Bate Besong

Bate Besong: Invitation to Book Launch

The Dean of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Buea, Professor Albert Azeyeh, invites the public to the launch of Bate Besong’s DISGRACE: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NARCISSUS and EMANYA-NKPE, with a foreword by Professor Beban Sammy Chumbow, lately, Vice-Chancellor, University of Yaounde I, under the most eminent patronage of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buea, Professor Vincent Pryde K. Titanji on Wednesday March 07th 2007 at the Amphitheatre 750, U.B. at 3:30pm.

CHIEF LAUNCHER:
Ntumfor Barrister Nico Halle
International Legal Consultant,
Member OAPI Scientific Committee,
Member, National Elections Observatory.

Interview: Playwright Bate Besong speaks his mind about Cameroon political issues

Interviewed by Christopher Ambe Shu (Published in Ohmynews - Korea)

Dr. Bate Besong is a Cameroonian playwright, poet, outspoken dissident and author of over ten books in creative writing and numerous academic papers in peer review journals. Despite official displeasure and exclusions, he continues to write in newspaper columns and to speak out fearlessly at book launches on the deteriorating political culture after a quarter century of the imperial presidency of Paul Biya.

Fritz Ilongo's “The Four Pillars of Time” Launched in Buea

By Solomon Amabo (In EDEN, Wednesday 31-Monday 05,June 2006 pg.5)

The Four Pillars of Time, a novel by the Cameroonian born IIongo Fritz Ngale was on May 19, launched at the Sullivan Hall , OIC, Buea.

The literary critic, poet and playwright, Dr Bate Besong, BB, praised the author for “constructing an intellectual arsenal for the liberation of the country and the decolonization of the mind”. He pointed out that IIongo Fritz Ngale’s “anti-hero King Lak is a pastmaster at the art of discovering the most ingenious methods of torture and brutality, unleashing a reign of terror and suffering on the innocent people of Suna”.

Walk Down Memory Lane: Bate Besong Bags ANA Prize for Drama! (1992)

(First Published in Cameroon Today, Vol.1, No. 15, December 17-24, 1992. Page 2)

“ I have resurrected West Cameroon on the International Podium !”---Bate Besong

Bate Besong fondly referred to as BB and widely acclaimed as Cameroon’s Wole Soyinka, has won the highly coveted ANA (Association of Nigerian Authors) Prize for Drama. Significantly, the accolades for Bate Besong’s literary works have come from without our frontiers. The enfant terrible of Anglophone literature, Bate Besong is reputed for his incessant scathing indictments of dictators – in Cameroon and Africa.

Dr. Bate Besong: Chief Inoni Ephraim’s Constituency – and – Vision will Never go Beyond Bakingili.

Published in The Heron, Nº. 0086, Friday December 17-24-2004

Bate Besong is the most paradoxical Anglophone Cameroonian writer today… he is also a political activist and a staunch advocate of the Southern Cameroon crusade. B.B., as he is fondly called by his admirers in this brief chat last Wednesday with Ezieh Christopher Andu x-rays the recent cabinet appointed by President Biya. Excerpts.

1991 (Memory Lane): The Pen and the Penitentiary

In an incident that made national headlines back in 1991, Bate Besong was arrested in Yaounde shortly after the Yaounde University Theatre performed his play, Beast of no Nation. This was at the behest of one Jean-Stephan Biatcha, a a low-level University of Yaounde employee but an alleged spy of the CENER, the Cameroonian Secret Service, with connections in high places. Immediately after the conclusion of the production, Biatcha had dispatched a blistering report to his handlers at the Presidency complaining that BB's "subsersive" play was a threat to national unity in Cameroon. Within hours of the report being received at the Presidency, the Boys from CENER came calling... Here is an excerpt of the report that landed BB in hot water:

BATE BESONG: ANGER AND AFTER

By Okokon ASUQUO (M.A.)

THE DEFENDER, Calabar Cross River State, Nigeria. Thur. 14TH – Monday 20th Jan. 1992

When he published Polyphemus and other Poems in 1980, with Scholars Press Uyo, as a student of English at the University of Calabar, many had thought Cameroonian poet and critic and Essayist, Bate Besong was merely engaged in an ego trip to get some recognition or passing mention.

Amongst those who wrote profusely as students then, Emmanuel Anametemfiok, Ishola Dina, and Francis Archibong, only Bate Besong can be said to have sustained the student yet prolific tempo and romantic temper that has now made him the symbol of resistance in Cameroon.

Anglophone Cameroon Literature At Cross Roads - A Review of Bate Besong's Interview

By Azore Opio

The Post No. 0613 of October 28, 2004

After the miraculous transcendental literary flowering of the sixties and seventies, probably topped by late Mongo Beti, Cameroon’s writers dropped from the consciousness of readers. Since then, many complaints have been made about the vexatious habit of not reading in Cameroon. In a New Year message, Paul Biya, Cameroon’s Life President, paid lip service to this malady when he said apathy had stricken the people. But who first cultivated the infernal habit of lying in clover, equivocating and shuffling, so deeply rooted in the very soul of the King Beast himself?

CONGRATULATIONS TO A GIANT, SO ACCOMPLISHED AND GREAT!!!

Paper read at the graveside of Albert Womah Mukong, Revolutionary Icon and Nationalist

By BATE BESONG

 No other Cameroonian has made incessant but genuine calls for our society to be measured in terms of how it solves the problems of the masses than Albert Womah Mukong.

           

Bate Besong Leads Southwest Delegation To Mukong’s Burial

By Chris Bunwe (The Post Newspaper - July 26, 2004)

Cameroon’s writer and literary critic, Dr. Bate Besong, is will lead a powerful delegation of varsity dons, playwrights, poets, publishers and journalists from the Southwest Province to late Albert Womah Mukong’s burial on July 31, in his native village of Babanki-Tungoh.

Among those to accompany Bate Besong are Chief Barrister Charles Achaleke Taku, Francis Wache, Celestine Monga, Dr. Chris Fomunyoh, Mike Akomaye Yanou, Prof. Ndiva Kofele Kale, Dr. Roselyne Jua, Hon. Joseph Kwi, and possibly Mrs. Christie Chinua Achebe [Mukong’s classmate at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria].

Bate Besong is expected to read a speech, which will centre on ‘Mukong’s Struggle for Political and Cultural Freedom’.