Colonial rule means that power, initiative is taken away from you by somebody else who makes your decisions. If that goes on long enough, beyond one generation, then the habit of self-rule is forgotten. People are no longer able to realize what it means. To be dependant for a hundred years! And suddenly when this thing ends there is nobody who actually knows how to set about running the country.

A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.

The language of young men is pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation.

I wouldn't have wanted anyone to teach me how to write. That's my own taste. I prefer to stumble on it.

Those whose kernels were cracked by benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

In my definition I am a protest writer, with restraint.