The presidential candidate for the Cameroonian Democrats Front, Hiram Samuel Iyodi, has called on Cameroonians to stand against French neocolonialism.
In a letter dated August 14, the 37-year-old stated that “Cameroon has never been free,” urging citizens to fight for freedom—a goal he thinks can be achieved if they mobilize to vote en masse in the upcoming presidential election scheduled for October 12.
Hiram’s statement was a response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s letter to Cameroonian President Paul Biya, acknowledging that France waged a war against Cameroonian independence fighters after World War 2.
The war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, including nationalist leaders like Ruben Um Nyobe.
“The letter from President Macron is both an act of recognition and a summons to confront the truth: Cameroon has never been free,” Hiram said.
“That freedom is ours to win—not through backroom political deals, but through the mobilization of the people. It is time to write our own history, to reject colonial continuity, and to build a Cameroon that is just, dignified, and sovereign,” he added.
That was the first time France was formally acknowledging its “bloody atrocities” committed in Cameroon between 1945 and 1971.
Joint Commission Established the Facts
In 2022, during Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Cameroon, he alongside Biya announced a joint commission to examine France’s role in pre and post-colonial atrocities committed in the country.
The announcement followed years of pressure and advocacy for France to address the suffering it inflicted on Cameroonians.
The commission, composed of Cameroonian and French historians, confirmed that widespread repression had occurred.
It also found that these atrocities were carried out with the support of Cameroonian authorities.
“Tens of thousands of Cameroonians were executed, tortured, imprisoned, or massacred. Entire villages were razed to the ground. Figures of our struggle for sovereignty—among them Ruben Um Nyobě, Félix Moumié, and Ernest Ouandié—were assassinated, often with the complicity of the power structures established at the dawn of our so-called independence,” Hiram stated.
“Beyond the words, the French President’s letter reveals a silent yet fundamental truth: France did not act alone. It operated with the active collaboration of the post-independence Cameroonian regime—a regime that remains in power to this day. More than a revelation of our buried past, President Macron has exposed the root of our confiscated present,” he added.
To him, the current regime is “both the heir to and an accomplice in the colonial system’s most violent and repressive forms.”
“This continuity of power, which we have endured since 1960 and still endure in 2025, cannot be dismissed as mere political longevity. It proves, irrefutably, that there has never been a true break between colonial domination and the post-colonial regime.”
Seeking a New Path
Hiram argued that “a free republic cannot be built upon the ruins of state-sponsored falsehoods, nor can a nation heal while entrusting its wounds to the very accomplices of its suffering.”
He called for a “rupture with the old order—a break from the practices inherited from colonization, and from those who, for 65 years, have governed Cameroon under a system that serves neither our people, our dignity, nor our future.”
Among his proposals were the creation of a National High Council for Memory and Sovereignty, comprising representatives from traditional chieftaincies, the diaspora, academia, and the families of liberation war martyrs; the establishment of a National Memorial for the victims of colonial and post-colonial repression; and the official recognition of a National Day of the Heroes of Cameroonian Resistance.
Only then, he argued, can Cameroon “truly refound its state—so that the nation may finally belong to its children, not to those who betrayed the promise of its independence.”
