The Cycle of Violence: From Classroom to Nation
The writer examines a viral video of a teacher brutally beating a student, tracing it to deeper patterns of inherited violence in Cameroonian society—from schoolyard beatings to documented abuses in conflict zones. The piece asks why such cruelty persists and where accountability begins.
I'm sure by now most, if not all of you have seen and have heard of the video in which a teacher is seen brutally 'correcting' a pupil with torturous acts.
As I watched that video and the act of torture perpetrated therein, I could not help noticing the similarities between that video and the numerous ones we have seen coming in from the North West and South West since the crisis started. There is one particular video which, if i remember correctly, was captured in Kumbo (please feel free to correct me). A man's hands and feet were bound. He was thrown to the ground and a soldier was hitting on his bare bottom with a machete.
I've always held the theory that the ordinary Cameroonian isn't really much different from the people who carry out oppressive acts against them. We claim to hate our oppressors, but we silently, unconsciously, love them and we behave exactly like them at the least opportunity.
That the act was even filmed in the first place calls for some worrying question. Why did the person film it? To later bask in the dark shadows of his brutal and sadistic proclivity? Or to go in an even more ominous direction, to jack off to it in the penumbra of his bedroom? It is indeed worrying.
No doubt the most worrying of it all is having to have other kids participate, by holding up their classmate to be beaten. For those of us, in particular, who went to public primary schools, we have very surely been held up that way by Class 6 boys while the teacher struck us. And we went on to replicate this in our different boarding schools. We grow up in a cycle of violence, even for the most innocuous of us, and we mete it upon others, every day, in varying degrees.
As much as I cannot say anyone has universal knowledge, I like to think that most young people, like that teacher, is present on social media and has read many accounts of how people carrying a certain trauma behave. A lot of these are personal testimonies.
One of the things I've picked up from these many stories is that a child whose behaviour changes radically usually is a child that is suffering some form of abuse at home that leads them to be stubborn, withdrawn, etc. That teacher, if one could bestow such a title on him, should know better than to think that going Guantanamo on that child would help to resolve any issues with the child. An excuse he gave for beating the child, which I seriously doubt, is that the child drinks and smokes. A good reason to look further into the origins of the matter, and not thinking that hitting the child's hands with a hammer was going to accomplish something.
Which brings me to the role of the government. I've not been to that primary school and I cannot make certain assumptions. But going from what I know about the poor state of schools in this country, I can bet my small left toe that it doesn't have a clinical psychologist working with the school; a very essential role in the primary academic milieu.
Teachers have been often been left to play the role of teacher, parent, guidance counselor and psychologist. While some really great teachers have been able to fill these shoes, it isn't usually the case. And in particularly in all these mushroom schools that spring left, right, and center. In the video in which he forces the child to eat pepper, you can tell from his diction and his vocabulary that that man has no business being in a classroom. It isn't then surprising that his first instinct is to look for pepper and for a hammer, to solve a problem that required a trained professional.
Where do we start? How do we even begin to resolve all this? The problem is of such a magnitude that even thinking about it tires me physically. I think I need to nap.
W.W
In early 2022, a widely circulated video documenting severe teacher-on-student violence prompted national discussion. The writer connects this to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the North West and South West regions, suggesting the violence reflects not aberration but a normalized cycle running through institutions and homes.
The piece articulates a difficult diagnosis: that Cameroonians often internalize and replicate the oppression they claim to oppose, and that systemic failures—absent school psychologists, undertrained teachers, under-resourced institutions—enable rather than prevent cruelty. Its unflinching tone on collective responsibility remains vital as conversations about accountability and institutional reform persist.