Briefing from ROAPE Volume 25 Number 77
First Babu Memorial Lecture

Mohamed A Babu died on 5 August 1996. The following lecture was given as part of a series in memory of Babu - writer, revolutionary and statesman - organised by the Babu Memorial Committee, University of London on 22 September 1997. We still miss him.&break; Thank you dear friends, sisters and brothers. It is with much emotion that I respond to the honour of being invited to speak at this first Babu Memorial Lecture. For me, speaking about Babu is speaking, not only of a comrade and an elder but of a personal friend whom I knew right from the post-war period -the whole of our generation in Africa. Babu was someone with whom I shared most political views for something like 40 years. For me, Babu's main characteristic was that he was always critical to systems and his criticisms were always from the left. He never shifted to the right and he was always critical even of regimes which he considered, and I think rightly, represented a step ahead in the long liberation struggle ...