Cameroon:Letter to Pius Njawe

(And the thousand Njawes to bloom!)
Dear Pius,

I thought I would just keep quiet, and silently mark your passing with my tears flowing inwards. But as the days go by, utterances by politicians, rumour mongers, friends and foes have pushed me to make my weeping visible through this last letter to you.

Needless to say that the news of your demise shook me to my foundation, and left me dumbfounded, asking the stupid question – why? Of course, the One and only who decided that your day had come may retort with a "why not?", but that will not easily erase the haunting question from my grieving mind.

You will remember that this is the second time I am writing a letter to you. The first was when you were released from New Bell prison through a presidential pardon. I wrote then to congratulate you for walking defiantly out of prison – without thanking your supposed pardoner. You knew very well that he did not pardon you because he wanted to, but because of the weight of national and international opinion that protested against the injustice of your imprisonment.

A president the citizens have empowered, and over whom they should retain sovereignty should not set limits beyond which he cannot be talked about or criticized. This is why you fought so hard to ensure that criticism of the president, the government, and public officials was always robust and unlimited. Your defiant attitude was different from that of Yondo Black, Bebbey Eyidi, André Marie Mbida, Charles Okala, and others that suffered the same injustice like you, but chose to give thanks and apologies following their release!

Some people usually say that journalists and politicians should always sit on opposite sides of the table, not on the same side. This is why some naive politicians have been asking what you were doing in Washington, hobnobbing with politicians. I know that if you returned alive and met such people, you would have told them that you left your side of the table to share the same side with politicians because you were interested in politics – which serious journalist is not? Further, like all good journalists, you wanted to be where the action was. More importantly, you were trying to do what many of our so-called politicians have failed woefully to do – furnish the glue to hold people together, and the imagination around which people can mobilize for 2011.

Since you have been using Le Messager Newspaper to diagnose our society’s ills, you had developed a wider curiosity, and wanted to lead in integrative thinking that has escaped the same politicians that were questioning your purpose and intentions.

You know that some of the invited politicians did not make it to Washington, claiming that their past experiences in "coalitions" were a deterrent, or that they have different strategies; others are even saying that the struggle for change should be inside, not outside the country! Again, I know that if you had the opportunity to meet them, you would have reminded them that the past is just prologue, not a forecast. You would have reminded them that change is too complicated, too multifaceted – too human – to be arranged in linear logic from cause to effect.

Such "politicians" may not know that the seed of change is in all of us; and that for the seed to sprout, it needs just a change of attitude by those who have failed us before; just the casting away of their selfish attitudes; just their coming together to make something different, something that has not happened before, happen.

I know that you would have told them that like you, a leader should always maintain a lively intellectual curiosity, and an interest in everything. After all, it is said that everything is related to everything else, including what they call their different strategies, and their past experiences. You would have advised them to always maintain a genuine interest in what other "leaders" think, and why they think the way they think. I know that you would have done all this because the type of future you thought about is neither a straight line projection of the past, nor the present. You knew that there can be a better outcome than would be got by adding up past experiences...

You were always an uncompromising purveyor of the truth. You always stood up to power with rare courage and integrity. Through the daily information you carried in Le Messager, you tried to help us to make sense of the torrent of information released on us by the present communication revolution. In the process, at the detriment of your freedom, your radio project and many others, you exposed wrongdoing in our society, causing our reluctant public officials to avoid certain actions due to the fear that you would hold the actions up to public scrutiny. You were good at whipping up public outrage, and directing it at wrongdoing in the private and public spheres. See where your sudden disappearance has left us!

Well, I know that you were more a teacher than a journalist. Therefore I trust that your passing will cause the thousand Njawes that you trained to bloom. Only then shall we realize that, indeed, every cloud has a silver lining!

Go well, Brother!

Tazoacha Asonganyi
Yaounde.

IMF sees pick-up in Cameroon's economy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cameroon's economy is set to improve as global economic activity picks up and spending on government projects rises, the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday,July 22

In an annual review of Cameroon's economy, the IMF forecast that economic growth would gradually climb to above 4.5 percent in 2014 from an expected 2.6 percent this year. It said the rise, in part, reflects recent investments in the West African country's oil sector.

Meanwhile, inflation should remain below 3 percent, the fund added.

The biggest risk to Cameroon's growth outlook is whether the global economic recovery is weaker or slower than anticipated, the IMF said. The country depends on commodity exports and global demand for its products which include oil, wood, rubber, cotton and aluminum.

The IMF welcomed steps to address concerns about the 2010 budget and urged the authorities to adopt measures to close the financing gap.

The fund said it was "important to protect priority capital spending, make vigorous efforts to mobilize revenues, and gradually phase out fuel subsidie"

Cameroon's Ace Journalist ,Pius Njawe ,Dies in Road Accident in USA

 By Christopher Ambe Shu
 Pius Njawe,Cameroonian front line journalist and publisher  of the daily ,Le Messager, is no more.

 He died at the age of 53 in a ghastly road accident in the USA last night at 11 pm. He was known to be one of the most courageous press freedom fighters in Cameroon.He founded Le Messager in 1979.
Njawe(pictured) traveled to the USA  since July 9 to attend a political forum by Cameroonians in the Diaspora billed for July 10 in Washington DC.

A speeding truck reportedly crushed  them as his  driver  stopped by the road side and was trying to replace a punctured tyre of the vehicle in which they were driving in a road in Virginia.

The said driver(a certain Eric) is said to be in a critical condition in hospital while Pius Njawe died.

Noted for his sharp pen and criticism of the Biya regime,Mr Njawe has been arrested and imprisoned more than 100 times in his journalistic practice .

In 1990, he  published an "Open Letter" to  President Biya, which led to his arrest.

In 1998, he was sentenced to two years in prison because his newspaper carried an article about President Paul Biya's health that suggested he had a heart condition. The sentence for publishing  this article was later reduced and, due to pressure from Human Rights groups, he was pardoned after almost a year in prison.

His exemplary practice of journalism and the defense of press freedom earned him several international awards: In 1991 he received CPJ International Press Freedom Awards and  1993 the  World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award

Born on March 4,1957 in Babouantou in Haut-Nkam Diviison of the West Region of Cameroon,Pius Njawe joined the journalism profession while a teenager(19)

It should be noted that Njawe's  wife, Jane, had  years back died as a result of a road accident.