A Quote by Petina Gappah

The painful truth may be that Zimbabwe, the youngest of Africa's former colonies, has simply followed where the continent has led, treading the well-worn path beaten out of the lie that taking power from the colonialists and delivering democracy to the people are one and the same.

Petina Gappah

Quote Topics

Africa Beaten Colonies Continent Delivering Democracy Followed Former Led Lie May Out Painful Painful Truth Path People Power Same Simply Taking Treading Truth Well Worn Worn Path Youngest Zimbabwe

Quote Author

Petina Gappah
Zimbabwean - Writer
Born: 1971

If truth is like the terrain, are we the generation who sees it as one who has worn shoes all his life or one who has never worn shoes? Yet still, even if the walk starts out as painful, the experience may be well worth it.

Criss Jami

People on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.

George Mikes

You can fit two United States and maybe a third one into the entire continent of Africa, but on a map we make the entire continent of Africa look like the size of the United States, which is why a lot of people don't know that Africa is a continent. They think it's a country because it looks as big as we do.

Baron Vaughn

There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.

Henry David Thoreau

Taking the continent as a whole, this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of the commonest racial feeling. Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted- Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara- do not manage to hide this latent racism. Here, it is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco-Latin civilization. Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized - in a word, savage.

Frantz Fanon

Curiously, it is hard not to be a little optimistic about the future for Zimbabwe (as nobody at all calls it yet, except in political speeches). The fear is not that there will be mass slaughter of the whites, followed by their flight to South Africa and the collapse of the economy, but that the need to retain white confidence may mean that the blacks are badly disappointed.

Simon Hoggart

Truth, beaten down, may well rise again. But there's a reason it gets beaten down. Usually, we don't like it very much.

Jack McDevitt

It's not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.

Masha Gessen

People tend to want to follow the beaten path. The difficulty is that the beaten path doesn't seem to be leading anywhere.

Charles Mathias

It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.

William Hazlitt

As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth - whatever the truth may be - that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.

June Jordan

Our own objective is to make Africa overcome its difficulties, to make Africa a continent of hope, to make Africa a continent of the future, to make Africa a pillar of the world in which we live - not seen as a problem but seen as an opportunity.

Antonio Guterres

Greece is the mother of democracy and South Africa is its youngest daughter

Nelson Mandela

Africa cannot afford to underestimate the power of technology to fast-track the continent's rise. Emerging technologies have played extraordinary roles in every aspect of the continent's most touted successes.

Yemi Osinbajo

It is my view that it is a big embarrassment for Africa . It is hypocritical for African leaders to talk about democracy and human rights and to be silent when these things are happening in Zimbabwe .