Bate Besong

Interview: Playwright Bate Besong speaks his mind about Cameroon political issues

Interviewed by Christopher Ambe Shu (Published in Ohmynews - Korea)

Dr. Bate Besong is a Cameroonian playwright, poet, outspoken dissident and author of over ten books in creative writing and numerous academic papers in peer review journals. Despite official displeasure and exclusions, he continues to write in newspaper columns and to speak out fearlessly at book launches on the deteriorating political culture after a quarter century of the imperial presidency of Paul Biya.

Homage to Bate Besong

By Nicha Jerome (Grandson, Switzerland)

The heavy tides of time never
Distort shades of truth, never!

             Bate Besong:

I honour you giant of the greats
Who said the stars were asleep?
Who said the master; our ancients are gone?
the Lion roared the other day ‘WOAW’
Zebras galloped, but I saw you stand!

Bate Besong:

I honour you great one of the old.
It was said the manacles of oppression
Dug into your flesh , exposing fresh wounds
To Zombie flies to feed on-
Your eyes never turned red,we heard.

Andrew Sankie Maimo’s Manichean Ontology: A Review of The Mask

By Bate Besong

Published in Epasa Moto: Journal of Letters, Arts, and Culture, University of Buea (2006: Abridged)

Andrew Sankie Maimo’s The Mask (1980) as a supreme expression of the situation of modern man like much of its absurd, Beckethian or Adamovean genealogy derives its theatrical alloy from its mosaic construct which entails a penetration through a cluster of images and symbolic landscape.

Post –Unification Anglophone Exile Poetry: Introducing Simon Mol & Kangsen Feka Wakai

By Bate Besong, Ph.D

Forthcoming: Inter’Actuel, 2006 (ed) Professor Robert Fotsing Mangoua, Universite de  Dschang, Cameroon.

Abstract
Anglophone Cameroon poetry, just as its dramaturgy and prose fiction counterparts, is a product of two distinct soci-aesthetic forces: the received traditionalist aesthetic practices and the aesthetics overdetermined by the nuances of Re-unification. The research seeks to correctly apprehend the artistic focus and ideological primogeniture of Anglophone exile poetry from an ideo-aesthetic perspective since, in the main, a study of Simon Mol (2002, 2004) and Kangsen Feka Wakai (2006)cannot be separated from the socio-historical,socio-political and socio-cultural contexts of “horizontal colonialism” [Doh 1993:]

Fritz Ilongo's “The Four Pillars of Time” Launched in Buea

By Solomon Amabo (In EDEN, Wednesday 31-Monday 05,June 2006 pg.5)

The Four Pillars of Time, a novel by the Cameroonian born IIongo Fritz Ngale was on May 19, launched at the Sullivan Hall , OIC, Buea.

The literary critic, poet and playwright, Dr Bate Besong, BB, praised the author for “constructing an intellectual arsenal for the liberation of the country and the decolonization of the mind”. He pointed out that IIongo Fritz Ngale’s “anti-hero King Lak is a pastmaster at the art of discovering the most ingenious methods of torture and brutality, unleashing a reign of terror and suffering on the innocent people of Suna”.