George Ngwane

The African Book Industry – Challenges and Changes

By Mwalimu George Ngwane

"If Education is the road out of poverty, then books are the wheels needed for the journey" - Richard Crabbe, (Ghanaian Publisher)

Preface
Books represent the mirror of every society; they showcase the immortal lore and mores of a people, they act as a publicity stunt for a nation since they go beyond the atavistic modes of cultural folklore.

The book sector in Africa poses some great concerns that necessitate a clinical diagnosis of its state and future. This diagnosis is of particular import because a man-made book famine is systemically gaining currency in Africa’s cultural landscape.

Anatomy of the Writer in Politics

By Mwalimu George Ngwane

The ultimate mission of every writer is to liberate both the minds of the oppressed and the oppressors in order to cultivate a harmonious society. How this mission is attained may be a subject of controversy, but make no mistake about it, the message for every credible writer is the same; it is the style that may make the difference. Whenever power mongers become lost in the journey of personality cult, when the politician’s ship is drowning in the ocean of dictatorship, it is the writer who serves as the compass pointing the ship of state to the shores of sanity. The social role of the writer has not only been a desire to lodge a claim for artistic leadership but to lay emphasis on democratic entitlement.

In Cameroon, the Writer is either Ignored or Humiliated - Mwalimu George Ngwane

In the interview below conducted by Manjoh Priscilla Musoh (MPM) as part of a fulfilment of her academic research in the University of Potsdam, Germany, Mwalimu George Ngwane expresses his fears and hopes on Anglophone writing and the role of the writer as a development agent in Cameroon’s fledging democracy and nation building. The interview was made available to Eden newspaper courtesy of the writer.

Manjoh Priscilla Musoh (MPM): Who in your own opinion is an Anglophone Cameroon Writer?

Prisoner of Conscience

By George Ngwane

Take away my intellectual chain and let me speak
Get me away from this cultural drain and let me be
Break away my economic shackle and let me eat
Free me from my political mannacle and let me live

Let met speak the words of wisdom to
a people that are in a political bondage
Let me be a soldier in the army of
the people that are in a cultural crusade
Let me also eat the bread from the table
which my sweat and toil have made
Let me live the life that I ought to live
to give my children a love that won't fade

I shall speak, for in the beginning there was the word
I shall be for in the creator's image, I was born
I shall eat even if man does not depend on bread alone
I shall live until when God shall call me home

Originally published in Bate Besong (Or the Symbol of Anglophone Hope, 1993

Mongo Beti: the writer-gadfly

BellagioPublishingNetwork Newsletter Issue No 30, May 2002, pp 20-21

George Ngwane

[The Cameroonian-born writer Alexandre Biyidi Awala, alias Mongo Beti, died in October 2001. He was one of the key Francophone African writers of the post-war and independence era. Educated in Catholic mission and public schools in Yaoundé and later in France, where he studied literature and lived for most of his life, Beti's early writing reflected the tensions in colonialism and the social dislocation and disorientation in the lives of the colonised, western educated and independent African.