BB Is Dead, BB Lives On

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh (CODESRIA, Dakar - Senegal)

BB died doing what he has always done: fighting to make a difference and making a difference by fighting. He died keeping hope alive in a hopeless situation, adding the weight of his pen to efforts to bring back a bit of dignity to the lives of ordinary Cameroonians stripped bare by shallow pretence and sterile rhetoric. He died fighting the battles he would want us to keep fighting.

In a context where many an intellectual has been silenced by the lure and allure of easy virtue and the sterile politics of reckless impunity, BB was a rare exception to stay wedded to Bernard Fonlon’s ideal of The Genuine Intellectual. 

BB’s plays, essays and newspaper contributions were as clear about what he believed to be wrong with the land of his birth, as they were about what he thought it would take to make right those wrongs.

It is therefore unfortunate and indeed ironic that he should pass on in a death most cruel, and not those excesses his Requiem for the Last Kaiser and The Most Cruel Death of the Talkative Zombie were meant to bury. And it is equally unfortunate that he should leave the scene just when he was ready to share with the world in person the richness of his experience of a country where a reluctant government and those whose intellects it has numbed would spare nothing to derail the train of hope and human dignity.

BB epitomized those who refuse to stand by and watch the train of hope and human dignity derailed. He stood for those who would rather fight than run away (wasn’t it Bob Marley who said it all – he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day?).

BB the flesh and blood may have died, BB the Idea has never been more alive.

So, let’s celebrate his courage and achievements
Let’s hold the dream and continue the struggle
That gave BB, Hilarious Ambe, Kwasen Gwangwa and Tabe Awoh
Something to live and die for
Let’s avoid a fate worse than Disgrace
Let’s keep alight BB’s flame of hope
Let BB in us be born again

Comments

[Sakwe]

Even in the world of our forefathers, i know this host of intellectuals will be looked upon with great admiration for who they were, and what they did.
Adieu brothers.

[Stephen Neba Fuh]

THE OBSCURE INTELLECTUAL LIVES ON

Speak not,
Except opening your mouth improves
Silence's tranquility.

Write not,
Except your ink isn't to soil
The fine works of pulp's craftsmen.

Read not,
Except your prejudices aren't buried
In your mind's contours.

Listen not,
except you worry not of what
May not please your soul's audience.

Dr Jacobs BB legthens the struggle,
By shortening the fear;
Even when contemporaries sit on the fence.

He listens,reads,
Writes and speaks.
The obscure intellectual lives on.

By Stephen NEBA FUH
snebafuh@yahoo.com