Besong: The Man, His Ideas, His Vision And His Life

By Babila Mutia Bate

Prof. Babila Mutia fluting in tears to the tune of "lead kindly light"at BB's funeral

Besong was born on May 8, 1954 in Manyu Division, at that time called Mamfe, in the then Southern Cameroons. He attended Hope Waddell Training Institute in Calabar and later came to study at St. Bede's Secondary School in Ashing, Kom, where he obtained his GCE A Levels. He left Cameroon after his A Levels and went to Nigeria where he was admitted into the University of Calabar in the Department of English and Literary Studies.

While at the University of Calabar, Bate Besong [fondly called BB] and Babila Mutia founded Oracle, the first Nigerian university journal of poetry edited by students. BB was Senior Editor while Babila Mutia was Deputy Editor.

Just before he graduated from the University of Calabar, Besong published his widely acclaimed maiden collection of poems, Polyphemus Detainee & Other Skulls. Scholars Press published the poetry collection in April 1980 with a foreword written by Professor Ime Ikiddeh of the University of Calabar. Chinua Achebe launched the book.

When he graduated from the University of Calabar in 1980, Besong did his National Youth Corps training in Nigeria (working with Brigadier Mamman Vatsa, the poet-soldier who would later be executed for a failed coup attempt) before enrolling at the University of Ibadan for an M.A. degree.

Suspicion, Mistrust And Misery
Realising that his emerging reputation as a budding writer was gradually giving him recognition as a Nigerian and compromising his Cameroonian nationality, Bate Besong opted to come back home to Cameroon after completing his Masters degree programme. To his utter dismay and much in despair, Cameroon welcomed him with suspicion, mistrust and misery.

With an MA degree Bate Besong would have naturally been recruited to lecture in numerous Nigerian universities while pursing his PhD degree. But in Cameroon he was unable to get a university job. In utter desperation, he took up a teaching job at CPC Bali where he was Senior Tutor from 1983-1985.

His two-year stay in Bali was not entirely improvident. While in Bali he met and got married to Christina, his beautiful wife with whom he has five children. It was Christina who gave meaning to his life and shielded him from the slings and arrows of a home country that did not recognise his talents and share his artistic vision.

Bate Besong accepted recruitment in the Ministry of Education at the time as a "PLEG" from 1985-1999. His trials and tribulations in the Ministry of National Education can constitute a book of its own. He was without a salary for more than four years and his integration file kept on disappearing every time he re-submitted it to the Ministry. Because of this persecution he went into depression and began drinking and smoking profusely.

Paradoxically, it was during this period of depression, extreme poverty and despair that he became quite prolific and wrote some of his most provocative works: "The Most Cruel Death of the Talkative Zombie" was published in 1987. "Obansinjom Warrior With Poems After Detention" came out in 1991 and was quickly followed by "Requiem for the Last Kaiser" in the same year.

"The Banquet", published in Makurdi, Nigeria, by Editions Ehi made its appearance in 1994. Three years later, "The Grain of Bobe Ngom Jua" (a collection of poems) was released in 1997. Partly because of his critical writings and his militant activism during the Ahidjo era, he was punitively transferred to teach in Mayo Louti, in the North Province where his depression deepened and he almost lost his mind. Eventually he was transferred to the Bilingual High School in Molyko, Buea.

"Beasts of No Nation"
It is understandable then why Bate Besong fell foul with the present regime in power, particularly after the staging of "Beasts of No Nation" in March 1992. Shortly after the play was staged, Besong was kidnapped during one of his visits to CRTV television house. He was physically assaulted and tortured by State security agents who took him to an unknown location.

Within a few minutes news of his kidnapping was broadcast around the world. Embarrassed by the kidnap news, the security agents released Bate Besong as quickly as they had kidnapped him. To this day, no explanation has been provided by the ruling regime as to why he was kidnapped or who masterminded the kidnapping. 

Unable to get a full-time job at the newly created University of Buea, under the pretext that his "MA degree was old" he took up the challenge and enrolled at the University of Calabar for a PhD in English and Literary Studies. Within a short period of time he completed his PhD and was recruited at the University of Buea in 1999 where he had been teaching till his death.

In May 2000, his world premiere production of "Once Upon Great Lepers" was staged at the Amphi 250 in Buea. In 2001, his highly celebrated essay in praise of Mongo Beti, "Just Above Cameroon" was published. Two years later, his provocative play, "Change Waka and His Man Sawa Boy" was published in 2003. In the same year, Edition Cle in Yaounde released Three Plays containing the Achwiimgbe Trilogy.

Complex Language
Most Cameroonians identify BB with drama and believe drama is his original calling. Bate Besong is first a poet and then a dramatist in that order. A close examination of his plays reveals that that they are written in poetic language much like T.S. Eliot's poetic drama. Right from his earlier poems in Oracle to the publication of "Polyphemus Detainee & Other Skulls,"

Besong demonstrated that he had a natural calling to the intricate and at times complex language of poetry that was greatly influenced by the poetic traditions of two great Nigerian poets whose poetry he greatly admired -Wole Soyinka and Christopher Okigbo. So why did he divert his creative energies from poetry to writing plays?

As he told Babila Mutia, his reason for switching to theatre was because of the urgent social and political issues of the day in Cameroon, which he was ordained to confront. Drama that would be put on stage and watched by audiences across the nation became an urgent medium to express his ideas and transmit his message to a lethargic nation.

Aware that Cameroonians do not read, he knew that if he opted to take the path of poetry he had begun in Nigeria, he feared, as he said, that he "may die and remain unheard."

Comments

[Musi John Nukam]

Dear mr Babila,
i wish to say thank you for the message you had passed about late Dr Bate Bisong i am so much impressed.But if i may tell you BB is no more and are so i think he had always walk agains the plitical situation of our country thuit has not change we then should never stop without taking the foot steps of BB.Lets believe BB was our Socrate in Camroon and we then have decided to become Platos.
Thanks yours sinserlly,
M J N.

[Makia EPIE]

One regrets a minute that went by when in your brains, you develop ideas which should have been passed on to the community but for the, "procrastination bug", you tell yourself, and “I will do it tomorrow". Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us. I am in that stage where I regret immensely my procrastination. Dr. Hansel Ndumbe Eyoh was a cousin of mine. A very kind and generous individual who, had he been placed in another continent, at another time, would be known as a great ONE.
But fate placed us in Cameroon.
Dr. Bate, I have heard, was a great ONE, whose intellect unnerved his countrymen who where not up to his capacity - you can call it envy.
Every time I visited Cameroon, I thought I would get a chance to meet him and ask a few questions. I never will have that chance.
Since these two great ones are gone, I am here on a very cold Saturday morning in Texas wondering what to do as I read his many articles.
Dr. Eyoh's play, for many who may not be aware of it, resembles real life in KURUME with some dramatics included. He mentioned the play to me a few years after its completion and promised a discussion. We never got to discuss the play but talked about putting down the wundupe (the bloodline of EPIE) history. That is our family name - not fiction. In that family is my great grand father who founded the Kurume village. Thus the chieftaincy has been passed down to my grandfather, father and my late brother Emmanuel Epie. In the fringe were my uncles Makia Feseh and half uncle who was Dr. Eyoh’s grand father. These two lived on either side of my father who in past times was responsible for partitioning the KURUME village to its original inhabitants.
The issue of illegitimacy he deals with is a family issue that does not need to be in the public domain but within the family.
I continue to write about the family and some things will become clear to you all. Dr. Eyoh was two years older than me so our experiences were similar.
I wish we had one more minute together. Since we never will, I waste no more time. I write.
Thanks for sharing this memory. We have lost some very great sons.
www.makiaepie.com

[EAA]

hi Mr. Babila when i read through BB's Life that you have presented tears ran down my eyes. i remember the day he told us in class that nothing will stop him from telling the present government that it is bad.Bate Besong was my role model unfortunately he is gone so soon.but nevertheless he has planted some trees whinch are going to bear fruits very soon. he thought us to always have a critical mind by not accepting tings just the way they are buT by striving to correct the wrongs.he thought us not to be the wasted or complacant generation.what a great loss.MAY HIS SOUL REST IN PEACE

[essombe sone massoua]

once in a life time a genuis is born, bate besong was the bethoven of our generation,Even if we don,t reconise his greatness right now future generations will, cause he was born in the wrong generation, just like vicent van gogh of holland.

[Amungwa Athanasius Nce]

I am writing for the first time since my friend died. We met in Saint Bede's College and I knew he would be a great write. One of best novels was the Advance Learners Dictionary, so I am not surprised at his unspeakeable artfulness and manupulation of the English Language and his use of words to get the effects he dreamed of.I have read most of his books, acted some of his plays,and felt so proud proud that he was my friend, my classmate. He has left his foot prints on the sands of time in Cameroon, let's walk them, let's help him build the society he stood and died for.

It's really rotten shit to learn that BB who patriotically zoomed in from Nigeria to develop his own country zoomed out prematurely the way it happened towards the heavens. I feel so ashamed that he was stigmatized and discriminated into depression, thank God he walked through that depression with an academic bank from which he drew a lot to write his great works.In fact, 'dis country dong spoil' a Musician says.

The one proud thing that remains is his name and his works and his wife and his children. I know those talents are with his children and God will help them develop them. The Abassanjom lives on.

Amungwa Athanasius Nche
Ivory Coast.

[First Anglophone President]

We all stand before history this day. BATE BESONG was man of peace, of ideas, appalled by the denigrating poverty of his fellow countrymen, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation,
angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, He devoted his intellectual and material resources, his very life, to a cause in which he had total belief and from which he was intimidated by the State (La Republique). I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of the cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which we may encounter on our journey to freedom. Not imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory. We are the Ambazonians! (K.B. Saro Wiwa 1995)