November 21: Seven years after Anglophone teachers’ strike
Though leaders of trade unions met in 2020 and decided to end every form of school boycott, Teachers’ Trade Unions Count Losses, Demand For Peaceful Resolution Of Armed Conflict – Cameroon News Agenc, the peaceful resolution of the armed conflict in the Anglophone regions is still far fetched.
Seven years after Anglophone teachers called for a sit-at-home strike that turned bloody, schools have gradually resumed in the North West and South West regions, but things have never been the same again.
Several persons have either been killed, are refugees in Nigeria, or have moved to safer regions like the Littoral, West, and Centre regions.
Today marks exactly Seven years since the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union, CATTU joined forces with Denominational trade unions to demand better working conditions and respect for the Anglosaxon culture and educational system among other demands.
These demands have never been respected nor given consideration as the government retorted to recruiting 1000 bilingual science teachers instead of allowing English speakers to teach English and French speakers to teach French.
In its efforts to harmonize the educational sector, the government stepped on its toes by forcing teachers from both systems to teach in the opposite language.
To date, in 2023, Cameroon News Agency got a message from a teacher who said he was forced to teach the French language in a school but he had never studied in French to become a teacher.
“When I took service I realized my school was purely French and was told to teach my subject in French and I refused. I have never done the Franco system of education before. We keep fighting for a proper educational system but those in the hierarchy keep destroying it. I don’t know if the minister is aware but I am begging her to take charge. I have written so many letters to the ministry but nothing. I even wrote in one my letters that I am taking payments without working.”
Anonyous ENSET graduate , 2023
The government has failed to listen to the voice of reason, all because of harmonizing the educational sector. A bilingual country like Cameroon should not force her teachers to teach in a language that they do not master, this can only produce uneducated future leaders.
While the teachers’ strike was overtaken by wild demonstrations in Bamenda on November 21, 2016, and with a massive government crackdown, separatists’ agenda grew from civil disobedience to the demand for an outright independence of the Anglophone regions- a full-blown armed conflict that has refused to end, Seven years later.
Despite the holding of a major national dialogue in 2019, Major National Dialogue: PM Dion Ngute Says Separation Is Not Possible – Cameroon News Agency peace seems to be far-fetched.
