"The imperialists utilize cultural, scientific, technical, economic, literary and moral values to justify and maintain their regimes of exploitation and oppression. Oppressed people, on the other hand, utilize cultural values of a nature contrary to that of the imperialists, with the aims of better combating imperialism and escaping the colonial regime.
If scientific knowledge, modern techniques and the elevation of the mind to the level of superior human principles, to a perfect social life, are necessary for the enrichment of a culture, they do not conserve any less the faculty of their utilization to contradictory ends."
- The African Elite in the Anti-Colonial Struggle
"... we restore to the term 'democracy' its actual meaning: power to the people."
Global REVOLUTION!
You find the solution
For each of our pains
Darting forth lighthouse and compass
You guide together
Men and women, young and old
On the uneasy road of progress
Doing away with all hindrances
Step by step
Methodically and tirelessly
Organizing persons, things
And means of struggle
In order to rebuild the nation
And better reconstruct the state
The family the village and the region.
National REVOLUTION!
Your accelerated and assured move
Justifies your decisions
In their morality,
Always in compliance with human objectives
Controlling the vehicle of history
You unerringly orientate
All activities
Of the People, Nation and State
In perfect harmony and order
In the strengthening of their rational grounds
And in the certainty to forge victory.
Multiform but one REVOLUTION!
Reaction is under your feet
Mercilessly crushed down.
Forward, go forward
Without fear; without hesitation.
You are conscience,
You are action!
Men and women
Young and old
Have all in view
Exaltant plans
And have chosen
Means to achieve them
For the triumph
Of the People's cause
In order to meet
The just necessities
Namely:
Justice, equality, democracy and peace
Democratic REVOLUTION!
In front of you
Was standing the injustice stronghold
But henceforth
Woman is equal to man
And are born
The groundworks of the new community
In the family and the village
In the region and the Nation.
Beyond any privileges
Of age and sex
Of color and faith
Will everywhere triumph
Equality, brotherhood and solidarity
For every one
To normally evolve
Within the communitarian frame
That is henceforth established
Both collective and individual.
Transtemporal REVOLUTION!
Heritage of past
Reality of present
Seed of our future;
It transforms both
Subject and object of history
Assigning to itself
Ever-growing objectives
To lead society
Towards its own surpassing.
For feudalism
Colonialism,
Imperialism
It has contempt and disdain
Its struggle against exploiting capitalism
Takes no end.
It wants to free society
From indignity
And makes it master of its own fate
A magnificent fate
That will be constructed
By the conscious efforts of all.
Economic REVOLUTION!
Source of prosperity
It exhorts the working classes
To produce more
To increase
The riches of the Nation.
It liberates the productive forces.
As well as their initiatives
Organizes co-operatives and trade unions
Whose dynamic activities
And progressive impulse
Will harmonize the interests
Through struggle,
A merciless struggle
Against selfishness and exploitation;
It suppresses under-development
Together with its share of insufficiency,
Misery and suffering.
Socialist REVOLUTION!
Starting from the People
For the well-being of the People
It socializes men
And their means of production
It nationalizes the riches
Of soil and subsoil
In order to make inalienable
To domainal patrimony.
To any development
Assigning social objectives,
It states the primacy
Of the People’s right and interests,
To the People, it confers sovereignty and power
To the individual, freedom, participation and security
In order to assure interdependence
Between ‘part’ and ‘whole’
Which belong to each other
And originate in each other.
Human REVOLUTION!
For which man is superior
To all material riches
Which by his work
He creates and censures.
It facilitates the bloom
Of intellectual faculties
Giving to the instruction
And the education of man
Their most human sense.
It guarantees for everyone
Liberty and dignity'
In everyday life
Within society
Brotherly united
In solidarity.
It makes society human
And Being, universal.
And to the realms of love
Where angels dwell
It directs man.
Cultural REVOLUTION!
Free and enlightened thought
A sense of analysis, sense of synthesis!
From the earth
Man conquers space.
And the moon and the stars
Unveil the unknown.
Men in olden time
By their mystic creed
With its immutable horizons
Threw a gloom over universe.
Let us unite planets
Into a bunch of knowledge.
Let my faults grow into virtues
Past, present and future
Melt in the pot of action
In perpetual rebirth
Of ever new quality.
Born from time
And from my will
My intelligence is made sensible
And from the instinct proceeds my conscience
Which penetrates the infinite.
Man must steal from the sky its secrets
To see, hear and understand
The rhythm of the Cosmos.
Dead are reconciled with the living
We too, like you, wish
To live an eternal life
The life which is perpetuated
From generation
To generation.
Popular REVOLUTION!
Inexhaustible source
Of legitimacy and legality
Continue your onward move!
Necessary and useful
Serve the People and do not make use of it,
Your theory cast in action
Is exclusively based
On the capacities of the People,
The People,
Invincible and incorruptible
The true engine of progress;
Triumph over all forces of evil
And use conscientiously for your aims
Nature and science.
You are in my conscience and existence
The determining force
That enlightens and guides
My being
Towards a more beautiful future
Historic REVOLUTION!
Condition of the environment
Will of progress,
You make history.
You are even history
Which leads the slave
From colonial gloom
To the sunshine
Of freedom.
You enable the People
To perform the blissful transition
From irresponsibility
To full sovereignty
Which stops oppression
And degradation
Prosperous changes
Are thus brought about
For the progress of the People
On the road of time
And beyond continents,
Always onward to happiness
On the endless horizon.
African REVOLUTION!
You have conquered me for yourself
For my People and for myself.
I understand your meaning
Just and irreversible.
I have committed myself to your line
Body and soul.
You have rendered confidence
To those who were about to fall in despair
Promoting without calculation
Everybody's condition.
For this very reason
You are in my consciousness
The reality
Which I belong to
In flesh and soul.
In my lifetime as in my grave
I entirely and for ever
Belong to you
Who are henceforth myself,
My People,
Their great ideas
Their courageous struggle
That must open
To unity.
Returned to the country he has chosen
The body of President Kwame Nkrumah.
The grieving and sad people of Guinea
Gave him a unanimous and pure welcome,
A welcome full of strong and high moral intensity,
The man who embodied Africa
With passion, fidelity and courage
Against the forces of imperialism
Is now himself incarnated and honored.
A whole people remember him
The People able to recognize true Merit,
Devotion and Efficiency of Man.
Death is still bound to happen, alas.
A human life is still limited.
Yet infinite Time and Space
By life valorized
For the benefit of People and History
Will give him a noble and great recognition,
Worthy of the Man and his Work.
Thus, the being he was, is and still remains
No longer in flesh, no more in blood,
But as Conscience, better as an ideal,
Sharing with force and constancy
The continuing struggle, dream of well-being.
Kwame Nkrumah belongs to those
Who have left a strong impact
On the destiny of liberty and dignity, loving humanity.
Kwame Nkrumah is and will be ever living
Since Africa, to him grateful
Is also living and will live for ever.
Fighters of all races and colors
Demanding Independence and progress for Peoples,
Equality and solidarity among nations of the world
Keep living and we shall continue endeavoring
To follow the path shown by Kwame Nkrumah.
If there are People of a particular time
There are also People of all times.
Kwame, the African, belongs to all times,
To all spaces, too.
Those who attempted to humiliate him
Only succeeded in glorifying him.
Indeed, time can neither soil his work
Nor tarnish his great and proud image-age.
In him is the Revolution
Which he is in.
Like the Revolution, he is ‘transtemporal'.
Oh! Beloved son of our Peoples.
Friend of those who fight,
Enemy of those who surrender.
Kwame the , worthy and courageous African,
The militant of the great Revolution,
you will be within us and with us
To revenge the martyrs, all the martyrs,
To liberate, unify and enhance the living,
To build Africa, United and beautiful.
Before your grave wherever it may be,
Fearless friends with militant faith,
With pure and faithful look
Will bow as a token of honor.
Your magnificence a hundred times will be exalted,
And glorified will be your unique contribution
To the cultural renaissance
And to the historical rehabilitation
Of those, all those who like you
Have chosen duty and the struggle
Against blind submission.
Crushing down imperialism and colonialism
Is the duty you assign to us
Which will be assumed, fully assumed,
Nkrumah, our brother and our comrade;
Enemies will harvest shame
And African shall be to Africans