LONDON 2012 OLYMPICS: BURNISHING CAMEROON’S LATENT CULTURAL DIPLOMACY

By Canute Tangwa

Afo-akom, Bamoun Things of the Palace, and Soul Makossa were to Cameroon’s nascent cultural diplomacy as the gaudily decorated, graceful, resplendent, striking Bamenda regalia and football are to our latent cultural diplomacy. When the Cameroonian delegation to the London 2012 Olympics marched past, commentators virtually combed their thesauruses for the most apt phrase to pin on the Cameroonian contingent.

Indeed, we were among the best dressed! However, to any keen Cameroonian watcher, such a flash-in-the-pan performance without added value should raise questions.

Cultural diplomacy stretches back to the days of Ulysses in ancient Greece. It is a concept that gained currency in the late fifties, sixties and seventies in countries with a Latin tradition (France and most Latin American countries). It reached its watershed with the creation of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Today, it is no longer a Latin preserve.  

Essentially, it means promoting and sustaining cultures within and beyond boundaries. It is tourism par excellence. The fallouts include social, cultural and economic leverage in the comity of nations. Cultural diplomacy falls under the realm of soft power politics. The underlying motive is not necessarily a cold political interest since it targets populations.

Evidence: when relations between States sour cultural umbilical cords are hard to break. For example, Iranians still wear American sneakers, eat hamburgers and drink coke but relations between Tehran and Washington are all but normal. However, cultural diplomacy depends on or draws guidelines directly or indirectly from State policy. Nowadays, States dictate overtly or covertly cultural diplomacy so as to win hearts and minds in hostile or friendly environments.

States also provide enabling environments for the drivers (leadership, tax relief, cultural policy, culture-based educational policy, infrastructure, freedom of expression, access to information) of cultural diplomacy to flourish. At the height of the Bakassi armed conflict between Cameroon and Nigeria, the former still consumed unabashed Nigerian films, music and gospel.

It would be edifying to conduct a study on the factors that underlie the exponential growth of Nigerian film and music industry or Senegalese cultural rebirth in the past twenty-five years. It would give an insight on the role of the following factors: the State that apparently defines cultural policy, leadership, institutions of learning, culture-based educational policy, business, fiscal instruments, regulatory bodies, infrastructure, freedom of expression, and access to information, democracy and so on). No surprise that Senegal and Nigeria have hosted under civilian and military rulership respectively the World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC).

With the sorry state of our football nowadays, we must ask very bold questions. Do we have a cultural policy? This begs another question: do we have a bilingual policy? Are there any visible drivers (leadership, infrastructure, culture-based educational policy, regulatory bodies, institutions, fiscal instruments, the media etc) to our purported cultural diplomacy? How can we add value to our culture? In other words, does it suffice to wear the Bamenda dress, win plaudits in London and wallow in self-satisfaction?

How do we, through events like the Olympics, re-brand Cameroon? According to Achille Mbembe, “sports-mega events provide a major opportunity for attracting worldwide attention to (a) country’s products and services.” We did showcase one of our products but it was within the “realm of folklore” since “it does not say anything meaningful about who we are, who we want to be, and what our proposition for the world is.”

Acclaimed bass musician, Vincent Nguini (in Le Jour of 20 January 2010) was quite blunt: the National Festival of Arts and Culture (FENAC) has brought no added value to Cameroon, no training institutions and infrastructure, the right persons are not appointed at the right place in the ministry of Culture, FENAC has no archives, talents are not detected at FENAC, no film halls, no public libraries, FENAC looks like a safari where people seek pleasure, and the national orchestra does not have instruments.

Ile Gorée in Senegal is a tourist hub as the Bimbia (Limbe) slave port would be one day thanks to the intense activity of ARK Jammers spearheaded by US based Madam Alvine Ava. In fact, the United States embassy in Cameroon has accepted to finance the rehabilitation of this slave port of exit.

These are sporadic actions powered by groups but the government should have a cultural policy that aims for instance at producing say 200,000 perfectly trilingual (English, French and one national language) Cameroonians every year; building museums, film houses, rehabilitating historic sites, promoting our cuisine and haute couture (dress Cameroonian at all times not only during the Olympics because this borders on folklore) and so on.

We cannot develop and promote a cultural policy based on exclusion. In order to burnish our culture we should look beyond masquerades that entertain visitors during occasions. A mask remains a mask; it becomes meaningful when it becomes a force of proposition.

Comments

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