Bate Besong

The Open Quarrel I Never Had With BB

By Martin Jumbam

CameroonPostline.com -- Usually, when my phone rings and I see Francis Wache’s name and number flashing on and off, I always answer with: “Hi, Francis, what’s up?” and expect the usual answer: “Oh, not much, I just wanted to tell you about ….”, and the conversation would then drift from one light-hearted topic to another.

That was, however, not the case in the morning of March 8, 2007. When his emotion-drenched voice asked: “Have you heard about BB?” I immediately felt, even before he confirmed it, that something tragic might have happened. “No! What’s wrong with him?” I recall asking.

Fallen Man of Letters (A Poem for Bate Besong)

By Sarah Anyang

BB Obasinjom[1] Warrior! Ekinni Achwimgbe[2]!

Bombomkiri, Kiribombom!

The famished road gulp you and your cohorts

On that fateful women’s Day 07

And you became Beast of No Nation.

Aieee Obasinjom warrior! Yet you Say “I conquer fear to die”?

A Candle for Bate Besong - Five Years Ago Today

Today we remember Jacobs Bate Besong, the prolific writer, poet, playwright and literary scholar, who died exactly five years ago on March 8, 2007. Five years after his passing, the vacuum that his death created on the Cameroonian literary landscape is yet to be filled. RIP BB!

Homage to a Literary Colossus (Remembering Bate Besong Five Years After)

By Douglas Achingale

On this fifth anniversary of Bate Besong’s demise, it is worthwhile dedicating some lines to him in the following way:

On Thursday, 8 March 2007, I was steeped in some laborious but edifying work in the news room of The Herald newspaper, in my capacity then as desk editor and columnist of the now defunct tabloid, when my phone suddenly rang. It was my good old journalist chum, Sam Bokuba, then working for CRTV Buea, who was calling. I thought he wanted to recount to me one of those thrilling tales he and I are wont to share.

“Guess what!” he screeched.

“Which varsity damsel has stumbled in your snare again?” I questioned in utter excitement.

US Ambassador hosts Café Littéraire to Discusses Writer’s “Quest for Freedom and Social Justice”

Originally posted on the US Embassy website

To commemorate Martin Luther King’s struggle for freedom and justice not only for African-Americans but also for the underprivileged worldwide, the Public Affairs Section organized a literary evening on January 19 at the Ambassador’s Residence to study “The Quest for Freedom and Social Justice in the Literary Work of Bate Besong.”

Born in 1954, Bate Besong was an Anglophone Cameroonian writer who published numerous plays, collections of poems, and essays before his tragic death in a 2007 car accident.  Participants included university lecturers, literary critics, writers, research students in literature, publishers, journalists, staff members from two foreign cultural centers in Yaounde, as well as the Ambassador and Embassy staff.

Bate Besong: The Silent Volcano

By Bole Butake, Professor.

TRAGEDY STRIKES ON DOUALA YAOUNDE ROAD

On March 8, 2007, at about nine o’clock in the morning, my phone rang. When I pressed the answer button and held it to my ear, I heard a delirious voice from the other end shouting, “Bate Besong! Bate Besong! Bate Besong!” I recognised the voice as that of Babila Mutia and tried to ask in as calm a voice as I could muster, “What is wrong with Bate Besong?” I knew that he had been engaged in launching his latest book entitled Disgrace the day before in one of the amphitheatres of the University of Buea where he was lecturing in the Department of English. The desperate voice on the other end of the line weighed down more forcefully: “Hilarious Ambe! Hilarious Ambe! Hilarious…” Realising that there was no way to get Babila to be more coherent, I switched off the phone and rang Hilarious Ambe’s number. After a long and nervous wait a voice answered from the other end. But it was clearly not Hilarious Ambe’s voice. Speaking in English, the person identified himself as a gendarme officer and went on to announce to announce what I feared the most.

Obasinjom Warrior

By PETER WUTEH Vakunta

Whether you be bookman
Or you be halfbook man.
Whe you be teacher
Or you be school pikin.
Whether you be man
Or you be woman
Whether you be small man
Or you be big man.
I member say you savy that ‘shooting star’
Whe them de call’am say Bate Besong.
That man na A1 for Cameroon.

A Video Tribute to Bate Besong

Poem written and performed by Joyce Ashuntantang in Memory of Bate Besong. Video filmed and Edited by Ryan Glista with music by Henry Tanyi (Tanash).

Niyi Osundare - A Toast to Bate Besong

Just days before it was announced that he had been awarded Africa's most prestigious award for poetry, the Tchicaya Utamsi award, Niyi Osundare was in Buea, Cameroon to take part in the inaugural EduArts Awards for Cameroonian Literature in English. In this excerpt, Osundare reminisces about the late Bate Besong, Anglophone Cameroon's most militant poet/playwright who was his student at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

First Anthology On Bate Besong Hits Shelves

By Solomon Amabo (Originally published in Eden Newspaper)   
 
The first ever poetry anthology after the death of arguably the most controversial and vocal Cameroonian poet, playwright and scholar, Bate Besong has hit the world shelve. Emails from the Editors; Dr Joyce Ashutantang and Dibussi Tande Esq., to some of the contributors in the literary piece indicated that 27 renowned African poets are amongst the writers in the anthology, which verses the life and works of Dr Jacobs Bate Besong.