national cohesion for the obsession with formal territorial integrity. Instead, the country needs innovative ways to forge unity and celebrate its cultural diversity. Cameroonians themselves must reinvent this new form of living together.

Culled from IssAfrica.org