Must Change Occur with Violence?
The writer argues against the prevalent narrative that systemic change requires violence, contending instead that history's greatest transformations—the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution—occurred through shifts in thought and capability. Drawing on the Cameroonian context of recent political turmoil, the piece proposes that meaningful change begins at the individual level, through skill-building and the stories we tell ourselves, rather than through confrontation.
One of the major epidemics we face in the world today is that of what I would term ‘blanket conceptions.’ We are so caught up in the keep it short mentality that we live our lives off quotes that were spoken in a certain context which we make no effort to understand. We all know the saying “If you want to have something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.” People take that quote and run with it like it’s gospel and in very rare cases would you see someone who stops to think, maybe, just maybe, if you want something you have never had, you have to STOP DOING SOMETHING YOU HAVE ALWAYS DONE.
We all know the running theory that any mass change must occur with violence but when you think back, you realize the greatest changes that occurred in the history of mankind did not come with any violence. One of the most obvious mass changes that occurred in the history of mankind was the renaissance of the 14th and 15th centuries and that tremendous-sweeping change in the way people thought occured without a spec of violence. Without the renaissance, there’ll be no scientific revolution and we would still depend on prophets for everything we know.
Think of the industrial revolution. It occurred without any violence and without the need for any government sponsorship. It happened because we found out we can make changes in objects and create better things and a better quality of life for ourselves. It did not happen because there was a war ahead we had to prepare for.
I always talk of the importance of the stories we tell ourselves and how they tend to shape our future actions. We have carried the narrative of ‘we have to fight for change to occur’ for so long that we now believe it to the point where even when we don’t have to fight, we go ahead and create a war, or create an opponent to fight so that we can satisfy our misconceptions- our intense desire to have been right. That is why we hold on to this belief that for a systematic change to occur in countries where one group is marginalized or oppressed, there must be violence. We say that confidently and quote America, South Africa, and recently Rwanda. Up till about a week ago, I probably held the same sentiment but after analyzing the last 10 months of events in Cameroon and adopting a different lens, I want to believe there is another way.
I always say the statement “C’est le Cameroun.” is the primary reason why we have not been able to see significant change around us. We keep a narrative that encourages us to continue to do the wrong things. We have fallen in love with our predicaments so much so that we do not feel we can have an identity as Cameroonians if Cameroon is not in the state that it is today.
We have come to believe so much in commanding change over seeking consensus and that is the problem with humans. We discover great things because there are no rules and once we discover those things, we then create rules around discovering other things similar.
In the wake of all the recent political and socioeconomic malaise in Cameroon over the anglophone problem, I believe we need another renaissance in thinking; not only for Cameroon but for the world in general. Maybe we should stop thinking the problem is in the government or its leadership because on a micro level, I know people in Bamenda who under no command or duress from anybody do things that are detrimental to their communities.
It starts with you and what you tell the five people around you. Let’s face it, the government will never do anything for us and we have to stop asking. We have to take matters in our own hands, at our level-with what we can control. We have closed down the schools, and no one is happier than I am because I have strong doubts that traditional schooling is capable of preparing us for the future we are about to face. With the schools closed, are we pushing those kids to go out and learn a skill or are we waiting for schools to resume without any fulfillment to our demands?
You know how we win the fight? By getting skilled. We cannot get office jobs because we are anglophones? Ok good. We’ll become the best carpenters, the best masons, the best painters, the best computer programmers, the best music producers. I am talking about concrete skills that will eventually give us the power we need.
I do not know of a francophone that will refuse to buy a piece of good furniture and prefer to buy some ugly thing because it was done by a francophone or one that will refuse to hire a tried and proven mason to hire a francophone that does a poor job. We have to stop fighting to have what they want and start doing things they cannot do so we can get some leverage. We have to thank God for the internet because through it the skilled ones can shine over the ones who bribe.
I will have another article talking about more of the kinds of things we can do to become a powerful voice that must be heard. For now, let each of us start by understanding that fighting is the worst way to go about this.
This is not to say it is an easy task and we really have to come to the realization that nothing is harder or easier, it all comes down to what we want and if we are willing to do what it takes to get what we want. We will have to make difficult decisions but I still believe in that over picking up arms to fight or protest on the streets. We are at war, and this one cannot be fought with anything else but the mind.
Written in August 2017, amid the escalation of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, this piece responds to a moment of acute social fracture and the assumption that resolution must come through struggle or conflict. The writer reflects on a decade-long pattern of narrative—both personal and national—that frames progress as inherently violent or oppositional, and questions whether that story is true or merely habitual.
The piece challenges a seductive and widely-held theory of change at precisely the moment when that theory seemed most urgent and justified. Its insistence on individual agency, skill, and ideational shifts over mass confrontation reads now as a quiet counterpoint to the cycles of protest and violence that continued to define the Cameroon question. The argument about the stories we tell ourselves—and how those stories become self-fulfilling—remains a foundational observation about social stasis and possibility.