Our Cultural Zones Of Silence

Cameroon Sat 20-03-2010

Our Cultural Zones Of Silence
By Mwalimu George Ngwane/ AfricanColours.com

The National Organising Committee for the celebration of fifty years of the Independence of the then French Cameroon and the Independence/Reunification of the former Southern Cameroon and French Cameroon in what is now the Republic of Cameroon has a lot in their plate.

First, to be effective the Committee needs to work with regional representatives consisting of state and non-state actors in each of the ten regions. Second, apart from the political and social manifestations that are bound to highlight the twin Golden Jubilee anniversaries, the urgent task of lending voices to most of the intangible landmarks of our cultural heritage needs to be addressed.

^{Re unification Monument in Younde, Cameroon. The twin spiral symbolises the unification of the French and British Cameroons}

Fortunately, the outcome of the first meeting held by the Committee on Monday 22 February in Yaounde in which issues of cultural patrimony were flagged gives room for guarded optimism.

Our political bonding that took us from Buea to Yaounde actually began in Foumban. Yet, very few Cameroonians can identify the historic hall in Foumban that hosted the constitutional talks in July 1961.

This is only one example of the neglect of our immoveable cultural patrimony and the absence of political will to give a voice to our cultural zones of silence.

Memory and History remain the barometer and compass of human civilisation. A nation deserves to be proud of its past no matter how infamous and needs to celebrate the full facet of its nationhood no matter how inglorious. And so we as a people cannot engage in the political and social celebrations of our twin births without reference to the cultural maternities whose walls echoed the pangs of labour and whose beds hosted the warmth of the consummated wedlock.

Why do we marvel at the elegance of the Eiffel Tower in France and yet undermine the art potentials of the Mungo Bridge?

Why do we visit the Burrel Collections in Scotland yet cannot establish Regional Museums that assemble art objects and artefacts of value from our triple heritage of colonialism to the present dispensation of the reunion?

How come that we crave to visit Madame Tussauds gallery in London when our own streets are despoiled of the splendid statues and majestic mausoleums of our heroes and heroines?

How can we explain the fact that the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands pulls its touristic revenue from the presence of age-old historical architecture while we are busy erasing memories of the West Cameroon House of Assembly, the former Presidency, the Buea Mountain Hotel, the West Cameroon Archives, the Federal House of Assembly, the Tiko Airport, the Bali airstrip etc etc?

I was recently given a guided tour of the Houses of Parliament in London, the York Minster in York and a canal cruise in Amsterdam, and while the curators were eloquently reciting the triumphs that characterised these architectures, my mind raced back to the day the Prime Minister’s Lodge in Buea shall employ a curator who shall tell us about the carpet, the numerous bedrooms, the designer of this towering structure that imposes itself over the wet town of Buea.

Family Monument in Yaounde, Cameroon

^{Family Monument | Yaounde, Cameroon}

I remembered like I did as a dismissed Delegate of Culture that we also have a cultural heritage that can be the bait of touristic attractions and the source of creative economy. I remembered like I do as a cultural professional that our streets either remain unnamed after our indigenous icons or when they do, after colonial pantheons. The fault is not in our nation’s purse, it is in our national mindset.

Ma Ke, the Chinese designer once said “I believe the greatest works of art can be the memories of history, preserving the most valuable feelings that have ever existed, and inspiring a greater awareness of ourselves”.
Our intangible heritage holds the key to our memories; they tell the stories of our identity and embolden our resolve towards a creative future. To ignore our cultural heritage would be to ignore our national soul.

To lose our historical symbols would be to deny our children’s right to information, knowledge and education.
As Cameroonians, we are a fortunate people because our monuments and sites have not been drowned in the ocean of natural disaster; they are only being consumed by the fire of man-made culturecide. But as the Somalis say ‘what is lost in the fire can be retrieved in the ashes’.

Our cultural zones are as silent as the Egyptian sphinx waiting to be given voices so they can tell the tales of our history however polemical and paint the picture of our bonding however challenging.

As we journey through the fifty years of our collective pride and prejudice, let our streets, our galleries, our libraries, our monuments and sites indeed our material and immaterial culture speak.

Let our statespersons, art historians and heritage conservationists break the silence of our cultural zones so that the true views of our historical legacies and our caged ideas are not only spoken on soap boxes but through marbles, through bricks, through clay, through wood, through canvass, yes through the artistic templates of our fertile cultural imaginations.

That for me is one of the greatest tasks of the National Committee of the twin Golden Jubilee celebrations in Cameroon.

Mwalimu George Ngwane is currently Chevening Fellow at the University of York (UK).

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