After the speeches we have heard today and, most of all, after the statement, as militant as it was moving, by our elder brother and companion in struggle, President Ahmed Sekou Touré, what more is there to say? But we must speak, for at this moment if we did not speak, our heart might break.

Here, beside the mortal remains of President Kwame Nkrumah – one of the greatest men mankind has seen this century – we are living an epoch-making moment in the history of the struggle for liberation and progress in Africa; we might say simply, in history.

We must, therefore, meditate deeply on this moment, and draw all the lessons from events; as President Kwame Nkrumah would say, the positive lessons and the negative lessons.

Before saying a very little of what I have in my heart and my head, I should like to greet all the delegates here and, on behalf of the African liberation movements, to recall that the fact that we should all be here together, beside the mortal remains of President Kwame Nkrumah, is not only evidence of respect and consideration for his person and his achievement, but likewise a pledge to the total liberation of Africa and the progress of African peoples.

On behalf of the combatants of our party, who are the legitimate representatives of our people in Guinea and Cape Verde, we should like to offer our fraternal condolences to his widow, Madame Nkrumah, to the whole Nkrumah family, to the president and our companion in struggle Ahmed Sekou Touré who was always a faithful comrade of President Nkrumah, to the Ghanaian people and to the whole of Africa!

However, our tears should not drown the truth. We, as freedom fighters, are not weeping for the death of a man, even of a man who was a companion in struggle and an exemplary revolutionary. For, as President Ahmed Sekou Touré often says: ‘What is man before the infinite and transcendent becoming of peoples and mankind? Nor are we weeping for the Ghanaian people, whose finest accomplishments, whose most legitimate aspirations are smothered. Nor are we weeping for Africa's betrayal.