Popular Mongo Beti rests

By Kalungi KabuyePoor Mongo Beti. Throughout his long career as a writer, his home country tried very hard to forget him. Most Ugandans forgot all about him when they left school and did not need to read books like Mission To Kala and The Poor Christ of Bomba any longer.So when he died on October 7, 2001, the officials in Cameroon tried even harder to make sure no one remembered him. Up to now, very few Ugandans know the man died. Yet he had a strong influence on African literature, back in the days when we were trying to find our identity as opposed to the European imposed one.“Mongo Beti dealt with issues that are topical to Africa, but his books are relevant across time and space,” said Ignatius Ticha of the University of South Africa. “He was one of Africa’s literary greats.” Born Alexandre Biyidi-Wala in 1932 in Cameroon, he adopted the pen-name Mongo Beti (literally ‘son of the Beti people’) in 1954. His first novel, Ville Cruelle (The Cruel City), introduced many of the themes that would flow throughout his later writing. He spoke of the struggles of the ordinary African caught between colonialism and tradition.These themes were also tackled by other writers like Chinua Achebe, but Beti was always the more militant one. His book Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (The Poor Christ of Bomba) caused a large controversy both in Cameroon and France, and it was banned in his home country. It touched on the role of Africans and the Catholic Church in entrenching European rule in Africa.“His use of humour and satire as a literary device stands out,” Dr. Cham Mbaye, Professor of Literature and Film at Howard University said in a tribute posted on the Internet. “He was without doubt one of the most significant writers in African letters who distinguished himself through not just the kinds of issues in which he engaged, but also the approaches he used to convey those issues.”Beti died of renal complications in Douala, Cameroon. He was 69.“It is a great loss,” another tribute by Sonia Lee of the Connecticut’s trinity College ran. “He was not only a militant but also a conscious person.”ends