What the French Revolution teaches Kenya’s middle class
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Pedestrians walking along Tom Mboya Street in Nairobi on November 24, 2020. Kenya’s middle class must decide which story it belongs to. That decision cannot wait for 2027. It must begin now.
Kenya’s middle class must decide which story it belongs to. That decision cannot wait for 2027. It must begin now.
In the voting queues, the middle class must finally explain to its neighbour why a candidate’s economic programme matters more than their tribe or the Sh200 in their palm.
The middle class that allows another cycle of beautiful promises to take power in 2027, will have made its choice. History will record it accordingly.
In 1789, when the crowds of Paris stormed the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolise the absolute power of the French monarchy, and brought the old order crashing down, what followed should have been the republic the poor had bled for. Instead, France descended into what became known as the Reign of Terror, during which the revolution consumed its own architects in an orgy of guillotines and paranoia.
Then came the Directory, a corrupt and directionless interregnum. Then Napoleon, who resolved the chaos by abolishing it and installing himself as emperor. It took three additional revolutions, a military defeat, and eighty-two years before France arrived at a durable republic.
