Dibussi Tande: Scribbles from the Den

For Haiti: Palapala Magazine #9 Now Available Online

Palapala Magazine #9 is now available online. This first issue for 2010 opens with three tribute poems by Kenyan poet JKS Makokha dedicated to Haiti and to Mbella Sonne Dipoko and Dennis Brutus, two literary giants who passed away in 2009.

The issue also includes Rosemary Ekosso’s review of John Buchan’s Prester John and William Boyd's A Good Man in Africa, which serve as a backdrop for an in-depth discussion on European demeaning, paternalistic and racist discourse towards Africa; a discourse that is not just limited to colonial literature but also extends to other areas as well:

Memory Lane (19 February 1990): The Yondo Black Affair Revisited

Culled from Reform and Repression in Cameroon: A Chronicle of the Smoldering Years (1990-1992) by Dibussi Tande (Forthcoming).

On February 19, 1990, officers from the CENER, Cameroon’s national intelligence service, raided the law office of Yondo Mandengue Black in the city of Douala. They demanded that Black, a former President of the Cameroon Bar Association (CBA), hand over the bylaws and program of the political party that he was in the process of creating.  After a search of the office yielded nothing incriminating, Black took the officers to his residence where he handed over a draft document titled “Coordination Nationale pour la démocratie et le multipartisme” (National Coordination for Democracy and Multipartyism).

Addressed to the Cameroonian people, the document criticized the one party system and the Biya regime, lamented about the worsening economic situation in Cameroon, and called for the reinstitution of multiparty politics in the country:

The Southern Cameroons Origins of the Youth Day Celebrations

By Churchill Ewumbue-Monono (culled from Youth and Nation-Building in Cameroon, 2009)

A policy advocacy initiative, the origins of the National Youth Day in Cameroon can be traced to the special days celebrated by youth organizations in the Southern Cameroons such as 22 February, the “Thinking Day”, celebrated by the Girl Guides and Brownies in commemoration of Lady Banden Powell. There was also the Commonwealth Youth Sunday marked by the reading of a Message from the Queen, Church services and a March-Past by youth groups such as the Boys Scouts, Girl Guides, Boy’s Brigades, Red Cross and other youth organizations. It was presided by His Honour the Commissioner of Southern Cameroons, or his Deputy Commissioner who took the salute and read the speech to the parades...

"Fey Me No More?" Donatien Koagne, the King of "Feymania", Allegedly Dies in a Yemeni Prison

According to newsreports, "King" Donatien Koagne, Cameroon's most notorious conman and the "father of Feymania" died in Yemen a couple of weeks ago. In the 1990s he conned many African Heads of State such as Mobutu and Eyadema out of millions of dollars before finally falling into the dragnet of Yemeni authorities who threw him in jail. In a fantastic twist to this already incredible story of crime, greed and duplicity, the French secret service tried unsuccessfully to rescue him from his Yemeni hell hole ostensibly in a bid to lay hands on his famous "black book".

One of the most definitive works on Feymania in Cameroon and on Donatien Koagne was written by Domique Malaquais titled "Anatomie d'une arnaque" Feymen et Feymania au Cameroun". An abridged english version titled "Death, Douala Style" is available online. (See excerpt below)

"Sovereignty Expenditures" and the Accountability of the Executive Branch

By Dibussi Tande

"As budget constraints have hardened, leaders have preferred to spend their money to keep their elite coalition together rather than invest in mundane activities like building schools or undertaking vaccine campaigns..." Van de Walle

While surfing through the Cameroonian blogosphere recently, I came across a blog post which gave a detailed breakdown of Cameroon’s 2010 budget. The first entry on the list was the budgetary allocation for the Presidency of the Republic which stands at 57,342 Billion Francs CFA – in fact over 63 Billion Francs CFA if you include the 6.677 Billion Francs CFA allocated to "Services attached to the Presidency of the Republic" – an annual budget greater than those of the Ministries of Higher Education (44 billion FCFA), Scientific Research and Innovation (13 billion FCFA), Energy and Power (44 Billion FCFA), just to name a few.

As I pondered over the Presidency’s budget, my mind went back to the controversy that erupted last year after the French media revealed that during a three-week trip to La Baule in France, President Biya and his entourage had allegedly spent $40,000 (£24,500) every single day at the five-star L'Hermitage Barriere hotel, bringing the total presidential bill to roughly half a million pounds.

Books by Dibussi Tande

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