Until we meet again - Homage to Isabelle Bassong
Isabelle Bassong passed away on November 9, 2006. For many of those involved in and observers of EU-ACP cooperation, she was not only the most senior of ACP ambassadors and the second most-senior member of the entire diplomatic corps in Brussels, she was also a friend. Kind, courteous, and loyal, she hung on to her sense of humour that she had as a former pupil of the ‘Collège moderne des jeunes filles’ in Douala (Cameroon) where she went to school. Often formidable, too, for example when she was called upon to defend the interests of the Group on issues as technical as bananas, chairing the commodity’s working group up to the time of her death.
Isabelle Bassong, a kindly, courteous and loyal friend.
Accredited for the first time in 1988 to the European Communities and the Benelux States, she was a trained as a linguist, held a DES from the Sorbonne and an MSc. from the University of Denver, also in languages. She was appointed Secretary of State for Health in 1984, and was ‘the grandmother of the ACP Group’. I hope her ten grandchildren will not be taken aback by the boldness of this remark.
Isabelle Bassong was President of the Committee of Ambassadors, and took part in the negotiations of the Lomé IV Convention (1990), the revised Convention of 1995 and the Cotonou Agreement (2000). At the same time, she was Cameroon’s Counsel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, throughout the long disputes between her country and Nigeria from 1994 to 2004, over the issue of sovereignty of the Bakassi Peninsula. It was only logical that Isabelle Bassong’s personality and her rank earned her a lavish tribute at her official funeral celebrated in Brussels by the Apostolic Nuncio on November 28, at the Basilica of Koekelberg, which was packed to the rafters. In the presence of her loved ones, the representative of King Albert II of Belgium, the diplomatic corps, including her ACP colleagues and her fellow Cameroonian ambassadors in Europe, as well as many members of the Cameroonian community of Belgium, the second-largest from sub-Saharan Africa in the Kingdom (about 10,000 people) after, histoire oblige, that of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On December 16, there was a funeral mass celebrated by the Archbishop of Yaoundé, Monsignor Tonye Bakot, at the Basilica Marie-Reine-des-apôtres, in the presence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Marie Atangana Mebara.
Alongside her family and friends, several members of the government and a representative of President Paul Biya attended the ceremony, followed by her burial in Yaoundé.
She was born on February 9, 1937 in the Fang region in Ebolowa in the South of Cameroon. Although she has taken her last breath, her smile is still with us. And among those who knew her there is no doubt that on accompanying her to her final resting place, there were those who whispered: “Until we meet again, Isabelle”.
