Godfrey Tangwa AKA "Rotcod Gobata": BIOETHICS, BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE: A VOICE FROM THE MARGINS

Tangwa at a glance

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A West African in Arusha at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on the angst, contradictions and rewards of that process.
Dr Godfrey Tangwa (Gobata)
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Prolific writer, social and political commentator, he was a professor at University of Buea and University of Botswana. Currently he is Head of Publications and Dissemination at CODESRIA in Dakar, Senegal. His writings are socially relevant and engaging even to the non specialist.
Ilongo Sphere: Writer and Poet

By Godfrey Tangwa

Developing World Bioethics ISSN 1471-8731 (print); 1471-8847 (online) Volume 4 Number 2 2004

One of the most remarkable things about the world in which we all live, localised here on planet Earth, is its biodiversity (the enormous variety of its living forms). Another is its cultural diversity (the enormous variety of its different human cultures). Equally remarkable is the variety of different forms, heights, weights, shapes, sizes and complexions with which individual human beings, even within the same culture and locality, come from the hand of God/Nature. I perceive great positive value – if you would permit the emphatic tautology – in this differentiated diversity and variety.

What all human beings have in common, in spite of their rather palpably striking differentiation and differences, is the fact that they are all human beings, equally liable to being, mutatis mutandis, rational, self-centred, sociable, fallible, altruistic, equally liable to experiencing sadness/joy, pleasure/pain, equally vulnerable and liable to suffering, equally mortal in the end, in spite of everything else, life-prolonging technologies included.
What all human cultures have in common is that they are all creations of human beings, reflecting, on the one hand, human capabilities, goodness, ingenuity, wisdom etc., and, on the other, human limitations, fallibility, frailty, perversity, foolishness etc.

Click here to print or download article in PDF format

February 2006

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Comments

Dear Godfrey Tangwa,

It migt not be relevant to the comment the specification that I am not an African.Yet,it might very well be since, without being an African I was able to understand with my mind and heart the words addressed by you in this article. Thus, I might have had been able to understand the powerful message due my morality, which you very well pointed out is what we all human have in common.

To emphasized exactly your point, despite living in Canada,I was touched by your article written in anther part of the world, in a different culture, in a different context.

Yet, why do I have this urge to thank you for writing this article and sharing your ideas with us?

It is because I feel greatful to you that we make us aware of who we really are, and what ought we to do as human beings, so beautifully diversed, and so surprisingly simillar, to be,simply to be human!

And it is also because I fully share your ideas.And it gives me strengh in the moments when I feel hopless thinking that we, as human beings, might not succeed to be we who we really are and ought to be.

Thank you so very much,
Nicoleta Ungureanu

Posted by: Nicoleta Ungureanu | July 28, 2006 at 05:00 PM