Dr Peter Mbile
On September 8, 2025, I published an article on the “Return to School” across Cameroon.
A reader from Limbe (the former Victoria) wrote back, proudly pointing out that for him, and for many in the Southwest and Northwest Regions, “Going Back to School” on a Monday did not apply. For them, Mondays are “Ghost Towns.” He went further to accuse me of living in “denial” about this reality.
I found his accusation curious. For no one who lives, works, or travels regularly to the Northwest and Southwest can be oblivious to Ghost Towns, which paralyze daily life every Monday in these two regions. What became clear in our exchange, however, is that Ghost Towns are increasingly justified and explained through the cultural lens of Kontri Sunday.
The roots of kontri sunday
“Kontri Sunday” (Pidgin for “Country Sunday”) is a traditional institution of the Cameroon Grassfields. It originated as the obligatory rest day within the traditional eight-day week, a calendar system that structured farming, rituals, and market rotations across villages and chiefdoms (The Art of the Bambui Kingdom; Racaud 2014). On this day, farming, drumming, and most forms of public labor were prohibited, creating a sabbath-like pause in rural society (Kedjom Keku calendar study).
Beyond rest, Kontri Sunday carried ritual significance. It was the day reserved for ancestral rites and the ceremonies of regulatory institutions such as the kwifon, ensuring they did not clash with market or farm work (Kedjom Keku calendar study).
In some areas, a smaller form, “small Kontri Sunday”, was observed for household upkeep and obligations (Ngwaelung 2020). It also became the preferred day for death celebrations and other large community events, when participation was assured (Jindra 2005).
The essence of Kontri Sunday, therefore, was not idleness, but a cultural rhythm balancing economy, spirituality, and community.
Though the colonial seven-day week later overlaid this order, Kontri Sunday has endured as a cultural marker, remembered and invoked across Anglophone Cameroon (The Art of the Bambui Kingdom; Racaud 2014).
From tradition to protest: The rise of ghost towns
In today’s Northwest and Southwest, the old Kontri Sunday has been re-appropriated as the modern phenomenon of Ghost Towns.
Since 2016–2017, and especially after the lawyers’ and teachers’ strikes of 2018, Mondays have been declared “stay-at-home” protest days by separatist movements. Streets are emptied, businesses shut, taxis grounded. The silence of towns and villages has become a weekly spectacle circulated on social media as proof of “control” over the regions.
Like strikes elsewhere, Ghost Towns are meant as instruments of resistance when ordinary governance mechanisms appear broken.
They represent the weaker or aggrieved party resorting to disruptive tactics to draw attention to grievances.
Yet in practice, Ghost Towns have gone beyond voluntary protest. They have become imposed through fear and violence. Those who defy them, taxi drivers, traders, parents, risk attack, arson, or even death.
Denial, imposition, and the question of control
My Limbe interlocutor insisted I was in denial of Ghost Towns. On the contrary, I am fully aware they exist and are real. What I deny is their legitimacy as an authentic, voluntary form of protest.
They are not observed from the hearts and minds of millions of Anglophones. They are imposed, enforced undemocratically by threats and violence.
This is why I argue that Ghost Towns are not only an adulterated version of Kontri Sunday but also a political weapon, a performance of who controls the Northwest and Southwest. Separatist leaders celebrate images of empty streets, while government officials appear on television to showcase children going to school.
In truth, each side uses Ghost Towns as propaganda to project power, one to some in Yaoundé’s masters, the other to its online supporters.
The cost of ghost towns
The tragedy is that Ghost Towns punish not the state but ordinary Anglophones.
They devastate local economies, cripple daily livelihoods, and rob children of their right to education.
Meanwhile, the “System” in Yaoundé remains largely indifferent, as shown by its neglect of infrastructure and livelihoods across the country.
Ghost Towns thus become a form of self-inflicted suffering, where communities starve themselves in the name of resisting a system that scarcely notices their pain.
The larger question
So I ask: if Ambazonians were ever to take power, what kind of society would they build? Would dissent be tolerated, or would citizens be compelled into silence and compliance, just as they are today?
If Ghost Towns are celebrated as “resistance,” are Anglophones not punishing themselves, ruining their own economy, and mortgaging their children’s future for a cause that remains undefined?
The question my Limbe friend must answer is not whether Ghost Towns exist.
They do.
The question is: resistance to what, to whom, and why, at what cost to ourselves?
In conclusion, Kontri Sunday was once a cultural institution of rest, ritual, and communal solidarity in the Grassfields. Ghost Towns, its modern echo, have become a symbol of division, fear, and imposed suffering. It is time we confront this distortion honestly. Protest must give voice to the people, not silence them in their own homes.
