Ndeh Ntumazah

A Conversational Auto Biography

This rich conversational auto-biography tells the story of the political life of Ndeh Ntumazah who was born in Mankon in 1926, spent the best part of his life suffering and sacrificing for the freedom of Cameroon, and died in London on January 21, 2010, at the age of 83, as President of the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC). Ntumazah was a political activist for nearly 60 years. He joined the UPC around 1950 and remained a militant of the party until his demise. When the UPC was banned in French Cameroon in 1955, he was advised by his comrades to create another party in the Southern Cameroons, which would be the UPC in disguise. The party was called 'One Kamerun Movement - OK', with Ndeh Ntumazah as its President. Following its banning, the UPC started a war of liberation in French Cameoon, so Ntumazah from the safety of Southern Cameroons, liaised with his comrades in French Cameroon to carry out their underground operations. Ndeh Ntumazah left Cameroon to seek political asylum abroad in 1962. He stayed in Ghana, Guinea, Algeria and finally in Britain where he spent most of his time sensitising the world about the plight of Cameroon using various avenues like writing, conferences and deputations. Ntumazah is dead, but he lives on because his life stands out as a point of focus.

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Reviews

“Written in the tradition of Plato’s Socratic Dialogues, the editors set for themselves a monumental task and may have acquitted themselves extremely well. It takes a feat of the literary imagination to blend into a composite whole, lectures, speeches, historical and philosophical essays with searching conversations and tribulations of one of Africa’s most enigmatic and fascinating politicians. The greatness of this book lies in the fact that from the very opening pages to the end it never lapses into boredom or repetitiveness.”: Isidoro Muansi, The Morning Star, Cameroon

“Easily the most lucid, the most daring and even very convincing, Ndeh Ntumazah… will remain for generations an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of the darkest and most down-played pages of the history of Cameroon…”: The Post, Cameroon