Jomo Kenyatta

Some people try deliberately to exploit the colonial hangover for their own purpose, to serve an external force. To us, Communism is as bad as imperialism.

Jomo Kenyatta (20 October 1892? – 22 August 1978) was an African social activist and politician; the first Prime Minister (1963–1964) and first President (1964–1978) of an independent Kenya; born Kamau wa Ngengi, he was baptized John Peter in 1914, later changing his name to Johnstone Kamau, and finally to Jomo Kenyatta.

Sourced

• I have no intention of retaliating or looking backwards. We are going to forget the past and look forward to the future.
  • (1964) Post-election statement. Virginia Morell, Ancestral Passions: The leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings, Copyright 1995, Chapter 19, beginning.

• When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.
  • Reported in Walker, John Frederick. A Certain Curve of Horn: The Hundred-Year Quest for the Giant Sable Antelope of Angola, 2004. Page 144. This has also been attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

• Some people try deliberately to exploit the colonial hangover for their own purpose, to serve an external force. To us, Communism is as bad as imperialism.
  • (1964) Reported in Meredith, Martin. The Fate of Africa. Page 266.

• "Don't be fooled into turning to Communism looking for food.
  • Reported in Lamb, David. The Africans. Page 61.

• The basis of any independent government is a national language, and we can no longer continue aping our former colonizers ... those who feel they cannot do without English can as well pack up and go.
  • (1974) cited in Crystal, David, "English as a Global Language" (2003), Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521530323, p. 124.

Unsourced

• The European condemns the Africans for having two wives yet he keeps two mistresses.