Showcasing 50 years of Artistic Achievement in Cameroon

(Dedicated to Etub’Anyang-the fallen Cameroonian country musician)

By Mwalimu George Ngwane* (Originally published on gngwane.com) 

On 30th May 1967, the first President of Cameroon, Ahmadou Ahidjo, declared at the Higher Council of National Education, Yaounde that “our preoccupation continues to be on the one hand that of ensuring a just balance between knowledge of the cultural values of the national patrimony and the knowledge of the universal values, and between knowledge of the past and knowledge of the contemporary world”.  Five years (1972) after this declaration ace-musician Manu Dibango opened Cameroon’s artistic door to the comptemporary world through his blockbuster song ‘Soul Makossa’.  The song only went to buttress the existence, hithereto in hibernation, of unharnessed talents in the creative sector in Cameroon.

Immediately after Independence in 1960 and Reunification in 1961, live orchestras based on aggregate interest became the mainstay in West Cameroon music while individual musical expressions of Nelle Eyoum, Ebanda Manfred, Anne Marie Nzie, and Messi Martin from East Cameroon blasted melodies that held at bay the fraternal invasion of music from the neighbouring countries. Eboa Lottin though mostly identified with indigenous gospel Makossa excelled in sculpture that his furniture fame made him a friend of most Heads of State in the Central Africa sub region.  What is today known as Collywood (Cameroonian film industry) apparently draws its inspiration from the late 70s when the theatrical finesse of Victor Elame Musinga, Sankie Maimo and Guillaume Oyono Mbia attracted a full room in schools or Abbia, Capitol or Wouri cinemas.  The pioneering creativity of these playwrights continue to provide succour for young professionals whether in plays or on cinema giving birth to artists like Hansel Eyoh, Bole Butake, Bate Besong ,Victor Epie Ngome, John Nkengasong, Daniel Kamwa,Jean Dikongue Pipa and Alphonse Beni.

Paul Biya, the incumbent President of Cameroon, in his book ‘Communal Liberalism’ asserts that ‘culture is a school of responsibility which produces men (and women) who are ready to come to terms with themselves by assuming the values that they, in all consciousness, defined for themselves’.

Accolades
The bounties of art/cultural awards have been a veritable harvest of the twin Golden Jubilee.  Jean Dikongue Pipa won the Golden Stallion Award in film in the mid 70s at the Film Festival in Burkina Faso called FESPACO.  Jean Pierre Bekolo has now become a house-hold name in the world of celluloid cinema especially after his Silver Stallion award in FESPACO in 2007. Josephine Ndayou’s film ‘Paris à tout prix’ has drawn considerable reviews making her one of the few, after Sita Bella, female film writers to have shot to instant international acclaim. Bassek ba Kobio continues to inspire faith and raise hope among young film lovers in Cameroon through his annual film festival in Yaounde called ‘Ecran Noir’.

The literature sector has had a mitigated harvest especially with the rise of creative resources against a backdrop of a withering home based publishing industry and the gradual transformation of bookshops into stationery stores and textbook warehouses. Immediately after Independence and Reunification, NOOREMAC Press in Limbe and Editions Cle in Yaounde midwifed many creative writers that have today blossomed into stardom. Paradoxically, and this is true of most African countries, writers that have excelled have had their awards more from abroad than from home.  The cases of Ferdinand Leopold Oyono, Francis Bebey and Mongo Beti whose books were celebrated among Africa’s best 100 books of the 20th century during the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in 2002 come to mind.  Their books like those of Mbella Sonne Dipoko were published and made popular by the African Writers Series at a time when the reading culture in Cameroon was still intact less corrupted by a robot addiction to digital technology. Even after long years of militant guerrilla writing in Cameroon, it needed the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) to recognise Bate Besong’s ingenuity as a playwright when the ANA award was conferred on him in 1992. Calixthe Beyala won the ‘Grand Prix du Roman de l’Academie Francaise’ in 1996.   A joint award of the Fonlon-Nichols prize was offered to the poet Rene Philombe and Mongo Beti in 1992 while Were Were Liking became the third Cameroonian to win the same award in 1993. Gaston Kelman,Patrice Nganang;Achille Mbembe, Francis Nyamnjoh and Daniel Ojong  all resident out of the country continue to make a large impact in creative discourse and cultural criticism in the continent and beyond. Cameroon’s publishing industry is being revamped with indigenous publishers like Buma Kor and Imprimerie Saint Paul but most especially by the Mankon-based and European retail outlet publishing house called Langaa Publishers. Created less than five years ago Langaa has churned out more than eighty titles that showcase innovative writing skills of Anglophone Cameroon writers leading to the opening of channels for intergenre literary communication and the creation of EduArt awards by Cameroon literary critics Joyce Ashutangtang and Dibussi Tande.  Blogging, promoted by Jimbi Media apart from being citizen journalism par excellence has now become an e-literature site with most Anglophone Cameroon creative writers transformed to bloggers. Yet major Writers’ Awards still elude the creative Cameroonian writer after fifty years in spite of the upsurge of books in our shelves.

Were were Liking, a Cameroonian cultural manager, based in Ivory Coast won the Prince Claus Fund (PCF) award in 2000 for creating a special village for art education of young people.  Samuel Fosso, a photographer living in Central Africa Republic won the PCF award in 2001 in recognition of his camera and his originality in photography.  Doual’Art centre run by Marilyn Douala Bell and Didier Schaub is the only Cameroonian –based art house to have won the PCF award. It won the award in 2009 for its inspirational impact on the visual arts and on social and cultural development in Central Africa. The brushes of Max Sako Lyonga, Kouam, Spee Nzante and Irene Epie paint immortal pictures in the hearts of young people abroad and adorn art galleries in Cameroon.  It is difficult to forget the only Cameroonian Journalist Irene Nzana Fouda to have won the CNN African Journalism award in 2006, the musician Wes Madico who took the West by storm when he won the ‘disque diamant’ in 1996 or Richard Bona whose inspirational and mellifluous voice attracts thousands of music lovers in the most famous music halls around the world. No Cameroonian lady may have yet catwalked into ‘Faces of Africa’ award but beauty pageantry which was originated from the then West Cameroon still offers a lot of hope especially when the celebration of physical feminity will genuinely respond to the African value system of beauty and when it resonates in the potentials of a creative economy for the laureates.  The list is inexhaustive but what all these indicate is Cameroon’s prominent visibility in the creative landscape for the past fifty years and the resilience the artists has shown in the face of a tottering physical infrastructural deficiency and an absence of a systemic cultural policy that is artist-centred and home driven.

Opportunities
The creation of the Ministry of Culture a few decades ago was arguably a launching pad for a cultural renaissance in Cameroon. The Ministry still remains a gateway for artistic blossoming if only like most Culture Ministries in Africa, it resists the temptation of civil service bureaucracy, the foibles of patronage and the virus of centralisation. Its flagship event FENAC or the Festival of Arts and Culture that holds every after two years remains a veritable corridor for showcasing Cameroon’s tangible cultural heritage. It could be improved through opening an arts and culture market in the country and beyond for the artists and the creation of National Arts Councils in every Region of the country that provide the template for a new vision in the arts world as it obtains in West, East and Southern Africa. An arts market can be reenergised through appropriate training, mentoring and business savvy for artists; transparent management of President Biya’s Art Grant at regional levels; a balanced bi-cultural identity policy, a holistic and equitable representation of the value chain of creativity in our cultural industry; and the inclusion of civil society art-related organisations’ prism into a new cultural roadmap that the new Minister of Culture seems to be heralding.  Fifty years of Independence and Reunification can only find relevance in a human development paradigm that unfortunately places most African countries at the bottom of the world’s economic pyramid. Now that creative industries have been recognised as one of the most dynamic economic sectors offering vast opportunities for cultural, social and economic development, the Ministry should be able to implement the Plan of Action on Cultural Industries that was signed by African Union Ministers of Culture in Algiers in 2008.
 
Way forward
The way forward is to celebrate individual artistic excellence as has been the case in the last fifty years but with added administrative value in the manner which Indomitable lions have been idolised. Any art form that borders on the commodification of art, the bastardisation of artists and the propagation of an ululation culture is anathema.  Art advocates and cultural militants in Cameroon in collaboration with their counterparts in other African linkages like Arterial Network would have to craft a bigger picture of intercultural dialogue, cultural tourism and the status of the artist which all underpin the cultural dimension of development.

Our cultural zones of silence embodied in our plethora of intangible cultural heritage would have to be given voices so they can speak through brick and brass, through clay and canvass, and through screen and scroll, the mindset of our collective memory and the heritage of our chequered history.

The way forward lies in our artists ability to recognise the paramouncy of clustering and networking; to redeploy their success spin-offs through art investment in Cameroon; to drink deep from the fountain of cultural wealth modernised along the creative template of glocalisation, and to resist the syndrome of art at the service of political truimphalism and culture as the quintessence of status mobility.  We can in the next fifty years create a more vibrant creative industry and even postulate as a cultural capital if local companies take a corporate social responsibility in promoting arts, if administrative authorities at home and abroad disconnect cultural showcasing from mere folklore during national events and if Cameroonians start emulating the global trend of patriotically consuming their own art goods and cultural services.

*Mwalimu George Ngwane is a writer, cultural professional and panAfricanist. His new book “The Power in the Writer” is now available online.

Comments

[Iota]

I love that stamp which clearly shows CameroUn (without the British Southern Cameroons) proclaiming its independence on 1er Janvier 1960. For those who are still unclear about the "50th anniversary" celebrations, take a close look at this map.

[Die Body]

THANKS FOR CALLING ATTENTION TO THE MAP.
IT'S VERY TELLING, LIKE THE ARTICLE.

INDEED, THE ARTICLE IS A SHOW-CASE.

[Iota]

Also notice the star-less flag. Who said a picture isn't a thousand words?????

[Die Body]

How many people does it take to make a stamp?
What's the process for designing, legitimating, printing, and circulating a stamp?
What does it take a critic to discriminate an artifact as evidence to substantiate an article or an essay?

Or.... what's the ideology behind the use of such a stamp?
Where does the writer stand?
To whom does he write?
What's the goal of this article?

[Die Body]

Or maybe my comments about the production and circulation of the stamp are misplaced. The context of the time indicates that the process was without doubt genuine - it was an entirely a La Republique affair.

Which brings us to the real question: where was the writer of the article at the time the stamp was produced and circulated?

What's the relationship between the writer and the stamp, if any?

[Va Boy]

The stamp is a facsimile of a genuine artifact from 1960 and speaks compelling truth, that the 50th anniversary is not ours. It is fake.

It clashes seriously with the Mwalimu's article, the substance of which is fake. The artistic trajectories of the two Cameroons are totally separate, and mishmashing them in the same article like this is total invention. Mwalimu, do not write without inspiration, because you will output crap.

[Ras Tuge]

George Ngwane,

you may be a cultural professional, a political slut, but most definitely not a pan-Africanist. You are just an adventurer who has managed to get away with empty rhetorical manifestation of sentimentalism, and who has blatantly IGNORED the very essence of the notion of practical pan-Africanism as propounded by Marcus Mosiah Garvey, as well as the plethora of other earlier adherents of the noble concept. Whereupon i state that yours is just at the sentimental level of the typical macronationalist that you truly are. Seen?

You cannot choose the eve of the unfortunate anniversary celebration that glorifies such a sophisticated scheme of treachery against an African people that are living in dire circumstances that approximate the callous servitude of bondage in a supposedly country of theirs, and yet profess to be a pan-Africanist! Man, how sleek, or silly can you really get! What a shameless hypocrite you are!

You parade the streets of the world and vapidly making a fool of yourself, posing majestically on the cursed tomb of your slave master, with whom you seem to claim a questionably common heritage, rather than express indignation at the inexplicable enslavement that you are subjected to in your own country. I find it exceptionally baffling to see how supposedly learned men can endlessly choose to set their guilty consciences on the balance in the dreary realms of ideological sentimentalism as you seem so keen at doing.

Ngwane, how come you never seem to express any kind of resentment at the humiliating Anglophone marginalisation and enslavement, and the somewhat omnipresent and abhorrent Francophone supremacy in your very own backyard? How come you never need to petition the Cameroon government for the right to the same treatment for Anglophones, that would eventually restore some sanity, dignity and freedom for all the citizens of the supposedly ill-fated union?

Listen now man; pan-Africanism possesses a fundamentally religious quality with particular nominal characteristics that a nothing but motivational macronationist, and beggar like you clearly pays just lip service to, with no obvious solemnity or style. You are just another compulsive smash-and-grab opportunist that is dressed in borrowed robes, and that relishes the uneasy comfort of living on borrowed time. What a jamdong LIAR!

The idiocy you term 'OUR CULTURAL ZONES OF SILENCE', and which you probably regard as an ingenious idea is nothing but a misguided notion that shamelessly perverts the truth, in favour of your personal aggrandizement. What is the rational behind this ill-advised flirt with a system that undermines an integral part of its existence? What is the relevance of being a self-imposed spokesperson, when you categorically refuse to narrate the tale factually as dictated by your very own conscience? Do you even have a conscience? What do you really want?

[Emane Ngu]

Ras the thug seems to have woken on the wrong side of his bed this morning:-) You write:

"How come you never need to petition the Cameroon government for the right to the same treatment for Anglophones, that would eventually restore some sanity, dignity and freedom for all the citizens of the supposedly ill-fated union?"

Anyone familiar with Anglophone history during the fiery 1990s will tell you that Ngwane was pivotal not only in bringing the Anglophone issue into the national public space but also in the convening of the All Anglophone Conference of 1993. In fact, there are very few people who have written extensively about and articulated the Anglophone problem better than Ngwane. So your rant is - as usual - based on crass ignorance. Search Ngwane's site and you will come across tons of articles on the Anglophone issue. For starters, you can check this link:
http://www.gngwane.com/the_anglophone_file/

[Wantim]

Interesting indeed! Thanks to Ras' "palava", I have discovered an article on Ngwane's blog that answers key questions that I always had about that All Anglo Conference in Buea. check it out at: http://www.gngwane.com/files/acc110_years_after.pdf

As Ngwane rightly says:

"Whether the Anglophone problem is considered a forgotten scar of our collective memory or an open sore of our collective survival, it will continue to prick the conscience of the Cameroonian body-politic."

Lots of great stuff on the Internet if only one knows where to look... Keep them coming!!!!

[Ras Tuge]

I am surprised, if not scandalised that some of you have been strangers to that notoriously impotent AAC of 1993 that turned out to be nothing but a massive charade! I was reading for my A-levels then, and memories of those two days of abject lunacy are still fresh in my mind like the day i tasted a woman for the very first time.

Chariot town was brought to a clanking halt, and the place was jammed with a superabundance of boisterous, cantankerous, lackadaisical, and feeble-minded show-off freaks that basically hijacked the meeting to display their cumbersome potbellies and tattered shirts. Ofcourse George Ngwane was there too. Infact, he had to be there since he was struggling to define himself as a man of integrity, a man of weight, as opposed to the ordinary struggling secondary school teacher that he was back in the days.

My good old man was there too with his own potbelly and shackled mindset, and i remember how he returned home licking the wounds of discord, and lamenting for yet another opportunity discarded by all the belligerent nincompoops of his time. Ngwane was a much younger fellow, and many perceived a good many people of his age as the future custodians of a vibrant Anglophone legacy, and deservedly so. Unfortunately, that all changed with time as we all must have noticed by now.

Seventeen years! Yea, seventeen good years have been enough time to witness how George Ngwane's early vision of a somewhat conscientious awakening of the Anglophone mind, has gradually eroded into an epiphany of vicious complicity with the same government he vehemently scolded, just to gain cheap publicity. And just like hordes of other Anglophone quislings, he decided to sell his soul and barely survives with untold guiltiness resting on his conscience.

No where else has the contrast in Ngwane's previous, and current lifes been starker than in the make believe world of power and money. No wonder therefore that this man has definitely changed course, and would rather snap heroically at the grave of his deviant captor who curiously happens to be the same man he had hoped to kill afew years ago! He would later use the pictures among other things as we know now as greater leverage on his former enemies, and against his own better judgment.

The question that quickly comes to mind is why Ngwane had to undergo this sort of scornful transformation, that definitely not only tarnishes his image, but reduces him to such a disgraceful and miserable wretch that beggared description? Why has he suddenly fallen in love with a system that will all but alienate him from his own people as well as his own aspirations? Clearly nonetheless, Ngwane doesn't care any more about what integrity truly means.

When you are George Ngwane, and suddenly you start writing about a bonded heritage of Cameroon with such a lustful mind, then there's a good but troubling reason that i really don't want to know. But the truth is that men of integrity are absolutely no pushovers that are as prone to flip-flop like Ngwane has proven to be for quite sometime now. The stakes are high, and time is of the essence. Gone are the days when the fate of Anglophones rested on the hands of parochial misfits. The time has come for Anglophones to strive for a fair piece of the pie, but hypocrites like Ngwane may not have space on that train any longer.

[Sangoh Angoh]

Ras Tuge:
Not too long ago (see your rants below), you threw invectives upon Bernard Fonlon, an honorable anglophone, who before his death, was beyond reproach for all what he stood for regarding Cameroon and its problems.
I begin to wonder how, based on such arrogance that you continously manifest on this forum,anglophones could move forward.I'm at peace, when in your arrogance, you exposed the fact that you were writing the A. Level when the AA meeting took place in 1993. It lends credence to fact that you've not read your history very well, although, in pretense, you turn to throw around bombastic sentences to show your shallow approach to issues.

George Ngwane, based on all what I've read from him, is an individual who has incessantly approached issues in Cameroon in a level-headed manner. Your rush to attack an individual of his calibre is not called for.
He has his photo on this website for all to see. Can you also bring forth your picture for us to see who you are? Cowards like yourself who scribble behind strange screen names, and inviting anglophones for an alright war with their breathens turn to behave just like yourself.

Paul Verzerkov, when a lion is resting never you try to wake it. So, you better not mess with me man!

This your Fonlon... this your Bumboklaat Bernard Nsokika Fonlon, Dr of shame. This mighty quisling freaks me out whenever i hear his name. But i shan't ever stand in awe of Fonlon, or have mercy on any Anglophone rogue that masterminded the sale of the Southern Cameroons.

With all his 'big sense', Nyabinghi Fonlon could have been the one to redirect the course of Southern Cameroons destiny by educating the bunch of shallow-minded riffraffs that was headed by rasclaat Foncha. Pitifully nonetheless, Fonlon deliberately ignored the danger, and chosed to sleep with the devil. You must be a devil to caress a devil.

In your list of 'impressive number of first', you forgot to mention the fact that Bernard Nsokika Fonlon also bagged a notorious diploma for being the first to weep in the aftermath of the outlandish betrayal of Southern Cameroons. This was the most cruel crime ever committed against Anglophones, and Fonlon was proudly an integral part of that shameful conspiracy.

No no no, Fonlon's spirit will never move through Cameroon. As a matter of fact, it was forgotten ever since the day when he vanished in shame. The evil that quislings do, only lives to haunt innocent generations. Therefore, the spirit of Fonlon and others of his ilk shall burn in JAH BLAZING FIRE. Fire burn dem all!

Posted by: Ras Tuge | Thursday, 27 August 2009 at 03:32 PM

[Kamarad]

Man no run...Man no run...

[Gariwa]

<<

My good old man was there too with his own potbelly and shackled mindset, and i remember how he returned home licking the wounds of discord, and lamenting for yet another opportunity discarded by all the belligerent nincompoops of his time. Ngwane was a much younger fellow, and many perceived a good many people of his age as the future custodians of a vibrant Anglophone legacy, and deservedly so. Unfortunately, that all changed with time as we all must have noticed by now.

Seventeen years! Yea, seventeen good years have been enough time to witness how George Ngwane's early vision of a somewhat conscientious awakening of the Anglophone mind, has gradually eroded into an epiphany of vicious complicity with the same government he vehemently scolded...>>>

[Gariwa]

"Le Cameroun c'est le Cameroun" :)

[Ras Tuge]

Sangoh Angoh,

i give you the privilege to quote me in places, and i am glad to notice that you're consciously learning from me somewhat. Sadly though, you quote me without saying anything worthy of your own. Speaking of progress! Well little man, i guess you don't expect me to be dragged into a pond of filth with a lowly element like you. I notice that you need to learn how to write, and endeavour to master the ART of using punctuation.

You don't even seem to understand what history is, and that's why you seem not to understand the need for due accountability which is one of the principal things that history judges people by. I am all over the WWW, and my presence is felt everywhere little man; YOUTUBE, BLOGS, WEBSITES, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, NEWSPAPERS, NEWS etc. I am a visionary image maker, as well as a well-read man. Donot think the fact that we share ideas here makes us equals. Search and you'll find me, and you'll be quiet. People like you are the reason why Africa is stagnating, and frustrating all the efforts that some of us are making to render Africa fashionable.

Yea, anybody that sells his conscience to the devil is nothing but a Bumboklaat criminal. Hear weti i say? Jamblasted hypocrites must be denounced, and if Ngwane will not come back on track, Rasta shall smoke him like Salmon.

'The Negro is his own enemy'- Marcus Garvey

P.S. I donot have a strange screen name man, i am not a jamdong criminal. Tuge is my name, and Ras is my title from the Head Creator.

[Gariwa]

"I am a visionary image maker, as well as a well-read man. Donot think the fact that we share ideas here makes us equals. Search and you'll find me, and you'll be quiet. People like you are the reason why Africa is stagnating, and frustrating all the efforts that some of us are making to render Africa fashionable."

[Gariwa]

"Yea, anybody that sells his conscience to the devil is nothing but a Bumboklaat criminal. Hear weti i say? Jamblasted hypocrites must be denounced, and if Ngwane will not come back on track, Rasta shall smoke him like Salmon."

[Gariwa]

Granted that:

'The Negro is his own enemy'- Marcus Garvey.

The question I ask then is: how will you right me (not being an equal) or the 'Mwalimu', whom I know to be a well-meaning person, even if his politics is appears short-sighted?

[Gariwa]

Ras, what I mean is, you have a smart mind and a penetrating vision - but sometimes you let your reactionary self get the worst of your analysis.

[Gariwa]

I don't mind the insults though. I can overlook them for they matter little in a discursive arena.

What I appreciate is your honesty, steadfastness, and insights. Those are rare qualities to find in a Cameroonian.

[Sangoh Angoh]

Ras Tuge:
You are an obscure megalomaniac who is under the illusion that you would fight Anglophones, whose modest solutions to problems plaguing Cameroon are not adequate Are you any different from Marcus Garvey, who, for all what he espoused about the return to Africa, ended up in jail for mail fraud in U.S.A? I’m still to find any blemish on Bernard Fonlon’s character that you’ve taken upon yourself to insult each time that his name is mentioned. You question my use of puntuations, yet your rants are all filled with unidiomatic expressions that only tugs like yourself can understand.

I once asked this question: whether you’ve been granted a mental or political asylum in the U.S. or Europe. My question went unanswered. Are you in a position now to respond?

[Gariwa]

Seems there was some mix-up above. I thought Ras was writing to me, when he was actually writing to Sangoh Angoh. Hope the reader will make out the mix up.

I don't know Ras in person. I have read his follow ups, and I don't think he's a megalomaniac, more than many Cameroonians whose minds have been scrambled in La Republique's endeavor to UNEDUCATE Cameroonians, which has been the sole purpose of the University of Yaounde and Yaounde I, II, III, ad infinitum; the purpose behind their intent to destroy the GCE Board (like Southern Cameroonians parastatals), to obstruct and frustrate any attempts at genuine university education in Southern Cameroon. If any does not recognize the mental destruction they have wrought on Southern Cameroonians and begin to clear off the dead ants in our cobwebbed minds, then there is cause to wonder.

The reactionary nature of most Southern Cameroonians - which is welcome to the infernal docility, prevarication, and slavish or knee-bending character of francophone assimilés, is of course more progressive face to face with changing the abysmal immorality, mental stagnation, and futility to which La republique has taken what passes as a post-colonial state.

In regards to Fonlon, Ras has reason to be radicalized by the sanitization that has gone with the man's passage. Fonlon ABETTED the domination and tyranny or erasure of Southern Cameroonians. He might have focused on the issue of language (the Queen's Language, he said, as well as Bilingualism, since he studied in Dublin and Sorbonne, but those were his pet peeves, nothing to do with the freedom of Southern Cameroonians in the ANIMAL FARM that is La republique). He might have tried to bring up a coterie of academics in Yaounde, but most eventually turned out to be either vindictive, power-or cunt craving assimilés.

Fonlon certainly had a meaning to a generation, whatever that meaning was; but to other generations that followed, he was the leader of a pack that we've now found wanting, except perhaps for Bate Besong, who suffered enormously from his vindictiveness and that of Njoma Dorothy. If the younger generation identify with Bate, it is because they know what suffering is, and because Bate Besong championed their cause, and put his hand into the pulsating heart of the problem. Whenever you mention FONLON, know that right behind, BB's name will crop up, and we are aware of the diametrical opposition of the lives of the two, the realism that filtered through their lives in regards to their vision of humanity. Whereas Bate Besong liberated most of the young, and taught them to question, even so die for their ideas, Fonlon was a quisling, whose products have not only failed to show leadership, but wrought untold malice on the younger generation. Ras might be too radical, reactionary, but that goes with the context.

[Gariwa]

That said, I still have respect for Fonlon, for his naive integrity, his ascetic life, his vision of the role of the genuine intellectual in society, only that all these were harshly misplaced in a material and historical context. They only abetted and fostered Ahidjo's tyranny, and disregard for Southern Cameroonians and Anglophones as naive and tolerable idiots; worse, they enabled a clutch of monkeys to ride on his back within the university apparatus and ministerial buildings.

It is this 'clutch' that were the first to fearfully expose BB (to Ahidjo and the establishment) as an insurgent outsider, or too radical a person to be allowed within the establishment; they were the first to drive their knives into his sides, even if ultimately BB's suffering, assiduity, and persistent voice in the wilderness was redemptive; or eventually brought these quislings (with the turning of political tides) to hand-clap and cheer him as a new prophet (in the absence of Fonlon).

Sadly, we've seen this scenario repeat itself at different places and historical moments, and I am glad that Ras has the audacity to pry open these instances of Southern Cameroon history for illumination.

[Gariwa on RAS TUGE, FONLON, BB, & the 50-year showcase (of the color - of shit?)]

Discussion...

[limbekid]

This "comply or explain" attitude of some of our Anglophone brethren, is not only annoying, but counter-productive. As far as I know, George Ngwane is a curator, not a revolutionary and ours no allegiance to any entity.

[Gariwa]

Limbekid, with all due respect to you, that is not the smartest thing you've said for a while. A curator does not work in void. If his job is solely to safeguard artefacts of culture, then he should not be in the public eye.

If part of his job is to explain culture, then he's inviting dialogue and critique, and we would be interested on where he's coming from, whether he's from the Ministry of Culture of the Third Reich, or from the Jewish Museum of Human History. The reason is simple: the public must be made aware of the cloud smoke of bombardier beetles, when they huff and puff...

Any act of dialogue, any act of writing, whether a blog, whatever, any act of curatorship is an explanans, and therefore invites critique. And any critique is an explanans that requires another explanans until the public that participates in the discourse is satisfied with the reality or "truth" whatever the latter is.

[Gariwa]

Here's a fact from the article that explains what I mean:

"*Mwalimu George Ngwane is a writer, cultural professional and panAfricanist. His new book “The Power in the Writer” is now available online."

That's an act of representation, put forward to the public. Unless it's a dumb public, any reading of the above work will go with critique, whether it's a book on nature study or politics.