Remembering Bate Besong: Where to find courage in Cameroon

We all know what makes for a good character in a warrior. We have seen this in the bravery of a Bruce Lee, a Super Makia, a John Cena, or an Okonkwo.

What about someone who sits on a table with a pen, thinking; or someone behind a keyboard all day conjuring words. Does it take courage to write?

Ideas – Bernard Fonlon so imperishably phrased - are the most powerful things in the world. This means thinking can be a kind of moral challenge, a challenge that requires courage.

In fact, thinking well under a heap of information may well be more challenging than fighting under a hail of bullets and bombs. The greatest of that kind of courage is the willingness to hold unpopular views and stand by them when everyone is running away.

Bate Besong, one of the signature voices on the Cameroon literary scene was that kind of man. It took me a lot of courage to accept that this man had died.

His core belief was that the pen was mightier than the sword because sentences were more powerful than pictures. That is, that a writer can hope to do what a photographer cannot do: convey how things stink, jingle, smell, as well as how they look. Again, the Obasinjom Warrior believed that a poet possessed holy mysteries in his palms, and he himself carried his own share along with admirable courage.

It was Seanus Heaney, that great Irish poet, who said; “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.”

Writers like Bate Besong and Mongo Beti have fortified Cameroon, not just with words, but with the fire those words carry. They teach Cameroon that what we have to do to find the world is to enter our own world fully, to enter into the tragedy of our own particular place. It is a pity that he has never been treated fairly in Cameroon.

Bate Besong balanced artistic ambitions and civil conscience throughout his entire literary career. For instance, he had a way of looking at life – like a fierce Obasinjom warrior-tiger, he seared his spiritual claws into the body politic of a trembling, stubborn Cameroon.

The only thing small about BB was his age. His huge literary presence is missed. His work helped break the silence about Cameroon’s political wilderness.

Yet, he knew the gravity and what that entailed in a career – sacrifice. Sacrifice, because you did not perform that sort of duty in an imperial Cameroon without some hard knocks on your head. He had a good share of them, anyway, and knew very well that that was the reward of those who become conscience to a community.

We should not repeat this with his books that are monuments in this country. He will very much love his masterpieces to be stepping stones rather that destinations - stepping stones to writers who inspire, to poets who embody history. When early season polemic will give way to reality, Cameroon literature will grant him the place he deserves.

There seems to be an unnecessary fear of writers in Cameroon. And this is understood. This fear is spilt into the representation of the country’s history – a disjointed chronicle of facts. Forchive takes first place to Ruben Um Nyobe. Hitler’s Bavaria jails to Ahidjo’s Kondengui camps.

Nelson Mandela’s Robben Islands to Albert Mukong’s tribulations in the Tcholire swamps. De Gaulle’s imperial hegemony to Ngom Jua’s gallant political feats; South Sudan’s sovereignty to West Cameroon’s self-determination.

Someone said the other day that the nation’s history is still to be rewritten; but I cut in straight to say that, that history is already written in the literature of Bate Besong.

Let the mysteries of that ageless poetry be unraveled and we won’t need a Shakespeare or Herodotus to teach us literature or history. Bate Besong was badly treated by his country in many ways. There is much in this to shed angry tears about. But none of us is safe from the poisoned arrows of the governance that has reduced the greatest of men in Cameroon to a level below their own. Bate Besong’s books are events in themselves and events in our lives - monuments.

Yet, we need to ask ourselves hard questions. What is it that draws us to a Wole Soyinka but withdraws us from the attention of a Bate Besong, or to a Senghor oblivious of a Mongo Beti.

What attracts our attention to a Ratzinger forgetful of a Verdzekov; not that Soyinka, Senghor and Ratzinger are not giants in their territories, but that we refuse to celebrate our own heroes, sometimes deliberately – who knows? Or could it be that unpardonable complex of greener pastures on the other side of the gate? Sorry to say, the main reason is the willing refusal to learn from our wounded history, from a past that stares us at the face.

There is hope that as more writers show Bate Besong’s courage, we can, someday, break taboos about misgovernment and inch toward a national recognition that it is more shameful to steal than to be stolen.

What then is to be done? There is nothing to be done but to go on reaffirming the significance of this kind of courage, and to enable this afflicted poet be seen for what he is: an honest man standing on the frontline of history, beauty and truth. How to do this? Break the silence about him, speak up. Every little bit counts.