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where we bring you great inspirational
speeches of african leaders
that i was in fact one of the savages
that when i had been younger i had
read these adventure books about the
good white man you know wandering into
the jungle
on the danger and the savages were after
him
and i would i would instinctively
be on the side of the white man the good
white man
see this is this is what what fiction
can do
it can put you on the wrong side if you
are not developed
enough in the university i suddenly saw
that these books had to be read in a
different light
reading the heart of darkness for
instance which was a very very
highly praised book and it is still very
highly praised
in american university i realized that
i was one of those savages jumping up
and down
on the beach i was not on marlow's
steamer you see as i had thought before
and once that kind of
enlightenment comes to you you realize
that you need to write a different story
that someone has to write a different
story and since i was in any case
inclined that way why not why not me
and so what i'm saying is there was a
certain
measure of seriousness
in addition to the pleasure just the
pleasure of creating stories of telling
stories
but there was this serious intention and
so when somebody gets up and says
oh but literature or poetry should have
nothing to do with
society or with heavy things like
politics i just can't understand
well they do all the time they shape our
image of the world right or wrong
true true or false you once said that
africans hope the west and america in
particular will listen
if we listen what will we hear what does
africa have to say
to the rest of the world
well first of all we are people
we are not funny beings we are not funny
beings you know we are not
if you take up any any newspaper here i
mean you probably won't see africa at
all mentioned
for four months then perhaps one day one
day a year
it is some strange some strange story it
has to be that
kind of story that we've come to
associate with africa
and i would simply say look at africa as
a continent of people
there are people there
just people they are not devils they are
not angels they're just
people and and listen to them we have
done a lot of listening ourselves
this is a situation where you have a
strong person and a weak person
the weak person does all the listening
and
up to a point the strong person even
forgets
that the weak person may have something
to say
you see because he's
simply there you know it's a fixture you
simply
talk at him you see a governor a british
governor
of southern rhodesia once said the
partnership
between us the whites and the blacks is
the partnership
of the horse and its rider and he wasn't
trying to be funny
he seriously thought so now that's what
we want
the west to get rid of
because we lack imagination
when we cannot put ourselves in the
shoes
of the person we oppressed if we were
able if we had enough imagination
to put ourselves in those shoes
things will begin to happen so it is
important that we listen
that we we develop the the ability
to listen to the weak not only in africa
but even in your own society
the strong must listen to the weak
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