Ferdinand Léopold Oyono

Cameroonian statesman, actor, and writer

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Ferdinand Léopold Oyono (born September 14, 1929, Ngoulemakong, Cameroon—died June 10, 2010, Yaoundé) was an African statesman, actor, and comic writer whose two best-known works—Une Vie de boy (1956; Houseboy) and Le Vieux Nègre et la médaille (1956; The Old Man and the Medal), written while he was studying law and administration in Paris—reflect the growing sentiment of anticolonialism of the 1950s.

During the 1950s, while writing his first two books, Oyono worked in Paris as an actor on stage and on television. In 1960, however, he returned to Cameroon and entered the diplomatic corps, becoming special envoy in 1961–62 to Guinea, Mali, Senegal, and Morocco. Between 1963 to 1975 he was ambassador to Liberia, the Benelux countries, the European Common Market, France, Italy, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. He then served the United Nations (UN) as chairman of the Security Council, of the UNICEF Board, of the Security Council’s Political Committee, and of the Council on Namibia. After serving as ambassador to the United Kingdom (1984–85), Oyono returned to Cameroon to take various posts in the cabinet.

Oyono’s first book, Houseboy, is written in the form of a diary. It depicts honestly but with humour the often brutal life of a houseboy in the service of a French commandant. The Old Man and the Medal satirizes colonialism through the eyes of a God-fearing and loyal old villager who completely reverses his opinion of the white man on the same day that he is to receive a medal for his “service” (sacrifices of his sons and land) to France. In both novels Oyono’s indictment of paternalistic missionaries and administrators is clear. He perfected an ironic tone that conveys the full tragedy and pain of the lives of the common people, usually illiterate peasant farmers, who naively accept the doctrines of French colonialism. In mocking the foibles of the self-deluded colonial masters as well as the simple villagers, Oyono often painted hilarious portraits, putting his early experience as an actor in theatrical farce to good use. A third novel, Chemin d’Europe (1960; “The Road from Europe”), tackles the somewhat different problem of a young man who is better educated than his peers but still lacks the skills needed to assure him of success.