Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

Four Myths About the Unification of British and French Cameroons

By Nantang Jua et Piet Konings (Culled from "Occupation of Public Space Anglophone Nationalism in Cameroon", Cahiers d'études africaines, 175, 2004)

The regime and organic scholars (Ahidjo 1968; Forje 1981; Fogui 1990) have often attempted to historicise Cameroon only in terms of its present mobilisation needs, in particular the construction of a national consciousness as part of the nation-building project. They are, therefore, engaged in an impressive dose of historical amnesia–willed acts of selective remembrance of the past so as to erase Anglophone identity and heritage from national history.

"Sisters in Law" Premiers on PBS on Tuesday, November 27, 2007

"In a small courthouse in [Kumba] Cameroon, two women are working to change a village—and making progress that could change the world."

Kumba Town Green (Picture courtesy of Friends of Cameroon)

"SISTERS IN LAW follows tough-minded state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba as they help women in their Muslim village find the courage to fight difficult cases of abuse, despite pressures from family and their community to remain silent. With fierce compassion, they dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure, handing down stiff sentences to those convicted.

Inspiring and uplifting, SISTERS IN LAW presents a strong and positive view of African women—and captures the emerging spirit of courage, hope and the possibility of change."

Check your local listings for Broadcast times. Click here for details.

The ability to call anywhere in the world at cheap discounted prices - MobileCaller.com.

Trail of Death: Maintaining Law and Order in Cameroon

Dibussi Tande

"Freedom of assembly and the right to demonstrate and to protest are widely accepted as basic civil rights and as such are embodied within all international charters of human rights" - Democratic Dialogue

 
Students shot by security forces in Kumba (c) Mutations

September 2007: Three people, two of them teenagers are shot dead in the town of Abong-bang during a demonstration by secondary school students protesting against frequent electricity cuts on campus which were affecting their studies. According to eyewitness reports, the Divisional Officer of the area, Sylvestre Essama, fired the first shot into the crowd of students which incidentally killed his own nephew, Marcel Bertrand Mvogo Awono.

Muzzling the Press in Cameroon

By Benn Bongang (Originally published by the Association of International Studies)

"Biya’s rhetoric on democratization in Cameroon was nothing more that another approach to a long tradition of silencing the media in Cameroon to hold on to political power"

In December 1990, Celestin Monga and Pius Njawe scorned Cameroon President Paul Biya’s ‘paternalistic and condescending’ claims that he brought democracy to Cameroon. Theirs was a frontal attack on the Head of State, fueled by frustration by decades of the government’s firm hand against the press. Until then, journalists who dared to criticize government wrote in disguised prose that often veiled their intentions.

"Dance of Scorpions" – Lloney Monono’s Dazzling Poetic Waltz

Reviewed by Dibussi Tande

Lloney E. Monono. Dance of Scorpions. Lulu Enterprises, UK. September 2007. Available on lulu.com and amazon.com

In an article on Cameroon literature in English published in 2004 in the French language literary journal Africultures, Pierre Fandio of the University of Buea noted that while Francophone Cameroon literature has been generally militant in nature, with many of its first generation writers having faced exile or imprisonment, Anglophone Cameroon literature, until very recently, largely focused on romance (“A few nights and days”, “Because of women”, “Taboo love”, etc.) and on “omnibus themes” which “interest everyone but don’t discuss anything of substance” (Sov Mbang the Soothsayer, Lukong and the Leopard, The Good Foot, etc.).

President Paul Biya: 25 Years and Counting...

By Dibussi Tande

When Paul Biya became president on November 6, 1982, he  seemed determined to  break away from, and put an end to the clientelist policies of the Ahidjo era; to establish a more humane nationalist agenda that respected ethnic and linguistic diversity but frowned on tribalism; encourage state decentralization; and introduce grassroots democracy within the single party. These ideas formed the bedrock of Paul Biya's "New Deal" philosophy which he articulated during the first five years of his rule, and whose basic principles were later published in a 1987 political manifesto titled Communal Liberalism.

Memory Lane (1967): A Loveless African Marriage Is Doing Surprisingly Well

By Donald H. Louchheim (The Washington Post, March 12, 1967)

Douala - When the wedding bells rang for French and British Cameroon in 1961, it seemed to be an unlikely match. For almost half a century, the two central African territories had gone separate ways under totally different colonial administrations.

British West Cameroon, about twice the size of Maryland, had been an adjunct to the sprawling colony of Nigeria. French Cameroon, more than 12 times as large, was a part of France's equatorial empire.

In their Own Words: Franz Fanon on the Assassination of Felix Moumié

Tomorrow, November 3, 2007, marks the 47th anniversary of the death of Cameroonian nationalist leader, Felix Moumié. In this posting, we relive that tragic event through the eyes of Franz Fanon (picture), the famous Caribbean essayist, psychoanalyst, and revolutionary who fought alongside the FLN in the Algerian war of independence, and whose writings inspired African anti-colonial liberation movements in the 1950s and 60s:

Moumié. On September 30th [1960] we met on the Accra airfield. He was going to Geneva for some very important meetings. In three months, he told us, we would witness a mass ebbing of colonialism in Cameroon.