Cameroon’s cultural diversity should be a source of strength, creativity, and development. Under Biya, it has been turned into a weapon. And when diversity becomes a weapon, blood inevitably follows. History will not judge this kindly.
By Mubun James The Independentistnews contributor
A Crime That Demands More Than Tears
I condemn, without reservation, the recent massacre of women and children of Bororo extraction in Donga-Mantung. The killing of civilians — especially women and children — is a crime that should revolt every conscience. But condemning the violence alone is not enough. We must also condemn the political system that produced it.
What happened in Donga-Mantung is not an isolated tragedy. It is the direct result of a long-standing strategy by the Biya regime: the deliberate balkanisation of Cameroon’s cultural and tribal diversity for the sole purpose of staying in power indefinitely.
How Tribal Division Became a Weapon
This method is not new. Those of us who passed through the University of Yaoundé at Ngoa-Ekelle during the height of the struggle for democracy remember it well. The regime did not confront students with ideas. It armed and encouraged student groups from particular ethnic backgrounds to attack and intimidate their peers. Instead of allowing universal values — freedom, justice, and equality — to bind young Cameroonians together, the regime reduced everything to tribal identity. It was an early experiment in what has now become Biya’s core doctrine of rule.
We later saw the same method deployed in national politics. John Fru Ndi and the Social Democratic Front were branded “Biafrans,” “Anglos,” and told to “go back home.” Maurice Kamto and the MRC were reduced to “les Bamiléké” and excluded from political participation. Political competition was no longer about programs or ideas; it became an exercise in ethnic tagging and collective punishment.
A Colonial Logic Wearing African Clothes
This is the logic of colonial rule, not republican governance. The French colonial administration ruled Cameroon through fear, division, and ethnic manipulation. Bamiléké and Bassa communities were massacred in their thousands during the pre- and post-independence wars. One might have expected that, after the departure of colonial rulers, a Cameroonian government would reject these barbaric methods. Instead, the Biya regime perfected them.
Turning Communities Into Instruments of War
Nowhere is this clearer than in the war in Southern Cameroons. Rather than addressing legitimate political grievances, the regime outsourced violence to selected cultural and tribal groups, arming and encouraging them to confront Ambazonian militias and communities. These groups, often untrained and operating with either the complicity or indifference of administrators, have been turned into instruments of chaos. The Ngarbuh massacre and the killings that occurred this week are not accidents. They are the foreseeable consequences of a policy that pits communities against one another.
Arming tribes. Turning neighbours into enemies. Reducing citizens to ethnic labels. This is the surest recipe for the disintegration of any nation. Yet the Biya regime persists with it, because for Biya, only one thing matters: staying in power for life.
When the State Becomes an Ethnic Engineer
In any genuine republic, the Ministry of Territorial Administration should be one of the pillars of national cohesion — protecting communities, managing diversity, and preventing conflict. In Cameroon, MINAT has been transformed into something else entirely: a ministry of opposition repression, election rigging, and ethnic engineering in service of Biya’s personal rule. Its traditional role has been sacrificed on the altar of regime survival. The tragedies of Ngarbuh, Nkambe, and now Donga-Mantung are the human cost of this policy.
The Price of Weaponised Identity
Cameroon’s cultural diversity should be a source of strength, creativity, and development. Under Biya, it has been turned into a weapon. And when diversity becomes a weapon, blood inevitably follows. History will not judge this kindly.
Mubun James
