By Dr. Peter N. Mbile
Part I: Roland Ndifor’s essay, and the Missing variable, – the CPDM Party-State*
Roland Ndifor’s essay, “ _Why Comparing Cameroon to Nepal, Tunisia, or the Arab Spring Is a Fatal Error_ ,” is a thoughtful, well-intentioned reflection on why popular uprisings have remained elusive in Cameroon.
His central thesis; that our society has been desensitized by war, fragmented by weak civil institutions, and preoccupied with survival, is both valid and circumstantially (even empirically) grounded.
Yet, his analysis overlooks the most powerful and enduring factor shaping Cameroon’s political destiny: the omnipresent influence of the CPDM Party-State.
For more than four decades, this party-state fusion has built a system of total institutional control, where access to public goods and personal advancement depends largely on belonging and loyalty.
It has blurred the boundaries between citizenship and patronage, politics and survival, state and party.
This structure does not merely suppress revolt; it absorbs it, transforming potential opposition into co-opted loyalty through jobs, contracts, appointments, and selective repression.
Unlike Tunisia or Egypt, where the state and military were distinct entities capable of shifting alliances, Cameroon’s power matrix is vertically integrated.
The ruling elite, the administrative hierarchy, the security apparatus, and even sections of the traditional chieftaincy are bound by one organizing logic: the continuity of the regime.
In such an ecosystem, revolution cannot find oxygen, not because the people are passive, but because the system has institutionalized their dependence.
_As an analyst, I must confess a personal bias: I do not desire a popular revolt in Cameroon. I believe it would not only fail but would deepen our existing fractures. The problem before us is not the absence of anger, but the absence of viable alternatives to channel it constructively._
*Part II: How the CPDM Party-State has mastered Cameroon’s socio-cultural complexity*
The survival of the CPDM Party-State is not accidental.
It is the product of a brilliantly adaptive strategy that exploits Cameroon’s immense socio-cultural diversity, its ethnic mosaics, linguistic duality, and regional identities, to maintain equilibrium through _calculated imbalance._
Out the System, Cameroon’s politics since independence has struggled with the weight of three demographic power centers: the Northwest, the West, and the Grand North.
Each of these has, at one point, attempted to leverage its numerical or historical weight to ascend to national leadership; _the majoritocratic impulse that confuses numbers with legitimacy._
My first instance (I come from Southern Cameroons) was the 1955–1965 KNDP era in the then Southern Cameroons, dominated by the Northwest. The bitter taste of that experience left then Victoria-Kumba-Mamfe Divisions (today’s Southwest) politically cautious, aligning its elite with the central regime for assurance, security more than political conviction.
The second wave came in 1992 with John Fru Ndi’s SDF-led challenge, a real first, genuine “ _popular uprising through the ballot box_ ” that was decisively neutralized by the ruling system.
The third came from the West Region, through Maurice Kamto’s 2018 campaign, once again absorbed and subdued.
The most recent, in 2025, has emerged from the Grand North, through Issa Tchiroma’s attempt to harness northern solidarity. That, too, has been largely contained, although it’s a developing story..
In each case, one man and one system; the CPDM Party-State, stood firm, skillfully dividing regions, neutralizing coalitions, and rewarding loyalty.
This ability to balance instability has become the defining genius of the regime.
The party-state draws strength not necessarily from the ballot box – in its Western Conception, but from its capacity to transform every ethnic and regional grievance into a manageable fragment of the whole; ensuring that no single bloc can challenge the center.
Even the electoral map tells this story.
In 2025, Tchiroma won significant ground in the West and the Grand North, but the CPDM retained the Centre, South, and East; predictable strongholds of state loyalty.
The Northwest, under the shadow of conflict, was conveniently neutralized, while the Southwest too was won; and Littoral, whose significant indigenous elites remain invested in regime stability, was won on paper by Tchiroma, bur in detail tilts sufficiently, and predictably toward continuity.
What emerges is a carefully balanced architecture of mutual suspicion and dependence; a political machine that knows exactly how to keep the peace by preventing consensus against it.
*Part III: The death of Majoritocracy and the search for a new architecture*
The lesson of 2025 must now be clear: the age of majoritocracy in Cameroon should be over – we have gone round and come full circle, empty handed.
The dream of changing regimes through either popular revolt or “popular uprisings via the ballot box” is now exhausted.
The country’s sociological diversity, while a source of richness, makes numerical democracy both divisive and destructive.
What we have witnessed across decades, from the KNDP years to the SDF, the MRC, and now the FSNC northern challenge, are successive waves of majoritarian frustration, each ending in predictable collapse.
If Cameroon is to survive as a nation, it must transcend the illusion that democracy is merely arithmetic, that numbers confer legitimacy.
We must accept that the “Cameroonian Spring” will never come, and that this is not necessarily a tragedy.
Revolutions born of numbers often replace one tyranny with another.
Our challenge, therefore, is to invent a Cameroonian political architecture; one that accommodates our multiple identities without reducing them to electoral headcounts.
The only sustainable path forward is a reasoned, effective, and intelligent Federal State, built on negotiated inclusion rather than numerical domination.
A federation that respects the authenticity of local indigenous communities, whether small, medium, or large; and gives each a just, dignified stake in governance.
This new architecture would transform diversity from a fault line into a foundation.
It would replace fear with responsibility, patronage with accountability, and the politics of survival with the politics of service.
It is neither utopian nor impossible.
It simply requires that we, as Cameroonians, bury the myth of majoritocracy once and for all.
The 2025 elections, what I call the “final ballot-box uprising”, should be the last experiment in the belief that numbers alone can heal a broken society.
The future must now be negotiated, calmly, intelligently, and inclusively, among all Cameroonians of good faith.
So, in conclusion, Roland Ndifor was right that Cameroon _will not witness a popular uprising._
But not because Cameroonians lack courage; rather because they have been contained within a political machine that has (mercifully) mastered their divisions.
The path forward is not through revolt, but through reconstruction; moral, civic, and institutional.
Chaotic revolutions can actually destroy; rebuilding redeems.
Cameroon does not need a Tunisia moment.
It needs a Cameroon moment, one that finally unites its peoples under a fair and federal order.