BUKENYA: Uhuru, revolution and the future golden time

The first half of December rings loudly with thoughts of freedom, with Tanzania’s uhuru on the 9th and Kenya’s Jamhuri on the 12th.

The uhuru we celebrated on December 9 was, of course Tanganyika’s Independence Day, in 1961. I remember Mwalimu Nyerere’s rallying call to his compatriots: “Uhuru na Kazi” (freedom and work)!

As for Jamhuri, we know that uhuru came at midnight (0000 hours) on December 12, 1963. But we celebrate the memory more as “Jamhuri” (jama’a huriya or free family) Day, when the country became a republic with its own President, on December 12, 1964..

Anyway, it was exciting being there and being young in those early 1960s. Imagine witnessing the independence celebrations of four contiguous countries, Tanganyika, Uganda, Kenya and Zanzibar! Zanzibar’s tale, however, is more memorable because of its “revolution” (commanded by my compatriot John Okello) than for its lacklustre uhuru from Britain.

Now, talk of revolution brings me to the rather strange surprise I had recently when I wrote about Fidel Castro and his revolution. I thought I had said enough provocative things about revolution to elicit vigorous responses from my readers. You know, nothing matters more to me than your feedback.

But the responses I received were so unusually few and muted, compared to your usual lively engagements, that I was left wondering if I had strayed into irrelevant or even embarrassing territory. Is revolution so “old-hat” that it is not worth talking about?

Are we all so satisfied with the way things are that we need no improvement, no change, in our affairs? Is it a waste of time to engage in thinking of and discussing the best ways to improve our lot?

Well, in one final attempt to engage you, let me relate revolution, fundamental change, to the basics of revolution. The anti-colonial struggle was a process of revolution. Did the revolution, however, end with the acquisition of uhuru?

A genuine revolution never ends. The African revolution did not end with independence. It goes on. It has to go on, but how? This is the crucial and admittedly disturbing question. There are several reasons why some people do not want to hear the word “revolution”.

The many autocratic demagogues who seized power at uhuru or shortly thereafter tended to brand all talk of revolution as “subversive”, obviously fearing that it was aimed at overthrowing them. That was how many progressive thinkers ended up rotting in prisons and other unmentioned and unmentionable detention dens.

But equally off-putting about “revolution”, especially to the ordinary mwananchi, was the chaotic and self-indulgent abandon with which it was thrown around by every anarchistic vandal seeking to wreak havoc on society.  A gang of delinquents seeking to burn a university library or computer lab in the name of “revolution” is certainly not the best sales agent for the concept.

Even more abhorrent was, and still is, the sacrilege of every panga, club or rifle-wielding hooligan who had the chance to clobber and throw out people’s elected leaders and then call themselves “revolutionary” once they had grabbed power. Idi Amin Dada, whose hand I was once obliged to shake, before I fled from his death squads, loved to call himself a “revolutionary” leader! So did Mobutu Sese Seko wa Zabanga. 

In order to clean the concept of genuine revolution of such sordid associations, it is necessary, first, to point out that there are many monstrosities that parade themselves under the name of “revolution”. Secondly, we should note that a healthy revolution, as a systematic operation, has to have aspects or parts that operate together in order to bring it about and to sustain it.

The aspects of a genuine revolution fall under two major parts: ideology and action. Here I rely on the formulation of the Moroccan political scientist Mostafa Rejai, whom I paraphrase from memory. The ideology part comprises awareness, analysis and vision. The action part consists in mobilisation, organisation, struggle and consolidation.

Briefly, with regard to ideology, awareness means knowing and understanding the way things are in one’s society. Analysis is the effort to understand why things are as they are, and vision is the imagination and the realisation that things could be better: “the future golden time” as the animal characters sing in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

In revolutionary action, mobilisation is the cure of apathy, ridding ourselves of the shrugging laziness that says “hivyo ndivyo yalivyo” (that is the way things are), and there is nothing that we can do about it. Organisation, to me, suggests, first and foremost, discipline. It is the recognition, acceptance and adherence to tried and tested leadership in every aspect of the revolutionary process.

Mobs are not revolutionary ranks. Riots, rebellions and insurrections are not revolutionary acts. They are just that: destructive and self-destructive lunacy. If you mobilise people, inspiring them to want to take action to improve their lot, you must organise them and lead them in their transformative undertakings.

These undertakings are what is called the struggle. The term “struggle” (a luta) seems to unsettle cowardly dictators and excite ill-informed anarchists in equal measure. To both, it suggests machetes, guns and bullets, and rivers of blood. This is silly, sad and tragic.

The best revolutions are not effected by bloodthirsty and murderous hotheads but by ordinary, level-headed people, each contributing to the changing of society in the best way they can by doing best that which they know best how to do. The teachers revolutionise by teaching in the best way they can. The same would be true of the doctors, the road-sweepers, the governors and the forest guards, the preachers and the writers, the farmers and the accountants.

This applies too to the consolidation of the revolution. Every stage we reach should challenge us to take stock of what we have achieved, visualise how it can be made better and then proceed with action to achieve that higher level. That is how revolution becomes continuous.

Can you or me, or indeed anyone worth their salt in human society, excuse themselves from such a noble cause?

Prof Bukenya is one a leading scholar of English and Literature. [email protected]