Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

Celestin Monga: An Open letter to Lapiro de Mbanga

Excerpts of an open letter from Celestin Monga to Lapiro de Mbanga written shortly after Lapiro's arrest in April (An English translation from the CAMNET forum).

My dear complice Ndinga Man,
I won’t ask you how you are doing. I am sure that, from the depths of your prison cell, you are in top intellectual form and that you are already assembling some caustic lyrics for your next album. I can only imagine the pity which you must have towards the poorly paid policemen who are charged with humiliating you day and night… Some irony: you have never stopped fighting for these same people throughout your entire adult life. And there: these sicklings are now inflicting all kinds of humiliations which give them the illusion of wielding some modicum of power. For once in their lives, they are, in their own way, "somebody".

Lapiro de Mbanga Sentenced to Three Years in Jail

From the Freemuse website

Several news sites reported that the popular singer Lapiro de Mbanga was sentenced to three years in jail for taking part in anti-government riots in Cameroon in February 2008.

The African Press Agency writes that the musician was found guilty for his “complicity in the looting, destruction of property, arson, obstructing streets, degrading the public or classified property and forming illegal gatherings”. The verdict was three years in mandatory prison. Lapiro was also ordered to pay 280 million CFA francs, about 630,000 US dollars, in damages to the SPM (Société des Plantations de Mbanga) and the ministry of finances.

Memory Lane (1960): Cameroon Delegate to the United Nations Arrested

A piece of historical trivia as President Paul Biya of Cameroon travels to New York for the 63rd United Nations General Assembly.

POLICE ASSAILED BY NEGRO AT U.N.; Cameroon Delegate Says He Was Stopped on Street Because of Color

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y., Oct. 13 1960 -- Ferdinand Oyono, permanent delegate of the Cameroon to the United Nations, maintained today that his detention yesterday by the city police for failing to show his United Nations pass had been caused solely because of his color.

The permanent delegate to the United Nations from Cameroon said he was "singled out of a crowd of white persons walking on the west side of First Avenue near the UN building.

The “Anglophone Problem” in Cameroon: A creation of “Counter Elite Intellectuals”?

By Jean-Germain Gros [Culled from « Preface » Cameroon: Politics and Society in Critical Perspectives. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America: 2003]

Rightly or wrongly, Anglophones in Cameroon today, or at least their elite, feel that they are second-class citizens of a country dominated by Francophones… I believe tat Anglophone nationalists (or at least the more ardent among them) miss several points about the Francophone-Anglophone divide.

First the division of Cameroon between “Francophones” and “Anglophones” is more historical and geographic than linguistic. A Mbororo (a member of the Peul ethnic group) cattle raiser, who has difficulties communicating even with her fellow Foulbe brethren in Fulfulde, might be quite surprised that she is “Francophone”.

Movie Trailer - Kuva Likenye and the Bakweri Armed Resistance to German Colonization

AFRICAphonie (with an OSIWA support) presents Kuva Likenye, a historical Documentary. Directed by Kome Epule Mathias. Editor: Njukeng George Njukeng. Script Consultant: Dibussi Tande. Narrator Muema Meombo. Executive Producer: George Ngwane.

For details on how to obtain a copy of the documentary, contact:

George Ngwane
Executive Director
AFRICAphonie
Tel: 77 66 84 79
E-mail: gngwane@yahoo.com or Africaphonie2000@yahoo.co.uk

Book Launch in London - The 1961 Cameroon Plebiscite - Choice or Betrayal by John Percival

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London; Thursday 18th September 2008 from 6-8 pm

The Political Legacy of Ruben Um Nyobe 50 Years After His Assassination

Dibussi Tande

"Ruben Um Nyobe is too little known among Anglophone africanists, he was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant political thinkers and organizers to emerge after the Second World War in Africa. Had he survived to lead his country to independence, he would most certainly be ranked today on the same level as Julius Nyerere, and the late Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba." Richard Joseph

Exactly 50 years ago, on 13 September 1958, Ruben Um Nyobe, leader of the nationalist Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) was assassinated by French forces in the outskirts of Boumnyebel in the Sanaga Maritime division. Um Nyobe’s death set in motion a series of events that culminated in the elimination of the UPC as a political force in Cameroon, the exiling and/or assassination of its entire leadership, and the establishment of a French-controlled neo-colonial police state in Cameroon led by individuals who either played a marginal role in the struggle for independence or were even opposed to that struggle.

Statue In Honor of Ruben Um Nyobe in Eseka

"The collective memory of a nation is represented in part by the memorials it chooses to erect. Public memory is enshrined in memorials from the newly opened Holocaust memorial in Berlin to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Whatever a nation chooses to memorialize in physical monument, or perhaps more significantly, what not to memorialize, is an indicator of the collective memory." (Anonymous)

After nearly half a century of institutional attempts to erase Ruben Um Nyobe from Cameroon's collective memory, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) began the slow process of redefining the nationalist leader's legacy by constructing a monument in his honor in the town of Eseka where he is buried.

The project went ahead - inspite of the lukewarm attitude, if not hostility of the Biya regime -because the Eseka municipal council is now controlled by the UPC, the party which Um Nyobe founded in April 1948.

Obama: The Community Activist - Republican Disconnect

By Eric Makuna Tande

“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities... My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.” Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska at the Republican National Convention.

Even when Republicans have common roots, their understanding of the lives and concerns of the less advantaged is lightweight. How can Gov. Palin – and her speech writers - not understand what a Community Activist does?

US Senator Barack Obama with Eric Tande

How can she not understand the significance of a young man dedicating his life to mending the lives of people who have lost their livelihoods and the ability to support their families and community after the closure of steel mills in Middle America? Her attempt at belittling the service Obama rendered as a community activist does not even qualify as political theatre.

CAMEROON: Rapid Intervention Military Unit Strays from its Mission

DOUALA, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - In 2001 the Cameroonian government created a special rapid intervention battalion (BIR) to quell hostage-taking and looting by criminal gangs operating on its eastern and northern borders, but this force is now straying from its original mission, causing anger among human rights groups.

The BIR was originally set up to fight criminal gangs known as ‘coupeurs de routes’ who operate on the borders with the Central African Republic in the east and Chad and Nigeria in the north taking hostages for ransom, stealing cattle, as well as attacking and looting passenger vehicles.