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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2020
Cameroon's autocrat, Paul Biya, declared war on Boko Haram in 2014. Using a variety of ethnographic materials, this article examines the politics of rumours and conspiracy theories that have defined the popular response to this war in Cameroon. It underlines the mobilising force of these rumours on intra-elite struggles within the national context as well as on international relations, particularly on French–Cameroon relations. I argue that rumour-mongering is a central mode of production of suspicion in times of war and social crisis. Yet, the current rumours in the wake of the war against Boko Haram in Cameroon are inscribed within a historical framework of a state-directed politics of paranoia that seeks to define ‘enemies of destabilisation’. In the end, this politics of suspicion also works to bring otherwise disaffected Cameroonians to support the autocratic Paul Biya as a victim of foreign plots for regime change in Cameroon.
Field research for this article is drawn from a broader, four-year research project titled ‘Elites, Freemasonry and the Politics of Secrecy and Suspicion in French–African Relations’ (2015–2018). Funding for this project has come from different sources and at different phases of the work. I am thankful for this support. I held a Fernand Braudel Postdoctoral Fellowship (2015) funded by the Fondation Maison Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH) in Paris, hosted by Professor Richard Banegas (to whom I also express gratitude personally) at the Centre for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po Paris. The University of the Witwatersrand awarded me a Faculty Travel Grant and a Mellon Staff Development Grant (2016–17). The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) awarded an African Humanities Program (AHP) Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017–2018). I would also like to thank my friend and collaborator on this project, Professor Peter Geschiere, for his encouragement and perceptive comments on different aspects of old and new dynamics in French–African relations, as well as Dr Joshua Walker with whom I have been working on the idea of suspicion.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the panel ‘Discussions of War’, during the Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Social Science Association (SSSA) in Austin (Texas) in April 2017. I am thankful to all participants at this panel for very helpful comments. I finalised the writing of this article during a residency at the African Studies Centre (ASC), University of Oxford, as a Visiting Fellow of the Africa–Oxford Initiative (AfOx) in November 2018. I am grateful to Professor Wale Adebanwi and his colleagues at the ASC for their warm hospitality and stimulating engagements. Lastly, I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers from JMAS for their helpful comments and suggestions. I remain responsible for shortcomings in the paper and my views should not to be attributed to any funder or host organisation.
