Cameroon has been celebrating 52 years as unified nation with a military and civilian parade on National Unity Day in its capital Yaounde as well as other ten regions.
Unfortunately the country is now more disunited than ever:
Since 2016 thousands of people have been killed and over a million people displaced after a group of Anglophone Cameroonians began to fight Biya’s Francophone government for what has become known as the Anglophone crisis.
Despite the political, economic and social crisis wreaking havoc in the country some of those who watched the parade in Yaoundé sounded optimistic about their country’s future and welcomed the day.
“It is to remind that we are one people, it’s to remind that it’s together that we can build and develop, it’s to remind that it’s together that we can be happy, it’s together that we can live in peace,” said Therese Temgoua, a Francophone Cameroonian who is a bank executive.
“I think it’s a happy day, and what I’ve seen today shows that Cameroon’s democracy is actually in the right direction,” Enobi Akepe, an anglophone Cameroonian who is a university lecturer, said.
But one francophone journalist described the unity of the country as a “facade.”
“Today, Cameroonians agree that we are living in a certain facade of unity. First, because in the North-West and South-West, you know that there are secessionists movements and fighting. On the other hand, we see the rise of hatred in the country,” said Pierre Youte, a journalist and the director of Soleil d’Afrique newspaper.
University professor Messanga Nyamding condemns the exaggerated tribalism with a crushing dominance of the ruling tribe from the South and Center in all key positions in the country.
” There is no unity at all with the ongoing tribalism, hate and especially embezzlement of public funds by the ruling clique ” Professor Nyamding said in a TV debate over the weekend.
This rainy season Cameroon is also facing a cholera epidemic which has spread to all of its regions and is know to have infected around 20,000 people.
The figure is likely to be higher as only those infected people who manage to reach hospital are counted.
On the eve of National Unity Day, the authorities closed down some of Yaounde’s food markets to prevent the spread of the deadly bacterial disease.
Security in the nations capital was really tight indicative of fear of the unknown.
