Letter from Yaounde to Buea

Dear Mbella,

Only the socio-political simpletons will comprehend an inch of your euphemistic style. Your piece was a circumlocution meant only for the “literary endowed.” The verbal grenades that you hurled at the obscenely mighty were loaded with acerbic diction and sarcasm. Since style is the mother of content, it bespeaks an articulate critic that you are.

Hope to see you again, when we meet in the land of the python trail to feed the bowels of mother earth with Bochong. When he closed his eyes to this sinful world, Bi Mvondo’s sister was also checking out not far away. He lived his full life even in the midst of controversies and exited like a hero. His life was a silver lining that also had a dark cloud like every other mortal.

The maker of that fine soap-boxer did not endow him with the aura of infallibility. So, was there any need for that posthumous trial and the sentencing of Bochong by the callus pseudo-academics? It was a cowardly act because they had better confronted him while he was still alive. Why hate somebody even at death because of his political convictions.

In a bid to pooh-pooh his very firm attachment to Ongola, he was renamed Francis Atangana. Yet, he took the doze of scorn and derision with equanimity and humility. So I don’t care a damn when the moral lepers, the spiritually empty and the intellectual eunuchs want even a corpse to face the guillotine.

In yet another scene, it was the theatre of absurd. The ministerial next of kins were ready to savour the delicious taste of power last week after their Sooth Sayers made firm assurances. But, even in the trans-world, the fraternity of conservative oafs was still stronger than the iconoclastic forces that plotted for the collapse of the status-quo. They prayed and schemed for the “chopping chair” bid like the legacy hunters in Ben Jonson’s Volpone. The Marabouts of the sit-tighters were strong, strong enough to magically avert a Presidential nod. It did not come.

Mola, it is difficult to state with certainty what happened. Ngong Ndum paid for his recklessness. Nemeses caught up with him for administering corporal punishment on the people’s messenger and hunter. There is tongue-wagging that someone hastened his journey to his ancestors. But, we should not forget that the Almighty is calling the shots alone.

Remember that what usually happens over there is likely to happen over here because the world is so intricately linked. In my show of intellectual honesty, I will tell you that I am borrowing from the ideological and undying human library called George Tanni. He checked out so as to continue to live in the unique style in which he anchored “CC”.

Even if some impostors are taking credit unduly, posterity and history will have it that it was Tanni and a bunch of pen-pushing rascals, including Jesus Ayeah who raped Government through the sixth May prophecy into giving birth to party pluralism. The sixth May prophecy forced the regime to embrace partisan polygamy instead of the one party monogamy which it had clung to.

The demabola macabre did not help. Even the soldiers sent to do infanticide discovered that the Eastern hurricane was too strong. And the son of the catechist mounted the soap-box to announce that he threw in the towel with his tail in between his legs in total capitulation. Yet, he would like to be remembered as the one who brought that “imported political model” to Cameroon.

If you doubt it, ask the Monte Carlo radio where his press charity began and ended.

Before I forget, the hand clappers and the legislative rented jesters are here for another piece of drama. The diarchy will be more active this time around because they will map out new strategies and rules to outsmart the people.

Yours sincerely

Ngwa