Longue Longue: Why was Cameroon’s most loved artist tortured with a machete?
What exactly makes an artist brave?
It’s a highly contextual question, and thus, many people will have many different definitions for it. There are some smooth-brained morons who will say with a straight face that multi-millionaire rock stars citing their allegiance to current governments is a “brave” act because a few people will call them out for it on social media. Some will call the biggest pop stars in the world making art that has a vaguely feminist bent “brave”, and while they may have more of a point than the fuckwits from earlier, it’s still something of a stretch.
However, on October 24th, 2024, a harrowing video was shared, which redefined what it meant to be brave as a pop star. It was the sight of Simon Longkana Agno, better known to the public as Longue Longue, one of the biggest musicians in Cameroon, being tortured.
The video will not be posted below because that would be disgusting, but the content of it is as follows. Longue Longue has been handcuffed and forced onto the floor of his house in his underwear, his legs held in place with a chair as the soles of his feet are whipped with the flat side of a machete.
This came after Longue Longue has spent his storied, hugely successful career in music speaking out against government corruption, colonialism and injustice all over the world. However, there was one statement he made that got him this particular treatment. The truly chilling thing is that at the time of the video’s publication, Longue Longue had been sitting on this video for five whole years.
What caused this to happen to Longue Longue?
In 2018, Cameroon seemingly re-elected President Paul Biya in a landslide, securing 70% of the vote to secure a “presidency” that has been going on since 1982. Any country electing the same leader for four decades straight (Biya is still president at the time of writing) is seriously sus, and the people of Cameroon have been calling Biya’s election results into question since 1992.
2018 was no different, and the year afterwards, Longue Longue decided to do something about it.
No matter what your definition of bravery is, it’s pretty undeniably that Longue Longue did the bravest thing a pop star could do. He publicly called out Biya for rigging the election, pointing to the numerous polls that suggested Maurice Kamto of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement had the votes to oust him from government. The video was allegedly taken shortly after Longue Longue spoke out against Biya and released after he’d relocated to France in the wake of this attack.
Longue Longue wasn’t the only one to suffer like this. People who have sided against the Cameroonian president have received similar treatment, and the 51-year-old musician was aware of the danger he was putting his family still in the country at risk by releasing the video. While it is a tragedy that Biya was inaugurated for another term as president the week before writing this, we must all take after Longue Longue’s example, and find the spirit to fight back in the face of oppression, whoever it may be oppressing us.