There is a point in a revolution when there is an interregnum, an interval or pause. At times it is a point of crisis. This is a lull at which point a revolution seems to have subsided, or gone under. When the combatants on the frontline have taken a break to replenish their energies, to reassess their mission and to refocus their visions. At best, they retreat and fall back from the offensive, not to withdraw, but to restrategise. Defence is a form of attack.
Such is the current phase of the revolution in Kenya. It continues in various forms, spaces, fronts and terrains. It manifests itself through the various offensives carried out by the labour force: teachers, university lecturers, medics, industrial actions, among others. It is in the agitation of university students demanding the scrapping off of the confusing and exploitative new university funding model. It is in the demand of the peasants in the countryside for the fruits of their sweat and blood. It reveals itself in the artworks of resistance and liberation fronted by artists. The phase is among matatu crews and other workers in the transport industry grinding the wheels of an exploitative economy. It is among the patients, and other victims of the misrule, queuing, puffing and stomping off in discontent with the purportedly new Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF). The funds management body, the Social Health Authority (SHA), was said to take medical insurance in Kenya forward, but has ended up pushing the masses, especially the lower classes, the so-called hustlers, two steps backwards into pits of confusion and hopelessness. The resistance is palpable all over the country. The widespread black and white silhouettes of #RutoMustGo tell it all in graphic resolve. Pages in the register of resistance in Kenya are bursting with revolutionary content. The revolution is alive and kicking though hidden in plain sight. Karl Marx likens it to a mole burrowing deep into the soil of history; it seems absent, and then it appears when least expected.
But this interregnum can also be a point of crisis. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian neo-Marxist philosopher views this crisis as a point of reflection where “the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” In such a crisis also lies seeds of hope and organizing. In the Chinese script, the symbol for crisis represents both danger and opportunity. It is reflected in a Chinese proverb: “a crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind”. Opportunities often arise from crisis, a reality pithily expressed in the saying “the darkest hour is just before dawn.”
Reflections in the 19th and 20th issue of Ukombozi Review speak to the interregnum in the Kenyan revolution, this point of restrategising, not in tones of defeat, but still stoking up the fires of resistance and liberation. This interregnum points to the emerging alternative political leadership for the mass social movement in Kenya that is still in a state of belonging, being and becoming.
Welcome to the combined issue of Ukombozi Review to close the year 2024 – the year of maandamano (protests). As usual, share your feedback and contributions. Look through the submissions guidelines on this site. It explains that submissions can be in any form; articles, book reviews, conversations, poetry, short stories, drama, cartoons, photographs, music, songs, and other forms of storytelling in any language or format, as long as they reflect people’s struggles in the pursuit of a just social order and Pan Africanism.
The revolution continues!
