I was Wiseman’s last colleague
(For Achuo Che Mathias, 11 Nov. 1952 - 5 April 2009)
By Franklin Sone Bayen
Radio and TV airwaves have been spared the trouble of his horrible, rumbling, hoarse, stammering voice. Who can deny that? But who can also deny the fact that what Achuo Che Mathias lacked in voice quality, he made up in surplus with the stuff he delivered?
The late Luke Ananga, former director of the CRTV News Department had a hot potato on his hands one day and was contemplating what to do. A student of journalism in Buea on internship in Yaounde, I was visiting him that 1996 day and as we chatted in his office, he told me hierarchy had asked him to call the Cameroon Calling crew to order. They were over-using their freedom of speech.
Luke said he was summoning the crew but he said he had one difficulty. If some elements were running their mouths on the programme just speaking bitterness without sufficient grounds for what they said, he would find it hard reproaching Achuo Che. He said Achuo Che always did his research and always had his facts so right that anyone could disagree with the tone of his paper but couldn’t dispute the facts.
Many often disagreed with Luke Ananga but few would have been at variance with him on that. Even when Achuo Che’s stammering would render his delivery somewhat boring because he would pause sometimes as if the paper had ended, then continue like an afterthought, listeners just had to listen to him. The guy had stuff. He made sense. That might have conferred him the nickname “Wiseman”, the symbolism of his early grey hair notwithstanding.
A generation apart and with no particular acquaintance with him, besides listening to him and noticing him pass by with his trademark grey head, destiny drew our paths together one day in February 2007. He was just retired. I was back from a professional fellowship abroad and on another job hunt. We had both read a job advert in Cameroon Tribune calling for applications to a new private TV channel in Yaounde , incidentally called New TV. I walked over to greet him. He said he guessed we were there for the same reason and told me he had looked up to working with me some day. I never asked him why. I took it for ordinary courtesies.
We were both recruited by a jury chaired by a French consultant, Hervé, flown into the country for the purpose. That French man went on to recommend the appointment of two Anglophones – Achuo Che and myself – to strategic positions in that nascent media group. I was appointed editor-in-chief, having to supervise the entire TV newsroom of both Anglophones and Francophones. It was a radio/TV project, with radio expected to kick off about the same time as the TV, so Achuo Che was appointed editor-in-chief for radio. He was cumulatively deputy director of the radio. Besides what we knew of him, you have to look at his CV to understand why he was so irresistible.
Our appointments made me feel we were luckier than Eric Chinje who narrated how a French ambassador was uncomfortable with an Anglophone holding the strategic position of editor-in-chief of a TV channel that ought to be promoting French culture.
Hervé, the French consultant gone, and the business back in the hands of Cameroonians, it turned out we were not so much luckier than Chinje. When it wasn’t a leaked memorandum questioning the heavy Anglophone presence at the top, it was an attempt at divide-and-rule with hierarchy trying to set me up against Achuo Che, the kind of trap that makes a chickenhearted, mean-minded minority candidate feel lucky to simply count in the number and seek to cut down “rival” minority candidates to be the only acceptable one. Not me!
Wiseman was soon to succumb to the shock of the reality of life in private media, which is all I’ve know as a journalist, which Achuo, the “spoiled CRTV boy” found unbearable.
Our first salary was Achuo Che’s last. It came late. Staff had to agitate to have it. And there was a slight slash from what we were promised in our contracts. Achuo and two other former CRTV cadres in the company packed bag and baggage and left that same day.
In the company of another colleague, I spent over an hour over beer, try to convince Wiseman to stay on and manage the turbulence we have known all our working lives. I told him that was much better than in similar structures. He quit. I stayed. And continued suffering.
By Franklin Sone Bayen
Radio and TV airwaves have been spared the trouble of his horrible, rumbling, hoarse, stammering voice. Who can deny that? But who can also deny the fact that what Achuo Che Mathias lacked in voice quality, he made up in surplus with the stuff he delivered?
The late Luke Ananga, former director of the CRTV News Department had a hot potato on his hands one day and was contemplating what to do. A student of journalism in Buea on internship in Yaounde, I was visiting him that 1996 day and as we chatted in his office, he told me hierarchy had asked him to call the Cameroon Calling crew to order. They were over-using their freedom of speech.
Luke said he was summoning the crew but he said he had one difficulty. If some elements were running their mouths on the programme just speaking bitterness without sufficient grounds for what they said, he would find it hard reproaching Achuo Che. He said Achuo Che always did his research and always had his facts so right that anyone could disagree with the tone of his paper but couldn’t dispute the facts.
Many often disagreed with Luke Ananga but few would have been at variance with him on that. Even when Achuo Che’s stammering would render his delivery somewhat boring because he would pause sometimes as if the paper had ended, then continue like an afterthought, listeners just had to listen to him. The guy had stuff. He made sense. That might have conferred him the nickname “Wiseman”, the symbolism of his early grey hair notwithstanding.
A generation apart and with no particular acquaintance with him, besides listening to him and noticing him pass by with his trademark grey head, destiny drew our paths together one day in February 2007. He was just retired. I was back from a professional fellowship abroad and on another job hunt. We had both read a job advert in Cameroon Tribune calling for applications to a new private TV channel in Yaounde , incidentally called New TV. I walked over to greet him. He said he guessed we were there for the same reason and told me he had looked up to working with me some day. I never asked him why. I took it for ordinary courtesies.
We were both recruited by a jury chaired by a French consultant, Hervé, flown into the country for the purpose. That French man went on to recommend the appointment of two Anglophones – Achuo Che and myself – to strategic positions in that nascent media group. I was appointed editor-in-chief, having to supervise the entire TV newsroom of both Anglophones and Francophones. It was a radio/TV project, with radio expected to kick off about the same time as the TV, so Achuo Che was appointed editor-in-chief for radio. He was cumulatively deputy director of the radio. Besides what we knew of him, you have to look at his CV to understand why he was so irresistible.
Our appointments made me feel we were luckier than Eric Chinje who narrated how a French ambassador was uncomfortable with an Anglophone holding the strategic position of editor-in-chief of a TV channel that ought to be promoting French culture.
Hervé, the French consultant gone, and the business back in the hands of Cameroonians, it turned out we were not so much luckier than Chinje. When it wasn’t a leaked memorandum questioning the heavy Anglophone presence at the top, it was an attempt at divide-and-rule with hierarchy trying to set me up against Achuo Che, the kind of trap that makes a chickenhearted, mean-minded minority candidate feel lucky to simply count in the number and seek to cut down “rival” minority candidates to be the only acceptable one. Not me!
Wiseman was soon to succumb to the shock of the reality of life in private media, which is all I’ve know as a journalist, which Achuo, the “spoiled CRTV boy” found unbearable.
Our first salary was Achuo Che’s last. It came late. Staff had to agitate to have it. And there was a slight slash from what we were promised in our contracts. Achuo and two other former CRTV cadres in the company packed bag and baggage and left that same day.
In the company of another colleague, I spent over an hour over beer, try to convince Wiseman to stay on and manage the turbulence we have known all our working lives. I told him that was much better than in similar structures. He quit. I stayed. And continued suffering.
