Bate Besong

The Bernard Fonlon Revolution: If Gold Should Rust, What will Iron Do?

By Bate Besong
Paper Read During The Commemoration Of The 19th Anniversary Of The Passing Away Of Professor Bernard Nsokika Fonlon - Djeuga Palace Hotel, Yaounde,24th November 2005

WILLIAM FULBRIGHT has argued that literary agitation, like practical political instigation, which edges on dissent or rebellion is “an act of faith”. Accordingly, and, as I have already shown elsewhere, although Professor Bernard Nsokika Fonlon (a man who was so exceptionally handsome), was, an intellectual pillar of fire; a Prometheus among his peers; indeed, something of a twentieth century Aristotle, the Greek philosopher and classical biologist, his neo-classical treatise on literary composition have, neither, received accolades nor endorsement from me.

Appointments at UB

By Bate Besong

Unlike the Secretary General of the Academic Staff Union, the francophone Professor, Innocent Futcha, who turned down the irresistible Recteur’s political bribe at the University of Yaounde 1, the entire executive of SYNES Buea chapter; in their blind, self-deceitful ambition, collaborated, in their own irrelevance.

Silence, submission and collaboration have become the order of the day!

Paul Biya 23 Years After: He has Elevated Graft into Statecraft

By Bate Besong
(Playwright, Poet and Literary Critic: Dept of English, University of Buea)

There has been a serious dereliction of responsibility on the part of his leadership. He has privatized the state and handed it over to his Essingan kinsmen and the Khalifas of the North. This has led to a manifestation of a most perverted form of governance that flourishes under conditions of social injustice, economic inequality and political opportunism. The fettered past has taken its toll on a Presidency that is afraid to face the facts. He has transformed himself into a Presidential Deity- courtesy of the puppet-masters at the Quaid’ Orsay. Mr. Biya imagines, like Appolo of Delphi, that Cameroon history can turn at his beckoning.