Neoliberal Bandwagonism. Civil society and the politics of belonging in Anglophone Cameroon: Civil society and the politics of belonging in Anglophone Cameroon

7. University of Buea students on strike

7 University of Buea students on strike Introduction Faced with a deepening crisis in their universities (see Chapter 6), African students have demonstrated a growing activism and militancy. They have been engaged in numerous, often violent, strikes for improvements in their living and study conditions and the introduction of a democratic culture in the universities and society as a whole, including the right to express their views, organise in student unions and participate in university management (cf. Amutabi 2002; Konings 2002a; Zeilig 2007). This chapter focuses on two recent violent student strikes at the University of Buea (UB) in the South West Province. This university, set up in 1993 in the wake of higher education reforms and based on the Anglo-Saxon educational system, is the country’s only English-speaking university. The presidential decree establishing the UB raised Anglophone hopes that their university was going to enjoy a large measure of academic freedom and autonomy and would be endowed with a democratic management style. However, it soon turned out that the UB was not going be any different from the other newly established universities that continued to be modelled on the Francophone university system with its excessive centralisation, authoritarian management style and political control (Jua & Nyamnjoh 2002; Awasom 2005). Given the fact that by the time the UB opened, the Anglophone region had become a hotbed of rebellion against the ruling regime (Takougang & Krieger 1998; Konings & Nyamnjoh 2003), the government was not keen to keep to the terms of the decree establishing the UB, preferring authoritarian to democratic governance so as to ensure political control and loyalty to the regime. UNIVERSITY OF BUEA STUDENTS ON STRIKE 109 Evidence is provided in this chapter that most of the UB students’ demands during the 2005 and 2006 strikes were similar to those of students in other Cameroonian and African universities, namely an improvement in their living and study conditions and the introduction of a democratic culture in the universities and society as a whole. What was peculiar to their strike actions however, and notably the 2006 strike, was their protest against the alleged marginalisation of Anglophones in general and Anglophone students in particular in the Francophone-dominated post-colonial state (Konings & Nyamnjoh 2003). As I have argued in Chapter 6, Anglophone university students have tended to be more militant than their Francophone counterparts since reunification in 1961, feeling more marginalised and oppressed because of their Anglophone identity. They have actually played a vanguard role in the Anglophone struggle for the preservation of the Anglo-Saxon educational system and the creation of an Englishlanguage university. They also became strong supporters of the Anglophone clamour for autonomy either in the form of a return to the federal state or outright secession. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first describes the creation of the UB and the development of its authoritarian management style. The second part discusses the two student strikes in 2005-2006. The study is based on extensive reading of primary and secondary sources, in particular reports of these strikes in Cameroonian newspapers, and a number of interviews with the main actors. Authoritarian governance of the University of Buea The University of Buea (UB) was born at a time of deepening economic and political crisis that affected the country as a whole and the system of higher education in particular from the mid-1980s onwards. Until 1993, there was only one university in Cameroon, the University of Yaoundé, which had been set up in 1962. Though officially a bilingual institution, the University of Yaoundé clearly remained a Francophone institute. Not only was it based on the French university system but courses were mainly given in French, thus putting English-speaking students at a disadvantage (Konings 2002a, 2005a; Awasom 2005). The administrative structure of the university was modelled on the French tradition with its excessive centralisation, and it became almost a replica of the one-party system initiated in 1966. The university’s administration appeared to be predominantly geared towards political control with, for example, national security agents, disguised as students, spying on both students and lecturers. There was no clear separation between politics and academics. All appointments at the university, from the rector to messengers and cleaners, were political appointments and for a university career, loyalty to the regime was more important than intellectual merit (Nyamnjoh 1999). The university was administered in an authoritarian manner with little 110...