Critical Perspectives on Cameroon Writing

36. Protest Journalism as a Literary Genre: The Case of Anglophone Cameroon Journalism Today

485 36 Protest Journalism As a Literary Genre: The Case of Anglophone Cameroon Journalism Today by Francis B. Nyamnjoh, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Faculty of Social and Management Sciences University of Buea As the title suggests, this paper argues that protest or liberation journalism has a lot in common with creative or imaginative writing, and that it could be considered a form of literature. The paper takes Anglophone journalism example of how journalists can perpetuate myths, legends, and fairy tales with the same creative imagination, provoking the same strength of emotion in there and viewers, as would a novelist or playwright with his fantasies and stereotypes. I am neither a literary critic nor an expert in any form of literature, but I do know that the creative writer is someone with a world view, with a value system, an idea of what is good or bad, wrong or right. He has a dream, a fantasy, and an order that he cherishes, and that he would like to translate into reality. The creative, has his opinions on how various aspects of society could and should be or P re-arranged or conducted so as to render life more comfortable and attractive; he writes he is either inventing the world of his drama or trying to reorganize reality to suit his fantasies and aspirations. The creative writer is very attached, emotionally to his idea of what things ought to be, and spends his time either trying to ignore to tinker with the way things really are. He is a day-dreamer in whom current frustrations awaken a strong nostalgia for a golden past, imagined or real, and creates an obsession for the re-invention of that past. In Cameroon, while some creative Anglophone writers feel that the present order (economic, political and cultural) is not so bad and that only a reform is’ necessary, others feel that the order is too unjust and needs overthrowing. Besong, for example, a playwrights whose 486 recurrent theme is the Anglo predicament in post-Foumban Cameroon, has called on fellow Anglophone writers to define and identify themselves as essentially concerned with a “fighting literature”, The Anglophone creative writer, he maintains, “must arouse his Anglophone Cameroonian constituency from the apathy and despair into which it has sunk and transform his writing into “hand-grenades” to be used against the oppressors tragic story he must tell from their own perspective. His writing “must depict the conditions of his people, expressing their spontaneous feelings of betrayal, protest and anger. It must challenge. It must indict head on, “ and it “must convey’ remarkable force the moods of the Anglophone Cameroonian caught in the as assimilation-nightmare of Sisyphean existence. (I) A cursory overview of his own writings leaves one in no doubt that Besong has lived up to his own prescription. His Beasts of No Nation (1990) is bitter indictment of the exploitation of the Anglophones who are reduced to “night men” by corrupt, overbearing Francophones. His bitterness is so great that he abandons all metaphors and ironies, except with the name Yaoundé which is reversed to Ednaouy. Bole Butake, in And Palm wine Will Flow (\990), uses the grass fields Fon as a metaphor, an epitome of institutionalized corruption, greed, and dictatorship in the country. He predicts participatory democracy for his people through a grassroots revolution. The presence of pro-democracy forces and imagery from the North West, an Anglophone province, leaves the audience in doubt about where Butake believes his revolution shall start from. On his part, Epie Ngome, in What God Has Put Asunder, uses an extended metaphor, the marriage of Weka and Garba, to denounce the unitary state system and to uphold the idea of a two-state federation for Anglophones and Francophones. Many other Anglophones and Francophones, Many other predicament, and what is mentioned here is only illustrative. Harsh experiences of post-Foumban Cameroon have also awakened’ in the Anglophone journalists memories of an earlier experience by their community - the golden age of public responsibility and accountability that only the thorough bred Anglo-Saxon heritage in Cameroon know something about. The wish to re-invent this golden age in the face of present frustrations, has given rise to a journalism of 487 liberation championed by journalists such as Charlie Ndichia, Boh Herbert, Julius Wamey, Paddy Mbawa, Francis Wache, Ntenfack Ofege, Lary Eyong Echaw, Sam Nuvala Fonkem, Joseph Bannavti and Hilary Kebila Fokum...