“Our revolution is not a public-speaking tournament. Our revolution is not a battle of fine phrases. Our revolution is not simply for spouting slogans that are no more than signals used by manipulators trying to use them as catchwords, as codewords, as a foil for their own display. Our revolution is, and should continue to be, the collective effort of revolutionaries to transform reality, to improve the concrete situation of the masses of our country.”― Thomas Sankara
In a world where words are passed off as mere buzzwords, Thomas Sankara’s words pierce the air, reminding us not to keep our revolution as a battle of eloquence and performative activism. Our liberation should not be a poetic ideal, printed on T-shirts and scripted into prose. It is not a ‘progressive’ declaration of a well-phrased speech presented at state banquets and celebrated through fireworks. We mustn’t aestheticise our liberation.
For many African countries, liberation has become a ritual of aesthetics, mainly celebrated on Independence Day with a dedicated special day. For most, it’s marked as a national holiday with dance, drinking, parades, fireworks and cultural celebrations. On that day, for those of us who celebrate, our governments tend to decorate empty fields with tents and designs depicting the colours of our ‘liberation’. It has been reduced to costume performances and wrapped in a knitted colour of national colours. We often gather in tents to hear speeches about our history whilst the soil beneath us collapses, and our skin dries from the burning sun. We collectively sing songs of liberation on such days while our economies engage in an entangled dance with debt and dependence. But I know it, you know it, we all know it, that we may jump and wave our flags, but when the drums grow silent and the history classes grow quieter, the loss remains the true fact that we were never truly liberated.
Today, 2025, on the 25th of May, as we rally to celebrate another liberation day, we bask in the idea that all African countries are officially “independent”. Independence Day for Africa is but a testament to the resistance put forth by her ancestors. It’s a teary moment to remember the unbeatable spirit of the historical struggles of people striving for self-governance. However, the truth remains that while we were freed on paper, we remain deeply under control, surveillance, deregulated markets, heavily privatised and chronically hungry. The paper was a blueprint of the design intended to keep our economies dependent on exports, “aid”, and worst of all, on ideology.
For 2025’s liberation day, I cannot help but wonder, what was the true vision of our ancestors? If they stood before us today, in chains, and damaged clothes, with sores from over-standing, would we boldly narrate how free we are? Would we proudly declare this current state to be their fulfilled vision? Would we be able to explain the “freedom” we enjoy? Would we steadily explain how we have been chained to currencies of control, to digital economies we do not own, and how we bear the brunt of the climate crisis we didn’t cause? Would we honestly talk about how the river still passes through the backyard, offering fresh subjects for the body? Would we stand in our truths and narrate how free we are to choose what we eat, to worship our gods, to roam our land and speak in our mother tongues without the politics of shame? Would we even recognise the language in which our ancestors spoke? Would we be happy to see them? Would we face them with a clear conscience?
If we stood before our ancestors today, we would be armoured in a language unknown, disenabling us from communicating with them. We would yearn to hug them, but unable to untie our hands from the invisible chains that we can’t exactly explain. We would look into their eyes with teary eyes, begging them to help us in our liberation struggle. We could only confirm that independence is an event/conference that we were told happened, because the books said so, and the stories continuously make us believe so. We often catch ourselves occasionally humming and moving our hips to the rhythm of our anthems. But when the ceremonial drums grow silent and the lights are turned off, the wind and darkness remind us that independence is still but a dream.
On the day the flags went up, we were told that that meant freedom. Little did we know that this meant being socialised according to colours on the flags, but with the same similar lived oppression. It meant performing freedom as a full-time job and never going beyond what the scripts said. For every performance we do every day, there is something we must sacrifice to maintain our position on the stage; we give up the future, we give up peace, we give up our bodies, and the fluidity of our minds. This year, we find ourselves doing a balance dance on a needle of oppression to show our oppressors who is performing liberation more than the other.
The truth is that our liberation has been turned into a pageantry of independence, freedom. We must reject this kind of aesthetic. We ought to undo the icing that covers our suffering, presenting our struggles with glitter. Our liberation must bring justice to the land, must centre our bodies and should be revolutionary. It must be an everyday act to transform how we live, how we love and how we dream. We must hold an epistemic revolution and reclaim our ways of being and knowing.
Our revolution mustn’t be an event, flag raising, or fine written script. It must be a collective labour of love, a memory and a source of healing. We mustn’t be caught up in aesthetically pleasing buzzwords while our people starve. We must do the revolutionary work on the soil and ourselves.
Our liberation is not a battle of speeches
It is not a collection of polished lies,
It is not an offering of their ‘charity’,
It is not a fenced house,
It is not a bunch of fear whispers
It is not their spectacle.
It is the truth of our mouths
It is the fire in our voices,
It is the dream unbetrayed,
It is ours.
Author: Precious Tricia Abwooli