From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment
Some readers may have heard that, out of the disorders of revolutionary France, eventually emerged the graciously unifying formula
LIBERTY EQUALITY FRATERNITY
A paper in the current number of The Coat of Arms enables us to survey the plethora of deft and subtle verbal trinities which proliferate(d) in the mottoes of (mainly) Francophone colonies in Liberated Africa.
Benin FRATERNITY JUSTICE WORK
Burkina Faso UNITY PROGRESS JUSTICE
Cameroon PEACE WORK FATHERLAND
Central African Republic UNITY DIGNITY WORK
Chad UNITY WORK PROGRESS and WORK DEMOCRACY PEACE
Congo UNITY WORK PEACE
Equatorial Guinea UNITY PEACE JUSTICE
Gabon UNITY WORK JUSTICE
Gambia PROGRESS PEACE PROSPERITY
Guinea WORK JUSTICE SOLIDARITY
Namibia UNITY LIBERTY JUSTICE
Senegal ONE PEOPLE ONE GOAL ('but') ONE FAITH
Sierra Leone UNITY FREEDOM JUSTICE
Tunisia LIBERTY ORDER JUSTICE
Zimbabwe UNITY FREEDOM WORK
Upper Volta UNITY WORK JUSTICE
[In the motto of Senegal, there is surely an enticing allusion to the particular genius of Herr Hitler and his spindoctors.]
Locked away somewhere in the detritus of my passing decades, I think I still have some elegantly designed coins carrying the trinity WORK FAMILY FATHERLAND. Perhaps it was in this source ... I do wish I could remember where those rather dishy coins came from ... that the distinctively and single-mindedly African enthusiasm for WORK finds its origin.
Is this diverting genre now extinct beyond the possibility of any revival?
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