In the beginning, there was a land.
A land without imposed borders or written lies.
A vast and fertile land, entrusted by God.
In the beginning, there were no chains, no domination.
There was an original freedom,
born of eternal rivers,
of red earth,
and the memory of ancestors.
And in the beginning, there was not only a territory.
There was a dream.
The dream of a great and proud nation,
of a civilization standing tall,
of a continental power,
a beacon for Black generations across the world.
In the beginning, there was nobility.
Righteous kingdoms, dignified peoples, powerful kings,
free men, proud women.
And in the beginning, there was a dream.
A dream of greatness, dignity, freedom.
A dream of justice, truth, fraternity.
That dream is still alive.
It is in the hearts of children,
in the memory of elders,
in the eyes of the young,
in the will of men,
in the tenderness of women,
in the faith of peoples.
That dream is still alive.
It is in the work of farmers,
in the patience of workers,
in the intelligence of managers,
in the passion of artists,
in the rigour of researchers,
in the courage of soldiers.
That dream is still alive.
It is in the prayer of believers,
in the silence of the wise,
in the hope of patriots.
That dream is still alive.
It is in the soul of the nation.
People of dignity,
Sons and daughters of eternal Africa,
There are hours when a man speaks not only for his time,
but for History.
There are days when the silence of the ancestors becomes a clamour.
There are moments when the dream of the fathers becomes the duty of the sons.
Today is that hour.
Today is that day.
Today, this dream takes flesh.
Our fathers carried this dream.
Some named it. Others betrayed it.
But the dream did not die with the men.
It is in the river. It is in the land.
It is in your blood.
We received this dream damaged.
We tried to make it irreversible.
We built institutions
so that plunder would become costly.
We drew corridors
so that drift would be visible before it became fatal.
We set up guardians
so that memory would not die.
We wrote the method
so that you would not have to reinvent everything.
It was not perfect. Nothing is.
But it was our way of saying:
never again.
Never again improvisation.
Never again betrayal.
Never again the endless starting over.
We tried to leave you a country that stands,
even when those who built it are gone.
Now, the dream is yours.
Keep your dignity.
Never bow your back before anyone.
A people that bows its head has already lost.
Keep your sovereignty.
Decide for yourselves.
Those who give advice are not those who pay the price.
Your future is negotiated nowhere but at home.
Keep your unity.
Above your languages, your homelands, your memories,
be one people.
A divided people is a prey.
Keep justice.
May force never be without law.
May authority never be without dignity.
May power never be without the people.
Keep the land.
It is sacred. It is your mother.
Do not let it be plundered. Do not let it be defiled.
Those who lived on it before you entrusted it to you.
You will entrust it to those who come after.
Keep memory.
Never forget the price paid by our fathers.
Do not judge them. Do not worship them to excess either.
But remember.
Memory is the soil where the dream takes root.
Keep the method.
The safeguards we built
are not chains.
They are the memory of what almost destroyed us.
Protect them. Improve them. Pass them on.
Keep the faith.
You are not alone.
Above kings and presidents,
above armies and institutions,
there is the One who holds History in His hands.
Pray for this land. Pray for its children.
Prayer is not a weakness.
It is the recognition that not everything depends on you.
If you hold on to these eight guardians,
the dream will cross the centuries.
If you let go of a single one of them,
everything can come undone.
The choice is simple.
The road is demanding.
The reward matches the struggle.
I am not telling you it will be easy.
Fathers do not owe that to their sons.
They owe them the truth.
The truth is that everything can come undone.
The truth is that vigilance is the price of freedom.
The truth is that discipline is the name we give to love
when it becomes demanding.
But the truth is also that you are capable.
You are the children of this river.
You are the heirs of this land.
You are the living memory of this dream.
So rise up.
Build.
Pass it on.
And when your turn comes to stand on the threshold,
you will write to those who come after you
the same letter,
with the same words,
with the same dream.
For the dream does not die.
Sometimes it sleeps.
But it always wakes.
Written on the banks of the eternal river,
in year 1 of the Renaissance,
I, Joshua NKOMBE,
son of this land,
servant of this people,
voice of the dream of our fathers.
May this letter cross time.
May it find those it must find.
May it fulfil what it was written for.
God bless Congo.
God bless our land.
God bless our children
and our children's children.
Amen.