Bate Besong

The mouths of liars will be shut

(One year after my public disgrace and subsequent impeachment on the F- Affair)

By Bate Besong (Published in The Post, No 0787, Friday 4, 2006)

        To Her who Rejoiced          

                      I
Your prejudices will be held against you. Just
as the mountain straw is set on fire by sparks, so
you will be destroyed by your evil deeds, and no Presidential
decrees will be able to stop your destruction.

L’ecrivain est mort : Alas, Poor Fredinand (Son Excellence Leopold Oyono)!

By Bate Besong

ALA Bulletin Vol. 28 No. 2 Spring pages 119-124

The list of African writers who opposed colonialism and stood for independence and freedom is long. Unfortunately, the list of those who ended up compromising and making deals is a long one too… But Mongo Beti,… was never one of them.

Dennis Brutus - University of Pittsburg

The Mummification of a Nation

By Bate Besong

It so happens that creativity
is the highest instance of human
intelligence at work … This is
plain and logical.
AYI KWEI ARMAH

History is ever reminding The Present
of any society even you shall come
to pass away. Tomorrow will be the
present; and The Present will be The
Yesterday.
NGUGI WA THIONG’O

Can President Biya Still Redeem his Tenure?

By Bate Besong
Publishedin EDEN Newspaper, Limbe, Number 59, March 2006

PROLOGUE
The system has always remained consistent with CNU traditional beliefs and Machiavellian political practices, authoritarian decision-making and refusal to delegate power and entertain dissident voices. The odium, persecution, and other forms of primordial prejudice of the last twenty-three years should not find a bazaar ground on the nation’s open sore. We have to quickly resolve all our domestic contradictions in order to concentrate our energy on coping with the challenges ahead. Whether we like it or not our choice of leadership must not be based on who is acceptable to our deviant mode of sexual conduct; in our fraternal polyandry or sorority; in our tribe; or who can preserve our privileges.

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.

DON MCKINNON EATS HIS CARROT

By Bate Besong

The totalitarian temptations or tendencies of the “new” Deal government of President Paul Biya and its consequent paradoxical resemblances to the “Volk” of Hitlerian Nazi Germany and the “Popolo” of IL Duce Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy were, more ominously, adumbrated on October 12, 2005, during the conferment of the honoris causa in Political Science of the University of Buea on the Rt. Hon. Don McKinnon, Secretary General of the Commonwealth.

Welcome Governor Eyeya Zanga

By Bate Besong

The foundation of which the Cameroonian Federation was built in Foumban, in 1961, was a power arrangement contoured to deal with a sociologically complex polity as presented by our multi-ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversities. It was a type of national integration that recognized the two separate but equal parts and the central government, in Ahmadou Ahidjo’s Yaounde, as mutually coordinate, and not subordinate one to the other.

The Irresistible Rise of Iya Mbamba Dorothee Limunga Njeuma

By Bate Besong

The sort of politicized tribalism that you practised during your long and ruinous stay on the Buea Campus (1988 – 2005) remains the greatest threat to national peace and stability.

The Final Exit: Dorothy Njeuma Leaves UB after 12 Years as Vice Chancellor

A Moron Finds Work

Dear Friends,

Dr Agbor Richard of the History Dept had, in March 7, 2005 publicly indicted his dean, Dr Victor Ngoh with venality,corruption,graft and mismanagement. He has now made a volt face accusing colleagues of the Dept of English: Roselyne Jua, Vincent Tanda, Henry Jick, Asheri Kilo and yours truly. In his garbled letter to the vice chancellor dated 13th August, 2005 he states that "Madam, I will be more delighted to let you know that, what was written dated 7th March was not by my mind... These colleagues are all from the Dept of English, which I later realised that, they want Dr Ngoh to have problems with the university of Buea and beyond".

Find below my response:

Letter to the Cameroon Minister of Higher Education

Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo
Hon. Minister of Higher Education
Ministry of Higher Education
Yaounde

Your Excellency,

After a most demonic ruse: The Price I am being forced to pay for initiating dialogue during the university of Buea upheavals in May/June 2005.

I was a member of a group of senior academic staff of the University of Buea, designated, by the four-man delegation led by former Minister of Higher Education, H.E David Abouem a Tchoyi, to inspect and evaluate the situation in the University of Buea students’ uprising.