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The colonial state was an implant, an alien apparatus imposed on the colonised society. It was an excrescence of the metropolitan state without the latter’s liberal institutions or politics. It was a despotic state.

— Issa G. Shivji Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa (2007)

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More quotes by Issa G. Shivji

Policy-making, an attribute of sovereignty for which the government of the day is supposedly accountable to its people.

Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa (2007)

‘A better world is possible’ according to the NGO slogan. But to build a better world we must understand the world better.

Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa (2007)

We do not judge the outcome of a process by the intentions of its authors. We aim to analyse the objective effects of actions, regardless of their intentions.

Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa (2007)

Needless to say, policy-making is a terrain of intense conflicts of interest, and has nothing neutral about it. The question is, as always, which interest is being served by a particular policy. A question about which there can be neither neutrality nor non-partisanship.

Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa (2007)

We activists are not in the business of brokering power where expediency and compromise rule. Our business is to resist and expose the ugly face of power. We are guided and our work is informed by deeply held human values and causes. It seems to me that consistency of principles and commitment to humanity should inform all our work, thought, activism and advocacy.

Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa (2007)

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