Book Launch : Prof. Kale’s Past As Prologue Hits Shelves

A heavily-attended book launch took the twist of a lecture in Buea recently with Emeritus Professor, Jurist and Politician, Ndiva Kofele Kale’s “The Past as Prologue: Essays on Cameroon 1980-1995”, under review. The July 1, 2022, event staged a review panel of revered minds including the renowned Professor Victor Julius Ngoh (historian), Professor Tala Kashim (social scientist), Charlie Ndi Chia (journalist) and Henry Ngale Monono (jurist) as chairperson. They took the task of reviewing the 117-page book containing 14 polemical essays published in magazines and newspapers from 1980-1995.
The author, Professor Kale, foregrounds the consequences of the historical and political evolution of Cameroon. As such, the book covers a range of subjects including the author's claim "how political independence set up the degenerating precepts in which freedom became a farce while democracy collapsed into autocracy". He further discusses how power and responsibility affect political dominance and finally denotes what he describes as the dysfunction of the state of legitimacy under existing reforms.
Professor Victor Ngoh, in his historical review of Professor Kale's piece, expounds that “the Ahidjo regime wanted and clamored for a unitary state,” one whose present state Charlie Ndi Chia describes “as the most polarized setting with feudal systems of high instructions". 
Professor emeritus Tala Kashim further intimates that “the 14-chapter book summarizes the lack of refrain in building political power added to heightened materialism that has resulted to the disruption of democratic principles. To him, it is about the tendency of some people in powerful positions to forget the masses. 
Although the book "The ...