Godfrey Tangwa AKA "Rotcod Gobata"

THE LAST WEEK OF MAY 2025

Every year, the last week of May heralds my birthday on 03 June which I have never celebrated. In traditional Nso’ culture and practice, the idea of ‘birthday’ does not exist. Children are classified according to the period they were born or the circumstances that prevailed when they were born. People therefore think and refer to themselves not in terms of birthday but in terms of their generation or age group. This is true of all other African peoples who share the same worldview and metaphysical ideas with the Nso’. The idea of celebrating one’s birthday, which has become the favourite pastime of colonized, indoctrinated, and proselytized Africans today is a foreign idea borrowed from other cultures. That is not to say that the idea is wrong or the borrowing unfortunate, although exaggerating any practice is always a cause for concern and we have greatly exaggerated our obsession with birthdays. In Nso’ culture, what is always celebrated is death, unless it is premature, self-inflicted, or a result of the retributive justice of the earth. 

The last week of May 2025 witnessed the passing unto eternity and the universe of our ancestors of two remarkable people, icons of Africanity, whom I have greatly admired and been influenced by. Both died at a ripe old age, respectively, deserving unrestricted celebrations and I am hereby celebrating their honorable transition to the universe of ancestors. The event has warranted and justified the resumption of the Gobata Website (www.gobata.com) which had gone dormant for some time now, owing to health challenges that prevented me from maintaining its regularity.

The first of the elders whose transition I am celebrating is Fara Clemens Ndze who journeyed on 27^th May 2025 at the ripe old age of 95. Fara Clemens was, I believe and here I may be wrong, the fourth native/indigenous priest ordained in 1960 for the diocese of Buea, covering the entire territory of former British Southern Cameroons, later West Cameroon, later Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon, today NOSO. His elders here, those he could not boldly take the gizzard in their presence, are only Fara Aloys Ba’lon Wankuy, the very first African to be ordained a priest in this territory in 1949, followed by Fara Lucas Atang and Fara James Toba.

I remember a period when Fara Clemens served as the parish priest of Shisong, my natal village. For the first time in their experience of Christianity since 1913, when the first Christian missionaries were welcomed in Shisong, the faithful parishioners had a priest talking and preaching to them directly in their mother language. What an experience! The gospel was interpreted directly in the choicest idioms and metaphors in Lamnso’. People would discuss Fara Clemens’ (whom they called ‘Fara Kilemon’) sermons for the whole week until the next sermon.

The second departed elder I am celebrating today is (James) Ngugi wa Thiong’o who connects directly with Fara Clemens on the problematic of the importance of the Indigenous/mother language for any people, any human culture. Ngugi died on the same day as Fara Clemens at the respectable age of 87.

Ngugi sets the problem of language with the following enunciations:

Language as communication and as culture are … products of each other. Communication creates culture: culture is a means of communication. Language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world. How people perceive themselves affects how they look at their culture, at their politics and at the social production of wealth, and their entire relationship to nature and to other beings. Language is thus inseparable from ourselves as a community of human beings with a specific form and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world.

 This conceptual position led to protracted debates as to what language colonially educated Africans should employ for expressing their artistic ideas and other knowledge products. Now, in the post-colonial era, should they continue using the colonially-imposed foreign languages like English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., or jettison them in preference for the marginalized indigenous languages? Furthermore, the question is raised as to whether it is possible for an African authentically to express him/herself or to produce a genuine work of art or other knowledge product in a foreign language?

However, some others argue that the colonial languages are one of the best things that ever happened to Africa, in that they are the languages of civilization and modernization, the languages of science and technology, without which no people can progress in the modern world. Ngugi’s position in the face of this problem and the multiple questions it elicits is firm and clear. He has been an ardent crusader and his arguments on the question are clear, consistent, well-articulated, powerful, influential, sincere in that he tried to practice much of what he preaches but, in my view, perhaps, essentially mistaken. For him, African writing should only mean writing in the Indigenous African languages, and until African writers accepted that any true African literature must be written in African languages, they are not sufficiently mentally decolonized.

In my contribution to this debate, [fully elaborated in Tangwa GB 2017; "Revisiting the Language Question in African Philosophy", The Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy, edited by Adeshina Afolayan and Toyin Falola, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 129-140], I submit that Ngugi’s arguments against the continued use of the colonial languages in Africa seem to me erroneous, not in their entirety, but in their exaggeratedness. Language is no doubt very important and an indispensable part of every culture but mainly as a tool for communication and a repository and vehicle of ideational or abstract entities. A mother language is particularly important for an individual in providing ideational paradigms on a mind as yet a relative tabula rasa; being the language with which the neonate first learns to communicate. But language, even the mother language, is not as determinant of human thought and behavior as Ngugi’s arguments presuppose. Attempts to reduce all human problems to problems of language are philosophically futile. Reality or facts should not be confused with the language (signals) with which we attempt to describe them.

I believe in linguistic pragmatism. To claim that an African cannot use a foreign colonial language authentically for self or artistic expression, or for knowledge production, appears simply counter-factual. Whenever I reread, say, Ngugi’s Weep Not, Child, A Grain of Wheat, or The River Between, (all written in the English language) or even if I consider just this piece I am now writing, I am more and more convinced of this conclusion. And yet, in my particular case, this in no way detracts from the emotional attachment I feel towards my mother language, Lamnso’, which I have progressively mastered better, both in speaking and in writing, ever since I started decolonizing my mind.

An African certainly can use a foreign language, colonial or otherwise, for authentic knowledge production, or for self-expression. The value of such a product for Africa, however, would depend on its relevance and importance for Africa. Some Africans have gained international fame and wealth for works or products that are of dubious worth/value to Africa but which clearly satisfy other non-African needs or tastes and there is perhaps nothing wrong with that. Choice of language, problem addressed, genre, and target audience, are the prerogative of the writer/thinker/artist. Judging the worth/value of what is written/produced is the prerogative of the reader/viewer/consumer.

Gobata, 03/06/2025

TETE – A – TETE WITH FATHER ETIENNE (A TRIBUTE OF SORTS)

I woke up early this morning (20/09/2021) to the sad news of the passing into eternity of Father Etienne Khumbah. I immediately recalled a conversation I had had with him in 1998 after his forceful eviction from Bonjongo. I had intended to publish a narrative of this conversation but procrastination on my part and other countervailing external events conspired to make it impossible until now, sadly posthumously for Etienne. I am grateful to Providence that my frantic search for hours in my disorganized library for this write-up was not in vain. Here below is the text of what I had wanted to publish, anchored on my tete-a-tete with Father Etienne.

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The recent call by His Lordship, Bishop Pius Awa, for forgiveness and reconciliation between himself and Rev. Father Etienne Khumbah, as well as between all the faithful and people of the entire diocese of Buea, over the five-year-old “Maranatha” affair, has moved me to dig up notes of a deep conversation I had with Father Etienne on the slopes of the hill of the Immaculate Conception at the Bishop’s House in Kumbo, on Saturday 31^st of January 1998. That year’s feast of Ramadan had afforded me a breathing space from my academic commitments and preoccupations to travel from Yaounde to Nso’ to see Fr. Etienne, amongst other reasons. No, I had never been a member of Fr. Etienne’s Maranatha Prayer Group, nor was I seeking faith healing or a miraculous cure for any ailment. I went to see Fr. Etienne as a personal friend and former schoolmate at St. Joseph’s College, Sasse, where his class batch, including mates like Paul Tamajong and Matthias Foncha, was a year behind mine. I was also with him at the Seminary of SS. Peter and Paul, Bodija, Ibadan. I had not seen Etienne since our student days at Ibadan.

When the Maranatha/Bonjongo Parish crisis started making headlines in the newspapers, I found it hard to believe that it was the Etienne I had known at Sasse and Bodija who was at the centre of the storm. The events, as recounted in the newspapers, sounded so incredible to me that I kept looking out for an opportunity to travel to Bonjongo to see Etienne and confirm/disconfirm things for myself. The first opportunity presented itself at the wrong period. This was the run-up period to the 1997 presidential elections and I was honestly alarmed by reported calls, from the campaign daises of the political bigwigs in the South West Province, for settlers’ eyes to plucked out (Njeuma), failing which they should be poisoned (Oben Ashu). I did not know whether these newspaper reports were veridical or completely fictitious, but I preferred to err on the side of caution and not to travel to the South West Province at a time when there was a chance of being erroneously mistaken for an actual or potential “come no go”, with the consequent danger of losing my eyes which I value so much for reading and writing.

We are living through a system in which one could be jailed for simply speculating on the health or ill-health of the ‘democratic’ Leviathan. Story-telling is an important part of our traditional cultures and dreaming is an involuntary universal phenomenon. But may it not be the case that I would be in jail today had I told the story of the dream I had the night Pius Njawe was jailed? I saw Pius Njawe (in the dream) watching through the prison bars, before the magic year 2000 (still in the dream), a state funeral in which the mourners were rejoicing, dancing, and stomping in unison to the improvised beat of the grave-diggers. Then when the coffin was about to be lowered into the grave, his excellency jumped out of the coffin and sat on top of it, and started waving his hands at people on all sides. Everybody scattered in all directions, running for dear life. Do you think I would have escaped a prison sentence if I had told this dream, given that my past dreams have enjoyed a 75% rate of veridicality? Is it safe to dream dreams, let alone relate dreams, in our Republic?

When “la democratie avancee” advanced and transformed itself into “la democratie appaisee” and anti-settler rhetoric abated, I fixed a date for traveling to Bonjongo to visit Etienne but, before the fixed date could arrive, Etienne was suddenly forcefully removed from Bonjongo, allegedly with the help of circa 300 armed soldiers.

Before talking about my January 31^st, 1998 conversation with Father Etienne, the following brief background is necessary. At Sasse College, Etienne was at first not Etienne. His name was Stephen Ntellah. Even ‘Khumbah’, which I believe to be his father’s name, was not yet part of his nomenclature during his early days in Sasse. We just called him ‘Stephen Ntellah’. Many of us in Sasse at the time did not yet bear our fathers’ names. Some of us had come from sub-cultures within which anyone who called you by your father’s name or who boldly called your father’s name, instead of saying ‘Baa so-and-so’, was surely provoking you into a fight. “He called my father’s name” was always a good excuse for having slapped someone. It was during registration for the GCE exams that many students would usually be advised to put their father’s name as their family name or surname. The ubiquitous birth certificates of today were not yet a common practice and to make, say a passport, you got any older person to swear to an affidavit in court as to how old you were.  The official ages some of us are stuck with today are the ones some uncle or cousin had sworn to from memory in our absence. But that is not the story I set out to tell.

At Sasse, Stephen Ntellah struck me as a personification or incarnation of what in later years I came to understand as the ‘Aristotelian mean’. Average and moderate through and through, he was not an extremist in any domain; he participated in all activities without being particularly outstanding or remarkably mediocre in any. He was spontaneously friendly, had a phlegmatic temperament, never exhibited excitement, and always spoke or responded to people in an even, calm voice, preceded or followed by a truly charming smile. He was very robust in health and had a remarkably huge chest, on account of which we just nicknamed him “Chest”. I don’t remember him ever falling ill, either at Sasse or in Boddija. The introduction of French as a serious subject in Sasse might have had something to do with Ntellah’s eventual preference for the French version of his name but for us, his school mates, once we learned that the English equivalent of ‘Etienne’ was ‘Stephen’, we never called him ‘Stephen’ again but always ‘Etienne’. By the time he went to Bodija, Ibadan, his nomenclature had firmly solidified as ‘Etienne Khumbah’. ‘Stephen’ and to some extent ‘Ntellah’ were left hanging on the memory walls of Sasse College, but the charming smile and spontaneous friendliness were carried along to Bodija.

 

Etienne and Gobata in Bodija circa 1972

 

 

An outsider to priestly formation or Seminary life may not know this but, amongst Seminarians or trainee priests, some are acknowledged by their peers as outstanding in their piety or holiness, real or pretended. At SS. Peter and Paul Seminary, Bodija, Seminarians who excelled in holiness could be easily recognized, as they spent all their free time kneeling and sometimes audibly crying before the Blessed Sacrament or before the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Then there are some known by their peers for their impiety and recklessness, including even visits to brothels. A seminarian colleague once told us: “I believe that God is calling me to be a priest exactly as I am; a smoker and womanizer”. Here again, Etienne maintained the via media, the Aristotelian mean, exhibiting neither extreme holiness nor un-holiness. He enjoyed a remarkable charisma amongst both fellow seminarians and parishioners.

To look at Etienne today, one could scarcely guess that he was a star actress (sic) in his days at Bodija. Both of us belonged to the extra-curricular club: Effective Speech Organization (ESO). Inter alia, the ESO used to produce at least one major play every year. When Sarif Easmon’s The New Patriots was produced, Etienne was cast and starred in it as Mrs. Barbara Heyford and came through so convincingly that the audience was convinced we had brought a lady to the seminary to act a play with us. Etienne’s charisma with Bodija parishioners was greatly enhanced by the role he so effectively played in this drama performance.

 

Etienne and Gobata in Bodija as actors in THE NEW PATRIOTS produced and directed by Rev. Sister Brenda Murray

The Major Seminary of SS. Peter and Paul, Bodija, Ibadan, run at the time by American Dominicans of the Order of Preachers (OP), was a modern avant-garde Seminary which permitted liberal practices – an elected student representative council, a students’ common room with dancing facilities, the Seminary chapel being also a parish church, permitting regular social contact with lay Christians, periodic drama performances to which the public was invited, etc., - practices unheard of in other seminaries the world over. The life at the Bodija Seminary was planned and organized around four main axes: study, prayer, manual labour, and recreation. For real self-development this plan is unbeatable.

In 1972, shortly before Etienne and the other Cameroon seminarians were transferred from Ibadan to Enugu, I decided to quit the path to “Fada work” in spite of having consistently received Alpha ratings in all academic courses and other divisions of the training. No one seemed to suspect it, but I had been tormented by doctrinal and conceptual doubts in my unfolding career as a priest; in short, I had slowly discovered that, against the unfolding background of Catholic dogmatic theology, I was a potential heretic within the Church. Many of the dogmas we were told one had to believe under pain of not being a Christian, let alone a priest, appeared to me as mere metaphors which could not be taken literally without absurd consequences. But one was invited to believe them firmly, ultimately as mysteries whose truth is guaranteed by God. For instance, I did not see how the doctrine of consubstantiation, whereby the priest’s words of consecration turn mere bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, could be true in any literal sense, except metaphorically. In short, at many points, I found Paganism more reasonable than Christianity. I thus considered it better to step aside and take the back bench as a lay person in Church, until I could come to terms with my skeptical doubts. I am still a skeptical back-bencher today but that is a different tale altogether. It is Father Etienne I set out to talk about.

 

Cameroon Seminarians in Bodija, Ibadan

When Etienne and I met at the Bishop’s House in Kumbo on 31 January 1998, we first spent a lot of time in the usual pleasantries and reminiscences of two good friends who had not seen each other for nearly a decade. Then I asked him a serious question: Is it true that they came with over 300 troops to evict you from Bonjongo? Etienne affirmed that it was quite true and confirmed all the other details the newspapers had sensationalized: that they had knocked on his door around 11:00 PM and, as soon as he opened the door, they immediately bundled him, manu militari, into a waiting vehicle, without allowing him even to step back in and change his shirt. In the waiting vehicle, sandwiched between two hefty soldiers, he was driven non-stop, with only a brief pause in Bamenda for refueling, to Kumbo, where he was deposited at the Bishop’s House around 7:00 AM the next morning.

Next question: What about the alarm system you are alleged to have installed all over the Bonjongo Parish compound? I had believed that this, at best, must be an exaggeration of the newspapers, but Etienne confirmed that there was indeed such a system but that he had refrained from setting it off because, had he done so, his supporters would have come out in their numbers to defend him and there would surely have been a blood bath. He expressed a lot of happiness that the whole episode had ended without any human casualties.

Lastly, I asked Etienne that, given his conflict with the Bishop and the great popularity of his prayer group, was he contemplating quitting the priesthood to continue with his charismatic healing Ministry? Etienne responded that quitting the priesthood had never occurred to him and that whatever he does must be done within the Catholic Church although the authoritarianism of the hierarchy is not easy to handle.

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Father Etienne Khumbah was a very good man, notwithstanding any shortcomings he may have had as a human being. MAY HE REST IN PERFECT PEACE!

Gobata, Yaounde, 20/09/2021 

TWO PUBLICATIONS AND AN AWARD

I am happy to draw the attention of Gobata blog readers to two books freshly out of the press and to an award conferred on yours truly by the Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment (GET) Consortium in August 2019.

The West African Ebola epidemic (2014-2016) witnessed the emergency formation of the GET within which I was charged with constituting and leading the Cultural, Anthropological, Social and Economics (CASE) Workgroup. Ab initio, I worked with Akin Abayomi and Nchangwi S. Munung in forming the group and one of the already delivered deliverables of the workgroup is the book Socio-cultural Dimensions of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Africa: An Indigenous Response to Deadly Epidemics  edited by Akin Abayomi, Samuel J. Ujewe, Nchangwi Syntia and Godfrey B. Tangwa.

The second book, African Perspectives on some Contemporary Bioethics Problems which has come out of the press at the same time is my second collection of bioethics articles

To crown it all, the GET Consortium gave me an award during its 5^th annual conference in Abuja, Nigeria, 7-10 August 2019.

 

BOLE BUTAKE AS A FLAME PLAYER: AN ACADEMIC TRIBUTE AT THE MOMENT OF HIS ETERNAL TRANSITION

To avoid post-mortem flattery and praise-singing that have become a way of life with us in Cameroon, this tribute to Bole Butake (RIP 01/10/2016) is limited to what I have written about him before while he was still alive. A tribute to Butake at this moment of his premature death imposes itself on me under several dimensions: he was a personal friend and University colleague, a co-member of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences,  a countryman, and an Anglophone whose mindset, attitudes and behavioural comportment towards and in and out of office and power fulfilled my own expectations of what they should be. For Butake's Festschrift in June 2012, I had prepared a power-point presentation with the title "HE WOULD NOT BE LAPIROED: CAMEROON ACADEMICS IN AND OUT OF THE CORRIDORS OF POWER"; but I did not present it for two reasons: first, there was no power-point projector and second, there were so many of Butake's students and mentorees scrambling to make their contributions that I thought it wise to leave the stage to them and to listen instead. This tribute  is mainly composed of excerpts from the following article of mine: [“Anglophone Theatre in a Francophone City: The Flame Players and other Troupes in Yaoundé”, New Theatre in Francophone and Anglophone Africa (MATATU 20) edited by Anne Fuchs, Amsterdam, Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, pp. 155-168, 1999]. Further elaborations, explanations, clarifications or what otherwise is newly added are enclosed in square brackets.

The Flame Players

I initiated the formation of the Flame Players in Yaounde in 1987 [following my return to Cameroon from the University of Ife, Nigeria, a great cultural centre animated by the likes of Ola Rotimi and Wole Soyinka, where I had frequently been involved in play acting as a hobby].

I had looked around in Yaounde for a mature drama group that was free from politico-administrative controls to join but found none. So I decided to create one. At that time, Jacqueline Leloup was working with the Théâtre Universitaire on one of her well-publicized productions. I watched them rehearsing a number of times and went away with a general impression about Francophone drama and theatre practice that further experience has done nothing to undermine, namely, that they concentrate on choreography, flawless rendition of language and comic humour. The actors and actresses in Leloup’s troupe gave me the impression of people reciting La Fontaine’s poetry. And when I watched a scene of village elders who were choreographed to cough and yawn in unison and shout “oui” or “non” in unison, I was strongly reminded of CPDM parliamentarians of our one-party National Assembly.

            Bole Butake was also at that time working with the Yaounde University Theatre on his own play, Lake God. He had given me a copy of the play which, when I read, left me with the impression of being a trivialization of a human catastrophe, the Lake Nyos gas disaster of 1986 in which nearly 2,000 Cameroonians perished.[1] I was, however, to witness the progressive radicalization and development of Butake’s drama until today when he is, indisputably, the boldest, most committed, most relevant and most popular dramatist in Cameroon.

            I knew scarcely anybody in Yaounde in 1987 when I started forming the Flame Players. I was still also a stranger to the way the “system worked”. Three people with whom I regularly discussed my ideas and plans and from whose advice I benefited were: Siga Asanga (who had very generously taken me in as one of his dependants); Kitts Mbeboh (whose mastery of the “system” was ever evident in his relaxed and calm confidence); and Hansel Eyoh (who was then Director of Culture in the Ministry of Information and Culture), one of the most spectacularly “successful” Anglophones in the “system” at the time. Eyoh gave me a list of the names of people he believed would be interested in my project and Mbeboh and Asanga provided me with the means to go around on a campaign drive. Of all the people I personally contacted, only the musician, Etubeyang, declined my invitation on the frank ground that he had no time for unsponsored adventurism. All the others received my idea with infectious alacrity.

            Once I had a handful of people, I immediately selected a play - J.C. de Graft’s Through a Film Darkly – and we started rehearsing thrice weekly in Dr. Siga Asanga’s parlour, [with me directing the play]. Prudential pragmatism soon led me to approach Bole Butake to join the group, especially as he had access to the only proper rehearsal facility known to me at the time [and, because Hansel Eyoh whom I had cast in the lead role of the play proved unable to afford the time required and I had to step into that  role and we therefore needed someone to direct the play]. To my pleasant surprise, Butake unhesitatingly accepted to join us. He also brought with him three of the most talented students in the Yaounde University Theatre. The group then drew up a working constitution which stipulated an “afrocentric” policy in the choice of plays and the Flame Players thus came into being.[2] [The members of the Flame Players, in the order they joined the group by formal/financial registration, were as follows: Godfrey B. Tangwa, Joyce Ashuntangtang, Kumengisa Pius Deghe, Rita Kum Konglim, Tangye Lydia, Vennessa Sona, Benn Bongang, Ma Arrah Bate, Caroline Ngala, Siga Asanga, Bole Butake, David Chuye Bunyui, Ann Rossiter, Kwasen Gwangwaa, Sama Mo Fomuso, Ayang Frederick, Hansel Ndumbe Eyoh, Maimo Mary, Julie Tala, Judith Bi Suh, Pamela Kisob, Agnes Akwo, Emelda Ngufor, Patricia Nkweteyim, Ayuk Susana Ngwa, Bannavti Joseph Kumu, Ernestine Jaja Ngringe, Kehbuma Langmia, Mary Madeka, Emmanuel Tita Tabi, Vitung Francis Atsimbom, Atemkeng Juliet, Balbina Mesue. The sponsors in cash or kind of the Flame Players in the early years were Pa Enoh Tanjong, Mr. Peter Ngufor and Mr. Simon Fobi.]

            The very first production of the Flame Players, J.C. de Graft’s Through a Film Darkly was directed by Bole Butake and premièred at the Centre Culturel Français, Yaoundé, on 27^th November, 1987. It was an instant success, not only on account of the rare quality of acting which many people remarked, but also because it dealt with a theme very dear to all Cameroonians: "love", a politically neutral theme with which everyone could feel at ease. Since the mid-1960s, when His (Departed) Excellency, President Alhaji Amadou Ahidjo, imposed a monolithic dictatorship in Cameroon, the only areas within which any Cameroonian could operate freely without fear of being considered “subversive” were: “love” in its sexual dimensions, “eating and drinking,” and “sports”, particularly football. In all these permissible areas, Cameroonians have achieved remarkable results.

            The Flame Players’ maiden production was so successful that it enjoyed a total of nine stage performances in Yaounde, Bamenda, Mbengwi, Buea and Victoria. A TV-film adaptation of it titled Visitor from the Past was later made and became equally popular with television viewers. From there things went on quite well with the Flame Players, with productions of Sankie Maimo’s Succession in Sarkov (1988) [directed by Bole Butake], a screen version of same (1989) [produced by Kwasen Gwangwaa] and Kwasen Gwangwaa’s Our Cousin (1989) [produced by himself], until 1990, when things dramatically changed in Cameroon as the struggle against monolithic dictatorship came into the open against a backdrop of government intimidation, heavy troop deployment and killing of innocent citizens. From then on, all Anglophones and everything Anglophone was looked on with irremediable suspicion [by the Yaounde political authorities].

            The next play attempted by the Flame Players after the 1990 watershed was Sarif Easmon’s The New Patriots, directed by myself. We sought the collaboration of the Centre Culturel Français, Yaoundé, in the project, but they refused to collaborate in the production because the play was in English and they were not here to promote the English language. We were then forced to go and hire the main hall of the Yaoundé Hilton for the première on 24^th April 1991. Because of serious political turbulence all over the country (a phenomenon christened “Villes Mortes”) we were able to manage only one more performance of The New Patriots. Our next production, The Dilemma, a workshop educational drama, conceived, scripted and executed by the group with the sponsorship of the German agency GTZ, and performed at the Yaounde Conference Centre on 21^st November 1991, helped the troupe to recover somewhat from the failure of its previous production.

            The next production, which is my personal favourite in the Flame Players’ repertoire, was  Victor Epie Ngome’s What God has put Asunder, an expertly crafted and powerful metaphor on the Anglophone problem in Cameroon, directed by Kwasen Gwangwa’a and premièred at the historic town of Buea on April 2^nd 1993 during the momentous All Anglophone Conference (AAC) which concluded with the Buea Declaration complemented by the Bamenda Proclamation exactly a year later.

            For choice of a play for our next production, we were divided between two unpublished manuscripts: an English translation of Werewere Liking’s Um and Sankie Maimo’s Retributive Justice. In the end we opted for the latter on the ground that, as a play about human rights abuses in Cameroon, it was more relevant and more committed in our actual situation and that it would be more appealing to Anglophones, our core audience. Directed by Asheri Kilo and myself, it was premièred at the British Council Hall, Yaounde, on 5^th June 1993. Excerpts from the play were performed at the Yaounde Conference Centre (Palais des Congrès) before the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku, when he visited Cameroon about that time. Some of the government ministers present on that occasion were said to have been so incensed by the excerpts we performed that they swore: “Jamais encore ces Flame Players!’ In the last production, so far, of the Flame Players, directed by Kumu Bannavti, we used a really hilarious comedy by Durojaiye Adegoke, Grip’am, translated from the Yoruba original into Pidgin English by Ola Rotimi, as a captatio benevolenciae, a veritable sweet coating for the bitter pill that is Bole Butake’s Deutsche Welle Award winning Shoes and Four Men in Arms.[Incidentally but remarkably, Grip'am is the only instance we had seen Butake not as playwright or director but as actor - our cast for the hilarious comedy comprised Butake, Judith Bi Suh and myself].

Anglophone Drama and Francophone Drama

Although the contrasts I am drawing here are about [British] West Cameroonians and [French] East Cameroonians, I have the suspicion that they might also be generally applicable to other African Anglophones and Francophones. Francophones call actors “les comédiens” and it would appear that, for them, all drama is essentially comedy. In general, Francophone drama appears to me as basically comic theatre, characterized by farcical acting, slapstick and licentious jokes and linguistic puns arising from attempts to domesticate the French language, which are really hilarious because the French language does not admit of local variants or else the Académie Française, since 1629 the gendarme of French language purity, established by Cardinal Richelieu, would not still be going strong today. The only exception in this regard known to me is Gilbert Doho who has recently teamed up with Bole Butake to give his own dramatic work more political punch and relevance.

            Their recent joint scripting and production of Zintgraff and the Battle of Mankon is not only a reminder that the German colonizers of Cameroon had met well-organized and politically highly sophisticated kingdoms in the hinterland who matched their military might and were only subdued with the help of other kingdoms with whom the Germans went into alliance, but also makes a few calculated highly caustic comments about the present rulership in Cameroon.

            The collaboration between Doho and Butake has opened a new chapter in Cameroon theatre where Anglophones and Francophones participate in one joint production in which the dialogues are rendered in both English and/or French as well as in Pidgin and some of the indigenous languages. The latest production of this type that I watched was The Courageous Cry, a play on dictatorship and human rights by the Nigerian dramatist, Effiong Ekpeyong, sponsored by the British Council and directed by the author, premièred at the Centre Culturel Français, Yaoundé, and taken on tour to several cities all over Cameroon. The very high popular appeal that these experimental productions have enjoyed is an indication that they certainly have an assured place in the future of theatre in Cameroon.

            By contrast to Francophone drama, Anglophone drama has more political punch and commitment because it seems always to seek for social contention and relevance, on the altar of which art as art, such as choreography and costuming, are readily sacrificed. In Cameroon Anglophone drama is basically the drama of people who see themselves as having been politically deceived and short-changed, marginalized, oppressed, persecuted, enslaved, exploited and brutalized. Anglophone theatre audiences often participate in the spectacle to the point of reading their own political meanings into quite innocent dialogues or actions and sometimes get excited with the dramatic action to the point of jumping onto the stage. Very often people have come to me after a performance and asked why I didn’t say this rather than that or do one thing rather than another. And they never seem to be fully satisfied when I answer that I was not the person who wrote the script but was simply interpreting someone else’s artistic work.

            The differences between Anglophones and Francophones in this regard are clearly an accurate reflection of their respective colonial backgrounds, orientations, upbringing and experiences. With my Nigerian academic background, especially coming from the University of Ife with its well known tradition of freedom, radicalism and unionism both at student and staff levels, I found the unquestioned authoritarianism in Yaounde a very bitter pill to swallow. I saw no reason why anybody should apply for “l’autorisation de spectacle” before performing an ordinary play. I could understand having to pay a fee for the Hall or even a performance tax. But having to submit the playscript and schedule of performances for approval is something that I’ve never been able to get used to.

            Nor is this type of exaggerated censorship limited to theatrical performances. A similar "autorisation” is required even for holding an academic discussion for which it is necessary to submit, in advance, all the details of what is to be said during the discussion. Apart from the Flame Players I was also involved in 1987 in the creation of an intellectual society: the Bernard Fonlon Society (BFS). My experience as one of those who tried to organize lectures, Symposia, Round Tables, and Literary Evenings for the BFS convinced me that, unless there was a change in this regard, scientific research, intellectualism and academic traditions could never take root in Cameroon.

Bole Butake and His Theatre of Conscientization

I have been closely associated with Bole Butake since 1987 and I have witnessed a transformation in Bole Butake as a dramatic artist. I have already remarked above about what I thought of his Lake God when it was first published. Shortly after Butake joined the Flame Players in 1987, I suggested to him that we should produce Bate Besong’s The Most Cruel Death of a Talkative Zombie, a play that satirized Ahidjo and Muna quite unmistakably. But Butake told me: “I am not looking for accommodation in Kondengui. If you want to go there, you can go alone.”

            And yet by 1991, Butake produced Bate Besong’s Beasts of No Nation with the Yaoundé University Theatre on the occasion of World Theatre Day, March 27^th. Bate Besong’s Beasts of No Nation was infinitely more radical than The Most Cruel Death of a Talkative Zombie in that it satirized not their ex-Excellencies as the latter did, but their incumbent Excellencies. The official government spy who watched the performance of this play in Yaoundé University’s Amphi 700, fled from the hall before the end of the play and later wrote a lengthy report which was widely circulated among all the repressive arms of the administration. But Butake was not perturbed. In 1994, Butake wrote:

It is an established fact that in most African countries, as soon as people manoeuvre themselves into political and administrative offices, their previous promises of service to the people are relegated to the background and their major concern becomes how to perpetuate themselves in office and how to amass wealth for themselves. In order to achieve this through the semblance of legitimacy, they rush legislation through parliament (but more fashionably through presidential decrees) and reinforce the police and military whose mission is now disorientated towards the protection of this minority against the majority. Furthermore, total control of the affairs of the country and its citizens is achieved by confiscating the media, especially radio and television, and placing injunctions on any private initiative in the area of communication and information. Through empty political propaganda and sloganeering, with the full backing of the forces of repression, the bourgeoisie can now settle down to raping the nation with impunity.

In my opinion, it is these elites, these rapists, who need to be conscientized. Otherwise, what explanation can one give for the large-scale prevalence of poverty and disease in most African countries while the majority of the political and bureaucratic leadership are operating fabulous bank accounts in Swiss and other European and American banks?

In the Cameroonian situation, for example, things have been further compounded by the manipulation of ethnic and linguistic divergences for the maintenance of a stranglehold on the entire country by a handful of absolutely myopic and ruthless self-seekers. In a country with a population of barely twelve million people, constituting over two hundred and fifty ethnic groupings, in addition to two foreign cultural heritages – English and French – imposed by colonialism, the exploitation of ethnic and linguistico-cultural rivalry for selfish, political ends can be very effective at the cost only of the nation.

It is within the context of this landscape that I launched myself in the desperate attempt to re-educate or conscientize the urbano-politico-bureaucratic bourgeoisie through the writing and directing of plays.[3]

 

            There is a clearly discernible progressive radicalization, commitment and tendency towards bluntness in Butake’s art, from Lake God (1986) through The Survivors (1989) through And Palm Wine will Flow (1990) and culminating in Shoes and Four Men in Arms (1994). The irreversible breakthrough came with an incident that, in fact, had nothing to do with drama or art. In February 1992, without any prior consultation or warning, Butake’s name was read over the radio as having been appointed by His Excellency the President of the Republic to join the campaign team of the ruling party, the CPDM, as Chargé de mission, at Kumba in the South West Province. In Cameroon, if you are a civil or public servant, if you hold a public office or, otherwise, do anything for which you are paid through the public treasury, it is taken for granted that you must be a militant of the ruling party. This situation, more than anything else, has greatly prevented the advent of genuine democracy in Cameroon. Butake, however, in an epoch-making precedent, publicly rejected the presidential nomination (an effrontery quite inconceivable to Francophones) in writing with a short piece entitled “I Refuse to be Lapiroed” which he circulated by hand and also had published in the newspapers. The title of Butake’s “bombshell,” for those who know the story of the Francophone musician, Roger Lambo Sandjo, alias Lapiro de Mbanga, alias Ndinga Man, which led newspaper columnists such as Cameroon Post’s Rotcod Gobata of No Trifling Matter fame to coin the verb “to lapiro,” clearly implied that Butake was refusing to be blackmailed, bribed and corrupted.

            As I remarked at the time, Butake had, with his “I refuse to be Lapiroed,” said simply, directly and most effectively what for years he had been struggling to say through his drama. I believe that drama and theatre are highly over-rated by people in power. What good reason is there really to be so afraid of theatre and drama that they are censored and controlled and proscribed etc.? A play is simply a play, make-believe, a work of the imagination, and is known to be such by all. Drama could, perhaps, sensitize or conscientize  people. I don’t really know. But I don’t also know where or when drama or art in general have ever on their own changed political reality. Those who desire political change would do better to engage in direct political action. Direct political action is indispensable for political change.

[In 1996, while on a Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, I arranged for the Flame Players to be invited to a youth theatre festival "Sprachspiele Internationales Theaterfestival für Schüler und Studenten" at Leverkussen. We chose Shoes and Four Men  Arms which meanwhile had been translated by Eckhard Breitinger into German. Butake led the all female troupe (four actors and one stage manager) to Germany and we had memorable performances at Leverkussen and Bayreuth.

When it was time to return home, one of the young ladies in the group disappeared into thin air. Luckily for us one of the others had an inkling about her plans to "fall bush", so we did not strain looking for her or going to report to the police. Finally, it is bush falling more than death (Hansel Eyoh, Siga Asanga, Kwasen Gwangwa'a, Sankie Maimo, and now Bole Butake) that grounded the Flame Players at the very moment it should have been soaring to stardom. Shortly after the Leverkussen Festival I had attended a conference on "the Voice in Theatre and Acting" in Cardiff, the UK. A Theatre troupe I met there were very keen on going into immediate partnership with the Flame Players for joint film productions. To mount our dossier for this proposal, I communicated with one of our members back home who was best placed to get for me in a timely manner some required information. She, surprisingly, was unresponsive. As it turned out, she was at the time seriously preparing to "fall bush". Had things worked out otherwise, the Flame Players might today be rubbing shoulders with Nollywood. The Flame Players had also drafted a 52 episode serial called ASHIA, which Kwasen Gwangwa'a was in the process of translating into screen play when untimely death took him, in the company of Bate Bissong and Hilarious Ambe, in a ghastly motor accident on the notorious Douala-Yaounde road. We do hear talk about the Cameroon Film Industry but, frankly, there is no such thing as yet. There is a Nigerian Film Industry, for sure, and Cameroonians have been so fascinated with it that they imagine a Cameroon equivalent could emerge through collaboration and imitation. Radical originality is necessary for a Cameroon film whatever to develop. Films which mimic Nollywood films or use its star actors/actresses are footnotes/part and parcel of the Nigerian film industry, demonstrating its power and influence. A genuine and authentic Cameroon film industry with English as the vehicle of communication will need to acknowledge and build on the humble foundations laid by the likes of Victor Musinga, Sankie Maimo, Bole Butake, The Yaounde University Theatre and the Flame Players.  The Flame Bush Fallers who might have moved things forward, were they at home, include Joyce Ashuntangtang, Vennessa Sona, Benn Bongang, Kumengisa Pius Deghe, Ma Arrah Bate, Maimo Mary, Pamela Kisob, Bannavti Joe Kumu, Kehbuma Langmia].

[Bole Butake was a Cameroonian with a pristine Anglophone mind-set and orientation, modest, true to himself and his conscience, true to all those he had to deal with at all levels. Given his indisputable patriotism and his teaching and mentorship of numerous young Cameroonians, he certainly deserves some national recognition which, we hope, His Excellency the President of the country, in one of those rare but brilliant actions he occasionally takes to the delight of all, will confer on him, on behalf of us all. But should that fall on the not to be side of reality, let us all with Butake accept reality with calm equanimity for, if he was so courageous in life, it is not in death that he would become a plaintive coward. On our part, the Flame Players attest that he accomplished all his tasks with distinction and left nothing undone that he needed to have done, and we wish him a well deserved eternal rest.]

 

[1] For a review of the play see Godfrey B. Tangwa: “Bole Butake’s Lake God: A Philosophical Review”. African Theatre Review 1:3 (April 1987).

[2] For a fuller account, see Godfrey B. Tangwa: “Who are the Flame Players and How did they Originate?” The Flame Players’ Production Magazine of Retributive Justice by Sankie Maimo (1993).

[3] Bole Butake: “The Dramatist at Work: My Theatre Work is Aimed at the Urbano-Politico-Bureaucratic Elite in Cameroon.” Theatre and Performance in Africa, ed. Eckhard Breitinger. [Bayreuth African Studies; 31], 1994, pp. 101-102.

On being and not being Charlie.

I am Charlie; I am not Charlie, and all that. Sounds a little childish; like the “Bring back our Chibock girls” of some months ago in which even America’s First Lady participated. A march for freedom of expression makes sense. Were I in Paris, I would join a march for freedom of expression any day. Provided it is agreed what we are marching about. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. It is connected with freedom of thought, the right to think your own thoughts and then to express such thoughts in any of the myriad ways in which human thoughts can be expressed. But neither freedom of thought nor freedom of expression of thoughts or feelings implies that all expression of thoughts or feelings is right. Some thoughts are immoral and wrong and expressing some thoughts which are not in themselves immoral may be wrong. If I meet someone with a big head and think “what an awfully big head” my thought is not necessarily immoral; but if I express this thought I am doing something wrong.

The “I am Charlie” people seem to be defending freedom of expression without any restrictions, as one of the sacred pillars of Western civilization. There cannot be freedom without restrictions and Western freedoms have usually functioned within reasonable limits. The slogan of the French Revolution “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” is a timeless procedural maxim, provided it is understood as applicable under reasonable limits. Artistic expression is a value in all cultures but it should be subject to the restriction of internal rational control. Rationality is one thing that all human beings have in common.

If you are a cartoonist or caricaturist, what you cartoon or caricature is up to you. Why choose to cartoon Muhammad when you are not a Muhammadan? Why not cartoon, say, your grandfather and/or grandmother; or do you think your readers will not find such cartoons delightful? I remember a Yoruba sculptor who once sculpted Jesus Christ in stone and in wood. He was a Christian and some other Christians did not like his works of art whereas others liked them. Some people said “Your Jesus looks like a Yoruba man!” Others retorted “Yes, Jesus must take Yoruba form for Christianity to take firm roots in Yoruba land!” This was a healthy debate on artistic self-expression among adherents of the same religion.

By choosing that your artistic self-expression is for caricaturing Muhammad, whereas you are neither a Moslem nor an admirer of the Islamic religion, you are choosing to provoke some people and perhaps to delight those who are happy to see those people provoked. The people provoked, however, are not justified in reacting anyhow. Action and reaction ought always to be proportionate to each other. Like the kids would say here in Cameroon “Cosh my mami I cosh your mami, God no go vex”. Shooting someone with a gun for artistically expressing himself, albeit in a provocative manner, cannot be justified. Lack of a sense of proportion is one of the serious maladies of the modern world. It engenders double standards, the commonest moral fault of the contemporary world. This recalls the African heads of state that flew to Paris to join the “I am Charlie” demonstrations. This is like leaving one’s house burning to go and assist in the ceremonial mudding of a neigbour’s house.

Terrorism is the name of a deadly epidemic ravaging our world today and no one has seen anything comparable in that regard to what has been witnessed in Africa, with heads of state behaving as if nothing was happening.  Take Boko Haram alone and leave aside for the moment Al Shabab, the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Moslem Brotherhood, etc. When Boko Haram first emerged, it appeared that it had a cause or objectives, no matter how incoherent and unreasonable they sounded. Abolishing Western education or establishing a Caliphate are putative objectives that could conceivably be discussed and negotiated within existing realities in Nigeria and elsewhere.  But the modus operandi of Boko Haram has proved beyond all doubt that the group has no ideology, let alone objectives, guiding its actions. They kill completely indiscriminately in Churches, Mosques, Markets and Schools. Throwing a bomb in an open African market is the worst type of terrorism imaginable. The target is human beings as such indiscriminately, including those who, per impossibile, may be supporters of your mad cause. This is nihilistic terrorism, a paradigm of a crime against Humanity.

The victims of the recent terrorism in Paris could at least be charged with cartooning the holy Prophet of Islam, even though the terrorism unleashed on them for such a minor misdemeanor was out of all proportion with the act. What putative fault, be it ever so pretentious, can the hundreds of Boko Haram victims be charged with? This fact alone, as soon as it became clear, should have helped to mobilize all human beings against the terrorist group. Anywhere in the world that innocent children happily playing, ordinary people going about their daily chores, oblivious of any danger, can suddenly meet a violent death, there we have this brand of terrorism, a crime against Humanity, crying for redress. It is an unimaginably heinous crime crying for total eradication, without any room for double standards. But eradication will not be possible unless and until the problem of the manufacture and distribution of fire arms around the world today is robustly addressed, as I have argued earlier and will argue again later on these pages.

Gobata

Yaounde, 01/02/2015

WE BURIED HIM IN BAMENDA

The funeral period for Victor Anomah Ngu ran for over two weeks, from 05  to 23 July 2011, culminating in his burial at the St. Joseph’s cemetery of the Cathedral Church at Big Mankon, Bamenda, North West Region of Cameroon.  

 

Over those two weeks, as I attended religious services, academic round-tables and other ceremonies in his honour, and listened to speeches, testimonies, tributes and eulogies, I marveled at the capacity and skill of Cameroonians for post-mortem flattery.

PASSING OF ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE CAMEROONIANS OF OUR TIME: VICTOR ANOMAH NGU

I already flashed the passing of VAN in my last posting. Professor Victor Anomah Ngu, basic scientist, award-winning oncologist, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Yaounde, former Chancellor of the University of Buea (UB), former Minister of Public Health, former President of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences, President of the Bernard Fonlon Society, author of the candidate HIV vaccine VANHIVAX, passed on to eternity on Tuesday 14 June 2011.

Since the death of Bernard Fonlon on 26 August 1986, no other death of an academic and public figure has been received with so much shock and fervor here in Cameroon as that of Victor Anomah Ngu. There are many parallels between Fonlon and Ngu: exceptional intellectual endowments, remarkable moral integrity, spirit of humility and poverty, visible genuine commitment to undiscriminating service of the public, deep religiousity/spirituality, etc.  Quite incidentally and interestingly enough Fonlon and Ngu were the greatest admirers of each other.  Until his death last month, Victor Anomah Ngu was still the President of the Bernard Fonlon Society (BFS), formed shortly after the latter’s death to promote his ideas, ideals, and remarkable life values. Fonlon himself had written a book of poems dedicated to the remarkable life and achievements of Victor Anomah Ngu.

GLANCING BACKWARD 4

Two giant steps backward from the CANTAM Workshop of 27 September to 01 October, 2010, take me first to the CAMBIN General Assembly which took place at the University of Buea in the South West Region of Cameroon on 17 July 2010. CAMBIN is the Cameroon Chapter of the Pan African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN) whose creation (CAMBIN’s that is) I initiated in 2005. It is a non-profit, non-governmental, non-political, non-discriminatory, multidisciplinary association whose official seat is in Yaounde.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2011

For various interrelated reasons, all beyond my control, my blog has been dormant since 2006. It has now been roused from its long slumber and there is a pretty backlog of issues/things to be presented and a lot of catching up to be done in the coming days. But, first, herewith the best of my wishes for 2011 to you, your family and loved ones.

Yours Sincerely,

Gobata

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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