By Julius Wamey - Editor & Writer, Former CRTV Journalist
If the late and much lamented Mr. CPN Vewesse, who died on Martin Luther King’s birthday, January 15, had a nickname among his peers, none of us youngsters who knew of him and later knew him had ever heard it. He did not sound like the sort of person who’d stand for such frivolities as nicknames. He was a serious-sounding CPN Vewesse, as he signed his newspaper columns and usually indignant letters to the editor.
As a kid fresh out of secondary school, with an avid interest in news, I learnt about CPN Vewesse when I started reading the old Cameroon Post and the Cameroon Times of those days. First, his incendiary rhetoric, rendered in flawless English captured my interest and held it. Then the passion behind his ideas on social justice and equity for the poor began to resonate in me and have inspired my thinking to this day. Such was the faith of my peers and I in the sincerity of his fierce passion for good that I never hesitated to believe an apocryphal tale whereby he stared down a squadron of gendarmes armed to the teeth and forced them to dismantle a roadblock during one of the numerous confrontations he had with our Cameroonian evil forces of so-called law and order.
When I did finally meet him in person in the eighties, my long-held views of him shifted only slightly. He was not the perpetually angry man I’d envisaged, but an engaging personality with the ability to dominate a roomful of ‘big people,’ with a piercing gaze and passionate but reasoned discourse. He wore his attitude of a man comfortable in his perceived mission to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" with amazing ease. When I met him in any one of the watering holes favored by the Anglophone elite of the day, be it the Mountain Club, the Victoria Club or Club 58, he’d be ensconced on the bar counter, trading friendly insults with the other bar patrons, most of whom were residents of the local Senior Service quarters. Many of them would also be less qualified for their positions than he was.
A Harvard man, by way of Makerere University, Vewesse could have easily outpaced most of his peers up the corporate or public service ladders, such as they were. But he chose to stand firmly by the side of the working poor, probably seeing in them his own hardscrabble upbringing in Babanki and the struggles of his parents. Thus he took up the cudgels of the labor movement and proceeded to do battle with the corporate and government grandees who have presided over the massive abuse of workers’ rights in Cameroon from independence to this day with near impunity. Nowhere was Vewesse’s combativeness and passion for justice more evident than when he took up the crusade for an autonomous GCE Board and his militancy in the nascent SDF party. Nor was his altruism more apparent than in his determination to stay out of the unseemly scramble for lofty positions in both institutions. In both instances his primary concern was the rights of the downtrodden and the commonwealth of the Anglophone community.
There is little doubt that in the ‘matutu’ houses around the CDC camps and club houses of Sonel and other industrial corporations in the Limbe area, talk would now turn nostalgically to the heroics of CPN Vewesse as he fought for the rights of workers to fair wages through contract negotiations and safer working conditions, organizing industrial actions and strikes. These workers and fellow travelers on the hard road to a more equitable workplace will fondly remember his courage the court battles he undertook on their behalf and the hard-fought victories they gained with Vewesse fighting the government and corporations to a standstill.
Above all, workers all over Cameroon will remember, as they wait for Cornelius Patrick Vewesse to be returned to the land of his forefathers, that he was a great champion of the little guy, who died fighting so that the least among us should be able to live a life of dignity. A devout Christian, he lived his Catholic faith in deed on a daily basis, translating the church’s numerous nostrums on selflessness, charity and humility into urgent action. CPN Vewesse may not receive a state funeral with a 21 gun salute, but the depth and sincerity of feeling at his funeral shall surpass anything a head of state could hope for. Many more tears shall be shed for him than for any prince, prime minister or president.
By Francis Tim Mbom
Renowned human and workers’ rights crusader, Cornelius Patrick Ngamteh Vewessee, is dead. The labour leader who was also at the forefront of the struggle for the “restoration of the Southern Cameroons statehood” died in the early hours of Tuesday, January 15, in Limbe, aka Victoria.
Vewessee, 75, reportedly died at the Yufanyi Clinic, New Town, Limbe, barely minutes after he was rushed there for medical attention.
A veteran Trade Unionist, he was the serving President of the Confederation of the Cameroon Autonomous Trade Unions, CCATU and also the leader of the Fako Agricultural Workers Trade Union, FAWU.
Charles Mbide, his immediate Assistant at FAWU,, told The Post that he had reported on duty at his Bota office, on Monday, but returned home 30 minutes afterwards, after complaining that he was “not feeling too well.”
Mbide said, after work, he had gone to Pa’s Aloha Cub residence in Limbe and stayed with him from 7: 00 pm to about 8:30 pm. “He was still not well, but told me that I should not worry and that he will be okay by the next day and hoped to be in the office then.”
But Pa’s situation is said to have worsened by the hour and by 4:00 am, he was rushed to the Yufanyi Clinic, where he passed away, even as preparations were being made to ferry him to Douala.
Vewessee is said to have taken active part at the innaugural of the new General Manager of the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC, on Saturday, January 12, looking hale and hearty. Howeverm he was a known diabetic and had planned to travel to the United States by the end of January, for medical attention, after having secured a visa for that purpose.
According to Mbide, Vewessee started off as a CDC worker at Moliwe in the 1950s. He said his trade union activities began as far back as then, as a Staff Representative. The doggedness with which he defended workers’ rights led to his being elected President of the CDC Workers Union as early as 1966. When Trade Union activities were re-organized in 1972 and limited to the Provinces, Vewessee became President of the Fako Workers Agricultural Union, a position he held till Tuesday.
In between his union activities, he attended the Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Harvard in the USA.
Vewessee believed strongly that until there is good governance, justice, accountability and equitable distribution of wealth, the Cameroonian worker, especially the youths would be doomed to suffering. His speeches during successive May Day Celebrations were uncompromising and provocative, even at a time free speech in Cameroon was synonymous with suicide.
When The Post visited him after his last May Day address, Vewessee had this message to put across:
“Government should take the necessary and appropriate steps and request the governments of France, Switzerland, Canada, and the USA, to facilitate the repatriation of our nation’s wealth, looted from the public treasury and stashed in banks in these countries.
My friends have this nickname for me, they call me CPN. This is due to the effect papa had on people. Oh my God, I cannot believe I am now using the past tense. May your soul rest in the bossom of the Lord. Papa, you were a very powerful force, and an examplary leader whom every body loved to follow. When you believe in a course, you did not care how long it took for you to realize it. All you care about is for it to be realized.
The case of the late Mr. Molua was a very clear example. I lived it and saw you fought your life, with tooth and nail for that worker. You were very inspirational, and thus led him to believe and hope and know his right.
And as much as you were rigourous and very keen on doing right and good on the outside, that was how your heart was very warm on the inside. You are the saint of this family. Always bearing and forbearing, forgiving and ever ready to help. Not just ready, but very willing.
You always ensured you know the people around you, and strived to always leave a good and positive impact which they could emulate.
I thank you for always buying the massive Albert Camus, Salman Rushdie, Charlotte Bronte and other novelists' books, which I read and read, which made me grow in vocabulary, eloquence and knowledge.
I have loads of stories grafted onto my mind from far back when I was still in my nursery school days.
I will remember you buying 'The Post' newspaper, and asking me to read one of the articles for your hearing pleasure with your friends. It made me full of so much joy to see, live and remember how proud you are of me
I remember your love for Don Williams in my very early age when you we behind the steering.
I remember all our fun stuff we used to do when I close from nursery school.
How you used to always have my back when I was in trouble.
The bond we have is inexplicaple. I thank you for bringing to my knowledge the fact that you took care of me as a baby when mami travelled for work. I guess that is why I was so attached to you, and no matter what situation, I would always still love staying around you, and we will never want to part from each other.
I remember when I wanted to go abroad after my O'levels, and you said 'no way! she will stay here and marry a Babanki man!' hahahahaha Oh my God! I couldn't be mad. Your passion brought more laughter and amusement to my lips and mind than anger or pain.
I love you papa. More stories are coming, just that they are so painful to write, for it is like me remembering you are no more-when i have not still come to terms with, lest to talk of remembering it. God bless you. Num6:24-26
