"The obscurity which enshrouds the centuries which elapsed between those earliest days and the rediscovery of Africa is being gradually dispersed. What is certain is that during those long years Africans were born, lived, and died. Men on other parts of this earth occupied themselves with their own concerns and, in their conceit, proclaimed that the world began and ended at their horizons. All unknown to them, Africa developed in its own pattern, growing in its own life and, in the nineteenth century, finally re-emerged into the world’s consciousness.....
Those men who refused to accept the judgment passed upon them by the colonisers, who held unswervingly through the darkest hours to a vision of an Africa emancipated from political, economic, and spiritual domination, will be remembered and revered wherever Africans meet....
Africa’s victory, although proclaimed, is not yet total, and areas of resistance still remain. Today, We name as our first great task the final liberating of those Africans still dominated by foreign exploitation and control...
In a very real sense, our continent is unmade; Africa awaits its creation and its creators. It is our duty and privilege to rouse the slumbering giant of Africa, not to the nationalism of Europe of the nineteenth century, not to regional consciousness, but to the vision of a single African brotherhood bending its united efforts toward the achievement of a greater and nobler goal....
The nations of Africa, as is true of every continent of the world, from time to time dispute among themselves. These quarrels must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference....
Military planning for the security of this continent must be undertaken in common within a collective framework. The responsibility for protecting this continent from armed attacks from abroad is the primary concern of Africans themselves...."
- HAILE SELASSIE.
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