Theatre and Environmental Education in Cameroon, and: Women in Theatre for Development in Cameroon: Participation, Contributions and Limitations (review)

For the last thirty years, theater has been used by scholars, government agents, and NGOs to foster development in Africa. Though the dreams have not always yielded expected results, Theater for Development has entered the daily life of many in rural and urban Africa, because of its promise as a self-improvement tool in oppressive contexts. These two monographs by John Tiku Takem and Emelda Ngufor Samba raise questions about who the practitioners of theater for social change should be and how far they can effect genuine change. While the first focuses on deforestation and forest preservation issues in Cameroon, the other centers on women as the objects and subjects of Theater for Development.

Theatre and Environmental Education in Cameroon does not cover the whole forestry industry in Cameroon nor all the theater activities that have been geared towards this specific issue. Rather, it concentrates on the Mount Cameroon equatorial rainforest. Moving from the general to the specific, Tiku Takem exposes the fallacious theories and practices behind deforestation and environmental education in Cameroon and assesses Theater for Development’s ability to integrate local populations in the education process. To better drive his point home, Tiku Takem focuses on rural and disadvantaged populations while locating both theater activism and deforestation within the contexts of international and national politics.

Chapter one gives a brief history of Theater for Social Change in Africa and Cameroon. The dramatic failure of all externally driven developmental projects inspired a number of developmental agents to reject the top-down model and to call fervently for the direct involvement of local communities. This was the main justification for choosing Theater for Development as a method to effect positive social, economic, and political changes. Tiku Takem acclaims international and national scholars and committed activists such as such as Ross Kidd, David Kerr, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Hansel Ndumbe Eyoh, and Bole Butake, but points out that Theater for Development hardly achieves the goals it proposes. However, the failure is due more to the Theater for Development approaches employed than to innate limitations of the medium. In most cases, local communities seem to have been used as guinea pigs and not as veritable practitioners of theater for change. Tiku Takem believes that except for one theater activist, the Cameroonians have inherited weaknesses along with the medium. The single success case came as a result of integrating local people and their cultures into the Theater for Development process.

The second chapter focuses on deforestation and demystifies discourses in which corrupt government agents and their accomplices scapegoat local populations while protecting the plundering loggers. More disturbing is their illogical approach to preservation through environmental education. One would expect the Cameroonian government and its foreign allies to gear the politics of preservation towards the adult populations that they accuse of carrying out the deforestation. As chapter three pointedly shows, however, it is school children whom NGOs target for environmental education in Cameroon, with the tacit complicity of the political apparatus. This should by no means be interpreted as an accident. It is a hegemonic approach aimed at covering the real causes of environmental degradation and offering false solutions. From this perspective, Tiku Takem’s book sounds the alarm about a deliberately fallacious diagnosis and solution to the problem of deforestation and preservation in Cameroon. But how can one remedy this, how should genuine developmental agents unmask such hegemonic and criminal practices and help implant the seed of revolution?

Chapter four answers these questions by examining five case studies of forest preservation through theater. These cases employ three different approaches. The first approach consists in carrying ready-made plays to the local communities. Such an approach not...