Cameroon’s President Has Seven Lives, But It’s Better to Talk About Other Things
The government of Cameroon has called the president's health a "matter of national security" and threatens prison for any kind of allusion or debate in the media or on social media
ROME – Fake news, hybrid war or whatever, Paul Biya is 91 years old and has seven lives. Certainly more than two, given that he had already been reported dead in 2004 and then won the elections again. Perhaps he will try again in 2025, after reappearing on October 21 in Yaoundé with a triumphant limousine after a 49-day mysterious stay in Geneva during which he had also been reported dead.
The Cameroonian presidency had to confirm his good health, denying that he had been hospitalized in a clinic upon his return from the China-Africa summit and instead claiming that he simply needed to rest a bit. But who wrote him off as dead after 42 years in power, since the accusations of fixing the Italy-Cameroon match at Enzo Bearzot’s World Cup? A web TV based in Houston, United States, that has unleashed pandemonium on social media. It seems that the broadcaster is linked to the separatists of Ambazonia, an English-speaking region that no longer wants to be with Biya’s Cameroon.
Here, the leaders with seven lives: in the magazine Jeune Afrique, the editorialist François Sudan recalled the “cold snaps” of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that covered up episodes of clinical death, or a quote from the American writer Mark Twain: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated and completely premature.” Then there is the wisdom of the Bèti, Biya’s community of origin in Cameroon: beware of “awu nsigena”, “the evil that surprises by terrorizing”, that is to say the sudden death that strikes far from home and loved ones, perhaps in a European hospital.
Post scritpum: don’t tell anyone because the government of Cameroon has defined the president’s health as a “matter of national security” and threatens prison for any type of allusion or debate in the media or on social media.