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ix Preface This selection of news commentaries and analyses is in itself so good, and so fairly represents the spirit, purpose and quality of Cameroon Report as to need explanation by way of introduction. The selection could have been titled Voices of Dissent in the context of our times and the background of its libertarian heritage. However, we sharply differ at many points of diagnosis and cure of social evils unanimously believed to be inevitable in human progress writ large. That is why we avoided claiming mantles of Godly wisdom, naively, thinking that we dwelt in a world of life without sorrows, frustrations and problems. Hence, we, of different intellectual persuasions, all had our nostrums to heal society of greed, poverty, political fraud, corruption, war, repression and pigheaded leadership in Cameroon and beyond. These prescriptions are all relatively simple. Cameroonian, African or any other human being if not infinitely perfectible by theological standards, is infinitely educable to his own true interests. Error and crime against humanity are wholly the fault of man’s social, political and economic environment. And no worthy journalist can afford to give mere verbal homage to human dignity. Many of the dwindling number of self-proclaimed African ‘‘Father(s) of the Nation’’ have hardly been realistic. These tin gods have been unblinking enemies of the forces of democracy; they have been presiding over the liquidation of their nations; they have been the true thieves of state! And they have been killing their citizens mindlessly in the comfort x of a theologian who consoles himself that anyhow he would meet his fellow believers of the enemy camp in heaven. The Cameroonian society in particular is a society of the minority, i.e. minority ruling groups, in a continent half of whose people live on the borderline between hunger and starvation. Such a country sorely needs wisdom more appropriate to it than any which we have inherited from our speech addicts since independence in 1960. That wisdom will be born of intelligent dissent and the avoidance of premature orthodoxies. But the lasting merit of this book is that its dissent is constructive. It is neither a dissent of negative despair nor of brittle cynicism. The range of these commentaries and analyses is wide. It is concerned with the whole man rather than any political creed. But the writers, whose labour is genuinely a labour of love, however various may be their opinions, have a common regard for truth. Truth, to them, provides the moral sustenance and a sense of values in the criticism of our time. The substance clapped between the covers of this volume is as politically challenging as it is intellectually stimulating. I leave you with the incisive commentators and analysts of the towering Radio Cameroon programme: CAMEROON REPORT. Professor Tatah Mentan has been a visiting scholar of Peace and Security, Global Political Economy and African Studies in several North American Universities – including Concordia University, St Paul Minnesota – for more than a decade. His most recent testamental publications include: Democracy for Breakfast? Unveiling Mirage Democracy in Contemporary Africa. ...

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