University Crisis and Student Protests in Africa: The 2005 -2006 University Students� Strike in Cameroon

Chapter 1 - Irrepressible Dissent: The University as the Bedrock for Political Transformation in Cameroon

1 Chapter 1 Irrepressible Dissent: The University as the Bedrock for Political Transformation in Cameroon Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the continental and national contexts of the crisis of higher education in Cameroonian State Universities, highlighting some of the critical factors that have served as impetus to student strikes. It is somewhat surprising that there are still relatively few detailed studies on the role of students during economic and political liberalisation on the continent. The first section of this chapter clearly demonstrates the radicalising role of students during this era, manifest in their various protest actions against their deteriorating living and working conditions in higher education and against the authoritarian regimes in the universities and state. It focuses in particular on the University of Buea, Cameroon’s only Englishspeaking university, where a striking number of students’ strikes have taken place since its establishment in 1993. The second section explores a number of factors that have been almost completely ignored in the existing studies on student actions in Africa, including the increasing use of cell phones, the differences in gender roles, the religious dimensions of students’ strikes and the importance of public spaces like bars and cafés for the planning and implantation of strike actions. It will be shown that these factors have actually played a significant role in student strikes in Cameroon The third section provides a brief presentation of the research methodology as well as of the overall content and structure of the book. African Universities at the Dawn of a new millennium African universities are in deep crisis (see Lebeau & Ogunsanya 2000; Nyamnjoh & Jua 2002; Zeilig 2007). Academic standards have been falling rapidly because these universities lack the basic infrastructure needed to cope with the massive growth in the student population (Lebeau 1997; Konings 2002). The severe economic crisis and the implementation of structural 2 adjustment programmes (SAPs) are further aggravating the situation. The increasing withdrawal of state support for universities, university students and graduates can be seen in the drastic cuts in university budgets, the imposition of tuition fees and additional levies on the student population, and a virtual halt in the recruitment of new graduates in already over-sized state bureaucracies (Caffentzis 2000). Many graduates are finding themselves obliged to defer their entry into adulthood indefinitely as they are unable to achieve economic independence, marry and start a family of their own. They are also being forced to abandon their aspirations for elite status. And, last but not least, despite the current political liberalisation process, most African universities are continuing to operate under authoritarian management structures and political control that pose a severe threat to academic freedom and autonomy and impede lecturers and students from organising in defence of their interests and participating in university management. Faced with this deepening crisis in their universities, students have started fighting 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 (Amutabi 2002; Konings 2002). While in the past, with a few exceptions, African student protest was sporadic, today it has become endemic in many countries, continuing year after year in spite of frequent university closures in what appears to have become protracted warfare. Federici and Caffentzis (2000: 115-50) have published a chronology of African university student struggles between 1985 and 1998 and this provides an impressive list of the violent confrontations between students and the forces of law and order in African states. As a result of increasing student activism, African governments have become inclined to treat students as if they were their countries’ major enemies, turning campuses into war zones. Police intervention and the occupation of campuses by the security forces are now routine in many places and so is the presence of intelligence officers and police informants in class rooms (Federici 2000). This book relates the spread in 1995 of a students’ strike from the University of Yaoundé to the other state universities. However, it also focuses on the students’ strike in the University of Buea (UB) in the South West Region of Anglophone Cameroon, which turned out to be particularly dramatic, resulting in the death of a few students and several injured. The UB 3 set up in 1993 in the wake of higher education reforms and based on the Anglo...