Bate Besong

Obasinjom Warrior

By PETER WUTEH Vakunta

Whether you be bookman
Or you be halfbook man.
Whe you be teacher
Or you be school pikin.
Whether you be man
Or you be woman
Whether you be small man
Or you be big man.
I member say you savy that ‘shooting star’
Whe them de call’am say Bate Besong.
That man na A1 for Cameroon.

A Video Tribute to Bate Besong

Poem written and performed by Joyce Ashuntantang in Memory of Bate Besong. Video filmed and Edited by Ryan Glista with music by Henry Tanyi (Tanash).

Niyi Osundare - A Toast to Bate Besong

Just days before it was announced that he had been awarded Africa's most prestigious award for poetry, the Tchicaya Utamsi award, Niyi Osundare was in Buea, Cameroon to take part in the inaugural EduArts Awards for Cameroonian Literature in English. In this excerpt, Osundare reminisces about the late Bate Besong, Anglophone Cameroon's most militant poet/playwright who was his student at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

First Anthology On Bate Besong Hits Shelves

By Solomon Amabo (Originally published in Eden Newspaper)   
 
The first ever poetry anthology after the death of arguably the most controversial and vocal Cameroonian poet, playwright and scholar, Bate Besong has hit the world shelve. Emails from the Editors; Dr Joyce Ashutantang and Dibussi Tande Esq., to some of the contributors in the literary piece indicated that 27 renowned African poets are amongst the writers in the anthology, which verses the life and works of Dr Jacobs Bate Besong.

The Ghost of Um Nyobe (Musings from the Other Side of the Bridge)

By Dibussi Tande

They say you died in enemy territory
They say you died on the wrong side of THE BRIDGE
But what better place to die
- On the other side of the bridge -
Than in the Sanaga Maritime -
The sacred land of the Ngog Lituba
The springboard of Cameroun nationalism
The heartland of the Cameroun resistance;
Purified with the blood of thousands of patriots
Who said NO! to the imperialists and neo-colonialists?

Bate Besong: A Tribute on Canvas

A Portrait by Abidemi Olowonira

BB was introduced to me by a very good friend mine, Kangsen Feka Wakai, also from Cameroon. He told me about BB's influence on the Cameroonian and African literary world. I had read few of his poems and essays and was looking forward to meeting him one day.

Unfortunately this will not happen on this sorry earth... perhaps in AFTER-AFRICA.

BB will forever be missed in the realm of the young African pioneers and his legacy will forever remain with us. Su' n re o baba (sleep well baba).

The Mountain Weeps

By Ilongo Fritz Ngale (Originally published on IlongoSphere)

The mourning seems to have no end
As the morning star of joy seems to have fled,
For the mountain bleeds
Its flanks red with blood
Which copiously flows through the pores of its kids,
Poor souls taken off into tragedy lane
Slain before their times

Farewell BB

F. Akemfua (Bonanjo, Douala Cameroon)

You knew too well the face of this day
These seasons that fed us with hunger and pain
You wailed out loud
As the cloak of darkness fell
As the chanting of the anthem fell out of rhythm
To the resonating sounds of the drums
You saw the scar- faced land, your land
And the knife sharp and stained with blood
You saw the desecration of the alter of Dreams

Flowing like a stream (In memory of Bate Besong)

By Ekpe Inyang

Materials
as building blocks
to make
the message crystal-clear
and safe for public consumption
must flow like a stream

Bad Boy

By Ekpe Inyang

Obasinjom warrior
Alias BB
Brave Boy
Bad Boy!?!
Tireless warrior

You intoned the tune
Of reformist chants
And charted the course
Of bad boys’ march