Martin Jumbam

The criticism of Anglophone literature in a deep slumber

Appeared for the first time in Cameroon Tribune of Wednesday, November 27, 1985.

Sankie Maimo’s much assaulted article, which appeared in the Cameroon Tribune issues of Wednesday, September 19, 1979 and of Wednesday, September 26, 1979, respectively, under the rather lengthy and pedantic title of “Literary Lag in English-speaking Cameroon – June 1979 Abbia Editorialist unwittingly Lost His Spear at First Cast”, marks, in my opinion, a decisive turning-point in the critical appreciation of Anglophone literature in this country.

Agostinho Antonio Neto (1922-1979): A tribute to a committed writer.

By Martin Jumbam

Revised and reproduced from Cameroon Tribune of Tuesday, November 18, 1986, p. 16.

Agostinho Antonio Neto, the first President of the People’s Republic of Angola, died in September of 1979 at the relatively young age of 57 (1922-1979). He was felled, not by an assassin’s bullet, but that implacable enemy of man, blood cancer. His sudden and surprising death cruelly robbed progressive humanity of one of its most articulate spokesmen, a man of action whose tragically short life was in itself an embodiment of the struggles of his people for their freedom, first from Portuguese colonialism and, at the moment of his demise, from South African aggressors.