Africa Liberation Day is a moment not just of remembrance, but of reckoning. While flags were raised and colonial powers retreated, the work of liberation is far from complete. Our ancestors did not fight for symbolism, they fought for dignity, land, self-determination, justice, and the right to thrive.
Their visions remain with us, not as distant memories, but as urgent reminders, truths we must carry forward in our daily struggles against neocolonialism, inequality, ecological destruction, and state violence. These six ancestral reminders through quotes from speeches speak to the heart of what liberation truly means: not a change in rulers, but a transformation of systems, values, and power.
1. We Must Put Up A United Front Against Debt
“Debt has to be seen from the perspective of its origins. Those who lend us money are the same ones who once colonized us. They managed our states and economies and created the systems that indebted us. We had no connection to this debt. Therefore, we cannot pay for it.”
— A United Front Against Debt, OAU Summit, Addis Ababa, 1987
2. Liberation Must Improve Living Conditions
“The people are not fighting for ideas, but to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace. National liberation is meaningless unless it brings real improvement to people’s lives.”
— Amílcar Cabral, Return to the Source
3. Women’s Liberation Is Central
“Did we understand that the position of women means the condition of more than half our population? That this condition is shaped by social, political, and economic structures? Transforming it cannot be the task of one ministry alone, even one led by a woman.”
— Thomas Sankara, Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle
4. Privatisation is a threat to the people and the planet
Until the arrival of the Europeans, communities had looked to Nature for inspiration, food, beauty and spirituality. They pursued a lifestyle that was sustainable and that gave them a good quality of life. It was a life without salt, soap, cooking fat, spices, soft drinks, daily meat, and other acquisitions that have accompanied a rise in the ‘diseases of the affluent.’ Communities that have not yet undergone industrialisation have a close connection with the physical environment, which they often treat with reverence. Because they have not yet commercialised their lifestyle and their relation with natural resources, their habitats are rich with local biological diversity, both plant and animal.
However, these are the very habitats that are most at threat from globalisation, commercialisation, privatisation, and the piracy of biological materials found in them. This global threat is causing communities to lose their rights to the resources they have preserved throughout the ages as part of their cultural heritage. These communities are persuaded to consider their relationship with Nature primitive, worthless, and an obstacle to development and progress in an age of advanced technology and information flow.
Wangari Mathaai, The Cracked Mirror Speech, November 11, 2004
5. Black Solidarity Is Power
“It is only when all Black groups join hands and speak with one voice that we shall be a force to determine our own destiny. We are not asking for majority rule—it is our right, and we shall have it at any cost.”
— Winnie Mandela, Speech after the children’s revolt “children’s revolt” in Soweto in June 1976 and the massacre and repression with which the apartheid régime countered it.
6. Exploitation Must End in All Its Forms
“The goal of human equality is the opposite of exploitation. Whatever form it takes, exploitation must be crushed. It is the sacred duty of our institutions to make sure equality is no longer denied.”
— Haile Selassie, UN Address, 1963
