Mongo Beti

Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 – 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti or Eza Boto, was a Cameroonian writer.

Beti spent much of his life in France, studying at the Sorbonne and becoming a professor at Lycée Pierre Corneille.

Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country.

As one critic wrote after his death: "The militant path of this essayist, chronicler and novelist has been governed by one obsession: the quest for the dignity of African people."

The son of Oscar Awala and Régine Alomo, Alexandre was born in 1932 at Akométan, a small village 10 km from Mbalmayo, itself 45 km away from Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon.

(The village's name comes from Akom "rock" and Etam "source": in old maps of the region, the name is written in two parts.)

From an early age, Beti was influenced by the currents of rebellion sweeping Africa in the wake of World War II.

His father drowned when Beti was seven, and he was raised by his mother and extended family.

Beti recalls arguing with his mother about religion and colonialism; he also recalls early exposure to the opinions and analysis of independence leader Ruben Um Nyobe, both in the villages and at Nyobe's private residence.

He carried these views into the classroom, and was eventually expelled from the missionary school in Mbalmayo for his outspokenness.

In 1945 he entered the lycée Leclerc in Yaoundé.

By the early 1950s, Beti had turned to writing as a vehicle of protest.

He wrote regularly for the journal Présence Africaine; among his pieces was a review "Afrique noire, littérature rose" about Camara Laye's novel The Dark Child.

"He takes Laye to task for pandering to French metropolitan readers with false images of Africa that efface colonial injustice."

Graduating in 1951, he came to France to continue his higher education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence, then at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Beti began his career in fiction with the short story "Sans haine et sans amour" ("Without hatred or love"), published in the periodical Présence Africaine, edited by Alioune Diop, in 1953.

Beti's first novel Ville cruelle ("Cruel City"), under the pseudonym "Eza Boto", followed in 1954, published over several editions of Présence Africaine.

It was, however, in 1956 that he gained a widespread reputation; the publication of the novel Le pauvre Christ de Bomba ("The poor Christ of Bomba") created a scandal because of its satirical and biting description of the missionary and colonial world.

Under pressure from the religious hierarchy, the colonial administrator in Cameroon banned the novel in the colony.

This was followed by Mission terminée, 1957 (winner of the Prix Sainte Beuve 1958), and Le Roi miraculé, 1958.

He also worked during this time for the review Preuves, for which he reported from Africa.

He worked also as a substitute teacher at the lycée of Rambouillet.

Following Nyobe's assassination by French forces in 1958, however, Beti fell silent as a writer for more than a decade, remaining in exile from his homeland.

After his death, Odile Tobner noted that exile was not easy on Beti; he remained tortured by his concern for his embattled country.

In 1959, he was named certified professor at the lycée Henri Avril in Lamballe.

He took the Agrégation de Lettres classiques in 1966 and taught at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen from this date until 1994.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, acquaintance with Beti or his work could spell trouble for a citizen of Cameroon; on numerous occasions, Beti used his connections in France to rescue one of his young readers, many of whom knew him from his periodical and his polemical essays.

In 1972 he re-entered the world of literature with a bang.

His book Main basse sur le Cameroun ("Cruel hand on Cameroon, autopsy of a decolonisation") was censored upon its publication by the French Ministry of the Interior Raymond Marcellin on the request, brought forward by Jacques Foccart, of the Cameroon government, represented in Paris by the ambassador Ferdinand Oyono.

The essay, a critical history of recent Cameroon, asserted that Cameroon and other colonies remained under French control in all but name, and that the post-independence political elites had actively fostered this continued dependence.

Beti was inspired to write in part by the execution of Ernest Ouandie by the government of Cameroon.

In 1974 he published Perpétue and Remember Ruben; the latter was the first in a trilogy exploring the life and impact of Nyobe.

After a long judicial action, Mongo Beti and his editor François Maspéro finally obtained, in 1976, the cancellation of the ban on the publication of Main basse.

Beti returned to critical and political writing at the same time that he returned to fiction.

In 1978 he and his wife Odile Tobner launched the bimonthly review ''Peuples Noirs.

During this period were published the novels La ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle (1979), Les deux mères de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama futur camionneur (1983), La revanche de Guillaume Ismaël Dzewatama (1984), also Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais ou la deuxième mort de Ruben Um Nyobé (1984) and Dictionnaire de la négritude (1989, with Odile Tobner).

Frustrated by what he saw as the failure of post-independence governments to bring genuine freedom to Africa, Beti adopted a more radical perspective in these works.

In exile, he remained vitally connected to the struggle in Cameroon.

Peuples africains (Black People. African People''), which was published until 1991.

This review chronicled and denounced tirelessly the ills brought to Africa by neo-colonial regimes.