Bate Besong

The Judiciary is a Pantomime: If Martin Essoka Eseme or John Kohtem Testify

By Bate Besong

A GAULLIST dictatorship, is by definition a prebendal, autocracy, sustained, by un-elected Governors and Government Delegates, the police, preféts, etc, and it derives its power from a Federal populist, Constitution it has had to subvert in order to cocoon itself in power.

Corruption and lack of accountability, injustice in the possession of power are metonymy of this troglodyte, francopile monolithism. Politics by its E.NAM political paparazzi is both backward and alienating providing little scope for patriotic forces or other progressive votaries to be a positive enzyme for change. The whole process of the Cameroonian Judiciary is an elaborate pantomime.

PRODIGALS OF DANGEROUS AMBITION

A Commentary of Alobwed'Epie's The Death Certificate
(Yaounde: Editions CLE,2004, 308 pgs)

PROFESSOR ALOBWED’EPIE’s close to four decades sojourn, in Ngoa-Ekelle, Yaoundé has provided the author with an insider-view, in transmuting, into art form; the folie de grandeur of a twenty-three year clannish, despotism; convulsing, in corruption; on a road to nowhere. Tribalism as a political weapon quickly attracted the ex-seminarians of “The Council of the First Province”.

In responding to a familiar, but specific historical development, the novelist has been compelled to display an increasingly, sharper and engaged focus. Myth and metaphor operating together occasionally achieve aesthetic statements of great compression and resonance. The Death Certificate attests to this effectiveness in employing novelistic art, as an instrument of raising social awareness.

Bate Besong: Courses taught at the University of Buea

As pointed out elsewhere, Bate Besong is a Senior Lecturer in Drama & Critical Theory, University of Buea, Cameroon (1999 – Present), with focus on Cameroon Literature, Theory and History of African Literature, Cultural Studies, Creative Writing, Critical Theory, Play Production. It is in that capacity that he teaches the following grauate and undergraduate courses at UB's Department of Literature.