Cameroon’s Civil Strife a Reflection of Africa’s Diplomatic Complacency, says Thabo Mbeki

By Boris Esono Nwenfor

BUEA, Cameroon – Thabo Mbeki, former South African President, has criticized both Cameroonian President Paul Biya and the African Union (AU) for their failure to meaningfully address the long-running Anglophone crisis, calling the situation “a kind of civil war” that has been neglected for too long.

Speaking candidly during a recent discussion, Thabo Mbeki, who served as the 2nd democratic president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, said efforts by the African Forum, a platform of former African heads of state, to mediate the conflict have made little progress due to Biya’s apparent reluctance to engage.

“We’ve been trying to talk to President Biya about this thing, to say as the African Forum, we are ready to assist you, to work with you to solve this conflict,” Thabo Mbeki said in the widely circulated interview. “And we haven't gone very far because he's not, he's not been very keen to be assisted to address these challenges.”

Mbeki expressed frustration over what he sees as superficial diplomacy that values pageantry over concrete results. He recounted a revealing anecdote in which an AU commissioner, sent to Cameroon to discuss the conflict, was welcomed with lavish protocol – including a red carpet reception in Yaoundé.

According to Mbeki, one of the commissioners admitted that the grandeur of the welcome signalled the failure of the mission. “When I saw my colleague walking down that red carpet, I knew the mission had failed,” she reportedly told Mbeki.

“The way they arranged that reception was to drive the notion into the head of my colleague that you are a very important person. So you are received with great grandeur. So in the end, it's the visit itself which becomes the objective, not the outcome. So I knew that my colleague would be so happy that he was received so well and the red carpet and the champagne, the mission would die.”

The 82-year-old Mbeki pointed to this incident as emblematic of a deeper malaise within African institutions, a loss of purpose and urgency in dealing with serious internal crises. “It's a crude reflection of the death of the Pan-Africanist objective,” Thabo Mbeki lamented. “It means there's something that has disappeared in terms of our consciousness and so on.”

The Anglophone crisis, which began in 2016 as a peaceful protest by English-speaking lawyers and teachers against perceived marginalization, has since devolved into a deadly armed conflict. Thousands have been killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced. Despite widespread international concern, mediation efforts have stalled.

Mbeki’s remarks add to growing frustration among observers who believe regional bodies like the AU have not lived up to their responsibilities in facilitating peace in Cameroon. With violence continuing in the North West and South West Regions, Mbeki’s words serve as both a warning and a wake-up call for African leadership to put more effort into bringing an end to the violence.

“You can't sit there as a full-time functionary of the African Union and you go there to solve a very serious conflict among the Cameroonian people, but you don't carry it out because all that happened that satisfies you is that I was given all the necessary protocol,” Mbeki said.