I shared this somewhere when someone knocked the Gen Z movement in Kenya. He cited Nkrumah’s methods as preferable to Kimathi’s. And cited China and India as examples of non-violent revolution
But you seem to think that it was Dedan Kimathi’s choice to be violent or noisy. While Nkrumah chose some silent mode.
That position has no historical basis. Kenya was dealing with a case of settler colonialism. Winston Churchill had promised Kenya to the Brits, “in perpetuity.” Ghana was under a very different kind of colonial arrangement, a protectorate. Not settler colonialism.
There has been no example in history, where settler colonialism has ended without a major and violent armed struggle. Not even one. Why do you think that is? Reflect on it.
You cannot decouple contemporary events from their antecedents. The Chinese revolution (I assume you mean by this Deng Xiaoping’s reforms) followed one of the most bloody armed struggles in human history.
The venerable Deng Xiaoping was a key part of the antecedents of the reforms. Recruited by Zhou Enlai in France, when he was only 17, Deng was very much a part of the violent phase. He was only six years younger than Zhou, bear in mind.
Deng and Liu Bocheng, the legendary Chinese war general, led units of the Red Army for Mao. In important battles like the crossing of the Yangtze River, one of the most sophisticated war efforts in Chinese history.
Deng became a political commissar to the army. He participated in the long march. A prodigious fellow, and a very, very talented thinker/doer, he was a senior part of Mao’s government – rising to the top nine, only at 28. Deng Xiaoping became vice-premier at one point, all under Mao.
Yes, he was purged, but those are the contradictions of politics. We can discuss later why I think Mao should have left office at the end of 1957.
It is the Mao era that created the Foundation for China’s industrial take-off. They carried out the radical land reforms then. The major gains in human longevity, women’s rights, dissolution of the exploitative landlord class, the liquidation of feudalism, massive progress in literacy rates, and more, were achieved under Mao. By 1957.
The military genius of Mao and the Red Army, stopped the efforts at imperial dominance of China, by not only Japan but also the Western countries combined.
How could that process, which provided the basis for the changes made from 1978, be said to be anything but violent? Mao said himself that revolution is a violent overthrow of one class by the other, not a tea party.
India is not my favourite example of industrial reforms. 700 million people continue to live in poverty there. 15% of the population is still engaged in open defecation. They have not dealt with the land problem, they still struggle with a caste system, Hindutva politics still blights the country under Modi (that is religious fundamentalism). With a slightly bigger population than China’s, India is still a small fraction of China, economically speaking. Why?
There is much more to say in exploding the central thesis of your post. But I have already gone on long enough.
“Let the blood flow” has become a reference point for those who say Ghanaians supported Jerry Rawlings’ carnage. That is another reflection of Ghanaians not being careful about facts.
Jerry Rawlings was speaking to a small section of students at the University of Ghana. He sought to explain why the execution of Generals was being stopped. That small section screamed that chant. Nothing more.
The leading newspaper in the country then, Daily Graphic; the professional associations, the religious bodies and more, all called for the executions to stop. At my primary school, teachers wept. My mother who had been a longstanding opponent of those overthrown, wept when they were shot like dogs. Market women wept. The assertion by some that Jerry Rawlings was supported by many in his frenzied bloodshed, is simply unproven!
Let me say it again: THERE HAS NEVER BEEN AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN HUMAN HISTORY THAT WAS ENTIRELY PEACEFUL. I challenge anyone to cite one such example.
Let me stop here. It is either we study history carefully, or we do not. Those who know Kenya well, are unlikely to oppose the Gen Z movement. Find out why that is.
