Godfrey Tangwa AKA "Rotcod Gobata"

AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. KOFI ANNAN

(THE POST, No. 0172, May 12, 2000)

Welcome to Kamerun, but don’t tell us no problem exists

Welcome to Kamerun, Africa in miniature, as we love to call it! (I am using the German version of the name of this our rough triangle quite purposely, for the obvious reason that it brings to mind the historical explanation why such strange bed-fellows as Anglophones and Francophones ever thought they could join together and build a single united modern nation. This German name of our country also helps to cover, the way banana leaves may cover a mess, so that the eyes would see only the termites, the very embarrassing fact that the name ‘la Republique du Cameroun/the Republic of Cameroon’, as it is today, signifies either a unilateral act of secession from the bilateral experimental union just alluded to, or an act of annexation and assimilation of one partner by the other. As Secretary General of the United Nations, you are surely familiar with all this, aren’t you?).

ROBERT GUEI AND THE STATIC STATE IN AFRICA

The news that Colonel Robert Gueï is being proposed or has proposed himself as the presidential candidate of the PDCI party for the forthcoming elections in the Ivory Coast (okay, Côte d’Ivoire) can come as no surprise to any observer of the African political scene. However, this news is not in the least less disappointing for not being surprising. And this remains so whether or not Gueï’s candidature is eventually confirmed or not. He came to power under the guise of a God-sent messiah charged with ridding Ivorians of the corrupt dictatorship of Henri Konan Bédié, and there is no doubt that the latter needed getting rid of. He had been presiding over a dictatorship, boldly pretending to be a modern democracy.

Ethical Challenges & Dilemmas of Research in Third World Countries

By Godfrey B. Tangwa, PhD

Here is my keynote presentation in PowerPoint at the 13th National Congress of the South African Society of Psychiatrists (SASOP) in Drakensberg last September.

Drakensberg Champagne Sports Resort, South Africa

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Colony of genes, genes of the colony: diversity, difference and divide

Henk J Van Rinsum & Godfrey B Tangwa

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 6, pp. 1031–1043, 2004

ABSTRACT
In this article we propose an ideal typology of reactions to genomics—the study (in complex transnational organisational research arrangements) of the genome, the sum total of the genetic material in any particular organism—from the point of view and perspective of communities that find themselves in marginal positions. Genomics is a particularly important part of ‘technoscience’—science mingled with technology. Within genomics the concepts of diversity and difference are paradoxically intermingled. Genetically speaking, the difference between human beings and nature is fading.

SYNES INAUGURAL LECTURE: The University and Development (With Particular Reference to Cameroon)

Godfrey B. Tangwa, PhD (Associate Professor of Philosophy)

Here is a PowePoint version of the inaugural lecture given by Dr. Tangwa at the 4th Congress of SYNES, National Union of Teachers of Higher Education in Cameroon, on November 11, 2004. The minister of Higher Education who opened the congress was there as well as the Rector of University of Yaounde I; quite a development from the past!
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BIOETHICS, BIOTECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE: A VOICE FROM THE MARGINS

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.

COLONIALISM AND LINGUISTIC DILEMMAS IN AFRICA: CAMEROON AS A PARADIGM

By Godfrey Tangwa

QUEST: An African Journal of Philosophy Volume XIII No. 1-2, 1999

Africa is the richest and most variegated continent on earth: geographically, climatically, historically, culturally, linguistically and resource-wise. That much is a palpable fact, requiring neither proof nor, for our purpose here, any further elaboration or analysis. Africa is also, paradoxically, the poorest continent on earth. Precisely because of its variegated riches, Africa is the most exploitable as well as exploited continent on earth. So it is on account of its exploitation and exploitability that Africa can be called a paradoxical continent: the richest as well as the poorest continent on earth.