Universal Declaration of Human Rights: English, French, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba

First words

At the height of a campaign to make Kishwahili the common language for the black African continent, I was asked — by a very committed ideologue — just what contribution such a language policy distraction had to offer to the far more urgent revolutionary struggle of African neo-colonial societies. That was easy enough. "For one thing", I replied, "it would put an end to the mystification which is constantly embedded in the very kind of question you have posed. It will compel you to define, in a language accessible to all, what you mean when you speak of a ‘comprador’ class to an African audience; when you dismiss your intellectual opponents as ‘revisionists’, which not only makes further dialogue with them beneath your intellect, but justifies their liquidation; it would compel you to show your listeners where you found ‘kulaks’ in the heart of Africa, thus dismissing them as deserving no less than a ‘Stalinist solution’ְ. ... in short, you would be left no option but to narrate, in ...

Full text available online on OpenEditions Books: http://books.openedition.org/ifra/432