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144 THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTHthe people tails in its mission and inevitably tangled up in aseries of trials and tribulations. If nationalism is not explained,enriched, and deepened, if it does not quickly turn into asocial and political consciousness, into humanism, then itto a dead end. A bourgeois leadership of the underdevelopedcountries confines the national consciousness to a sterile formalism.Only the massive commitment by men and women to judiciousand productive tasks gives form and substance to thisconsciousness. It is then that flags and government buildingscease to be the symbols of the nation. The nation deserts the falseglitter of the capital and takes refuge in the interior where it receiveslife and energy. The living expression of the nation is thecollective consciousness in motion of the entire people. It isthe enlightened and coherent praxis of the men and women. Thecollective forging of a destiny implies undertaking responsibilhistoricalscale. Otherwise there is anarchy, represemergenceof tribalized parties and federalism, etc. Ifwants to be national it must govern bypeople, the disinherited and by thecan replace theof the people, anditself with international prestige, mustcitizens, furnish their minds, fill their eyes with human thingsand develop a human landscape for the sake of its enlightenedand sovereign inhabitants.On National CultureIt is not enough to write a revolutionary hymn to be a part ofAfrican revolution, one has to join with the people to make this revolution.Make it with the people and the hymns will automaticallylow. For an act to be authentic, one has to be a vital part ofMrica and itsthinking, part of all that popular energy mobilized for the liberation,progress and happiness of Mrica. Outside this single struggle there isno place for either the artist or the intellectual who is not committedand totally mobilized with the people in the great fight waged by Mricaand suffering humanity.Sekou Toun§16gell1el:anon must discover its mission, fulfill it or betrayit, ooacitv. In the underdeveloped countries precedresistedthe insidious agendaemergence of the currentstruggles. Now that we are inwe mustshed the habit of decrying the efforts of our toreiathersing incomprehension at their silence or passiveness.as best they could with the weapons they possessed at the time,and if their struggle did not reverberate throughout the internationalarena, the reason should be attributed not so much to a16 "The Political Leader as Representative of a Culture." Paper presentedat the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists, Rome, 1959.145;."'tt'