Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

Human Rights Report Condemns February 2008 Repression in Cameroon

Yaoundé: Rights campaigners in Cameroon accused authorities of covering up for the security forces during a string of killings in the country's political unrest in February 2008, said a report obtained on Monday by Agence France Presse (AFP).
 

Members of the security forces opened fire indiscriminately on civilians, using automatic rifles and even light-machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks, said the report by National Observatory of Human Rights (ONDH).

But the authorities put pressure on hospital directors to cover up crimes committed by the security forces by hiding evidence, it alleged.

Book Review: The Travail of Dieudonné by Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Reviewer: Peter Wuteh Vakunta, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.

The Travail of Dieudonné is the tale of a triple estrangement. Nyamnjoh’s protagonist is physically separated from his homeland (Warzone), beloved wife (Tsanga) and opulence associated with materialism. The writer adumbrates: “Dieudonné misses his home village to the point of tears…” (153). Mimboland, his country of choice, is a dichotomized world where the haves and have-nots cohabitate. While Beverly Hills swims in the niceties of life, Swine Quarter—home to the underprivileged—is likened to a “bleeding ghetto” reputed for its “muddy meanders of footpaths and shacks whose walls were delicately sustained by ant-infested wood, human excrement, dog shit…multitudes of rats and cockroaches that celebrated impunity.”(149)

Cameroon Ranks Very Poorly on 2008 Global Integrity Report

Cameroon faces serious problems with its governance and anti-corruption framework according to the Global Integrity Report released today.

Cameroon received a “very weak” (55 pts) overall ranking on the 2008 Integrity Indicator Scorecard.  It scored “very weak” in four categories; Elections (58 pts), Government Accountability (44), Administration and Civil Service (48) and Oversight and Regulation (49). It scored “weak” in two categories; Civil Society, Public Information and Media (61 pts) and Anti-corruption and Rule of law (69).

Book Review - “This is Bonamoussadi”: A Poetic Foray into the Valley of Despair

By Dibussi Tande (Originally published in Palapala Magazine)

Oscar Chenyi Labang. This is Bonamoussadi. Lulu.com, 2008, 60 pages.

What is it that we did
Mother of the earth
That we have remained this cursed (56)

It is still not clear how Bonamoussadi, the popular student residential area on the outskirts of the University of Yaounde campus in Ngoa-Ekele came into being. When students returned in September 1987 for the beginning of a new academic year, they discovered that houses had sprung up ex nihilo on the vast wasteland between Regional Centre for Labor Administration (CRADAT), the University Restaurant no. 2 and the football field. It was rumored that university lecturers whose trade in dog-eared polycopies had become less profitable with the proliferation of photocopy machines on campus had decided to grab state-owned land on which they constructed mini cités (student housing) for rent. Before long, high ranking government officials, the military top brass, friends and relatives of the well connected, and other hangers-on joined in for a piece of the action.

Palapala Magazine # 4 Now Available Online

The fourth issue of Palapala Magazine is now available online. This issue is rich with literary goodies - feature articles, poems, book reviews, short stories, interviews, etc., for literature enthusiasts and the general public. 

Contributors include Joyce Ashuntantang who tells us of the long journey to find her voice and identity, from the foot of Mt. Fako in Buea, Cameroon, to New York; poet Viola Allo who explains in a very delightful poem why she prefers to be married to her poetry than to her suitor in Cameroon ("I do not know what it means to be a Cameroonian wife”); Tolu Ogunlesi, the man form Lagos, who writes about exile in "we will set forth at midnight; Poet Barfee Gideon Wirndzerem who gives us an insight into the future of African and Cameroonian literature in an interview with Kangsen Wakai; Chenyi Labang and Dibussi Tande who both take us on a colorful and heart wrenching poetic journey to Bonamoussadi, the infamous neighborhood on the fringes of the university of Yaounde; Benna Sayyed who writes about marching bands in historical Black colleges and universities in the United States; Dipita Kwa who concludes his story on the wages of plunder, etc.

A must-read issue indeed!

Click here to read Palapala Magazine #4.

Memory Lane (Video): Foncha, Ahidjo & the Cameroons Unification

A brief report on the unification of the British and French Cameroons. What expectations did Southern Cameroons leaders have of unification? What promises did the leaders of the French Cameroons make with regards to unification? How did the erstwhile equal relationship between Premier Foncha and President Ahidjo become be a subaltern one? Documentary contains very rare archival video footage and audio clips from the 1960s and 1970s. (In French).

A Man, A Plan, A Cyber Café

Here is a very heartwarming and inspirational story from Cameroon about a teenager who beat the odds stacked against him to become a success story and a role model. Orginally published by RPVC Bill on his blog, 27 months.

Sometimes, it’s the small successes that make everything worthwhile. This isn’t a story about a Gates Foundation grant, a fabulous new software project, African tech startup, or a microfinance program designed to serve the needs of thousands. Rather, it’s the story of a single young Cameroonian who through his own grit, determination, talent, discipline and tireless effort made a bright future for himself. His name is Simon, but everyone (and I do mean everyone) in Buea knows him as “Wise Man” now.

Wise Man is just nineteen, and the youngest cyber café owner in Buea, probably the southwest of Cameroon—maybe even the entire country.