Throughout Dog Days, Nganang displays the government’s failures in insuring basic rights. The lack of freedom of expression is demonstrated as the character, known as The Crow, is repeatedly put in jail for defending his right to a freedom of speech. He is unable to non-violently stand up to the police officer and is incarcerated for writing his opinion in a letter to government representatives. Similarly, the military brutality and torture occurring at the end of the novel after the locals of Madagascar, the popular neighborhood, peacefully march towards the police station to denounce the crime that has occurred in the killing of Takou. Similarly the common reappearance of starvation and the lack of sanitation reveal the neglect of Economic Rights. Nganang’s novel exposes this with the citizens’ despair when it comes to the access to basic food for subsistence, and the constant swarms of flies that display the insanitation.

As Dicklitch mentions and Nganang displays, cases of Human Rights abuses are not represented in court due to what is known as the “Big Man Syndrome,” which refers to the head of the state and the government representatives’ perception of being above the law. This creates a negative Human Rights culture, where the civil liberties of those seen as inferior do not have to be respected. This, in addition to the weakness and division of the society and the weak opposition to the government in power, are the impediments to Cameroon’s development.

Susan Dicklitch remarkably explains this:  “Given the political climate of neo-patrimonialism and the economic climate of the crisis, few individuals have time or the desire to get involved in organizations that could jeopardize their physical well-being.” As seen in Nganang’s Dog Days, a lot of risk is involved in contesting the government, which explains the ongoing and stagnant crisis in Cameroon and the acceptance from the characters. As they say: “Cameroon is Cameroon”.

Dicklicht, Susan. “Failed Democratic Transition in Cameroon: A Human Rights Explanation.” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2002) 152-176. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web.

Regardless to how he is treated, Mboudjak continually returns home. Soumi tries to murder him, Massa Yo clearly can’t care for him, he follows a friendly beggar and gets lost in the streets. Through each of these experiences, there is a time when Mboudjak begins to feel nostalgia toward his master and his home; he never truly considers staying away permanently. Mboudjak does not fit into the world of men; he is abused and misunderstood. Due to the status of his master and his lush upbringing prior to the economic crisis, Mboudjak is also never accepted among the stray dogs of the street. This leaves him with few options and so he chose the comfort of the life he knows best, even after 4 months of wandering the city.

Mass Yo’s wife does try to support herself, but ultimately, she is unable to overpower her husband. When the economic crisis hits, she opens a fritter stand in order to generate income from herself and make up for her husband’s depressed wages. While this does help her, she also must learn to put up with disrespectful school boys and the rowdy regulars of The Customer is King. Despite the fact that her husband stops coming home to sleep, she continues to hold her head high. At one point she even takes herself and Mboudjak to the salon in order to build an appearance of grandeur. This surface level resolution is quickly diminished as her life’s hardships take their toll.

The books we have read thus far center on a man and the women (and animals) in his life take a backseat. Is this an accurate depiction of the societies we are reading about? Or are there tales of strong and independent women that we have not yet had the opportunity to read?

One of the biggest arguments that she is talking about is the subjectivity of the dog. Woodward talks about Mboudjak being the possession of his master. This is very prevalent in the text because having a dog as a possession also shows the politic and class of an individual. Because Mboudjak is Massa Yo’s dog he is thought of as a bigger person. Because he is able to own a dog he is able to show all of the people around him that he is a man of high class. While showing his class he is putting Mboudjak in this position of just being a mere dog and nothing else. As seen in the novel no one really cares about him because he is just a dog, the bottom of society.

This article was a great way of showing a lot of the prevalent themes in the novel, and though only a few pages of the article are dedicated to “Dog Days” Woodward makes the reader have a better understanding of the novel.

Woodward, Wendy. “The Nonhuman Animal and Levinasian Otherness: Contemporary Narratives and   Criticism.” Vol. 21, Iss. 1-2, 2009. Web.

“As long as foreign publishers remain the mid-wives of our stories, they will keep determining the nature of these stories.” Joyce Ashuntantang

Interviewed by Dibussi Tande

In 2009, Joyce Ashuntantang published a book titled Landscaping Postcoloniality: The Dissemination of Anglophone Cameroon Literature which Bernth Lindfors describes as the “most comprehensive study of Anglophone Cameroon literature that has been published to date”. In the book, Dr. Ashuntantang, who teaches literature at Hillyer College, University of Hartford, USA, demonstrates that contrary to widespread belief, literature from the English-speaking part of Cameroon is alive and well, in spite of a host of obstacles that have slowed its development and reduced its international visibility. In this interview, Dr. Ashuntantang discusses her ground-breaking book and the state of Anglophone Cameroon literature with Dibussi Tande.

DT: To the man in the street, a viable literature is one that produces many books and has writers of repute. Rarely does dissemination enter into the equation. Can you explain why/ how dissemination is equally, if not more important, in assessing the viability of a national literature?

JA: It is not that dissemination is more important in assessing the viability of national literature. The point I make in my book is that the way a book is disseminated influences the way it is received by readers. For example, African literary works published by multinational companies are disseminated internationally and so the works also receive international acclaim, while works that are published and disseminated locally do not get known widely no matter how good they are.

If dissemination is the key to the development and sustainability of a literature, can we really argue as you have done that Anglophone literature is vibrant?

Yes it is vibrant. The point I make is that while judging African literature, we should not only look at works that are coming out of international distribution channels. As Buma Kor puts it      “ the way to know about all the literature of Africa is to know the different writings from different parts of Africa, the distinctive characteristics embodied in all writings from country to country or region to region. It is not grouping them together, but singling them out, analyzing the different themes problems, styles, messages”.                                                                                                                                            

In a recent interview, novelist Patrice Nganang argued that Cameroonian literature does not belong to Cameroonians because the copyrights to major Cameroonian literary works are owned by European and American publishers. He adds that we cannot develop a sustainable literature which serves as the foundation of our collective memory under these circumstances. Is this also your view?

Certainly. The problem even goes beyond copyrights. As long as foreign publishers remain the mid-wives of our stories, they will keep determining the nature of these stories.

What then is the role of Cameroonian publishers such as Editions Cle, Patron Publishers, and Langaa in this regard? Will the problem of sustainability and (re)appropriation of our literature be resolved by simply having more Cameroonian authors publishing locally or through partnerships between local and foreign publishers?

Of course, no one is an island – a viable partnership is the way forward. Local publishers have to network with foreign publishers for wider distribution. For example, Langaa has networked with Africa Book Collective, so works published by Langaa are distributed in the USA by Michigan State University Press and in the UK by Africa Book Collective.

What role can an English language university such as the University of Buea play in ensuring that literary works by Anglophone Cameroonians become part of our collective memory, our literary consciousness?

I have proposed that the University of Buea library should become a depositary/archive for Anglophone Cameroon literature. You know, the University of Buea provides an all-Anglophone academic environment which engenders a sense of identity. Buea itself is quite a historic town as the capital of former Southern Cameroon and is considered the unofficial capital of Anglophone Cameroons. The Government Archives in Buea could also perform this role, but it is expected that a university archive will be relatively free from Government bureaucracy and the vagaries of national politics.

In your book, you argue that “Anglophone Cameroon publishers do not treat books as commercial commodities”. What exactly do you mean by this?

Books are meant to be sold and if publishers expect to make this business lucrative, then they have to put marketing strategies in place. In fact, before delving into publishing, publishers must at least investigate their immediate market to determine the size of their audience. They have to determine their distribution chain to work out in advance the publicity strategy for their commodity. Publishers must attempt to determine where their potential readers are located and put the books within their reach. For example, Cyprian Ekwensi argues that “Our culture recognizes retailing as hawking. If that will be the final answer to making our people read more books, then books must be hawked”.

You also highlight the disconnect between writers, booksellers and the reading public, which further hampers the availability and dissemination of published works in Anglophone Cameroon. Is there a feasible solution to this problem?

The solution is cooperation between the writers, booksellers and readers. Booksellers and readers are important elements of the book chain. Therefore there has to be a thriving relationship between these two. Booksellers are established intermediaries through which readers can get the books they desire.  In order to boost reading, booksellers must publicize the materials they own and stocking items readers are interested in. In Cameroon where writers usually fund their own publishing ventures, they have to assist the booksellers in initiating this publicity.

You seem to place high value on an author’s manuscript, although the layman’s view is that a published work is much more important than the manuscript on which it is based. What exactly is the literary value of a manuscript when the work is already published?

You see, written literature depends on effective record keeping. Literary texts and biographical information need to be preserved not only to keep the text for posterity but to help in reconstructing accurate editions of texts and literary biographies. For example, fifty years from now, when scholars are attempting to edit the complete works of Bate Besong they will find it extremely difficult to establish accurate texts for Beast of Nation, (just one example of his published work with a number of typographical errors) if none of the author’s manuscript and none of the publisher’s proofs are available for study. In my book I give the example on page 19 of Beast of No Nation, some copies have “Agbada go crisis come” while others have “Agbada go trouble come”. “Crisis” and “Trouble” are similar but their connotations are different. Which is the authentic version? Did the writer change it during another print run or is it an error from the publisher’s end? These are interesting questions that can only be answered with the help of a manuscript or publisher’s proof.

One of the most fascinating sections of your work is the chapter that deals with literary canonization in Anglophone African literature. Can you shed light on what you mean by canonization?

Literary Canonization is the process by which some works are selected and preferred, while others are marginalized and neglected. My argument is that the way Things Fall Apart, the first modern African literary text was published and disseminated pretty much established the dissemination pattern for African literature. In fact this novel shaped the criteria used in judging” worthy” texts of African literature as a whole.

In your work you explain that Heinemann’s African Writers Series and its pioneer editor, Chinua Achebe, were instrumental in determining which books became part of the African literary canon, and that these books and authors still hold sway over African literature in spite of the emergence of second and third generation writers who are as good as, and if not better, than many of the first generation writers. Is it possible to rewrite or redefine the canon of African literature to accommodate later generations of African writers?

The canon is slowly changing. At least it now includes African women writers like Buchi Emecheta, Tsi-Tsi Dangaremgba, Assia Djebar to name a few, and of course some younger writers like Chimamanda Adichie are being read, but you must understand that African literature is also trapped in the same postcolonial web like African nations. So the strings that control canon formation in African literature are controlled from the west and it will take more than publishers or authors to influence an effective shift.

What do you make of the news that Penguin will launch the Penguin African Writers’ Series in August 2009 with Chinua Achebe as its Editorial Adviser, and that the series inaugural six books will include Achebe’s Girls at War and Ngugi wa Thiong’o's Weep Not, Child? Isn’t history repeating itself all over at the expense of newer writers?

Well History may be repeating itself, but I will use King Solomon’s wisdom here not to divide the child and kill it. Any opportunity to showcase African literature is welcomed. The idea behind Penguin’s project is to re-publish the African Literature classics originally published by Heinemann. Some of these works have been out of print for so long and I welcome any opportunity that makes them available in book stores. The problems of publishing and dissemination of African literature run deep and will not be solved if Penguin were to scrap this project.

Some have argued that Penguin and African literature would have been better served by selecting a young writer from today’s generation able to “understand the pulse of their generation in the same way that Achebe understood what was necessary when he was in charge of the African writers series”… 

Achebe is going to be an Editorial adviser, but I believe he will be working with younger editors. However I applaud Achebe’s appointment because he more than any other African, understands the politics that control writing. If you read his essays collected in Morning Yet on Creation Day, Hopes and impediments and Home and Exile, you will find that these essays still frame African literature even in the context of today. I had the rare opportunity to interview Achebe last year on the 50th anniversary of his classic, Things Fall apart and this living legend still exudes wisdom in a prophetic manner.

A lot has been written and said about the negative role that western publishers have played in stifling African literature or alienating it from the people. Isn’t it possible to make the argument that the African/Cameroonian state has played an equally nefarious role by ignoring that literature, keeping it off the streets, and locking it up within what poet Kangsen Wakai has described as the “tyrannical walls of academia”? 

The fact that African literature is tied to academia is not limited to Africa or Cameroon. However the way African readers associate African literature with school examinations goes back to the fact they were introduced to this literature in the classroom. My research on Cameroon literature documented in my book shows that most readers out of school indicate an interest in popular literature, therefore Anglophone Cameroon writers have to write for this group of readers to balance the types of books available for reading. It is true there has always been a debate whether low brow literature should be encouraged, but research in many countries has shown that only 10 percent of all adults read serious literature.

In April 2009, the University of Yaounde hosted what was arguably the most important conference on Cameroon literature in over two decades. One striking aspect of the conference was a complete absence of discussions and papers on Cameroon Anglophone literature in the Diaspora. Doesn’t this prove that claims of the vibrancy of Anglophone Cameroon Literature in the Diaspora are highly exaggerated? Can a literature that is unknown or shunned be considered vibrant? 

Well, it was not a total absence because there was a paper by Babila Mutia on two short stories by Makuchi; The Healer and Your Madness, Not Mine. Anyway, I don’t think writing from the Diaspora is shunned. The works are simply not available in Cameroon or are not known. Take for example Makuchi’s fascinating collection of short stories, Your Madness, Not Mine: Stories of Cameroon. This work is not available in Cameroon and I bet you Professor Mutia must have picked up a copy of this work during one of his visits to the USA. Also take the more than fifty works published by Langaa; these are not yet available in Cameroon in bookstores because Langaa prints out of Cameroon. I know this is a problem Langaa hopes to rectify soon and once this is done, Cameroonians in Cameroon can start reading and critiquing these works.

Back to the issue of sustainability and collective memory. The poet Wirndzerem Barfee has lamented that in Cameroon, writers are not accorded the same status and even privileges like footballers (medals, financial incentives, audiences with the head of state after international awards, etc.). Patrice Nganang, on the other hand, sees no problem with this, arguing that unlike football, literature does not need instant and ephemeral adulation and an obsessive presence on TV because sustaining and developing a literature is a long term intellectual endeavor. What is your own take on this?

I believe that medals, financial incentives and public recognition in themselves do not make a writer or keep his name for posterity; however, these are all aspects that help to sell books. If a writer is visible in the public eye most likely his works will be visible too. Visibility is the stuff on which the canon feeds.

There is a “nationalist” school of thought which postulates that by advocating for a distinct “minority Anglophone literature” separate from the general Cameroon literature, Anglophone writers, scholars and critics are inadvertently locking up Anglophone literature in a literary ghetto, and are developing a laager mentality which hinders the growth of that literature…

I don’t believe so. Understanding Anglophone Cameroon literature only helps in understanding Cameroon literature as a whole. According to that argument, we may as well just talk of African literature and no Cameroon or Nigerian literature. Today we hear of Yoruba studies or Igbo studies, so how do these hinder Nigerian or African studies? Whenever someone tries to suppress another person’s identity for whatever reason I become highly suspicious.

Thank you for the insightful answers.

We know, Mr. future President of France, that the French slave kingdom in Africa is maintained by thousands of French soldiers stationed here and there the continent: Senegal, Chad, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire. We know that if it weren’t for this military support, the tyrants, those commanders that keep the people in bondage, would have long been toppled by the people. (…) We expect more from you than outrage over the tyrannies that strangle Cameroon and other francophone countries. From you, we expect a withdrawal of the all too obvious support that Paris has always given to some African dictators. From you, we expect a military withdrawal from Africa. But, from you, we also expect strong gestures and concrete support to the African civil society undermined by years of dictatorship and corruption. (…) Mr. future President of France, be more than the Mitterand of La Baule, be more than the Obama in Cairo; be a friend of democracy in Africa.

Read the original letter here or a fair English translation here.

* When you click on the map it expands to show the details, including troop numbers, military operations, etcetera.

In an article published last summer in The Chronicle Review, Rob Nixon makes the case  for examining depictions of slow violence in literature of the global South. Defining slow violence as “neither spectacular nor instantaneous but instead incremental [violence], whose calamitous repercussions are postponed for years or decades or centuries,” Nixon argues for its “[particular pertinence] to the strategic challenge of environmental calamities.” Perhaps to discover intimations of slow violence, we should look to the environments created with these texts for signs of things gone awry––even those that, at times, might stand in place for the otherwise-silenced, subaltern voices.

*     *     *

 “I take in the world from below,” claims the canine narrator, Mboudjak, in the early stages of Patrice Nganang’s novel, Dog Days (available in a wonderful translation by Amy Baram Reid, University of Virginia Press: 2006). And that is precisely the worldview the reader is allowed into, one that subverts the top-down politics of a Cameroon obsessing over the exploits of the tyrannical Biya. Mboudjak, as narrator, is a vital link in the ecology of the city streets to which he belongs and into which the reader becomes immersed. While narrating his geographic walking tour of Yaoundé, primarily within the neighborhood named “Madagascar,” Mboudjak traverses an urban landscape that could be read as a landscape of fear.

Human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, in his early work Landscapes of Fear, denotes such a terrain as one in which there “are the almost infinite manifestation of the forces for chaos, natural and human.” Mboudjak’s world, populated by mysterious spirits and reportedly (and sometimes truly) dangerous characters seems to easily lend itself to such a study. Yet might there be something more deeply grounded in the physical landscape of the Cameroonian streets that is equally capable of evoking fear?

As a self-proclaimed “object in the human universe,” Mboudjak is subject to the human-built constructions and constrictions of the neighborhood. Mboudjak relates of his master’s correction “if I stray from the path” and eventually gives up the freedom of his wanderings for the chains of civilization, sacrificing––in the process––the openness and freedom of space for the security found in the confines of a specific place. Should we read this decision as motivated by a desire for “freedom of the mind,” as Mboudjak claims, or rather, did the landscape produce a fear that could only be controlled by the ordering of the human world?

If the landscape is capable of producing fear, then perhaps there are also human-built structures in the neighborhood which are able to negate that fear. Tuan claims that “every human construction––whether mental or material––is a component in a landscape of fear because it exists to contain chaos.” Is it then, perhaps, that human constructions themselves might perpetuate cycles of fear and chaos? And if so, how does one tear down these structures, while seeming to dangle above the earth, like Mboudjak, from the end of a metal chain?

Panelists:

“Elections are becoming key moments in Africa – moments of conflict and also of opportunity. With crucial elections coming up in Cameroon, Senegal, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire, it was critical to discuss the organization of power in Africa,” said Professor Mamadou Diouf, the head of the institute, in his opening remarks. “Beyond the process of democratization, the question inevitably remains: Which elections for Africa? Do we need direct universal suffrage for presidential elections or should we organize elections which are indirect? This is linked directly to decentralization – the question of the creation of local powers. The key element of all discussions going on is the big issue of the ‘big man.’ The idea of a big man is a constant of African history including moments of today when we talk of democratization”

Paul Biya, president of Cameroon is one of such big men.

The star-studded panel included two French citizens with expertise in Cameroon: Fanny Pigeuad, who is a journalist with Agence France-Presse and former correspondent for Cameroon, and Dominique Malaquias, a writer, scholar and currently senior researcher at the Centre d’Etudes des Mondes Africains. They were joined by two Cameroonian professors: Dickson Eyoh, political scientist and associate professor at the University of Toronto,Canada and Patrice Nganang, associate professor of comparative literary and cultural studies at Stonybrook University in New York.

The panel members concluded that elections are not the magic wand in the political process in Cameroon. Pigeaud, the journalist, was quite pessimistic about the possibility of change in Cameroon, noting that even though people are focused on ousting the current president of Cameroon, Paul Biya, the greater problem is with the political system which she thinks is difficult to change.

Malaquais, the senior researcher, borrowed President Biya’s “sans objet” response to Cameroonians’ demand for a national conference in the 1990s to describe Sunday’s elections. Many of her friends and acquaintances have told her that elections in Cameroon are pointless, useless and a big joke.

“It is a complete waste of time. Whether people come to vote or not, it will be rigged. The opposition is so fractured,” Malaquais said. “The whole thing is a farce. Unfortunately this farce is not amusing, and voting is a dangerous sport. Given that President Biya often acts with complete impunity, the elections are not only ‘sans objet’ but in fact a non-object.”

Nganang of Stonybrook University was more optimistic and saw in the Arab Spring, promises of a changing system especially with francophone Africa.“Cameroon is a tragedy with its own logic. Yet, just as with Tunisia in 2011, there are signs of hope,” he said.

Drawing from her newly published book, “Au Cameroun du Paul Biya,” which is unofficially banned in Cameroon, Pigeuad explained that Biya has stayed in power for close to 30 years thanks in large part to his extensive use of state violence. Biya inherited this crucial tool from Ahmadou Ahidjo, the first president of Cameroon, and has used it successfully to quell any form of opposition and to intimidate any prospective contenders to power, she said.

Elaborating on this, Malaquais pointed out that a clear sign of the regime’s use of violence and fear would be found in the sheer number of police officers and soldiers that would be deployed on the election day at polling stations.

“This would be a reminder of that bloody week in February 2008 when 100 people were killed and 1,500 jailed over an event intimately related to this election – constitutional amendment,” Malaquais added.

If officers and soldiers are ordered to turn out and use force, it will also be a painful reminder of the extrajudicial killings of more than 1,000 Cameroonians in Douala eight years ago by the infamous Operational Command – a special military squad created by the government and the intense violence of the 1990s during the “Villes Mortes.” – operation ghost towns launched by the opposition.

“These reminders of state violence are least pernicious. It is one thing to abstain from voting because one is legitimately concerned about process, and it is another thing to refuse to vote for fear of safety,” she said.

During the Q & A portion of the discussion, Professor Diouf, remarked that Cameroon has historically been seen as one of the most violent regimes in the history of Africa.”

A second reason for President Biya’s hegemony is the successful implementation of the French-colonial “divide-and-rule” policy, which Pigeuad expressed as “divisez pour mieux regner,” loosely translated as “divide in order to rule better.” Biya has effectively used ethnic identities to maintain his stranglehold on the people.

Pigeaud also said that Biya’s dominance is a result of a power vacuum deliberately created by Biya whereby critical institutions such as the senate and constitutional council, both mandated by Cameroon’s 1996 Constitution are yet to see the light of day.

Of course, talk of Cameroon politics is incomplete without referencing corruption. Pigeaud noted that Biya has been adept in fomenting corruption to enthrone himself.

“Fraud has a deeper context – electoral fraud is a manifestation of the normalization of corruption,” said Eyoh of the University of Toronto. He explained this in terms of the “intense privatization of the state” so much so that those who hold political office do so in an effective exchange for bringing their people along. “You can use corruption. You can eat from the state, but the cost is to bring your people along,” Eyoh added.

In Cameroon, since the state remains key to resources for both public and private sectors, there is enormous pressure on elites to toe the line. Breaking away from the regime is a kiss of death. With surging poverty rates, corruption is bound to loom large.

According to Eyoh, there is widespread disenchantment with the regime in Cameroon, yet this is not translated into any viable form of opposition because of corruption.

The French journalist, Pigeaud, without mincing words, laid the blame for the Cameroonian disaster on the feet of the French administration. According to her, Biya is a puppet of the French regime used to serve the economic interests of France.

Nganang amplified this role of the French by saying, “There is something wicked about the French Constitution that makes it difficult for opposition parties to break through.” This is the same constitution that Cameroon adopted in 1958.”

In seeking the causes of the Cameroonian dilemma, Eyoh pointed to the highly centralized nature of Cameroon’s political system exemplified by former President Ahidjo’s personal selection of Paul Biya for president.

He then indicated that a correct reading of the political situation in Cameroon must look to two watershed moments in the political history, namely the 1984 failed coup d’etat and the 1990 democratization process driven mainly by the opposition.

With the 1984 failed coup attempt, Biya’s sole priority became the protection of the incumbency at all costs. The key mechanism he used “is the growing politicization of bureaucracy and the careful manipulation of ethnic differences, such as Prime Ministry,” said Eyoh. Regime survival is intensified.

The development of mass political power in the 1990s led to the creation of the Social Democratic Front (SDF). This opposition party was a credible national alternative and injected fresh steam into the political system. Prior to this, one could get regional representation without being actively involved, but in the ‘90s all this changed. Now politicians needed to prove that they could broker regional support. The prominence of the SDF was short-lived and soon it began to self-destruct.

As a result, “Cameroonians are suffering from exhaustion,” Malaquias said. “State-sponsored repression, privatization of the state, disastrous unemployment and basic rights have been under attack for so long. This exhaustion is sought and encouraged; the complete sell-out of the opposition compounds the situation further.”

For Nganang then the question was what needs to be done to awaken the Cameroonian citizenry? Drawing from the Obama campaign with its historic grassroots mobilization in which he participated, Nganang revealed that in preparation for the elections, he had partnered with Cameroon Obosso a civil society organization in Cameroon together with some opposition parties to educate the masses. They had launched a campaign, titled, “9-10-11: Don’t Touch My Vote,” dedicated to educating Cameroonians on civic responsibility and training election monitors. The project which is more long term launched on Sept. 7 and had already taken place in six provinces in Cameroon.

In order to fight the blanket immunity president Paul Biya had been given by the new constitution, Nganang also indicated he had launched a campaign to have Biya indicted for crimes against humanity given all that brutality and killing he had orchestrated over the years.

With elections now over and the counting going on, one cannot help but appeal to every Cameroonian to take the challenge put forth by Malaquais: “It will be difficult to change the status quo given that Cameroon’s problems go deep in breadth and depth, and it will take decades to make a dent. But the opposition mantra, “Biya must go,” is spot-on. This is self-evident. Elections are just the tip of iceberg, and we need to be paying attention to the iceberg.”

Columbia University’s series on elections in Africa will continue throughout the year with talks on DRC, Senegal and Mali. It will focus on how to oust dictators in countries like Cameroon and DRC and how to build on gains made in burgeoning democracies like Senegal and Mali, according to organizers.

Etienne Smith, research scholar with Columbia University’s committee on Global Thought who moderated the panel gave a context to the discussion noting that “Cameroon presents an interesting paradigm for thinking and evaluating what democracy in post colonial Africa looks like. The analysis was fundamental for thinking through what will happen one month after in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

After going in as separate candidates, the opposition is surprisingly coming together to call for a complete annulment of the elections on grounds that they were fraught with irregularities. Results will be published by the Supreme Court whose members are appointed by the incumbent.

A map of Africa will show that, as of 2009, there are 54 different nations. Roads and borderlines have been drawn and redrawn since the mid-19th century, with European settlers leaving their mark on Africa as muddy ruts and dried rivers.  Meanwhile Africans have always drawn their own paths as they enter a globalized world with keen insight and ripe possibility. Gods and Soldiers, a new anthology of African literature, edited by Rob Spillman of Tin House, captures this colorful reemergence of a continent the West has both influenced and forgotten.

An amalgam of modern and traditional fiction, short stories, and essays, Gods and Soldiers shows that African literature still retains its creative vengeance. Well known authors such as J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace) and Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart) join new voices in a collection that addresses gender, the internet, and modern religion, as well as the fight for independence in the aftermath of post-colonial rule. The work selected, separated by region, is only a small sample of what is being produced (what Spillman calls a “mere bucket of sand in the Sahara”). But what has been put forth is inventive, sinewy, and brave. As Spillman says in the introduction, “these were stories that had to be written.”

What makes African literature so immediate, perhaps, is the fact that even in a fast-paced, interconnected world we might stop and contemplate how we’ve moved—or in some ways haven’t moved—from the past. In Patrice Nganang’s essay “The Senghor Complex,” for example, we are given a history of the Senegalese poet and president, Senghor, who was influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and black nationalism. Only, “blackness”, Nganang reminds us, is a term that belongs solely to Westerners, and not Africans; and yet it has come to mean something across the Atlantic in Cameroon. With stark brevity and intellectual vigor, Nganang provides a cross-section of Senghor’s concept of “Negritude” as well as the Rwandan genocide and the limits of nationalism.

And while Francophone African literature shows the influence of the past, as well as its relevance for today, West African literature reflects on how one might move forward into the future. In “The African Writer and the English Language,” Chinua Achebe explains why he chooses to use English as opposed to his native language Ibo. With a global conscience Achebe reflects on how audiences might be reached, as well as how to transform some of the negative impositions of colonial rule into something positive; with 800 million people and 2,000 languages, English might be the only way to express, as Achebe says, “the weight of my African experience.” However, it is an English that belongs solely to Africans; a common language that encapsulates a bloody past as well as the chance for a bright future.

Each section—West Africa, Francophone Africa, North Africa, East Africa, Former Portuguese colonies, and Southern Africa—opens with essays such as Nganang’s and Achebe’s, which give insight into the different regions as well as provide context. From there, sections unfold into inventive, sometimes surreal or satirical territory. Each work of fiction gives a rich account of its region, but is powerful enough to stand on its own. In an excerpt from Jose Eduardo Agualusa’s novel The Book of Chameleons, Borges is reborn and a new race of people created; in Abdourahman A. Waberi’s brilliant work of satire, The United States of Africa, Africans, and not Americans, become the imperialists; and in an excerpt from Alain Mabanckou’s novel Broken Glass, we are given an account of Congo President Adrien Lokouta Eleki Mingi in rambling, impressionistic sentences as well as a worldwide account of oppression with candor and wit.

Even more realistic fiction, such as Chris Abani’s excerpt from Becoming Abigail, is teeming with haunting and imaginative allusion. As a young girl remembers her mother’s funeral, a memory becomes uncertain although it’s feeling is palpable and real:

Always in this memory she stood next to her father, a tall whip of blackness like an undecided but upright cobra. And he held her hand in his, another lie. He was silent, but tears ran down his face. It wasn’t the tears that bothered her. It was the way his body shuddered every few moments. Not a sob, it was more like his body was struggling to remember how to breathe, fighting the knowledge that most of him was riding in that coffin sinking into the dark soft loam.

It is in passages such as this that the mission of Gods and Soldiers is fully realized; when prose that cuts like ice has the power to melt the illusions—color, race, country—that we create. The best part about Gods and Soldiers, then, is not only that Africa has much to offer, but also that through written word we might still be able to find a way to express with eloquence and compassion the different lives we lead in a common world.

Samantha Fingerhut is a degree candidate at The New School, NYC