Professor Bole Butake is dead

Emeritus Profession Bole Butake wrote his final chapter to eternity at 5 am at the Yaoundé Teaching Hospital the age of 69. The Emeritus Professor of Drama and African Literature spent about 40 at teaching at the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon.

Relatives and friends have been trooping the home of the deceased in Yaoundé to pay their last respect to one of the proponents of the Anglophone Literature in Cameroon.

He is also a distinguished and internationally recognised writer whose vision is seen in his works. He is the author of the play entitled Family Saga. He also wrote Lake God in 1986, The Survivors in 1989 and And Palm Wine Will Flow in 1990 amongst other publications. He has also directed several plays.

He works were written against the backdrop of rapacious and inhumane oppressors of the seemingly silent and marginalized masses of the fictionalized communities of the North-West Region of the Republic of Cameroon, Africa.

The literally critic highlights themes corruption, tyranny, nepotism and the rampant abuse of power in his plays. Butake’s approach according to several authors shifts the traditional responsibility of the fight for political liberation, which has hitherto been the preserve of the men to women.

The silent suffering masses come to rely solely on the women who take the leading responsibility for their liberation.

According to Emmanuel N. Ngwang, of the Mississippi Valley State University (USA); this sudden and unexpected resurgence of females on the political field and their overwhelming success is intriguing and new to an audience that has for a very long time minimized and denigrated women to secondary and/or subsidiary roles.