“New People, New Style, Old Dance”: An Analysis of the Dominant Ideologies in Bate Besong’s Plays

Abstract

Borrowed from Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born, the notion of ‘New People, New Style, Old Dance” is a perfect description of the kind and type of leadership that characterizes post independent Africa as exemplified in the plays of Bate Besong. This paper x-rays the parasitic nature of leadership politics in Besong’s plays and argues amongst other issues that the dreams of independence were all deferred with the accession to power by the neo-colonialist. It further stresses that the political transition of power from the colonial to the neo-colonial regime was a mere changed of political actors and tactics but the doctrine of oppression, exploitation, corruption and embezzlement amongst many other social vices still remained unchanged. Like their predecessors, these leaders perceived power as an opportunity for personal gains and not for the benefit of all and sundry.

From a Marxist critical paradigm, the analysis in this paper validates the Marxist dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Emerich, 1887.1902). Besong’s plays in terms of ideology can rightly be considered as a dramatization of the excesses of autocratic leadership, conceived, spear headed and master minded by a group of beastlike (or Zombie) creatures with absolutely no concern for the suffering masses. Also, that his plays capture and dramatize the grimness and futility of the human condition in postcolonial Cameroon in particular and Africa at large. Furthermore, the analyses reveal that Africa’s leadership is responsible for the inability of the continent to emancipate itself from poverty, epidemics and persistent diseases. As a result, a continent rich in natural and human resources is continuously characterize by coup d’états, civil wars and social unrests because the wealth of the nation is at the mercy of a few elites while the rest of the citizenry suffer in abject poverty. Besong therefore as a ‘writer in postcolonial politics’ frowns at autocratic leadership and his plays suggest that Cameroon in particular and African as a whole need a new set of leaders with a decolonized mindset as conditions sine qua non for their emancipation from physical and mental oppression, corruption and exploitation.