Many countries commemorate their revolutionary struggles in July

Former South African President Nelson Mandela saluting the crowd next to Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Matanzas, Cuba.[File,Standard]

July stands out as a ‘revolutionary’ month as different countries remember struggles, heroic events, and sacrifices in pursuit of ideals. 

In North America, after British imperialism thwarted other European desires, Englishmen turned on each other and quarreled about who should enjoy what liberties as colonists mounted resistance to policies made in London.

Thomas Jefferson waxed Lockian logic of elevating ‘revolution’ into a ‘natural right’ to justify the American Revolution. Since the government had failed to protect life, liberty, and ‘pursuit of happiness’, the English rebels exercised ‘natural right’ number four and declared independence on July 4, 1776, which became a national holiday.

The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 marked the French Revolution that deteriorated into Maximillian Robespierre’s ‘Jacobinism’ that used the guillotine to execute thousands. The excesses eventually produced Napoleon Bonaparte who spread the Bastille ideals at the point of French bayonets. The French still celebrate Bastille Day as the day of liberty.

American and French revolutionary ideals acquired universality in places like China that sought to free itself from Western powers and imperial Japan. In July 1921, idealists met in Shanghai and created the Communist Party of China (CPC) to replicate what Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks had done in Russia. Lenin had become impatient with the Marxian revolutionary path that called for ‘revolutions’ to start in advanced industrial/capitalist countries. The Marxian prescription had not worked, Lenin argued, because capitalists had become imperialists and had bribed workers into compromising their natural mission. The solution for Lenin was to jump the ‘revolutionary queue’ and help backward Russia become communist.

Lenin’s success inspired Chinese idealists into jumping the ‘revolutionary’ queues. First, they turned peasants into revolutionaries and proclaimed ‘New China’ in October 1949. Given that its initial Soviet inspiration had collapsed, CPC takes pride in being one of the most effective political parties in the world as less than 10 per cent of the population govern more than 1.4 billion people. It remains unique among world political parties and commemorated 100 years of existence in July 2021 with a lot of fun-fare. 

In East Africa, two separate events in colonial Tanganyika and post-colonial Kenya bear the same label of Saba Saba to mark serious ‘revolutionary’ changes. On Wednesday, July 7, 1954 Julius Nyerere led the founding of Tanganyika African National Union which then led Tanganyika to independence. Commemorated as ‘Saba Saba Day’, it is a national holiday with events held in Dar es Salaam.

In post-colonial Kenya, however, Saba Saba is not an official holiday but it evokes memories of when people took the reform initiative from government. Three days of confrontation between security forces and the public beginning on Saturday, July 7, 1990 marked a different ‘revolutionary’ beginning in Kenya as people lost fear of government. Ceremonies in the US, France, China, Tanzania, and Kenya make July a ‘revolutionary’ month to remind people of past struggles.