Africa’s oldest president, campaigns for another term in Cameroon

ON THE campaign trail Paul Biya’s motto is “La Force de l’Expérience”. It is a slogan that few would dispute. Since Robert Mugabe was tossed off Zimbabwe’s throne last year, the 85-year-old Mr Biya, Cameroon’s president since 1982, has been Africa’s oldest head of state.

Still, as he tours his country ahead of presidential elections on October 7th, two corners of Cameroon are unlikely to hear his pitch in person. In the English-speaking south-west and north-west regions, where separatists are waging an insurgency, the violence is so intense that it would not be safe for Mr Biya to visit.

Militias there have threatened to attack the president. They have also told fellow Anglophones to boycott the election. Armed mainly with home-made rifles, cutlasses and juju (black magic) charms, the guerrillas have limited power to carry out their threats. Yet much of the population already backs the boycott. Come election day, it may be a brave person who ventures out of his house at all. Thousands of people have already fled the two regions ahead of the poll.

This will probably be Mr Biya’s last election—he will be 92 if he stands for another seven-year term. Critics say that the blame for the violence surrounding the poll rests largely with the president, an aloof leader with scant regard for human rights or Anglophones. For decades English-speakers have complained of government neglect of their regions. When they protested two years ago over plans to increase the number of French-speaking judges in their British-styled courts, Mr Biya responded with bullets and tear gas.

Today, a smouldering civil war afflicts much of English-speaking Cameroon, with tit-for-tat atrocities by security forces and separatists. Some 160,000 people have been displaced and 600 killed, 160 of them members of the security forces. Reports from Bamenda, the north-western capital, say the hospital morgue is now filled to capacity with unidentified corpses. Last week separatists staged a mass jail break, freeing more than 100 prisoners.

Amid mounting pressure from Britain, France and America, Mr Biya has responded with some belated concessions, including a cabinet reshuffle to increase the number of English-speakers, and creating a clunkily titled National Commission for Bilingualism and Multiculturalism. But diplomats worry that the president and his ageing inner circle have yet to grasp the scale of revolt. In February Mr Biya said the crisis was “stabilising”.

That was not the view of Cameroonians in the city of Calabar on the Nigerian side of the border, where 25,000 are refugees. Ulrika Naseri, who had just arrived after a two-day trek through the forest with her children, said soldiers had rampaged in her village, killing her neighbour. “It is too late for dialogue now,” says a former fighter with one of the separatist militias. “Too many lives have been taken.”

Yet it is hard to see the separatists getting their own state. Regional and Western governments are wary of backing them, mindful of how newly minted South Sudan has collapsed into civil war.

The crisis could still be defused if Mr Biya made the right moves, including, perhaps, devolving more power to the restive regions. Once he is re-elected—which seems likely, since the vote is sure to be rigged—he may feel free to make magnanimous gestures. But that would mean swallowing his pride. Doing so would not be easy for a president who has adopted the nickname “lion man” to symbolise his tenacity and ruthlessness.