Bate Besong: 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.

Born thirty five years ago, Bate Besong had assumed the unenviable posture of the iconoclast and one that lances lethal and fatal barbs at oppressive regimes. Today his consistent insistence against official malfeasancy and morbid corruption in high places in Cameroon has made him a household name there. He is perhaps the most hounded writer in Cameroon today as well.

Author of The Most Cruel Death of The Talkative Zombie, Robbers in Paradise and the controversial Requiem for the Last Kaiser, Besong, whose guerilla dramaturgical tectonics in Beasts of no Nation, his most indictive and nihilistic dramatic presentation that caused audience scampering out of the venue of its gory enactment, has paradoxically refused to join the Cameroon Writers Union, accusing the likes of writer Ferdinand Oyono of The Houseboy fame of the high handedness and corruption while in the government.

The embattled writer was in Calabar enroute to the Cameroon from the 1991 Association of Nigerian Authors Conference in Minna Niger State. He had come to seek solidarity with his Nigerian counterparts to prevail upon President Paul Biya to release arrears of his salaries for eight years which he says stands at over 10.8m francs.

“You see”, he proffers in a no holds bare chat with this reporter, “the government does not recognize me as a writer in Cameroon but as a senior lecturer at the Bilingual Grammar School Molyko Buea Southern Cameroon.”

As a member of the Ejaham Country, of Southern Cameroon he is dialectally classified as an Anglophone Cameroonian. This seems to be one major plank of his politico-literary and psychological battles.
“I will never speak French”, he sneered in a fit of anger as a reaction of spite against Biya’s official torture stratagem against Anglophone Cameroon.

He accused Biya of using his Beti tribe to foster francophone colonial, neo-colonial vestiges of favoritism, nepotism and institutionalized corruption. This must rate as one of the most corrupt regimes in the world. This is a country where professors are appointed by government decree with absolutely no consideration for academic merit”, Besong detonated. Such cavillings against Biya’s masochistic machinery is a familiar song with Besong and he sings so often in prisons and cells.

That revolutionary favor is replete in his befuddling and often turgid post detention poetic collection Obasinjom Warrior with Poems After Detention. It was this energy that caused his arrest without charge immediately after the effluvial eruptions in Beasts of no Nation.

Perhaps as this restless spirit takes this pressure in their strides they are beginning to take their toll on him as he laments his inability to pay for and train his siblings even in primary school, even though he belongs to the best paid elite labour group teaching in the Cameroon.

Besong may be coming “home” to roost. Educated at Hope Waddel Training Institution Calabar and the University of Calabar, Besong got his MA in English at the University of Ibadan. He will be doing his doctoral work at his first alumnus the University of Calabar come the 1992 academic session.