By Dibussi Tande
In a recent article on state sponsored “literature apartheid” in Cameroon, Patrice Nganang warned against what he perceived to be attempts by Anglophone writers to create a distinct minority “Anglophone Cameroon literature” separate from mainstream Cameroonian literature. He argued that this approach would confine Cameroon literature in English in an anonymous literary ghetto. He urged Anglophone Cameroon writers “to understand that their minority perspective restricts them into local hero Authors, not readable beyond Anglophone schools in our country and on CRTV”.
Nganang also condemned what he perceived to be Anglophone writers’ unhealthy obsession with the “Anglophone problem” and Francophone Cameroonians. As he puts it, Anglophone writers are “akin to the Albatross in Baudelaire’s poetry” because “the English language that they acquired from their colonial past arms them with broad wings, but the Anglophone issue clips them in their impending flight.” He goes on to wonder whether “By pigheadedly picking a fight with Francophones, do Anglophone Authors not lose out on the potential of the borderless language that they use, namely: English?”
In this rebuttal, I explain why Anglophone Cameroon literature must carve out its own identity and also debunk the myth that Anglophone writers are obsessed with Francophone Cameroonians whom they blame for the woes of the Anglophone community in Cameroon.
Why We Need a Distinct “Anglophone” Literature in Cameroon
In any society where there is a linguistic, racial and even ethnic minority, the voice of the majority almost invariably dominates or even drowns out that of the minority in practically all facets of national life. In Cameroon for example, the country’s history is essentially synonymous with the history of Francophone Cameroon, with the history of the former British Cameroons being merely a footnote. And, as Ashuntantang has shown in her recent work on the dissemination of Anglophone literature, the most significant studies on Cameroonian literature have invariably been limited to a review of works by Francophone writers with a few Anglophone writers thrown in “pour le décor”. Similarly, for centuries “American history” was exclusively the history of white America to the exclusion of the histories of minority groups such as African Americans. And, when the history of these minorities was incorporated into the mainstream narrative, it was generally to perpetuate the myth of European superiority.
Under these circumstances, the only way for minority groups to protect their identities is to create their own cultural and historical spaces where they can tell their own stories and celebrate their own cultures. This is the case with Anglophone Cameroon writers who generally write about issues relevant to the people of the former British Southern Cameroons. This is neither a “repli identitaire” nor a laager mentality at work, but a natural and logical desire to make their voices heard and to tell their stories as part of the national narrative.
Regional or even ethnic literatures are nothing new. In the United States where Nganang lives, there is a thriving black literature which deals primarily with issues of racism, slavery, and equality. There is also a burgeoning Latino literature which focuses on different facets of the Latino experience in America, and on what it means to be a Latino in America today. Still in America, there are regional literatures such as “Southern Literature” which focuses on the plantation era, both from the white and black perspectives.
Much closer to home, in neighboring Nigeria, a contemporary Hausa literature popularly known as “Kano Market Literature” has developed in the last decade; an unapologetically feminist literature which challenges the conservative values of the Muslim North, particularly the subservient position of women. This ethno-regional literature has brought renewed vigor and diversity to Nigerian literature, albeit to the dismay of proponents of the Shari'a who consider it a threat to “pure” Islamic values. There is also an emerging protest literature in the Delta region, spearheaded by the likes of Tanure Ojaide, which focuses on the marginalization and exploitation of the inhabitants of that oil rich region by the Nigerian state.
These examples show, if need be, that “Anglophone Cameroon Literature” is not an aberration, and that like other “minority” literatures in world, it is intricately tied to the unique experiences of the Anglophones within the Bilingual Cameroon Republic. It is a literature which does not only have to deal with issues of literary quality and quantity, but, unlike its Francophone counterpart, also has to engage in a relentless political fight for recognition as the other major component of mainstream Cameroonian literature.
The literature from the former British Southern Cameroons is not merely “Cameroon literature in English” as some would like us to believe. If that were the case, then English translations of Ferdinand Oyono’s Une vie de boy (“Houseboy”), Mongo Beti’s Mission terminée (Mission to Kala”) or even Nganang’s Temps de chien (“Dog Days”) would be classified as “Anglophone Cameroon literature”. But that is not the case. Anglophone literature goes beyond a colonial language to embrace a specific territory, a specific socio-cultural space, and a specific historical reality.
Similarly, when Ba'bila Mutia published the French version of his play Before this time yesterday (Hier et maintenant : pièce en un acte. SILEX/Nouvelles du Sud, 1995), which deals with the nationalist struggles in the French Cameroons in the 1950s and the political turmoil of the 1990s, it was completely ignored by the French language media and critics, even though Mutia had stepped outside the confines of that “Anglophone space” which supposedly limits the reach of Anglophone writers. What prevented the book’s takeoff in Francophone Cameroon was neither its subject matter nor its language, but the author’s “Anglophoneness”. It was irrelevant that Mutia was an internationally acclaimed writer, playwright and poet, with honors from the Berlin Academy of Arts, among others.... This is the Herculean challenge, which even the most “Cameroonian” of Anglophone writers must confront.
In my opinion, the key to this literary puzzle is very simple: Anglophone literature will develop and take its rightful place on the Cameroonian literary pantheon, not by submerging its identity into a vast Cameroonian “national literature” that is synonymous with Francophone Cameroon literature, but by creating a distinct literary space and trajectory which reflects its own historical, political and socio-cultural realities. Only then will it finally emerge from the cloak of institutionalized neglect and repudiation that has been its lot in the last 50 years.
The Myth of Anglophone Writers’ Obsession with Francophones
Patrice Nganang’s claim that Anglophone writers are obsessed with and regularly demonize Francophone Cameroonians is a misreading of Anglophone Cameroon writing of the past two decades. In fact, it is not even a reflection of the militant Anglophone literature during the turbulent 1990s which witnessed the dramatic resurgence of the “Anglophone problem” on the national scene. While many Anglophone writers of that era used the Anglophone Problem as a springboard for their works, their literary canvass spread far beyond the confines of Anglophone Cameroon to include themes and issues that were universal in nature. For example, the most common theme in the works of Bate Besong, the torchbearer of that militant generation, was an unequivocal condemnation of dictatorship and oppression in all its forms. You don’t have to be Anglophone to appreciate this message! Bole Butake, another leading writer from that era wrote plays about dictatorship, national dialogue, the university of Yaounde uprising of the 1990s, etc. In fact, it can be argued that from a thematic standpoint, Anglophone literature of the 1990s, even more than Francophone literature of the same period, was a better reflection of the prevailing zeitgeist not only in Cameroon but in Africa as a whole.
Today again, without even trying, Anglophone writers are better representatives of that elusive and largely discredited ideal of a bilingual and bicultural Cameroon republic admired by the rest of the world. A cursory glance at recent Anglophone literature shows that many, if not the majority of Anglophone writers, set their novels in Francophone Cameroon, have leading characters that are Francophones, and spice their works with a liberal dose of French, Franglais, and Pidgin. A good example is Francis Nyamnjoh whose novels are set partially or entirely in Francophone Cameroon (A nose for money, Souls Forgotten, The Travail of Dieudonné…), and have a long list of Francophone characters who generally use a language that is reflective of what is spoken in the streets of Buea and Yaounde. We can also add to the list Anglophone poets such as Peter Vakunta and Ilongo Fritz who write in both French and English. How can such a literature be described as inward looking?
I don’t know of a single Francophone writer who has bothered to look beyond the river Mungo for a story or for a central character in a novel or play. In fact ,when Anglophones appear in the works of Francophone writers, they are merely caricatures who speak bad French or “l’anglais de Bamenda”, thereby reinforcing all the negative stereotypes that Francophones generally have of “Anglos”. How many Francophone writers have ever written a literary work that deals even obliquely with the unification of Southern Cameroons and “La Republique”? None to my knowledge. Anglophone writers do this all the time, not to demonize or accuse, but to enrich our collective memory. Afin que nul n'oublie. Lest we forget…
It is therefore not farfetched to argue that in terms of themes, characters, setting and local color, Anglophone literature IS Cameroon literature – it is the only literature within the “national triangle”, which even in its most militant form, comfortably straddles both banks of the river Mungo, feeling equally at home in Bamenda or in Bertoua.
Thus, if Anglophone literature is indeed like an Albatross as Nganang claims, then it is an Albatross which is soaring towards greater heights in spite of the systemic and institutionalized obstacles on its path.
This debate raised by Nganang is both unfortunate and enlightening. his critical shoot off the mark is informative of the physics thru which microcosmic ignorant arrogance of the francophone cultural intellectual reflects a same nonchalance as replicated by amplification on the macrocosmic frame of the larger hegemonistic system, a system that inculcates and internalizes refractive optics that in turn photographs our alloyed, disjointed, and atrophied experiment in reunification and unity! But then, it is enlightening because at least presents us with a mirror (innate flaws notwithstanding) : he helps reciprocate a national debate which hitherto had sounded and reverberated with the frustrating, vexing and almost dementing soliloquy of anglophones screaming and wailing infront of tall and thick apathetic walls, i mean the ears, of their francophone literary/intellectual counterparts that usually only echo back the hollow speech of silence!
That's my dime on it!
Posted by: Wirndzerem G Barfee | July 21, 2009 at 10:55 AM