Up Station Mountain Club

Freedom of Expression versus Cultural Sensitivity (Restraint, Respect and Revolt)

By Mwalimu George Ngwane

Being a paper presented at the World Summit on Arts and Culture, Johannesburg, South Africa (22-25th September 2009)

It could have been possible to title this panel session “Culture and Democracy” or “Culture and Human Rights” seeing the organic link between our desire as human beings but more so people of the Arts to expand our spaces of freedom of expression beyond the limitations imposed on us by our value systems or ecosystems.

Cameroun Vision 2035: Rebranding Cameroon

By Mwalimu George Ngwane

The Cameroon government through the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development has published a 65-page lofty and laudable draft long term democratic development blueprint for Cameroon dubbed “Cameroun Vision 2035”.

Vision 2035 vindicates me of a political treatise I wrote in “The Post “ newspaper, Cameroon and CODESRIA bulletin, Senegal in 2004 titled “Cameroon’s democratic process-Vision 2020” for which I suffered administrative sanction.  The underlying assumption of my political treatise was that multipartyism had failed in Cameroon not necessarily because it has proven to be a problematic model in Africa but primarily because the political elite in Cameroon had been unable to provide a vision of a future for Cameroonians and a realistic strategy for achieving it.  The fundamental question that my treatise sought to address was “What will Cameroon look like in the year 2020?”