Villecruelle d’Eza Boto : Mongo Beti, negritude et responsabilite.

Abstract

The name of Alexandre Biyidi Awala, the famous Camerounian dissident writer and activist, better known by his pseudonym of Mongo Beti needs no further introduction in the annals of African literature of French expression. So much has been said and written about his very first novel titled Ville Cruelle (Cruel town), the only novel he used the pseudonym of Eza Boto. The most common narrative that critics prefer to launder about the work, is the fact that the novel took the decolonisation struggle head on, at a time when more elderly intellectuals like Camara Laye preferred to either be diplomatic, or ignored the leprous subject of the evils of colonialism in Africa. The gap in knowledge about this novel, which has often been overlooked by scholars and critics alike, and which this paper seeks to close, is the fact of the collaboration between the African traditional /cultural system and the colonial machine to monetise and commercialise Africa’s socio cultural norms and values, thereby imposing the gerontocracy of the elders for the purpose of economic exploitation. Using the socio historical approach, this paper explores how this gerontocracy worked as a tool of economic exploitation of African youths by exploitative elders in the name of the colonial system.