By Franck Essi

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Cameroon gives the impression of a country that is still functioning but increasingly running on empty. Government offices are open, but they do not resolve issues. Public services exist, but they disappoint. Professional associations are mobilizing, but they are struggling to maintain lasting internal order. As for the citizens, they oscillate between lucidity and resignation, anger and fatalism.

Structural reasons are readily invoked: colonial heritage, excessive centralization, rentier economy, lack of political change. These explanations are real, but they are not sufficient.

For at the root of our problems lies a more disturbing truth: Cameroon is above all undergoing a moral crisis, a crisis of meaning, a crisis of responsibility. Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, in La Crise du Muntu, already described this internal decay in which individuals withdraw from themselves, where values cease to be living forces and become empty words. [1]

The philosopher Hubert Mono Ndjana summed up what we are experiencing today in a single sentence:

‘In Cameroon, we have discarded the norm and normalised the deviation.’

The sentence is terrible because it is accurate. Transgression is no longer the exception that shocks: it has become the ordinary way of running the country.

To understand this is to understand that the reconstruction of Cameroon cannot be solely institutional or economic. It must be – first and foremost – moral and ethical.

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When morale cracks, everything else collapses

For several decades, Cameroon has become accustomed to a way of functioning where:

• Personal loyalty takes precedence over competence;
• Administrative survival is more important than service rendered;
• ‘Social peace’ is confused with silence in the face of abuses;
• Cunning is better rewarded than integrity.

This system produces reflexes that become cultural:

• Files buried in offices for lack of ‘appropriate follow-up’;
• Public contracts awarded on the basis of affinity or membership;
• Arbitrariness in certain police stations or gendarmerie brigades;
• Public hospitals partially privatised by informal practices;
• Professional bodies undermined by power struggles, careerism and fear of sanctioning their members.

In this context, expressions such as ‘What are we going to do?’ ‘Cameroon is Cameroon’ or ‘What’s in it for me?’ are not mere verbal tics: they express a philosophy. They instil in people’s minds the idea that effort is futile, that rules are optional, that integrity is naive.

Achille Mbembe has shown this to be true of post-colonial regimes: when a society ceases to think of itself as responsible for its own destiny, the political arena becomes a stage for survival, cunning and spectacle, rather than a place for collective projects. We are now at this point.

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World history shows that nations rebuild themselves first and foremost morally

The central idea is simple: before infrastructure, institutions or the economy can recover, it is people’s consciences that must be restored. Three examples illustrate this forcefully: Japan, Germany and Rwanda.

1. Japan: rebuilding honesty before rebuilding roads

In 1945, Japan was a destroyed country: cities razed to the ground, economy in ruins, institutions discredited, immense national trauma. Yet in less than thirty years, it became one of the world’s leading economic powers.

In Embracing Defeat, historian John W. Dower shows that the priority of the post-war Japanese elite was not only material. It was moral.[3]

• In schools, the focus was on self-discipline, respect for rules, a sense of duty and community. Pupils cleaned their classrooms themselves and learned punctuality, cooperation and responsibility.
• In companies, a culture of loyalty, collective effort and impeccable quality developed. The idea is not just to produce, but to produce well, with honour.
• In the state, an anti-corruption policy is gradually being implemented; the public shame associated with scandal acts as a powerful deterrent.

This ‘moral infrastructure’ generates social trust, which makes economic take-off possible. Roads, factories and ports come later. What comes first is the collective decision to make rules and a job well done the pillars of national dignity.

2. Germany: responsibility as the foundation of renewal

In 1945, Germany was a field of ruins, morally even more so than materially. Yet within two decades, the Federal Republic became a driving force in Europe.

The key, as shown by the work of Ian Buruma (The Wages of Guilt) and Konrad Jarausch (After Hitler: Recivilising Germans, 1945-1995), was what was called Vergangenheitsbewältigung – ‘coming to terms with the past’.

In very concrete terms:

• The judicial system was reorganised to break with totalitarian logic;
• Part of the administration was purged (albeit imperfectly);
• The school system was rebuilt around rigorous civic education: human rights, individual responsibility, criticism of authority;
• The question of guilt and participation in the Nazi regime was debated publicly.

This is not a matter of abstract morality: it is a matter of recognising that a strong nation cannot be rebuilt on a lie. Truth becomes a political act. Responsibility becomes a collective learning process. This moral foundation largely explains Germany’s democratic stability.

3. Rwanda: civic discipline, memory and integrity as a national project

In 1994, Rwanda was devastated by a genocide of unprecedented scale. Many analysts predicted a failed state, or even the disappearance of the country as a viable entity. Yet in less than thirty years, Rwanda has recovered at a pace that many thought impossible.

Research by Phil Clark on the gacaca courts and by Timothy Longman on post-genocide justice and reconciliation reveals three essential pillars of Rwanda’s moral recovery:[6] [7]

• A zero-tolerance policy towards corruption: reformed administrations, swift sanctions, strict control of civil servants, including high-ranking officials. Integrity becomes a criterion for the credibility of the state.
• Compulsory remembrance work: school visits to memorials, integration of the history of the genocide into school curricula, national commemorations. Memory is not left to historians: it becomes a civic education.
• Organized civic discipline: Umuganda – a monthly community work day – is not just about cleaning up neighbourhoods; it is a regular practice of shared responsibility.

The Rwandan model is far from perfect, and its authoritarian aspects must be questioned. But it shows one thing: a state can decide to make public morality a pillar of its reconstruction and achieve tangible results in terms of order, trust and efficiency.

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Cameroon: a slow erosion of meaning, but real moral resources

Cameroon has not experienced a cataclysmic rupture comparable to those in Japan, Germany or Rwanda. We are experiencing something else: a slow erosion of meaning, a gradual deterioration of standards, an accumulation of small acts of cowardice and major renunciations.

Yet our history offers considerable ethical resources.

1. Pre-colonial societies with robust moral mechanisms

In many pre-colonial societies, traditional authorities combined spiritual and temporal power, but within a framework of collective responsibility: a promise made was binding on the dignity of the clan; public shame punished deviant behaviour; customary reparation and mediation played a central role. [8]

These systems were not idyllic, but they showed that social rules were experienced as a shared obligation, not simply as an external constraint.

2. Nationalist struggles: discipline, sacrifice, consistency

The liberation movements of the 1940s and 1950s, in Cameroon as elsewhere, embodied an ethos of discipline, a sense of sacrifice, and consistency between discourse and personal life. Consider the UPC militants who refused to compromise, or the resistance networks that organised the struggle under extremely difficult conditions: morality was not an afterthought, but a driving force.

3. The first generations of civil servants

There is abundant evidence from the 1960s and 1980s: teachers, magistrates, nurses and engineers performed their duties with a high regard for public service. People could be proud to be ‘civil servants’ because it meant something in terms of honour and rigour.

The problem today is not the absence of values.

It is their gradual abandonment, then their relegation to the status of mere decoration.

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Why the crisis is moral and structural – and why we must start with morale

To say that the crisis is moral does not mean that everything is a matter of individual ‘soul’. As Achille Mbembe and Marcien Towa have shown, political systems produce the behaviours they encourage; but, in turn, behaviours end up reinforcing the systems.[2][9]

In other words:

• A state that does not punish impunity breeds irresponsibility;
• Citizens who renounce all moral standards reinforce an unscrupulous state.

The heart of the matter is therefore not: ‘let’s change hearts and minds, and everything will be better’.

It is: ‘without moral rearmament, no institutional reform will last’.

This is what Japan, Germany and Rwanda show: laws have mattered, but it is the transformation of behaviours, reference points and imaginaries that has brought stability.

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What does ‘rearming the conscience’ mean in Cameroon – and where to start?

Moral rearmament is not a sermon. It is a political project. In Cameroon, it can be articulated around three levels: individual, community and institutional.

1. Individual level: moving beyond ‘how are we going to do it?’

Simple but decisive questions:

• Do I refuse, in concrete terms, to pay or receive a bribe?
• Do I keep my word, even when it no longer suits me?
• Do I work seriously, even when no one is watching?
• Do I protect the truth, or do I twist it to protect myself?

Where to start?

• With personal integrity (not lying ‘by reflex’).
• With conscious refusals (saying no to illegal arrangements, even ‘small’ ones).
• With positive actions: helping a colleague to do the right thing, protecting someone who is more vulnerable.

These are tiny acts, but they crack the system from within.

2. Community level: families, associations, parties, churches

Communities are powerful places for moral socialisation.

Where to start?

• In families: stop glorifying ‘success by any means’, value integrity, tell stories of courage rather than exploits of cheating.
• In associations and political parties: adopt genuine ethical charters, limit the accumulation of functions, publish accounts, organise regular public reviews.
• In churches and mosques: demand consistency between discourse and practice, denounce internal abuses (financial abuse, spiritual manipulation), promote justice, not just individual prosperity.

3. Institutional level: State, schools, justice system, professional bodies

This is where learning from foreign examples is most useful.

a) Schools: ‘character builders’

Like in Japan or Germany, Cameroonian schools must once again become places where consciences are formed, not just candidates for competitive exams.

Where to start?

• Reintroduce real civic education, based on practical cases, debates and collective projects.
• Take firm action against bribery and organised cheating.
• Establish forms of school community service to create a reflex to contribute.

b) Justice: making the norm credible

Without justice worthy of the name, the rule remains theoretical.

Where to start?

• Ensure that decisions are made public, judgments are accessible, and procedures are transparent.
• Protect magistrates who do their work independently.
• Make major corruption cases exemplary, with clear penalties that are understood by all.

c) The civil service: restoring order to the state

As in Rwanda with zero tolerance, a clear signal must be sent.

Where to start?

• Enforce existing laws on attendance, meeting deadlines, and disciplinary sanctions.
• Set up a few ‘test cases’: a ministerial department, a region, a hospital, a pilot municipality where the rules are actually enforced and the results measured.
• Involve citizens in monitoring: notice boards displaying deadlines, accessible complaint mechanisms, public audits.

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Clear-sighted minorities: the real drivers of change

In all historical examples, it is not massive majorities that initiate moral breakthroughs, but clear-sighted minorities:

• Teachers who refuse to sell marks;
• Doctors who treat patients according to ethics, not according to envelopes;
• Judges who apply the law, even in sensitive cases;
• Journalists who investigate seriously;
• Activists who refuse ‘intelligent compromises’.

In Cameroon, these minorities exist. They are sometimes isolated, discouraged, invisible. Yet they are the moral reserves of the country.

Protecting them, connecting them, and bringing them to light is already a start towards recovery.

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My firm conviction: a country is never worth more than its moral choices

Cameroon will never be more advanced than the Cameroonians who live there, especially those in positions of responsibility. No reform, no election, no new constitution will have lasting effects in a country where:

• Effort is systematically circumvented;
• Truth is feared;
• Integrity is mocked;
• Responsibility is avoided.

Moral rearmament is not an extra soul.

It is the very condition of our collective rebirth.

Japan did it.

Germany did it.

Rwanda, in its own way, did it.

Cameroon can do it.

Provided that it first agrees to face its truth:

we have discarded the norm,

we have normalised the deviation.

It is time to reverse this logic.

To make the rule no longer an obstacle, but a protection.

To make conscience no longer a handicap, but a strength.

This is the most difficult task.

But it is the only one that opens up a future.

#WhatIbelieve

#IdeasMatter

#WeHaveChoices

#WeHavePower

#Let’sTurnOnOurBrains

References:

[1] Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, La Crise du Muntu, Présence Africaine, 1977.

[2] Achille Mbembe, De la postcolonie. Essai sur l’imagination politique dans l’Afrique contemporaine, Karthala, 2000.

[3] John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, W.W. Norton/New Press, 1999.

[4] Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan, Vintage, 1994.

[5] Konrad H. Jarausch, After Hitler: Recivilising Germans, 1945–1995, Oxford University Press, 2006.

[6] Phil Clark, The Gacaca Courts, Post-Genocide Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

[7] Timothy Longman, Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda, Cambridge University Press, 2017.

[8] See, for example: ‘Traditional Authorities and Decentralisation in Cameroon’, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, vol. 5, no. 12, 2021.

[9] Marcien Towa, Essay on the Philosophical Problem in Contemporary Africa, Éditions Clé, 1971.