Cameroon is an Orwellian Animal Farm where the English-speaking minority is brutally subjugated by the Francophones. The Cameroon Anglophone Problem raises pertinent questions about shared governance, participatory democracy, national identity and language policy. But the 35-year-old dictatorship of Biya pays no attention to these questions.

President Biya does not live in Cameroon and, therefore, does not know Cameroonians. The absentee landlord spends several months in Europe with no specific agenda in mind. Once back home, he retires to his million-dollar castle to play golf and drink champagne. Biya’s inept governance has brought Cameroon to its knees. Cameroonians should rise up and replace him.

Last week’s local government elections in South Africa were marred by racial slurs, ethnocentric witch-hunting, mudslinging and outright physical elimination of political opponents. The country’s electoral commission remained indolent and incapable of taking bold steps to put an end to the blatant abuse of citizens’ right to choose their own leaders. Free and fair elections remain a big challenge in the rainbow nation.

This sociological novel provides readers with an opportunity to read the kind of Africanized French that is spoken in the streets and neighborhoods in Gabon’s major cities such as Libreville. The text is replete with standard French words, argot and indigenous language words and expressions that endow it with a reasonable dose of cultural authenticity.

Cameroonian poet Ngong issues an effective wake up call decrying the rapidly declining state of the environment. The volume is a battle cry, urging everyone to fight back against the forces—including human nature itself—ravaging the Earth.

The book is a tale of opportunism, spoliation, misappropriation and dispossession. The arrival of Chinese in Africa in drovees lately is arguably the latest chapter in a very long narrative of empire building through emigration.

'Strive to be Happy' is an inspirational work replete with didactic messages. Throughout this book Lamnyam’s voice sounds like that of a quiet peace-maker calling for non-resistance as a modus operandi needed to ward off the pangs of pain occasioned by social injustice, exploitation and disenfranchisement.

Kouega’s seminal work, ‘Camfranglais, A Glossary of Common Words, Phrases and Usages’, is a succinct study of the emergence and structure of a new linguistic code in Cameroon—Camfranglais

Racist stigmatization of Africa as a backward land in need of external intervention for its salvation is the justification for the slave trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism. But many Africans today appear to be complacent about this. The war against imperialism is no yet won

Effective translators must be like the texts they handle — at once bilingual and bicultural. The meaning of a text is to be found within its cultural, historical and literary contexts.

Lamnyam’s book of poems is a tribute to penmanship. She contends that poets are not dead wood, and attributes much leverage to the weight of her pen

‘I deplore what I regard as a growing tendency among Cameroonians to equate expression of dissent with lack of patriotism. I insist that to criticize one’s country is in itself an act of patriotism.’

This book is highly recommended to people who know nothing about Camfranglais and who wish to one day visit Cameroon. It really is a must read.

There is no question that the new song is a rap on the face of President Biya by a valiant dissident musician who views the Cameroonian leader as undeserving of the public office he holds

If Cameroon is to avoid catastrophes of possibly greater dimensions than so far witnessed, the citizens must take a hard and unsentimental look at the crucial question of leadership and the manner in which political power is exercised.

This is a revolutionary novel in several respects but what captures the reader’s attention from the onset is how the author turns the tables by portraying an African woman as the herald of civilization to the benighted West.

A review of Michel Roger Emvana’s Paul Biya: Les secrets du pouvoirs. Paris: Karthala. 2005. 290pp.Paper Back $58.45. 2-84586-684-4

Verschave is convinced that the inception of Françafrique calls into question the meaning of political independence granted to French colonies in Africa more than five decades ago.

Is Cameroon's language policy integrating the nation, as it was intended to do? Or is the approach to language threatening to tear the country apart?

President Paul Biya’s regime has deeply disillusioned the Cameroonian people, writes Peter Wuteh Vakunta. But Biya will not be president forever, so the challenge for Cameroonians is to look beyond the failed leadership and begin to imagine a new future for themselves.