George Ngwane

Prisoner of Conscience

By George Ngwane

Take away my intellectual chain and let me speak
Get me away from this cultural drain and let me be
Break away my economic shackle and let me eat
Free me from my political mannacle and let me live

Let met speak the words of wisdom to
a people that are in a political bondage
Let me be a soldier in the army of
the people that are in a cultural crusade
Let me also eat the bread from the table
which my sweat and toil have made
Let me live the life that I ought to live
to give my children a love that won't fade

I shall speak, for in the beginning there was the word
I shall be for in the creator's image, I was born
I shall eat even if man does not depend on bread alone
I shall live until when God shall call me home

Originally published in Bate Besong (Or the Symbol of Anglophone Hope, 1993

Mongo Beti: the writer-gadfly

BellagioPublishingNetwork Newsletter Issue No 30, May 2002, pp 20-21

George Ngwane

[The Cameroonian-born writer Alexandre Biyidi Awala, alias Mongo Beti, died in October 2001. He was one of the key Francophone African writers of the post-war and independence era. Educated in Catholic mission and public schools in Yaoundé and later in France, where he studied literature and lived for most of his life, Beti's early writing reflected the tensions in colonialism and the social dislocation and disorientation in the lives of the colonised, western educated and independent African.