Remember Mongo Beti (review)

During our last meeting in his office at the Peuples Noirs bookstore, Mongo Beti surprised me by offering me a beer, thereby submitting to the Cameroonian tradition of hospitality. Mongo Beti's generosity at that moment was another confirmation of the graciousness he had shown me on many previous occasions, especially the positive responses he had given me the numerous times I had solicited his assistance. Nevertheless, since my first meeting with Mongo Beti, I have been—and remain so—overwhelmed because the meekness of his temperament is in such stark contrast to the incendiary prose of the militant author. The present commemorative volume, among other things, sheds precious light on the multidimensional personality of "l'un des combatants les plus acharnés de notre indépendance et de notre souveraineté" 'one of the fiercest fighters for our independence and our sovereignty' (Ntonfo 254). Gustave Massiah, Mongo Beti's companion in the trenches of the anti-imperialist struggle, draws the contrast between "la gentillesse, la modestie, l'humilité et la prévenance d'Alexandre Biyidi et la violence flamboyante du pamphlétaire Mongo Beti" 'the kindness, modesty, humility, and thoughtfulness of Alexandre Biyidi, and the flamboyant violence of the pamphleteer Mongo Beti' (133). It is Bessora who attempts to find a rational explanation for this paradox: "La douceur du regard de cet homme si virulent dans ses textes me frappe. Et je pense: c'est logique, la violence est la réponse des tendres à la brutalité du monde" 'The sweetness of the face of this man who is so virulent in his writings strikes me. And I think: It's logical, because violence is the response of the tender-hearted to the world's brutality' (42). The dissidence that informs Mongo Beti's writings is situated in a long tradition of what the Cameroonian novelist PatriceNganang calls "l'intelligence critique du peuple camerounais qui aura toujours su lire dans les diverses formes de la réalité qui vivait le Cameroun une usurpation répétée, une illégalité instituée" 'the critical intelligence of the Cameroonian people that has always been able to read in the diverse forms of reality that Cameroon has experienced a repeated usurpation, an institutionalized illegality' (269), from the German colonial regime to the de facto imposition of the structures of French and English colonization, to the postindependence regimes.

The militant path of this novelist, chronicler, and essayist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of black African peoples: "Foi de primitif, j'atteste que Mongo Beti ne ressemble à aucun autre. Mongo Beti est un cas à part: c'est le loup solitaire, le dernier des Mohicans, le plus beau de nos factieux, la fraction saine de notre cerveau malade. Il émerge d'une autre galaxie, répond d'une tout autre ère géologique" 'On simple faith, I swear that Mongo Beti is like none other. Mongo Beti is a unique case: he's the lone wolf, the last of the Mohicans, the best of the seditious, the healthy part of our sick brain. He has emerged from another galaxy, and responds to a totally different geological era' (29). Monénembo's homage is the result of a life-altering experience caused by Remember Ruben, the novel he read at a turbulent and crucial period in African history that witnessed Lumumba being assassinated, the children of Sharpville sprayed by gunfire, the macabre parade of a dying colonialism in the streets of Algiers, and the angry outburst against apartheid that eventually led to Mandela's imprisonment in a cell on Robben Island. Writing, for Mongo Beti, became a dangerous activity that placed his life in jeopardy nearly every single moment. Therefore, fleeing Africa in order to save Africa was to becomethe temporary tactic for this "contemporain capital" 'first-rate contemporary,' a strategy illustrated in the affair of Main basse sur le Cameroun and the exalting adventure of the publication Peuples Noirs/Peuples Africains.

Remember Mongo Beti is an intellectual, ideological, and emotional veillée that brings together four generations...