On 7 July 2023, thousands of Kenyans gathered at the Kamukunji grounds in Nairobi in response to Azimio La Umoja’s call to express their discontent with the government and demand change. The rally, which had begun calmly with an address from Azimio leaders, culminated in clashes between squadrons of riot police and groups of protesters in Nairobi. Violent protests also took place in other parts of the country.

Raila Odinga’s call in early July for nationwide Saba Saba rallies came amidst the rising cost of living and the recently voted controversial Finance Bill 2023. In his statement delivered on the 4th of July, the Azimio leader cited high taxes on consumable goods, the failed bipartisan talks on the reconstitution of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and the audit of the 2022 elections as the reasons justifying calls for protests, picketing and civil disobedience on the historic Saba Saba Day. Odinga referred to the 7 July 2023 mobilisation as symbolising the beginning of the nation’s Third Liberation struggle.

The first Liberation struggle was against colonial rule, the armed resistance that culminated in independence in 1963. At the time, Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta declared that his administration would wage a war against poverty, disease, and ignorance in Kenya but despite these grandiose promises, his administration and that of his successor were ultimately accused of the same failings that had characterised the colonial administration.

The Second Liberation movement therefore emerged in reaction to the government’s unfulfilled promises, restrictions on free speech, human rights violations, and, most importantly, the one-party doctrine enforced by Daniel arap Moi’s regime. The Saba Saba Rally of 1990 would come to signal the beginning of the second wave of Liberation that culminated in the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution.

Saba Saba Day, as we know it, had no political significance in Kenya’s history until the late Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia fixed it as the date for the first of a series of rallies to demand the reintroduction of multi-party politics in Kenya. The advocates for a return to multi-party politics set the stage for 7 July 1990 when they first applied for a licence on 11 June from Fred Waiganjo, then Nairobi Provincial Commissioner, to address a rally at Kamukunji grounds in Nairobi. The government turned down their request and instead issued a strong warning to the general public against attending the Kamukunji meeting.

As political tensions mounted, the government arrested and detained Matiba and Rubia, who were perceived as the key protagonists of multipartyism. Their lawyers and other leaders like Raila Odinga, John Khaminwa, Gitobu Imanyara and Mohamed Ibrahim, were also arrested. The movement persisted despite government harassment in the form of arrests, detentions, and threats, and on 7 July, Kenyans turned up at the Kamukunji grounds.

The 7th of July gained ominous significance after riot police moved in to disperse the crowd gathered at the Kamukunji grounds, turning the peaceful gathering into a frenzy of violence. For three days, the unrest that had started in Nairobi spread to other parts of the country, including Kiambu, Murang’a, Nyeri, Thika, and Nakuru. About 20 people were reported to have lost their lives, and 39 others were injured.

The pressure exerted by the Saba Saba movement played a crucial role in accelerating reforms in Kenya and as a result, Section 2A of the constitution was amended, and multi-party democracy was restored in the following year. The constitutional amendment limited the president’s stay in office to two terms, and consequently led to Moi’s retirement in 2002 after 24 years in power. The movement’s struggle climaxed with the promulgation of the 2010 constitution, which firmly established devolution and explicitly defined the division of powers between the different arms of government.

The 7th of July gained ominous significance after riot police moved in to disperse the crowd gathered at the Kamukunji grounds, turning the peaceful gathering into a frenzy of violence.

Over the years, more and more organisations – especially civil society organisations – have observed this day by holding protests to highlight various social problems including police brutality, the high cost of living, corruption, and unemployment. Opposition parties also hold Saba Saba rallies at the Kamukunji grounds every year to commemorate the Second Liberation and challenge the government of the day regarding the governance and socio-economic problems besetting the nation.

Since the 7 July 1990 Saba Saba Rally, which birthed multipartyism and the 2010 Constitution, subsequent Saba Saba Day commemorations have not culminated in any significant changes. Part of the reason is the disintegration of the movement that initially comprised Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), the Church, politicians and lawyers. And even where CSOs and political parties appear together to commemorate Saba Saba Day, one cannot help but notice the divergent viewpoints advanced by both camps.

Whereas some CSOs took part in the demonstrations last July 7, the incongruities of the issues raised between them and the Azimio team stood out. Top on the agenda of the CSOs was the high cost of living, with issues touching on the bipartisan reconstitution of the IEBC and the audit of the 2022 elections conspicuously missing from their list of demands. Moreover, the Church – a key player in the original Saba Saba – avoided making known its support or opposition to the rally. With unharmonised agendas and the absence of other key players, 7 July 2023 would fail to leave an indelible mark in its wake.

Secondly, ever since that first rally on 7 July 1990, the face of the movement demanding change has remained a mosaic of politicians who have historically opposed the government. In effect, while the principal key figures in the first Liberation (Jomo Kenyatta, Oginga Odinga, and Paul Ngei) were different from those in the Second Liberation (such as Charles Rubia, Raila Odinga, and Kenneth Matiba), the leadership of the Second Liberation is still reflected in the Third Liberation. If the thesis that one movement succeeds another is accepted, then the dominance of Second Liberation leaders in the third struggle defeats the course that is being advanced.

Thirdly, lack of acknowledgement of July 7 by the government as a nationally recognised day to celebrate the heroes and heroines of the Second Liberation renders the holding of a peaceful and meaningful ‘Kamukunji’ difficult. July 7 then appears to be no more than a day for protests and government criticism, and with the gatherings termed illegal more often than not, protesters end up battling with police officers, leading to death and destruction of property.

Moreover, the impression that the country is stuck in an endless cycle of history repeating itself discourages adherence to the movement. While the first liberation movement led to independence, the very issues that led to the struggle for freedom – such as land issues, discrimination, and tribalism – have continued to dominate subsequent Saba Saba rallies; the Second Liberation brought to the fore the issues of human rights abuses, corruption, and inequitable resource distribution that have been the hallmark of successive governments.

Persistent calls for political reforms continue to cast a shadow over the Third Liberation movement, whose focus should instead be on issues of economic growth and development. While the controversial Finance Bill 2023 is the elephant in the room, it has not received serious attention as have the calls challenging the legality of the president’s election to office. The opposition held protests in March and April demanding that the electoral body ‘open the servers’ and calling for a bipartisan reconstitution of the IEBC and an audit of the last general election.

Persistent calls for political reforms continue to cast a shadow over the Third Liberation movement, whose focus should instead be on issues of economic growth and development.

As a result, the struggle for the Third Liberation, symbolised by the 2023 Saba Saba rally, has been criticised for lacking sincerity and clarity regarding its main agenda.

Even while it has entered the annals of Kenya’s history, the meaning and importance of Saba Saba will continue to remain divorced from the Third Liberation. The relevance of the movement, therefore, is closely linked to the participation of the people, the CSOs and the Church, and not just the political class.

In the summer of 1961, the African American novelist Julian Mayfield escaped the US under cover of darkness. A veteran civil rights activist and communist sympathizer, he and his family had long been targets of FBI surveillance. In August, however, police harassment increased after Mayfield was named as a material witness to the kidnapping of a Ku Klux Klan member near his North Carolina home. Aware of the risks of appearing before a Southern jury, he fled to Canada before settling in Ghana, where his wife Ana Livia Cordero was working as a physician.

Mayfield found himself in the right place at the right time. Under the rule of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana had emerged as a hub of radical publishing and pan-African activism. On the terraces of Accra’s hotels, ministers and trade unionists mingled with revolutionaries from Angola, South Africa, and Rhodesia. After W.E.B. Du Bois emigrated to Ghana in October 1961, African American radicals began flocking to the country to pay their respects to the eminent pan-Africanist scholar. Ingratiating himself with Accra’s influential literary scene, Mayfield quickly took up work as a journalist, broadcaster, and speechwriter on behalf of the ruling Convention People’s Party.

In June 1963, Mayfield became the editor of The African Review, a new magazine combining socialist politics, cultural affairs, and book reviews for a wide audience. While the magazine claimed to be an independent publication, it was in fact covertly funded by the Ghanaian Publicity Secretariat in return for positive coverage of the Nkrumah regime. The magazine’s sponsors were particularly interested in the magazine’s coverage of foreign affairs. In keeping with much of Ghana’s state publicity, The African Review was instructed to combine vocal support for African nationalism with a sharp critique of racism in the US. Mayfield, with his experience as a novelist and connections to radical politics on both sides of the Atlantic, was an ideal candidate to lead a cultural front of the struggle for African sovereignty.

The content of The African Review certainly gives a strong impression of its commitment to new forms of transatlantic solidarity. In its first edition, Mayfield published a long essay on Malcolm X which emphasized his attempts to connect civil rights to the wider struggle against imperialism. S.G. Ikoku provided glowing reviews of Nkrumah’s pan-African philosophy, while a young Bessie Head wrote damning essays about life under apartheid. For a time, The African Review even employed Maya Angelou, who had become close to Mayfield while living in Ghana in the early 1960s. In her role as Features Editor, Angelou supplied the magazine with radical political commentaries—including a head-to-head comparison of Martin Luther King and Frantz Fanon on the subject of political violence.

Covert funding from the Ghanaian government sometimes compromised the magazine’s editorial integrity. In a letter to Mayfield, Conor Cruise O’Brien suggested that inviting a committed socialist like Ikoku to review Nkrumah’s books was “like getting a Curia cardinal to review a recent work by the Pope.” At other times, however, The African Review was remarkably tolerant of views that challenged the orthodoxies of African socialism. Embracing a form of “positive controversy,” its articles often promoted nuanced visions of decolonization and pushed for the inclusion of African American issues within the wider struggle against white supremacy.

Ironically, however, The African Review was not the only African Review. From 1963, Mayfield and his employees also had to contend with competition from another publication bearing the same name. Like its Ghanaian namesake, this African Review was devoted to African nationalist politics. Praising the work of anticolonial activists in Angola and Mozambique, it voiced consistent support for self-determination and development across Africa. However, where Mayfield’s magazine proposed transnational socialism as a source of anti-colonial solidarity, the second African Review was consistently hostile to radical politics and suspicions of “foreign interference” in independent states.

This was no coincidence. Recently declassified files reveal that this African Review was in fact produced by the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret anti-communist agency within the British Foreign Office. Like other IRD publications, including the Loyal African Brothers series, the magazine was designed to undermine the claims of socialist and communist propagandists across the continent. By adopting the appearance of an African nationalist publication and the popular vocabulary of self-determination and sovereignty, it attempted to encourage its readers to reject radical politicians and support moderate nationalists more in line with British interests.

Subtlety was not one of the magazine’s strengths. In the editions of the IRD’s African Review held at the University of Cambridge, more than 60% of articles relate directly to the failures of socialist policy in Africa. Unattributed editorials refer to China’s attempts to export a “violent brand of revolution” across the continent and cite racist attacks against Africans in the USSR as evidence that Moscow was becoming a “second Alabama.” At times, this extended to attacks on African socialist states such as Nkrumah’s Ghana, which the magazine singled out in 1964 for its “disastrous assault on the image which emerging Africa is striving to achieve.”

At other times, however, the IRD’s African Review revealed remarkable flexibility in the British government’s information policy. The idea of appealing to moderate nationalists would undoubtedly have been unthinkable in the 1950s when British propaganda was largely based on the idea of “tutoring” Africans for a gradual transition to self-rule. By 1969, in contrast, African Review was comfortable with the Organization of African Unity’s attempt to smuggle weapons to apartheid South Africa as an alternative to Soviet and Chinese arms sales. The magazine also began exploiting political tensions between communists and African socialists. After the expulsion of a group of Soviet diplomats from Kenya in 1968, for example, it produced quotes from Kenyan newspapers and government officials to prove that Africans believed that Soviet technical assistance was a “selfish policy” and a “form of expansionism” across the continent.

In this sense, both The African Review and African Review reflect the clandestine structures and complex loyalties which characterized political writing in Cold War Africa. Mayfield’s magazine was the less partisan of the two publications, and by far the more tolerant of diverse opinion. However, it was evidently reliant on the Ghanaian state for funding and political guidance. After the coup against Nkrumah in 1966, the magazine ceased production and Mayfield was forced to return to the United States.

The influence of the Cold War was more pronounced in the IRD’s African Review, whose appeals to African nationalism served as a convenient disguise for its anti-communist aims. However, it is revealing that this propaganda was presented in the idioms of an existing African nationalism. Magazines like African Review suggest that, by the early 1960s, many British propagandists had become convinced that the ideological battle for Africa was already lost. If IRD officials wanted to continue to appeal to their former subjects, they would have to do so in a language like Mayfield’s.

In 2009, South African scholar and activist, Prof. Sean Jacobs of the New School in New York started the online publication Africa is a Country.  Since then, the periodical has grown by leaps and bounds into a major outlet for opinion, analyses and new writing on and from what they describe as “the African left.” To its deserved credit, Africa is a Country’s publications offer revolutionary and innovative ways of analysing and thinking about Africa, focused on all aspects at the macro and micro level.

But as a regular reader of the site’s publications for a long time now, I have not stopped mulling over the name of this site especially the point it sought to make through naming itself, “Africa is a country.” Not to be misunderstood for its clearly cheeky and satirical name, the periodical runs a kicker—some form of explainer—which could be read as epic satire: “Not a continent with 55 countries.”

I know, a rose would still smell the same even when it went by another name.  But surely, there is power in a name.  My first reflex to this name is that it was a slap back, a ridicule to the scholarship—and especially western media and travel writing—which tended (and perhaps continues) to treat the African continent as a single homogenous, both geographical and analytical space: one single country.  This slap-back, as I understood it, wasn’t necessarily in response to some explicit colonialist-orientalist portrayals as that which defined colonial literature during the colonial period (such as The Flame Tress of Thika or Heart of Darkness), or the equally disparaging, subtle, and sometime mild derogatory encounters, newspaper and magazines stories and book titles—oftentimes, with evidence on Africa’s problems—(such as Robert Guest’s 2004 book, The Shackled Continent) which have continued being published to this day.

Indeed, sadly, despite being a continent renowned for its diversity 55 times (at least, going by the number of countries), a great deal of analyses, continued to talk about an Africa that was almost homogenous in all forms—histories, political practices, economies, and cultural traditions, etcetera.  Thus diversity, difference, and sometimes animosities, had all been reduced into one single homogenous entity.  Africa was the same from the Cape Town in the south to Alexandria or Bossaso in the North, and from Mombasa and Accra.  So, the often-repeated anecdote was that Euro-Americans continue to tell their African visitors about how they have friends on the continent (like it were a small village): “You are Ugandan, oh, that is great, I have friend in Nigeria, maybe you might know them…” It is not that these homogenising chronicles and encounters were in praise of African geniuosity, but rather an African collective backwardness.  Africans started fighting back—often satirically—and most memorably, Binyavanga Wainaina’s essay “How to Write about Africa” went viral after its publication in 2005.  Four years later after Wainaina’s essay, a notable outlet, Africa is a Country, was born.

While I fully appreciate the urgency to push back on these caricatured, racialised, orientalised, and homogenising renderings of Africa, I wish Africans saw themselves as a country—and not necessarily as a diverse and differentiated continent.  My intention is not to aspire for a single language or currency, neither is it an aspiration for a singular leadership and ruler or emperor.  My aspiration is rather for a political-economic theoretical position that thrives on what I see as New Colonialism.  Africans ought to appreciate the reality that while we might be undeniably diverse and different, as a continent, we are still trapped in an existential power relation; a contest over our own resources with Euro-America—and Africa is seen and approached as a continent but with several disunited and confused small countries.  With this position, I want to challenge the African elite and politicians to see themselves, not with their own eyes, but with the same eyes through which their nemeses see them.  (This actually could have been Prof. Sean Jacobs original idea if the name and site were not read as satirical clap back). While I believe seeing Africa form African vantage points is an important methodological intervention, my position is that it is more helpful, more liberating, for Africans to see themselves from the vantage point of the pugilist on the other side—as country.

From Berlin Conference to Washington Consensus (1884-1980)

If the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 met to divide the continent amongst European powers for extraction without fighting against each other, as they had been fighting during the slave trade, the 1980s meetings in Washington, which came up with the “Washington Consensus” were about extracting from the continent as one whole—without necessarily dividing it amongst the preying animals.  But while the approaches to extraction as agreed from these two meeting slightly over 100 years apart, extraction from Africa remains real, and perhaps even more perverse.  From the vantage point of the extractors, Africa is Africa—a singular space.  Even when the modes of extraction are diametrically different as is the case with almost continued direct control in West Africa through the CFC, on the one hand, and direct violence and bribery in DRC and South Sudan on the other, Africa remains a singular jungle to Euro-America—and the jungle has to be exploited by those living in the garden.

While emphasising our diversity and difference (which is undeniable), however, we have tended to use the colonial-given borders as the beginning point: these have not only become borders of nationalist pride and identity (calling ourselves Ugandans, Rwandans, or Nigerians), but have also become securitised and distinct markers of difference.  “Securing the borders” is spoken about as a matter of national security, and pride and from these, more paraphernalia such as national IDs and Passports and border crossing police and dues have become entire departments and institutions.  From there, these borders then become methodologies of generating discourse.  So, for example, one country is seen as democratic and another as autocratic, and the discussion might focus on this singular country’s democratic/autocratic credentials in comparison to another.  It is my contention that keeping countries proud of their distinctive markers especially defined through the borders is one of the ways of being controlled by the international regime of capitalist exploitation. It is the benign version of divide and conquer, which has, ironically, become a loved part of African identity—whilst core component of collective weakness.

In effect, what the securitization and the newly found joys and institutions of nationalist pride in the borders took away from us is the solidity to fight as a singular block—seeing ourselves as blessed and favoured “single country” the way the new coloniser sees us.   Take for example, when the Washington Consensus was being pushed onto the African continent, several economists and ministers of finance and trade on the African continent rightly rejected them in meetings held in Addis Ababa, Accra and Europe.  Most countries in East Asia simply rejected them solidly and would not budge whatever the circumstances.  But for Africa, the IMF and the WB put individual countries under immense stress and harassed them independently.  They demanded that to qualify for aid and other grants from the WB, countries had to have a certificate of compliance form the IMF indicating that they were implementing privatisation. Something remarkable happened in East Asia that these countries collectively rejected structural adjustment. There is not enough evidence as to why even when approached individually, East Asian economies refused to oblige. In Africa, for example, countries such as Libya, Eritrea and Ethiopia refused to open up their economies for foreign players.  For a long time, these countries had to brave hostility from the western world of corporations. It took years for Ethiopia to budge, and under the Meles Zenawi presidency, Ethiopia remained protected from the scourge of privatisation. I have noted elsewhere that Zenawi spoke for the continent that was not willing to listen).  Libya finally crumbled under the weight of hostility; Eritrea still lives under sanctions; and Ethiopia is holding on.  I have it on good authority, that Ethiopia almost got ruined recently by a markets-fuelled war exploiting local ethnic cleavages.

Sadly, for the most parts of the continent, the ruins were meticulous and deliberate. Political economist Jörg Wiegratz has showed in his book, IMF auditors were under explicit instructions to forge accountabilities to show that state-run parastatals were not profitable. I recently listened to a story from one of the attendees of an OAU ministers of finance meetings in Addis in the early 1990s that after the Ghana Minister of Finance had meticulously articulated his resistance to privatisation, he then remarked that he had to balance the books of his country and was going to painfully budge to privatisation. The ruins are still new and continue to deepen every single day.

Drinking Africa in one gulp

The images of African presidents being bussed around in the UK at the funeral of their colonising queen, Elizabeth II have never left me. It seemed these African leaders made peace with their colonisers so quickly, even when the ruins of colonialism are still in their midst.  Nor the images of the same African leaders in Washington during the “Africa Puppets summit of 2022,” as Ugandan activist Mary Serumaga described it.  There is very little respect for these folks from the African continent (because many of them are modern-day compradors presiding over own countries on behalf of London, Paris or Washington).  Like school children, they could be bussed around from one corner of London to another.  They do not need specialised security nor red carpets.  And since they come from the same continent, they are assumed—and they never refute this—to represent a singular set of interests, and can therefore meet and discuss these interests in one single village meeting, normally called a “summit” without clear interests defined, except extracting from the periphery to the centre. Thus, Euro-America sees the continent as one single geography and intellectual space. Just as old school 1800 colonialism did.

However, it is important to stress that while these events I have cited above often ignominiously bring all African leaders together and treat them as coming from a singular homogenous space, the magic of looting the continent is not in approach, but rather design (of the template).  Here, a singular policy designed in Washington or Paris—such as what came to be called the Washington Consensus in 1989 or what Guillaume Blanc has termed Green Colonialism—is designed and to be applied to all Africa at once.  But because Africa is diverse—yes, here it becomes important to acknowledge diversity and difference—the policy is adapted, packaged and applied differently in these “diverse” and “different” countries. This diversity and difference in packaging and application is informed by many factors ranging from (a) servility and greed of the leaders in charge of the targeted country—the greedier, the easier and simple packaging of the policy; (b) the confidence and legitimacy of leaders especially in terms of their connections with the governed. If the leader is confident enough, before him, the approach is different. It has to be more measured, detailed and more technocratized.  In the face of insecure leaders who solely depend on serving western interests for their presidencies, the approach and vulgarity of application might be even open and deeper.  No need for much discretion. Other reasons for difference in approach and packaging are (c) the nature of government: for fully-fledged capitalist democracies (meaning, leaders are periodically changed through elections) such as South Africa, Malawi, Nigeria, Kenya or Zambia, the application is different from autocratic-democracies such Uganda, Sudan, or Zimbabwe, which organise elections but return the incumbent as president at every round.  Under almost one-party states such as Tanzania, the policies would follow a different methodology.  For others, the same policies are best applied and secured under conditions of violence such as the extraction in DRC, South Sudan, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and currently, Libya. In all these cases, Africa is subjected to a singular extractive machine, only applied and packaged differently.

Interestingly, these different approaches and packaging in application—of the same extractive policies—actually bamboozle both the discourse-makers and the political elite. Thus, endless chronicles, indices and ethnographies are produced theorising and celebrating these differences. In effect, emphasizing the uniqueness of these 55 countries, blurs the non-exclusiveness of the extractive policies pushed by Euro-America. This explains why almost all countries on the African continent, from so-called full democracies (South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Lesotho, Malawi etc.), semi-democracies (Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda), bad autocracies (Eritrea, Sudan, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe) and almost-failed states (South Sudan, Somalia, CAR etc.) with minimal variations, are afflicted by the same problems: poverty, high unemployment rates, inflation, profit repatriation, debt crises, etcetera.  At the end of the day, these problems actually blur any claims of uniqueness and diversity to the point that even these countries get ranked at almost same levels on the indicators of growth. (Doesn’t this explain why for 27 countries on the African continent, applicants for the United Kingdom visa have to have their passports shipped to South Africa for processing? For the UK, at least these 27 countries are one small place).

My intention is not to downplay the diversity and uniqueness of the African continent. In fact, this (mostly cultural and geographical) uniqueness is important in understanding each other.  My contention is simply that (a) seen from the vantage point of the coloniser, Africa is seen as one single item of prey, and emphasis on diversity is good for the ways in which it enables extraction, and disables collective resistance, and (b) for efforts towards better understanding of the task ahead and fighting back—in the spirit of the Bandung Conference of 1955—Africans will have to adjust their spectacles, and see themselves through the eyes the new colonisers. While acknowledging their difference and diversity—sadly, often built around the colonial borders—they might have to see themselves as single beautiful belle coveted by a single monster that deftly uses its many heads to eat away the different body parts—because these body parts insist they are different and unique.

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This article was first published by The Pan African Review.