Bate Besong

Before a Cameroonian Rwanda

By Bate Besong

Critique on Piet Konings’ & Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s Negotiating an Anglophone Identity: A Study of the Politics of Recognition and Representation in Cameroon (2003)

CAMEROON RE-UNIFICATION, like an inflated balloon, has the appearance of solidity but there is no substance to it. It is, however, imperative to make certain clarifying statements from the onset, in order to make very clear and straightforward the positions these scholars have taken.

In basing their scholarship on Foumban and post re-unification Anglophone political consciousness and sensibility, Professor Piet Konings and Dr. Francis B Nyamnjoh are only substantiating the fact that these periods are very cogent and decisive in the overall context of the contemporary Cameroonian experience. Piet Konings’ reputation as an insightful and perceptive scholar, who has never relented in the diligent pursuit of his work as a Cameroonologist, is not in doubt. Francis B. Nyamjoh has gained a reputation as a prominent, pioneering and distinguished Cameroonian sociologist and writer.

ESUKA NDOKI'S QUISLING SCNC: After The Ekontang Elad Particular

BY BATE BESONG

The POST Newspaper No. 155, Monday, January 24, 2000

We, Southern Cameroonians, have always had leaders that are archetypal mediocres: tribalistic, deceitful and fraudulent - since Foumban. Our daily lives are, therefore, viewed by the neo-colonial askari, through a distorted Quai d' Orsay prism, where the sum total of a person's character, merit, and worth is defined by De Gaulle's language. We have always been frog-marched in the limbo of marginality, alienated and directionless. In the depths of ignominy. Yet, we need someone who could give a strong sense of belonging to all, since the alternative, revolutionary front, is a special one that requires special techniques not perceived, understood, or appreciated by apologists, jobbers and other such thieves-of-power.

The Henry Fossung and Esuka Ndoki Mukete-Ivo Yongbang SCNC gave no leadership, clarified nothing, and confused everything.

Multiculturalism and the Politics of Nation Building in Recent Cameroon Anglophone Theatre

By Tiku Takem

Applied Theatre Researcher/IDEA Journal Number 4, 2003

Abstract
The works of Bole Butake, Bate Besong and Victor Epie Ngome have become classics of Cameroon Anglophone drama today. The performances discussed here show that not only do they articulate the authors’ attitudes, but they also seek to influence the attitudes of audiences towards the nation. Cashing in on a popular desire for change in a society characterised by widespread disillusion, Anglophone theatre presents varying perspectives on reconstructing the nation, based on the vision of each dramatist, ranging at times from mutual reconciliation and recognition of socio-cultural identities to outright usurpation of despotism to usher in democracy.

IN APPRECIATION: Siga Asanga, My Friend

BY BATE BESONG

Signs of vacuity and morbidity appeared on the horizons. Implosions here and there.

The country was witnessing social oppression, economic chaos and the forces of neo-colonialism. The nation had become balkanised along lines of the very rich and raggedly poor.

Cameroonians were struggling to exist in difficult situations and thus the beliefs they held were attempts to make sense of their situation and guide their everyday actions.

The CPDM, then, was the veritable government-as-leviathan. It avoided difficult choices and hard decisions.

Themes and Style of Bate Besong’s Works

Culled from George Ngwane (1993). Bate Besong (Or the Symbol of Anglophone Hope). Limbe: Noomerac Press.

Themes
In most of his works Bate Besong criticises the roof by attacking the foundation... Bate Besong always comes back to where the rain began to beat us, not with the naivety of somebody who does not know what happened in the past but with the clairvoyance of somebody who knows what should happen in the future. ... But rather than resort to a trip of witch-hunting he is in search of a Promethean ideal; he is in search of change, for change is the only permanent rhythm in life. His poems conjure the bitter themes of Power Abuse like in the The Kaiser Lied,

A Cardinal And The Judgement Of History

By Bate Besong

(To Cardinal Christian Wyghan Tumi)
This pharaonic cabal had, lied.
Time is not a pontiff
Who pardons simonies
Emceed

By idiot-soaked
Demagoguery

Now in a state
Of multi-decadal
Ruin

NEW ENGAGEMENTS IN CAMEROON LITERATURE: The Other Side Of The Bridge

By Bate Besong

Part I

Preface To Discourse
No full account of the rhizome density of our national literature is possible - as the editors of Patrimoine have so kindly guessed - without adequate and appropriate reference to the alternative writing that has given life to an essential, yet repressed and denied aspect of Cameroonian reality.

It is writing that is a reflection of the multifarious nature of Cameroonian reality and the readiness to decisively take a progressive and radical march towards it that distinguishes new Anglophone literature from the apologetic perspective and transcendental lore of bourgeois sylvan pretensions.

The Anglophone Cameroonian Writer Comes Of Age Under The Biya Sky (I)

BY BATE BESONG

When I … used to write plays and novels that were only critical of the racism in the colonial system, I was praised. I was awarded prizes and my novels were in the syllabus. But when … I started … questioning the very foundations of imperialism and of foreign domination of Kenyan economy and culture, I was sent to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. Ngugi Wa Thingo’O (Barrel Of A Pen, 1985:65)

PLAYWRIGHTS WREST VICTORY FROM CHADS OF ANOMIE: Diminution of Babila Mutia’s Humanist Vision

BY BATE BESONG

Prolegomenon

I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible except getting off his back. Leo Tolstoy

Augusto Boal, the famous Brazilian theatre umpire had so presciently noted long ago (1979) that in the dialectical theatre of the German Marxist playwright, Bertolt Brecht, we are witnessing the death knell to the illusionistic or naturalist tradition. By unquestionably preaching the changeability of archaic institutions, Brecht’s commitment, which embraces both a political, social or economic vision of man, demystifies capitalist myths by attacking the perpetual peazantisation of the masses or lower classes. In turning official historiography and mythopoesy on their heads, the playwright’s artistic vision “clarifies concepts, reveals truths, exposes contradictions, and proposes transformations” (106).

Query To George Ewane, Presidential Mimic Man

By Bate Besong

I will not conceal my own conviction that as my former Advanced Level English Literature student, in the late 80s, at the Bilingual Grammar School, Molyko-Buea, George Ewane, has not taken to heart the repercussions of inflicting on society the cataracts of mass delusion and enfoolment, resulting, from the hubris of unmoderated greed.

Whether this reflected the hamartia of new deal lionisation or calculated obfuscation on his part, cannot now be determined by hearing the mimic man’s voice on the radio.