Every Pound and Pence

Cameroon Tue 13-01-2009

Every Pound and Pence
By Mwalimu George Ngwane

Untitled By Marthe Nso Abomo

One of the major issues from a seminar that AFRICAphonie organised on arts, indigenous culture, and human development way back in January 2003 was the need to get the Cameroonian media involved in the promotion of visual Arts and design in Cameroon.

While there is a trendy, new discipline called “cultural journalism”, the media’s focus remains political and economic to the exclusion of relevant cultural issues or creative industries.

In addition, the Anglophone cultural voice remains peripheral on the Cameroonian media especially on television, both private and public. The programme policy of our local television channels is so lopsided that one is tempted to conclude that there is a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the bilingual cultures and artistic diversity of Cameroon.

Culture plays a vital role in the health of the individual, but most importantly, the creative industries have emerged as one of the world’s most dynamic economic sectors offering vast opportunities for cultural, social and economic development.

In its widest sense culture, to quote UNESCO, may now be said “to be the whole complex of distinctive material, emotional and intellectual features that characterise a society or social group”.

Cameroon is home to 200 historical monuments and sites. Of these, the Southwestern region is home to about 22, some of them dating before 1914, a feat which if compared to the few found in other 9 regions of Cameroon, makes the South West unique and worth considering for special media cultural attention.

Involving the media in the creative industry is bound to boost to Cameroon’s economy, particularly the lackluster cultural tourism.

On a global scale the United Nation Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report showed that international trade in creative goods and services surged to 445.2 billion US dollars in 2005 from 234.8 billion US dollars in 1996.

The broader issues incorporated in cultural journalism include the wider dissemination of art, culture in the media; the establishment of a media policy on art that shall encourage the observance of our values, traditions, customs and culture on our local media.

It needs a media policy that reiterates a shift of emphasis in the allocation of prime time to indigenous culture over foreign culture on our local media.

There is a need to create a media art association, to record and document the artistic wealth and cultural heritage of the past through audio visual medium or Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Cultural journalism aims at identifying and developing a rich cultural patrimony; transmitting knowledge on the wealth of history represented by monuments and sites as well as the fading exposure of our rituals (birth, marriage, initiations, deaths etc) in their de-westernised modes; transforming our intangible cultural patrimony into tourist attractions and cultural development bearers for both national and international cultural managers.

It involves enabling the public to appreciate the historical treasures around this cultural patrimony so that they can cooperate in its maintenance, promotion and preservation.

While a provincial delegate for Culture for the South West Province, I visited Lebialem division on May 13th 2004. The Lebialem lap was the fourth in my tour coming after Meme, Kupe Mwanenguba and Manyu and followed by Ndian and Fako divisions.

My visit to Lebialem was meant to coincide with the World Museum day. It was part of a vision I had of scouting for cultural industries far from the metropolitan capitals to what is banally called the hinterlands. The exhibition of diverse art objects by more than 30 sculptors, painters and craftsmen in Lebialem on that day was a manifest of the rich array of cultural professionals who need to transform art to commerce and culture to tourism.

On the surface, the rolling hills and steep valleys that characterize Lebialem division would scare a first time visitor. Yet for me this landscape is what makes Lebialem unique – in the same way the dry savannah and long distant virgin forest make the road to Sun City in South Africa intriguing.

Which other city could be home to the World Museum day in Southwest Cameroon than Menji, the capital of Lebialem division?

Others would argue Buea or Limbe. True, Buea is home to the Prime Minister’s lodge built in 1901; the Bismarck Fountain built in 1904; the old Secretariat, in 1903, the old German burial ground with graves dating from 1898 and the old native Authority built in 1901 and situated opposite the former West Cameroon Archives.

True, Limbe is home to the District office, now the Senior Divisional Office, which was built in 1890; the Basel Mission House built in 1874 by George Thomson, the Cape Nachtigal light House built in 1903, the Senior Divisional Officer’s house of 1890 and the Botanic Gardens founded by Dr. Preuss in 1892.

So what does all this cultural historiography signify? First the state of art and culture today goes beyond mere anthropology and cultural jingoism. A new phrase coined “creative economy” has entered into our cultural lexicology.

It means making art and culture a sustainable industry that can attract both domestic and foreign investment, strengthening local creative industries and developing cultural capacity for wealth creation and entrepreneurship and weaving the strands of isolated creative artists into a web of an endogenous cultural market.

As UNESCO puts it, today the product of human creativity must take an additional economic dimension.

A new cultural revolution that would make a trillion flowers blossom can only be possible if we all give arts the same financial value and albeit, the same stimulation we give our bottles of beer.

Culture pays and needs to be paid for
I was a student in University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland in 1991 at a time when Glasgow was the city of culture in Europe. I paid every pound and pence to attend every cultural function related to the management and preservation of the moveable and immoveable cultural patrimony.

I visited the Burrell Collections, the Glasgow Art Gallery, the lush vegetation up the mountain country side, tried to learn the Gaelic language, wore the kilt dress and even danced to the music of the bagpipers.

You could not be indifferent to the rising Scottish nationalism embedded in their struggle to be politically different but culturally diverse. The menu of our pub conversation with the Scots was either our legendary Cameroonian football or their loyal cultural renaissance. So after my whirlwind tour of the South West region in the three months I served as a functional Delegate for Culture, I mapped the region into cultural zones:

Meme division epitomized the film sector; Buea-the city of theatre reminiscent of the Musinga days; Limbe-the land of literature; Kupe Mwanenguba- the division for traditional dance; Ndian-the Mozart of choral music; Manyu-the home to indigenous music and Lebialem- the Picasso of monuments and sites.

These zones were not isolates but cross-cutting spaces in thematic verve and cultural projections complimenting and feeding into each other the same way the various colours make up the rainbow. These zones can contribute to the meaningful artistic-cultural development of the Southwest.

But mid 2004 I awoke to the fact that my vision was a pipe dream. Yet I still cling to that vision the way Barack Obama stuck to a new American dream because when I see urchins in Mile 14 to Mile 16 Buea jostling to sell beautiful flowers for a mere pittance at a time when the economy of Botswana has become the second fastest growing economy in the world due to horticulture, tourism, and of course sane governance, I know the potentials are there if only we refocus our economic orientation.

Cultural production, promotion and consumption are first and foremost the preserve of organised societies and civil society agents (media). Arts and culture is not just an annual display of folklore or an occasional menu for political entertainment or party triumph (culture of ululation).

It is a life service event. The link between art products and wealth creation is so intricate that most West African countries particularly Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Nigeria have become very proactive in the enhancement of a sub-regional African cultural market.

When I read the pages of our newspapers and watch our local televisions I wonder whether the media can transcend the boundaries of culture reporting to embrace the fundamentals of culture analysis and showcasing.

We sure do have journalists who can focus on art and the artist like the late Kwasen Gwangwaa did with brio. We definitely have media practitioners who can borrow a leaf from the “Studio 53” arts and culture programme that I religiously watch on M-net channel every Thursday at 7pm local time.

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