AMAZING GRACE: CRTV`S NEWLY-APPOINTED BOSSES

AMAZING GRACE: CRTV`S NEWLY-APPOINTED BOSSES:                                                 ABOVE:  Ndongo: doing what he knows best                                             ...

CRTV`S NEWLY-APPOINTED BOSSES

                                                ABOVE:  Ndongo: doing what he knows best
 

                                                   ABOVE: Wongibe: he who laughs last

Yesterday, 29 June 2016, President Paul Biya appointed a new General Manager and a new Deputy General Manager at the Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV). The two bosses are respectively Charles Pythagore Ndongo and Emmanuel Wongibe Fomonyuy. Ndongo replaces Amadou Vamoulke who had held the post of General Manager since 2005 and Wongibe takes over from Prof. Francis Wette who was appointed in 2001 and served as Deputy to Prof. Gervais Mendo Ze who is currently at the Kondengui central prison in Yaounde on charges of misappropriation of state funds during his 17 years as General Manager of the corporation (1988-2007), before serving under Amadou Vamoulke.

The appointments of Ndongo and Wongibe are significant from several perspectives, the first of which is that they are both not just journalists by profession but also old brooms that know each corner of the house. In fact, it can be said that Ndongo has spent his entire career as a journalist – doing what he knows best – at CRTV. He is a graduate from the Advanced School of Mass Communication in Yaounde, better known today by its French acronym, ESSTIC. He was one of the first to have served at national television when it was created in 1985, working alongside other pioneers such as Alain Belibi, Eric Chinje and Denise Epote. However, whereas Chinje and Epote as well as others jumped ship for greener pastures abroad, Ndongo stuck to his guns and stayed on at CRTV. When the corporation was restructured in 2015 and the Radio Broadcasting arm and the Television arms were split more or less, he was appointed Director of CRTV Television. Interestingly, Belibi who was his classmate at the journalism school and who like him stayed at CRTV instead of going to work abroad was at the same time appointed Director of the CRTV Radio wing. Prior to that, Charles Ndongo had not only served as “President Biya`s journalist”, but had also accompanied and interviewed him on many occasions.

Prior to his recent appointment, Emmanuel Wongibe was Director of the Cameroon Marketing and Commercial Agency (CMCA) which is the commercial and marketing unit of CRTV. He served as Head of the Cooperation and Public Relations Unitof the corporation and later Technical Adviser Number 1 before. Just before being appointed Head of the Cooperation and Public Relations Unit, he was Deputy Editor-in-Chief in charge of English Language Magazines at Television House. Although Wongibe has been abroad, he made it a point to return home. In fact, after just two years, he returned home and went back to CRTV. He gained international experience working for the American multimedia firm CNN and for the international service of the German  Deutsche Welle. He also made his mark in international environmental journalism, by notably taking part in an international climate change summit in Durban, South Africa. He also served as a trainer on several programmes organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The coming together of both Ndongo and Wongibe through the recent appointment is not the first, for it had happened in the early 1980s when they both served in the same unit.

The two appointees represent a new breed of bosses at CRTV in the sense that they belong to the younger generation of top level managers. This is in fact the first time that Paul Biya has looked in-house to choose not just a general manager to head the institution but also his deputy. For that and many other reasons, the two appointments have been greeted with an expression of satisfaction from the staff of CRTV. Consequently, they are seen as in-house people who know exactly what is not right in the “house” and how to put it right. CRTV`s very first General Manager, Etoga Eily Florent had been appointed from outside; so was his successor, Professor Gervais Mendo Ze who came in as a university professor of linguistics. Although Amadou Vamoulke who succeeded Mendo Ze trained and worked as a journalist before, he was appointed from the private sector where he served as a close collaborator of James Onobiono, the boss of the Douala-based tobacco company, SITABAC. Although the corporation`s Pioneer Deputy General Manager, Dr. Nyamdi Ndifonta came in with a journalism background, he was actually appointed from a diplomatic post at the Cameroon embassy in London. Prof. Francis Wette who succeeded him and has now been flushed out alongside Amadou Vamoulke is a university Associate Professor of Journalism and mass communication.

The new General Manager and Deputy General Manager have come to the corporation with two distinctive characteristics of theirs, which make them stand out when compared with their predecessors. Ndongo and Wongibe are both independent minded and thorough in whatever they do. They relate well to other employees, even those below them. 

Born and bred in Yaounde, Charles Ndongo is therefore a Francophone, so to speak, but he speaks very good English and often makes it a point to address Anglophones at the corporation in English, as a way of making them feel at home. I personally had that experience with him, except for the times when he would speak to me in Ewondo, knowing my knowledge and love for the language, just like other Beti members of the corporation usually did when they came in contact with me. Those others include Antoine Marie Ngono and François Bingono Bingono and Guy Roger Eba`a. When I worked under Charles Ndongo as Assistant Chief of Service for Television Coverages and my immediate boss, Mbella Essengue who had been hospitalized after a malaise died, Ndongo called me over the phone and said in English: “Mr. Tikum, your boss is no more!”. Charles Ndongo is caring and sensitive to the needs of others. When the Cameroonian international footballer, Marc-Vivien Foe died on a football pitch in Europe and his corpse was brought to Yaounde, Ndongo proposed me to the then General Manager, Prof. Mendo Ze as the journalist to do live commentaries in English and the general manager put my name down for the activity.

The appointment of Wongibe in replacement of Prof. Wette as Deputy General Manager has been greeted as a wrong that has finally been righted because before it happened, many petitions had been sent to the president of the Republic to the effect that if his appointment of Prof. Wette was intended to be representative of the Anglophone community, then he had got it all wrong because although the professor was Anglophone by upbringing, upon his appointment, he identified himself more with Nde Division of the West Region to which his birth origins belonged. It is also general belief that the professor did not do much in his time as Deputy General Manager of CRTV to further the cause of Anglophones in the corporation. If anything, he stood in their way, much to the chagrin of the two general managers under whom he served – Mendo Ze and Amadou Vamoulke. In fact, during his stay at CRTV, a significant number of Anglophones instead left the corporation. For that reason, the new Deputy General Manager, Wongibe has been hailed as not only being representative of the anglophone community – he hails from Bui Division in the North West region – but also as someone who has a temperament that militates for reconciliation and fosters a spirit of belonging.

I can personally testify to that temperament of Wongibe`s because when Amadou Vamoulke was appointed General Manager and he selected duos to be trained to present television news, Wongibe was not among them. Fortunately for me, I was. But Wongibe gave those of us who were selected, total and undivided support and encouragement. He did everything humanly possible to stand by us and made us succeed. For that, I take off my hat in gratitude to him.

Critics of Paul Biya have conceded that if he has made “wrong” appointments before, the recent appointments of Charles Pythagore Ndongo and Emmanuel Wongibe Fomonyuy are a typical case of square pegs in square holes. If that is the case, then Paul Biya has done his job well. The onus is now on the two appointees to prove that they can rise up to the challenge and deliver the goods as expected.

AMAZING GRACE: GRADUATION CEREMONY AT SAINT MONICA UNIVERSITY BUE...

AMAZING GRACE: GRADUATION CEREMONY AT SAINT MONICA UNIVERSITY BUE...: This was graduation ("commencement", in the USA) at Saint Monica University, Kumba Road, Buea, where I am Director of Communi...

THE INTERFACE OF JOURNALISM, LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION

                    




 By Tikum Mbah Azonga, PhD
 Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
 School of Arts, Education and Humanities
 Saint Monica University
 Kumba Road, Buea
 South West Region
Cameroon

 



ABSTRACT

Journalism, Literature and Translation are generally viewed as separate disciplines. We approach this paper by examining them as such. However, we go further and study them as they come in contact with each other. Our investigation was motivated by the realization that this three-in-one composition had so far not been subjected to scientific investigation. We therefore decided to put the cards on the table in order to find out what the results would be. We used the Venn diagram to probe the triple bond, with focus on the sets and sub sets that were generated by the configuration. We also used primary sources such as literary works of art, published or broadcast journalistic articles and translated texts in which one of the main methods of investigation was content analysis. We found that when put together, the triple paradigm of Journalism, Literature and Translation revealed inter-related relations that are worthy of note by both researchers and policymakers.We also discovered that in the sense that “affluence” means abundance and “confluence” means team collaboration, the overlapping of the three variables engenders several new entities that go to enrich the formation.

KEY WORDS

Journalism, Communication, Media, Literature, Translation, Language, Interface, Intertextuality, Confluence and Affluence.

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FOR FURTHER DETAILS

Contact:  The Editor-In-Chief, Prof. Cornelius M. Lambi, Ph.D (Salford), F.R.G.S., F.G.S. (London), F.G.S. (France), F.C.A.S. (Yaounde), Professor of Geography and Environmental Science, Former Vice Chancellor, University of Buea, Department of Geography, Faculty of Management and Social Sciences, University of Buea, P.O. Box 63, Buea, Cameroon. TEL: (237) 69533 1285 EMAIL: lambimc@yahoo.com

AMAZING GRACE: LESSONS FROM AN OFFICE TYPEWRITER

AMAZING GRACE: LESSONS FROM AN OFFICE TYPEWRITER: When one pauses to contemplate progress made in modern technology, one cannot but be astounded by its fast pace. A case in point...

LESSONS FROM AN OFFICE TYPEWRITER

When one pauses to contemplate progress made in modern technology, one cannot but be astounded by its fast pace. A case in point is that of typewriters which over the years have been quickly outpaced by computers and in later years, computer-like gadgets such as the cell phone.

Yet, when typewriters were in their heyday, they were the kings in each office. The story I am about to recount is set in that period, in one of the Divisions of the North West Region of Cameroon. It was at the time when the regions were still called provinces and the North West had five of them which were Bui, Donga/Mantung, Menchum, Mezam, and Momo. As we know, later Menchum was later split into two different divisions with Boyo being carved out of it and Mezam was also split into two with Nkoketunjia being created out of it.

In Cameroon, ministerial departments are represented at the regional level by Regional Delegates; at the Divisional level by Divisional Delegates; and at the Sub Divisional level by the Sub Delegates. In the Division where the incident happened, an employee had sought permission from his Divisional Delegate to take a typewriter home and finish some work he was doing. The boss duly granted it. Then, no one appeared to have remembered it thereafter.

One day, when the National Radio Station in Yaounde announced appointments within that ministerial department, the said Divisional Delegate was “appelé à d`autres fonctions”. That means “called to other duties”. Sometimes, when that happens with appointments, the civil servant concerned is actually “called to other duties”. But in other cases, despite the announcement that he had been “called to other duties”, he might not be reassigned anywhere else, which meant that all of a sudden he found himself in the middle of nowhere, hanging in the air. That was what happened to the Divisional Delegate who signed out the typewriter.

Since he knew he was no  longer the Divisional Delegate, he wanted to make sure everything was in place before handing over. At that point, he remembered that the typewriter he had authorized the employee to take home had not been returned to the office. It was now three months overdue, although it was supposed to have been out for only a night. When he sent for the employee and asked him about the machine, the latter insulted him and told him to his face that he had no right to ask him for the typewriter because he was no longer his boss. “In fact, now that you have been deposed, there is no difference between your level and mine in this office”, he added mockingly.

The Divisional Delegate left it at that, handed over the other things he had in his office and the delegation and then left for his home. In the meantime, a new Divisional Delegate had been appointed to head the service. The former delegate stayed at home but occasionally still came back to the office, this time as an ordinary employee. However, he was well treated by the new delegate who assigned him a table in one of the offices in the delegation. But relations between him and the employee who took the typewriter home had been poisoned.

One day, something dramatic happened. Yaounde again announced appointments and this time the former Divisional Delegate was reappointed. He was not just named a Divisional Delegate like he was before, but this time he was actually catapulted to the post of Provincial Delegate in the same province. Now, he was not just once more the boss of the typewriter man but also that of his boss the new Divisional Delegate. As things turned out, when the new Provincial Delegate visited the division on an official tour, the typewriter man hid himself somewhere. But the provincial boss sent for him and asked him where he had been. He apologized profusely with a lot of guilt but the provincial boss assured him that he had nothing to fear. Later, both men ended by being great friends.