From The Sketch, No. 20, March 26, 1993, p.13
The Cameroon of PB, alias “Lion-Man” or “Man-Lion”, whichever one you prefer, and his altar boy, Achidi Achu, is in dire straits as its coffers are empty. I can see you pouting your lips, shrugging your shoulders and wondering to yourself what else is new.Well, I may not be telling you anything new there, but what you probably didn’t know is the very original – I’ll even say uniquely Cameroonian – tax-collecting method the Biya Administration recently experimented in the rural areas of the North-West Province, particularly in Ndu: tax collection from women’s vaginas, which one fellow vulgarly referred to as the Triple-T (i.e. TuTu-Tax) formula.
Before you jump up in justifiable revulsion and rush for Tav-Njong’s throat, as I know many of you are going to do, disgusting as the idea sounds, know that I am merely borrowing from J. Sonkwe’s poem entitled “Eulogy to the C.P.D.M.”, which appeared in Cameroon Today, Vol. 1, No. 7, August 13, 1992, page 6. It is, in fact, a parody of that grandiloquent speech by Mark Anthony, who came to bury Caesar not to praise him. By none other than that immortal English poet and playwright, the incomparable William Shakespeare, or simply “Bill”, to some of us, his old pals. Lend Sonkwe your ears:
Friends, Anglos, Frogs, lend me
your ears. I write to pity Oben,
not to blame him… Oben invited
the red caps, as he says, because
the people of Ndu didn’t pay taxes…
Women were stripped naked, sat down
in a line and forced to open wide
their legs for tax collection. …
Prime Minister Achidi Achu wants order
restored “at all cost” so taxes can be
collected from women’s vaginas.
What Tav-Njong will like to know is why the Biya/Achidi/Oben gang of three – and who is this Oben fellow, anyway? – decided to harass poor peasant women while notorious tax-evaders like Mrs Foning go unscathed. Mrs Foning, like most of our so-called business magnates, especially those who went to urge PB to “precipitate” presidential elections in this country, doesn’t remember the last time she ever paid taxes or customs duties in this country. Yet our gang of three avoided her thighs and brutally searched through those of helpless peasant women. How revolting!
When I wondered why the women of Ndu and not Foning, my buddy Andy “Young”, ever the philosopher, said that our lecherous trio might have been scared to their pants by the mere thought of having to search through Foning’s nauseatingly massive thighs. If they ever tried, he reasoned, they would be completely exhausted by the time they wade their way through those thick, over-heated folds of her thighs to the spot where the taxes might be hiding. When I asked how he knew Foning’s massively voluminous thighs had over-heated folds, Andy, that rogue, merely smiled. Who knows what he’s been up to lately?
However, suffice it to say that the way the Biya Administration treated the women of Ndu, confirms the views of human rights groups that nowhere else in Africa, are the dignity and integrity of the human person assaulted with as much impunity as in this unfortunate triangle, which some syphilitic Portuguese joker, with decaying teeth and foul breath, had nicknamed shrimp, or Njanga, to borrow Gobata’s delightful word. What a joke!
Tav-Njong cannot understand how a country that parades its women in the nude to general derision, some during their menses – remember that unfortunate Yaounde university female student who fell into the hands of the “Man Lion’s” soldiers? -- can be allowed to ensconced itself anywhere among civilised humanity.
wwhy did the cardinal have to resign. is he resigning from the priesthood or just as cadinal
Posted by: che fanny | October 21, 2005 at 08:19 AM
wwhy did the cardinal have to resign. is he resigning from the priesthood or just as cadinal
Posted by: che fanny | October 21, 2005 at 08:19 AM