African Leader Quotes & Sayings

Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been the last person to have wanted his iconization and his heroism. He was an enormously guilt-laden man. He was drenched in a sense of shame about his being featured as the preeminent leader of African-American culture and the civil rights movement. — Michael Eric Dyson

The disobedience if Eve in the Genesis story has been used to justify women's inequality and suffering in many Christian traditions. Thus, what is understood as women's complicity in evil leads much traditional theological reflection on suffering to offer the "consequent admonition to 'grin and bear it' because such is the deserved place of women." Similarly, when Jesus is seen as a divine co-sufferer, the potentially liberating narratives of Jesus as a revolutionary leader who takes the side of the poor and dispossessed can be ignored in favor of religious beliefs more interested in Jesus as a stoic victim. Christ's suffering is inverted and used to justify women's continued suffering in systems of injustice by framing it as redemptive. — Melissa V. Harris-Perry

I was against impunity when it comes to human rights violations. But many of us African leaders now want to leave the Rome Statute as soon as possible because of this Western arrogance. — Yoweri Museveni

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe.
In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees. — Mark Gevisser

An old African leader says about leadership, he says that leadership should never be shared; it should always remain in the hands of the dispossessed people. We will lead the revolution. — H. Rap Brown

I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am. — Cory Booker

With Bolivia, I had hope that a discriminated African-American, with another discriminated indigenous peasant leader, I hoped that together we could work for justice and equality. Not only for just two countries, Bolivia and USA, but for equality around the world. — Evo Morales

Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. — Henry Louis Gates

The first African-American leader was Dr. Martin Luther King. — Bobby Seale

I would love to be the African leader that steps down, that overthrows this idea of a Big Man ruler. I don't want to stay in office forever. — Meles Zenawi

It is our duty to give support to the brother leader ... especially in regards to the sanctions which are not hitting just him, they are hitting the ordinary masses of the people ... our African brothers and sisters. — Nelson Mandela

Father Jude Nnorom also criticized his church leaders, saying the simple lifestyle followed by Pope Francis should challenge African bishops to ask themselves. — Sylvia Poggioli

One day, I was on the front lawn of the property and aimed the gun at a sparrow perched high in a tree. Hazel Goldreich, Arthur's wife, was watching me and jokingly remarked that I would never hit the target. But she had hardly finished the sentence when the sparrow fell to the ground. I turned to her and was about to boast, when the Goldreichs' son Paul, then about five years old, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said, "David, why did you kill that bird? Its mother will be sad." My mood immediately shifted from one of pride to shame; I felt that this small boy had far more humanity than I did. It was an odd sensation for a man who was the leader of a nascent guerrilla army. — Nelson Mandela

The adoring crowds and overwhelming Democratic support in the 2008 election was based largely on joy at jettisoning Bush and the appeal of electing a superbly qualified charismatic African American leader. — Mary Frances Berry

Why did Africa let Europe cart away millions of Africa's souls from the continent to the four corners of the wind? How could Europe lord it over a continent ten times its size? Why does needy Africa continue to let its wealth meet the needs of those outside its borders and then follow behind with hands outstretched for a loan of the very wealth it let go? How did we arrive at this, that the best leader is the one that knows how to beg for a share of what he has already given away at the price of a broken tool? Where is the future of Africa? — Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

We cannot proclaim this century the African Century and then ignore the AIDS pandemic, as some political leaders are apt to do. To claim this century the African Century is to declare war on AIDS. — Nelson Mandela

Ethiopia did not have the same problem [of corruption]. African leaders looked at us with envy. — Mengistu Haile Mariam

Gone are the days when African leaders used to misrule their people and the rest of Africa was quiet under the guise of what was called non-interference. — Raila Odinga

Popular culture - above all rock 'n' roll, with its African-American R & B roots - did far more to radicalize us than did any feminist leader. — Camille Paglia

In his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson contrasts law and in the Congo in the early 16th century with law in Portugal and England. In those European countries, where the idea of private property was becoming powerful, theft was punishable brutally. In England, even as late as 1740, a child could be hanged for stealing a rag of cotton. But in the Congo, communal life persisted. The idea of private property was a strange one, and thefts were punished with fines or various degrees of servitude.

A Congolese leader told of the Portuguese legal codes asked a Portuguese once, teasingly, 'What is the penalty in Portugal for anyone who puts his feet on the ground? — Howard Zinn