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"We want to be ourselves. We like influences from the West, we like influences from the West, we like influences from the East, but first we want to be ourselves," Nana Nketsia, Ghanian Ambassador to the United Nations, told a Quincy House audience last night.

Speaking at the first meeting of Quincy's Africa forum, Nketsia drew on the writing of two centuries of Ghanian authors and half a millenium of his country's history as he traced the disastrous contribution of Europe's past errors to the present problems of Africa.

Intelligent Retrogression

Africa must seek a reintegration with its own culture, he said. Quoting one African politician, he added, "Our duty is to usher in an era of backward movement. Only intelligent retrogression can save our country."

Taking as an analogy the adaptation of Catholicism into a "uniquely Ghanian" institution, Nketsia suggested that similar "cultural diffusion" was the only possible way of adapting European institutions to the African situation.

Classical Principles Destroyed

The attempt to superimpose European customs on Africa without regard to either their context or their possible implications destroyed the classical tribal principles (including such rules as an absolute requirement of trial before punishment) without providing any realistic alternative.

When Parliament was debating Africa, he recalled, "the cardinal question was whether we should be Christianized before civilized or civilized before Christianized...all the troubles we have in the African world were started by these do-gooders."