Six weeks. That’s how long it has been since anyone saw Paul Biya in public. Cameroon’s 93-year-old president has not appeared since the 20 May National Day celebrations, and the government’s only account of his whereabouts is that he is in Switzerland
Into that silence, two claims collide. Jeune Afrique reports he collapsed at the National Day reception, was flown quietly to a private Geneva clinic on 7 June, and is being treated for a knee problem. This is a report the government rejects as “malicious and unfounded,” while offering no proof of life.
And now his own daughter, Brenda Biya, has gone further, declaring in a video “mon père est mourant”—my father is dying However, she has made dramatic claims before, then walked them back.
Notwithstanding, no one outside a Geneva clinic can verify the president’s condition. But that is precisely the point. A state that has made Biya’s health a secret has left an entire nation, most of whom have known no other leader in their lifetimes, to read between the lines.
Forty-four years in power, and Cameroon is once again governed by a man nobody can see. Some would say, the country is being governed by a ghost, but would they be wrong?
