No Trifling Matter: Contributions of an Uncompromising Critic to the Democratic Process in Cameroon

8 The Two Faces of Mongo Beti

23 And how are we expected to pity you when very soon we will see some of you playing cards and draughts with the very red caps sent to terrorize you and some of your female counterparts getting on the back seats of their motor cycles to be carried to we know not where? 8 8 The Two Faces of Mongo Beti (Published March 21-28 1991) In the ancient mythology of the white races, there is a deity named “Janus” who had two faces, one in front, the other behind, which were as diametrically different as they were opposite. The expression “The two faces of Janus” has thus been frequently used for depicting any ambivalent issue that can be looked at from two different perspectives or points of view. This is how I wish to look at Alexandre Biyidi alias Mongo Beti today. After more than 30 years of self-imposed exile in France, Mongo Beti finally braved a visit to Cameroon recently. Like many other Cameroonians, he must have been carried along on the wings of unfounded euphoria generated by the democratic rhetoric and talkshop of his countryman, Biya Bi Mvondo. Two eminent intellectual, societies Club de Recherche et Action (CRAC) and Conference National Cheick Anta Diop (CNCA), showed their own political naivety by planning, without official clearance, a series of symposia in honour of this prophet who, so far, has gone without honour in his own country. Predictably, our ubiquitous security forces stepped in and prevented the Mongo Beti Round tables from taking place. Of course, Caesar himself had tactfully just checked out, ostensibly for routine inspection of his stables. So in point of fact, this rape on the democratic rights of people who should be leaders of thought, shapers of destiny and custodians of the country’s democratic values, occurred in his absence. But anybody who has followed carefully the political history of this country and particularly the relationship between the two giants 24 would certainly know that the check-out was a veritable alibi: well, suppose that X spent the whole night on which Father Fontegh was murdered between the warm arms and legs of Y, could X have been the one who committed the murder? See the point? Now when two elephants wrestle, the surrounding vegetation should be very careful! Now, Mr Biyidi’s front face is the literary face. If you have never read :MISSION TO KALA, KING LAZURUS, THE POOR CHRIST OF BOMBA, PERPETUA AND THE HABIT OF UNHAPPINESS, REMEMBER REUBEN, then you should scarcely consider yourself literate, let alone a member of the intelligentsia. These are the works which have made Mongo Beti a literary giant. As the Canadian, Professor Stephen H. Arnold, remarked recently in the course of an interview with Martin Kongnyuy Jumban (Cameroon Life, Vol. I, No.7, Jan, 1991): “… the day is coming soon when Beti will be recognised as Cameroon’s greatest writer of the 20th century, and probably the greatest African writer of the post-colonial period known as neo-colonialism.” This expert opinion is incontrovertible. The way Mongo Beti is “worshipped” in places like Nigeria, attests to this. If this were the only Mongo Beti that there is, he should surely have received a triumphant entry into Cameroon any day. But there is a second Mongo Beti, or rather the second face of the same person: the overtly political face. Apart from his novels, Mongo Beti has also published a considerable amount of non-fiction. Professor Arnold believes that “…. It is on his non-fiction…..that his long term reputation will rest.” A lot of this non-fiction demonstrates a perceptive and inclusive understanding of the political evolution and actual situation of Cameroon. Sample for instance, the following excerpts from an address by Mongo Beti read before the 7th annual conference of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) in December 1989. “….the truth is that on the first of January 1960….as they were made to believe that they obtained independence, Cameroonians allowed to be imposed on them a dictatorship from which they have not been freed, even if it 25 has as its leader a colourless person who has succeeded another equally dull person, thanks to neo-colonialism which enjoys the endless use of servants of the same ilk… Cameroon is perhaps the only country where the writing in the colonial era of a novel which shook the confidence of the...