Bate Besong

Where will the New Deal intellectual/ Writer Stand at the Trumpet of Reckoning?

(To the memory of Kenjo wa Jumbam, playwright, educationist and novelist, who died in his sleep on 12 December, 2005)

By BATE BESONG

Brahmins of our higher institutions of learning have not provided the elixir that would redeem our inchoate democracy from its prolonged, socio- economic death sleep, and, political quagmire. This refusal to turn history into a useful dialogue has given rise to the perverted culture of glorification of a parasitic, comprador bourgeois ruling class, as well as, the encrustation of a pleasing propaganda image of the Establishment.

Abstract: Dramaturgical Art as Social Commentary: Bole Butake’s The Rape of Michelle; Notes and Queries

[Paper submitted to: Publications du Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches du Monde Anglophone (CERMA), Université Omar Bongo - Gabon].

ABSTRACT
Bole Butake’s The Rape of Michelle (1984) in its form, aesthetics and subject matter would be described in Brechtian terms as bourgeois theatre method.  The realistic nature of the play is seen in the way post-colonial contradictions are brought to the fore.  The playwright makes use of adequate dramatic devices to communicate historical experiences. Unfortunately his solutions to political corruption are individualist bourgeois, and thus, miss the larger social quest of the community. 

Walk Down Memory Lane: Bate Besong Bags ANA Prize for Drama! (1992)

(First Published in Cameroon Today, Vol.1, No. 15, December 17-24, 1992. Page 2)

“ I have resurrected West Cameroon on the International Podium !”---Bate Besong

Bate Besong fondly referred to as BB and widely acclaimed as Cameroon’s Wole Soyinka, has won the highly coveted ANA (Association of Nigerian Authors) Prize for Drama. Significantly, the accolades for Bate Besong’s literary works have come from without our frontiers. The enfant terrible of Anglophone literature, Bate Besong is reputed for his incessant scathing indictments of dictators – in Cameroon and Africa.