Remembering an African icon Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o — 10 quotes Part 2

One of Africa and Kenya’s most celebrated author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o who died aged 87 leaves a remarkable legacy.

Here’s a selection of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s quotes.

• “Africa has many resources than any other continent. It should start thinking for itself”
• “Accents for access: … While African leaders perfected their accents, Europeans sharpened tools for access to Africa’s resources”
• “Use English… but don’t let English use you…”
• “African languages are not on a lower rung on a ladder to an English heaven…”
• “If you know all the languages of the world but not your mother tongue, that is enslavement. Knowing your mother tongue and all other languages too is empowerment.”
• “We must be careful with the vocabulary that defines us … to not internalise the negativity.”
• “Let us call people by what they call themselves.”
• “…Black intellectual tradition has given so much to the rest of the world … but this is often invisible”.
• “In colonial conquest, language did to the mind what the sword did to the bodies of the colonised”
• “It is not African languages that threaten English. But postcolonial African policy makers will often insist that they do.”

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