THIS SONG IS NOT OVER!

Rigobert Song is neither too old, unfit, nor technically incapable to continue playing his central role within the ranks of the Indomitable Lions, captain or none. Every recent national team coach I have spoken to on this subject has been categorical on the view that in player performance, age is just some figures. Action speaks. Most of them have said Song remains the piston at the defence.

And it is not like Song is even so old. Officially, he is 33. That seems to be his real age. Beyond the generalized doubts that often dispute players’ ages, I have met disinterested persons who said they knew Song as a college boy here in Yaounde . Without being too categorical, they can admit that he is actually within that age-range.

And if the boisterous defenceman with a lion heart and natural aura of leadership were really 33 as I am convinced he is, it is wholly unkind of us to be jeering him out of the team he has given so much for. We blame all the woes of the national team on him and his click and their “age”.

True, it took a rare lame run by Song for Egypt to score the lone goal that cheated us of the 2008 Cup of Nations title. Rare. And so, he is too old to continue? Interestingly, some of us say Eto’o is old too. Because we often speak in chorus even without mastering the song, since we often follow the bandwagon with knowing which direction it is heading to, we join protestations against their click (984) but mistake it with unrelated questions about age: Song, 33, old; Njitap, 30, old; even Eto’o, just 28, old too!

As if age has ever really been an issue in the fortunes of our national team. Down memory lane, we have seen men about that age or older defend our national colours without raising eyebrows. Tokoto Jean Pierre starred for us at the 1982 World Cup, aged 34. Kunde Emmanuel, also former national team captain and a defence monument like Song played his last World Cup in 1990 aged 34. Even leave out the legendary Roger Milla who did wonders for us in 1990 aged 38!

Now, if you wanted to raise the argument that most of them played at an epoch when the game was not as fast-paced and highly technical as now, take the sluggish Patrick Mboma. He was recalled for service in the 2004 Cup of Nations, aged 34, and didn’t he score great goals for us?

At the awards ceremony for European club top players, UEFA president Michel Platini presented a special award to Paulo Maldini, long-serving Italian defenceman who only retired from the game last year, past 40. OK, agreed that he only continued playing club football long after quitting the national team. But check again: when Maldini, also former captain of the Italian national team, played the World Cup for the last time in 2002, he was aged 34.

Yet another Italian defencemen, the legendary Franco Baresi, played his last World Cup in 1994 aged…34. Something about the age 34 with monumental defencemen? (Kunde, Maldini, Baresi…).

Why not Rigobert Song? He will be 34 next year (2010) when he expects to play his last World Cup for Cameroon in South Africa . The committed fellow has only said he wants to finish the job with his troops. But a certain mob action by some fans is trying to jeer him out prematurely. That is making him sound in several press interviews as even begging to be given a chance.

Captain or not, Song remains team leader. Even new captain, Eto’o knows that. It was Marcel Desailly who aptly drew the line between captain and leader. Ever before he took the captain band for France, when Laurent Blanc was still captain, Desailly saw himself as the leader. Song might have cumulated captain and leader for ten years, but the captain band now gone to Eto’o, he remains the leader.

Elsewhere, reasonable people sing their heroes. Here we frustrate ours and send them to their early graves. If only Song could be allowed to enjoy the pleasure of playing his last World Cup at that magical age - 34.

First published in my sport magazine, "This is SPORT! This is FOOTBALL!" ahead of Cameroon's September 5, first leg game with Gabon in Libreville just after Rigobert Song lost the captain band to Samuel Eto'o and at the time he was considered by many to be on his way out of the national team, having also lost his stopper position to the younger, Sebastien Bassong in Cameroon's friendly with Austria that preceded the Cameroon-Gabon World Cup/AFCON qualifier.

On the bench at the start of the match in Libreville, Song smarted on to the pitch after Bassong suffered an injury and his performance was without reproach. He has not been benched since then, proving to fans at the Yaounde stadium on two occasions - Cameroon-Gabon (September 9) and Cameroon-Togo (October 10) - just what I'd said in this commentary.

How and why Musonge sidelined Inoni at Limbe CPDM rally*

Peter Mafany Musonge believes he is the new political leader and patriarch of Fako Division and wanted the fact acknowleged and established, so he crafted a gathering of all five Fako CPDM sections on 26 September in Limbe.

Musonge, former prime minister, now grand chancellor of National Orders, invited other political heavyweights of his generation – among them former archrivals John Ebong Ngole and Peter Agbor Tabi – including his most potential rival for Fako leadership, fellow ex-prime minister, Ephraim Inoni. Musonge apparently wanted to show that even in the presence of Inoni, Musonge is king.

That “Extraordinary Joint Section Conference of CPDM, Fako” was thus a “corronation ceremony” for Musonge as political godfather of Fako Division.

Every act of the Limbe show had the strappings of a Musonge corronation. Speaker after speaker gave him credit for masterminding the event. Although he holds no local party position, Musonge was initiator and chairman of the organizing committee.

“This conference was planned at the impulse of our elder brother and statesman, the Right Honourable PM Musonge,” said Andrew Monjimba Motanga, Fako I CPDM section president, who spoke on behalf of all five section presidents.

Yet, had no one sung his praise, Musonge was set to blow his own trumpet. He opened his scripted speech by reminding all that he – and no one else – was at the origin of the grandiose event. “The idea of this extraordinary joint sections conference was hatched […] at a meeting called by your humble servant,” Musonge boasted.

In enumerating who else were involved in organizing the show, Musonge gave the public to tacitly understand that Ephraim Inoni was not one of them. He went on to avoid mentioning Inoni even in acknowledging personalities who honoured the event. Neither was there any provision on the programme for Inoni to speak, even if only as a local elite, and throughout the show, he looked like a stranger in his own homeland.

Another potential Musonge rival, the very eloquent Henry Njalla Quan, former Limbe government delegate and Musonge’s successor as CDC general manager, might have shown some non-chalance in the face of that “cold war”, by quitting his seat in the honours tribune to join his orchestra across the street at the Limbe marchpast venue, in performing a song that lavished praises on both Musonge and Inoni as worthy sons of Fako.

Political watchers believe Musonge was just making smart to hoist his flag of conquest over territory he knows Inoni equally lays claims to. And the timing could not have been better calculated.

Dorothy Limunga Njeuma, erstwhile Fako leader if only in her capacity as the lone CPDM Politbureau member from the division, is now out of the way. She officially lost her party political status with her resignation from the party, following her appointment last year into ELECAM.

If Fako must retain Njeuma’s sit in any future reorganisation of that high organ of the CPDM, the two former PMs would be seriously considered. And there is the Senate expected to be set up soon, which would largely be the assembly of former statesmen. If nothing else, a statement by Laurent Charles Etoundi Ngoa, representing the CPDM scribe, gave room for speculation over what big trophy would next come to Fako and to whom. Said he: “Fako has received and Fako will receive again.”

If Musonge’s longstanding intentions to occupy the territory were held at bay while Inoni was in power until 30 June, his restraint clearly lasted only until then. There were words from Musonge himself to prove that. He said the Limbe CPDM rally “was hatched only a month ago, precisely on 26 August 2009.”

Without having to check on a calendar, that was less than two months after Inoni was replaced as prime minister and only one month after he effectively returned home and announced he was still available for service. That implied Inoni’s continued involvement in active politics and – he might have hoped – as a local political godfather.

Although Musonge has not quite been seen in overt political gesticulations even as prime minister, it now looks like Fako is beginning to get too small for the two retired PMs. Both men have not been particular fond of each other as politicians though, so Musonge’s stage-managed show on 26 September appears to have been a way of denying Inoni soft landing in Fako after he was booted out of the Star Building on 30 June.

This analytic report was first published in Standard Tribune N° 054 of 05 October 2009 (page 1) as my Guest Contribution under the title: CPDM: Musonge, Inoni in ‘coldwar’ over Fako

Musonge’s political calculation

Timing is crucial in political calcualtions like in everything strategic. Musonge certainly knows that. He has taken about the most outgoing move in his political career with the rally in Limbe grouping all five CPDM sections in Fako.

Besides capitalising on Dorothy Njeuma’s departure from the party political arena, Musonge may have banked on certain incapacities of the people most likely to stand in his way at this present time.

Co-patriarch Ephraim Inoni, who by right and acquired status should also be postulating as a Fako political godfather is gravely handicapped to put up a political fight at this time when grapevine holds, he has the sword of Damocles dangling over his head in relation to looming corruption suspicions.

Besides, Musonge remains confident that he, not Inoni, can be regarded as a local godfather any time, political gesticulations or none. As Churchill Ewumbue Monono put it in a 1996 write-up sizing up Biya’s likely pick for PM from the South West ahead of Musonge’s appointment in September same year, Musonge seems to have done more to groom the young Fako elite than Inoni, though the latter spent longer years within government circles. Even when Inoni became PM, Fako boys felt his Kupe-Muanenguba wife led him away to care more for her native division. That may not be entirely true.

His local rival aside, Musonge brought along his former arch-rivals, Peter Agbor Tabi and John Ebong Ngole. These should have been the most unlikely two to be seen at a Musonge event. Ebong’s descent into everlasting (?) hell and Tabi’s 12 years in the political wilderness; both men owe them to Musonge. It is understood they were Musonge’s first political casualties. He axed them out of the government in 1997 at his very first opportunity to be consulted by Biya for a cabinet change. Grapevine had been awash with talk that both rivals plus Inoni, thought Musonge was only their caretaker PM when he was first appointed in 1996. He stayed on eight years, three months!

So in Musonge’s calculation, inviting Ebong and Tabi might have been a show of reconciliation or actual reconciliation at a time little remained to divide them. For whatever aspirations each of them nurses now, their paths can only be parallel; they may not clash. An ex-PM may now only aspire for the Senate. Coming from separate constituencies, one’s gain cannot be the other’s undoing. Securing a Senate seat is one thing, holding an influential position therein like speaker, is quite another. So, Musonge may thus be paving his way to the next big thing, assured his peers would stand by him.

If Musonge is not counting on their understanding and forgiving heart, he might be playing on the reality that, now back into government after 12 years in the school of verbal restraint and self-examination, Agbor Tabi, the more militant of the two Musonge victims, should be in no mood to engage in another fight lest he repeats his errors of the past and compromise his chances for his own next big thing. He would need the goodwill of his peers and possible detractors if he must realize his life dream.

There cannot be any denying that Musonge’s mailing list for the Limbe event on 26 September was targetted. It was an oldtimers club. As a formality, sitting ministers may have been invited, just like the sitting prime minister, Philemon Yang, who was only represented, yet Musonge was visibly contented that in the absence of them all, he had a chance to show the world he could stretch a hand at his former arch-rivals and show his local rival that while those who live in a glass house ought to avoid throwing stones, those sure they have no glasses to bother about can go about throwing their stones to mark out captured territory.

This article was first published in Standard Tribune N° 054 of 05 October 2009 (page 11) in my new column STATE OF THE NATION

We were not spoiled kids - late Dan Muna

Excerpts of what the late Daniel Muna told me in a 2001 interview


The late Daniel Muna said they (Muna kids) were not princes born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Their upbringing was devoid of the spoilings that children of well-to-do parents generally enjoy, he said. This, he said, involved trekking to school though there were vehicles at their disposal. He said that could have humbled them and given them the drive to serve humanity that leaves the impression they are over-ambitious. The first son of the late S.T. Muna who died on 12 July 2009 in Douala, had just been elected chairman of the Cameroon Medical Council in February 2001 when Franklin Sone Bayen conducted an interview with him in Yaounde, which was published in The Herald of 2 – 4 March 2001 (page 10). This excerpt was republished in Standard Tribune on Monday, 24 August 2009

What is it with the Munas? Why do they always seek to be leaders?
If I try to answer that question, I may want to refer to our background, and in referring to our background, I have to give credit to our parents. We have been brought up, consciously or unconsciously, with a sense of service to society, a sense of consciousness to the needs of society. But in doing this, it has not been to be leaders…

Is it not that the Munas are just ambitious…?
Well, I think everyone should be ambitious. I think you should be ambitious to achieve your objectives. OK, I was saying that we were brought up to work hard, to try to achieve, to be concerned about our society, you see, and it becomes a drive. You commit yourself to the things that give meaning to your life. In the process, you also find yourself having to fall in situations where, instead of being part of the problem, you become part of the solution. And so sometimes, some of these things galvanise you to certain positions without you really fighting for them. And when I look back, I become very appreciative for the time my father, S.T. Muna, for example, after a day’s hard work, would call me to his office to try and review my homework, to see what we did in school. He himself would teach by example. If he was going to the farm, he took you along. When he was working, you had to work with him. Sometimes, on going somewhere, which required driving there, he could prefer to go on foot and you had to follow him there on foot. As school children, he even made us trek to school like other children, although there were vehicles at our disposal. All these were lessons which were subtle. I tell you, when I look back they become very significant in my life now. It was when I did my studies in the United States that during difficult situations, I looked back and appreciated the hard way our parents brought us up. I’ll always give credit to our parents for giving us what I consider that foundation.


Let’s take a close-ended question. Is the Muna family a political family?
When you look at our history, our father has been in politics (S.T. Muna was still alive then) and has played a very significant role in the political evolution of Cameroon. I have a brother, Bernard, who is very politically inclined. I have Akere who is Batonnier (Akere Muna was Bar Council Chairman at the time). It’s a professional group. He has taken certain positions as a politician, though he has not been very interested in politics as such… I don’t know what he is thinking this year and what he may think next year. I think that situations change in life. In my case, I have never really been in active politics. I don’t see myself as a politician… [but] let us say that the situation among doctors becomes critical in a sense that some of the issues that we are fighting become political issues, in fighting for these issues, one can be perceived as a politician, but one would be going there because of an issue, not for politics as such. (Their kid sister, Ama Tutu, appointed into the Biya government in December 2004, was not yet in politics.)

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.

Whose “Frankly Speaking”? (III)

By Franklin Sone Bayen

Now that I know I’m not the only Frank in the world thinking I speak frankly, I’ve come to a few conclusions:

1.) Most of us called Frank think we are frank people. I do. My friend and GHS Limbe classmate, Okole Winston "Kool", now somewhere in the U.S., always reminds me I was fond of saying: "I'm as frank as my name." Looks like we Franks around the world form a tribe of self-professed frank speakers.

2.) The World Wide Web (www) that brings out – more than anything else I think – the notion of the global village, has only established its network of our dispersed “tribe” – the Franks tribe. But it has also taught me that God's creations are made in like manner. No one is an island. No one is unique. Along certain lines, sometimes based on what we think of ourselves (like Frank is frank), we – or many of us – think alike. It may be that most of us called Frank arrive at Frankly Speaking only by playing around the root word of our name. But it is likely we think we are, indeed, frank. If only half of us were really frank, what a world of trouble this would be, as frankness is not one of the great qualities of those who make people feel good. Frankness is often hateful and annoying. Frank speakers are self-professed mirrors and they hurt the beholder. Yes, we do.

3.) What a shame all the same for me! I should have been the wiser to have suspected that for not using my unique African name on my blog, I exposed myself to this shame of sharing a banalized English coinage - Frankly Speaking.

In fairness to myself though, what if I had used Bayen? Just google the name Bayen, you'll find that name which is unique even to my tribe in Cameroon, is a surname in Ethiopia, France, Germany... and where else?

Frankly Speaking, it is a global village, and where better than through the world wide web, for such a remark to hit me straight in the face?

Whose “Frankly Speaking”? (II)

Blogosphere navigators might have noticed the blogs of big-timers like Frank Whalen of the Frank Whalen Radio in Prairie Grove, Arizonia, U.S.A., Frank Warren who seems to be a TV news anchor of reference.

Besides those journalistic Frankly Speaking bloggers, others comment on specialized fields like Frank Dimant who "blogs on issues of concern to Canada's Jewish community..."

Yet others:

* Gail Frank is a Harvard graduate and describes herself as "A professional writer who knows business" and "A business professional who can write."

* Geof Frank is a chartered accountant specializing in training for small business, non profit organizations and industry groups in New Zealand.

* Frank Levans gives "A bartender's view of the world"

* Frank Weller is a church minister

These are just a tip of the iceberg. When I googled Frankly Speaking I found over two dozen pages, each page with an average 10 items of Frankly Speaking stuff. Multiply that! I gave up clicking on “Next” in the seemingly elastic run of web pages with Frankly Speaking references.

"Whose Frankly Speaking"? (III) subsequently.

Frank

Whose "Frankly Speaking"? (I)

Google the title of my blog, Frankly Speaking, and I bet you'll be ashamed of me.

What plagiarism? You'd hate to know I copycatted a banal blog title, so over-used by different bloggers around the world. Some of the people who know me and thought I was - and I do claim to be - a remarkably creative person, must be wondering what became of me, if not flat out disappointed in me. They should bear with me.

However, I promise I'll hold no grudge if any of you wrote me off for this. It's something to be ashamed of. But how did I get myself into this mess? How did I, for heaven's sake, go so low as to - not create but - copy (cut and paste) that title for my blog?

As frank as I claim to be, I'll tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Right after my first blog posting on 15 February 2009 - my first ever in my well over three decades on earth - I googled my blog title Frankly Speaking hoping to find I was now a must-notice signpost (you know that kind of selfglorification!) on the international superhighway. To my utmost delight, I didn't see the most frustrating notice for an online researcher: "page not found" or "...did not match any documents".

So, to my delight, the google search page was full of more than just a few Frankly Speakings. It's normal to find several references even for the same item on the web, so I stretched my neck towards the computer monitor, to gulp the various references to MY very important blog, I thought to myself.

Yes, most of them were blog titles, some just some online references, but frankly speaking, my freshman blogosphere-bloated ego was summarily deflated to find mine was nowhere to be found. Meaning, not only am I not the only author of a Frankly Speaking blog, I didn't - still don't - count in the number. In fact, to this day, over a week after my blog came to life, I haven't succeeded to access my own blog by simply googling. I have had to type in my complete blog address - franklinbayen.blogspot.com or google "franklinbayen+frankly speaking".

Without which I continue to face a vexing long list of Frankly Speaking blogs by every other Frank in the world except me. Yes, most of the Frankly Speaking blogs are by people called Frank like me. (Frank for me is my first name Franklin for short.) Which name inspired me to coin my newspaper column "FrankTalk" in Weekly Post in 2002, way before Cameroon Tribune launched its periodical centre-spread feature also by that title. I later created a TV talkshow with that title.

Watch out for “Whose Frankly Speaking”? (II)

I mean to be frank with you.

Frank

Coming up: Frankly Speaking?

I named my blog "Frankly Speaking". Did I create (coin) the name? Was it my original idea? Didn't I plagiarize it from somewhere?

That's stuff for our subsequent conversation.

Stay posted.

Frank

Watch this space!

Hey! See who's coming here:

* a free thinker, analyst, commentator on Cameroon, Africa and
world events and politics
* a journalist, international news reporter/correspondent
* a civil society pro-democracy advocate keen on civic rights and responsible
citizenship towards transparency and good governance
* an advocate for environmental friendliness
* a peer educator on HIV/Aids awareness
* a student of International Relations, specialized in Peace and Development
* a former soccer player still keen on the game
* a willing traveller to discover other peoples, to understand,
tolerate and love their own ways
* a poet...

Hi:

I'm Franklin (Frank) Sone Bayen, journalist based in Yaounde, Cameroon. As you can see, my blog is under construction. We'll be having conversations here. Frank conversations. Frankly speaking. The silence has been broken, who wants to remain locked in a spiral of silence?

Hope you'll enjoy the exchange. I look up to making useful contributions through this forum and expect your feedback.

See you shortly.

Best regards,
Frank