TFT Magazine | Cameroon News | Southern Cameroon News

Culled from the Southern Cameroons Yahoo Forum

When I moved from Victoria (Limbe) to Buea, seat of Southern Cameroons and West Cameroon government, I was deeply shocked and saddened at the state of the Government Residential Area, GRA. This neighbourhood was reserved, in those golden days of West Cameroon, for the cream of the public service. If you were blindfolded in those days and brought to this part, and suddenly your eyes were opened, you would have imagined yourself transported to Europe . Neatly mowed lawns and manicured hedges were the characteristic features of GRA. Clean alleys and houses with disciplined occupants made this area a special one in Buea like many other towns in West Cameroon . The PWD, Public Works Department, did a formidable job in maintaining the houses on a regular basis.

By Christopher Fon Achobang*

Cameroon has been steadily invaded and infested by human rats since 1982. Some visionaries, described and condemned as coup plotters, took up arms in 1984 to flush out what they described as the Beti ethnic oligarchs laying siege to the country’s wealth. These individuals captured Bate Besong’s imagination in the play “Beast of no Nation”, whom he saw as enemies of the Cameroonian nation ferrying plane-loads of CFA (money) out of the country. His vitriolic and acerbic discourse earned him detention and the cruelest death of his premonitory talkative zombie, himself.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Martin Yembe in Bamenda

The avalanche of arrests of Southern Cameroons activists these past years has stirred up some concerned interest in the minds of many youths not only in the Southern Cameroons, but also beyond.

The heroism that used to go with the SDF has now slipped over into whatever is linked to the SCNC. The Biya administration is so naïve and gullible that any silly and fatuous report from a lazy drunken secret agent or ‘commandant’ is taken for real … and immediate disposition is taken to “maintain peace and order at all cost”.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Christopher Thompson

Bongo’s demise at the age of 73 had the air of a tragi-comic Shakespearean play. Officially, Africa’s longest-serving leader died from a ‘heart attack’, having suffered from cancer, but some suggest foul play, citing the possibility that he was poisoned by ambitious palace plotters. Whatever the truth, his body was flown on Thursday from Spain to Gabon, for a period of lying-in-state before he is buried this week.

The death sent French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and his mandarins into a spin: Bongo has been France’s most important ally in Africa since the De Gaulle era. The French army has a military base in the capital, Libreville, and French business giants such as Total and Bollore dominate Gabon’s economy.

Ali Ben Bongo, Gabon’s Defence Minister, who as The First Post reported last week is the presumed successor to the presidency, keeps a Ferrari 456 GTA, a Mercedes S-600 limousine and a Porsche 911 in France.

Original The First Post Report Here

The death last week of Omar Bongo, president of the oil-rich west African state of Gabon, has focused attention on why a French police investigation into the assets of the late dictator was shut down last year.

Bongo’s French real estate holdings were so numerous and valuable that he was rumoured to be the country’s biggest property owner. The investigation, launched in 2007, was intended to examine how Bongo and his family could possibly amass such a portfolio without embezzling state funds.

A list of the assets, made by French police before the investigation was abruptly halted by Paris’s public prosecutor, has been seen by The First Post. It details 39 of the Bongo family’s French properties - mostly in Paris’s chic 16th arrondissement, including the apartment on Rue Laurent Pichat photographed above, plus several homes on the Cote d’Azur.

Read the rest of this entry »

By BBC News 12/6/09
Jun 15, 2009 - 8:13:13 AM

The BBC’s Peter Lewenstein has compiled a list - in reverse order, by length of continuous time in office - of the 10 African heads of state who have stood the test of time.

No 10: PRESIDENT ZINE AL-ABIDINE BEN ALI of TUNISIA
Tunisia’s President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali

21 YEARS IN POWER

President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali came to power in a bloodless coup in November 1987.
He took over from Habib Bourguiba amid claims the latter was unfit to govern owing to senility.
Mr Ben Ali marked the 21st anniversary of office by releasing 44 political prisoners.

No 9: PRESIDENT BLAISE COMPAORE of BURKINA FASO
Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso

21 YEARS

Mystery still surrounds the death of President Blaise Compaore’s predecessor and friend, Thomas Sankara.
But after he was shot dead by a group of soldiers in October 1987, Mr Compaore, as his number two, stepped into the breach.
President Compaore has since won three elections, scraping in last time round in 2005 with 80% percent of the vote.

Read the rest of this entry »

BBC Reporting

The speaker of the senate in Gabon has been sworn in as the country’s interim head of state, following the recent death of President Omar Bongo.

Under the constitution, Rose Francine Rogombe, an ally of Mr Bongo, must organise elections within 45 days.

On Thursday, Mr Bongo’s body will be repatriated from Spain where he had been undergoing medical treatment.

Access to the internet in the oil-rich nation remains cut off, but the state’s borders have been reopened.

Minute’s silence

Ms Rogombe was sworn in at the International Conference Centre in the capital, Libreville, on Wednesday morning, a day after her appointment was confirmed by the constitutional court.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sapa-AFP Report

Libreville - Gabon’s defence ministry announced on Monday the closure of air, land and sea borders after the death of President Omar Bongo Ondimba, Africa’s longest-serving leader.

The ministry, headed by Bongo’s son Ali Ben Bongo Ondimba, also announced in a statement read on public television that “all components of the defence forces were put in place across the territory.”

UPI Reports

PARIS, June 4 (UPI) — U.S. President Obama has turned down a dinner invitation from French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, and French media are calling it a snub.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, plan to spend Friday night at the U.S. Embassy in Paris after a day in Germany, The Times of London reported. On Saturday, they will participate in ceremonies in Normandy marking the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Editorial

Why should France be worried about the boycott of a contrived commemoration in a banana republic by a diminished opposition party? Or why should a major news organisation in Yaoundé report on this real or imagined chagrin by France as front page news?

The cover of La Nouvelle Expression, a French language daily based in the Camerounese capital about France’s “worry” that the “Social Democratic Front (SDF) of la République du Cameroun” has called for the boycott of the so-called National Day parade in Yaounde reveals the very sensitive nerves of any perceived threat to France’s continuous loot in the British Southern Cameroons’ Eldorado that is under the guard of the Paris-installed Yaoundé regime.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda

Originally Published on May 7, 2009 in the Financial Times

At recent meetings of the Group of 20 and the International Monetary Fund, world leaders have gathered to discuss the global economic crisis. Unfortunately, it seems that many still believe they can solve the problems of the poor with sentimentality and promises of massive infusions of aid, which often do not materialise. We who live in, and lead, the world’s poorest nations are convinced that the leaders of the rich world and multilateral institutions have a heart for the poor. But they also need to have a mind for the poor.

Dambisa Moyo’s controversial book, Dead Aid, has given us an accurate evaluation of the aid culture today. The cycle of aid and poverty is durable: as long as poor nations are focused on receiving aid they will not work to improve their economies. Some of Ms Moyo’s prescriptions, such as ending all aid within five years, are aggressive. But I always thought this was the discussion we should be having: when to end aid and how best to end it.

Read the rest of this entry »