The Bookman - A Tribute to S.N. Tita (1929-2011)

By Franklin Sone Bayen*

Playwright, Bole Butake said at a 1994 “Conference on Anglophone Cameroon Literature” in the University of Buea that indigenous writing and publishing was rare in decades past because books in their printed form looked so perfect – they so looked like the Bible – and thus could only have been made by God, if not Whites only. 

Neither God nor White, S.N. Tita (1929-2011) who died December 1 in Limbe aged 82, may have been immune to that complex. At the time he wrote and printed books in his own printing press from the late 1950s, the art and technology were still a marvel and looked alien to even some of the most enlightened of his time. He was author, publisher and printer of the legendary series History, Geography, Rural Science for Cameroon from his Nooremac Press. He was a bookman par excellence in all senses. 

What study manuals would we have used in primary school had Tita not written and printed? In my schoolbag the only other indigenous author was E.K. Martins, rather co-author – with a foreigner – of “New Nation”, the famous Arithmetic textbook. Incidentally our neighbour during my childhood in Clerks Quarters, Limbe, Martins was a Krio, member of a community of freed (Black American) slaves from West Africa who sailed to Victoria (Limbe) with Baptist Missionary, Alfred Saker. He was therefore not so indigenous. 

Even when there was another early indigenous author, Tita had evidently pulled his hand along. S.E. Abangma’s “Civics for Cameroon” was printed by Tita’s Nooremac Press. Martin Amin’s Mathematics textbook for senior primary only came later towards the 1980s and the first indigenous English reader with a Cameroonian co-author, “Cameroon Primary English” by David Weir and Augustin Ndangam, was introduced when we did senior primary in the early 80s. And that launched the post-Tita age of indigenous publishing. A decade later, local publishing began to open to the floodgate we know today.

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Comments

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