Cameroon’s bicultural conundrum : the anglophone ‘special status’ oxymoron

Abstract

The ongoing crisis in Cameroon offers a painful example of the consequences of mismanaging bicultural diversity through poor constitutional design. The 1961 Federal Constitution that paved the way for the union of the minority anglophones and majority francophones was dismantled and replaced with a highly centralised unitary system in which the distinctive features of the anglophone communities’ cultural and institutional identity were progressively removed under the pretext of national unity. Anglophone protests over the years against discrimination were ignored until this degenerated into a civil war that started in 2016. In 2019, the government finally yielded to internal and external pressure and enacted a General Code which purports to give a special status to the two restive anglophone regions. This paper seeks to assess whether this Code responds to the opportunities and challenges posed by Cameroon’s bicultural diversity conundrum in a manner that promotes democracy, social justice, sustainable peace, and stability. The analysis is situated within the context of the theoretical debates between integrationist and accommodationist approaches to managing cultural pluralism. The paper argues that only a profound constitutional change can pave the way for sustainable peace and stability. This Cameroonian experiment offers lessons to many countries today grappling with similar challenges.