After Independence

In reading Chapter 2 of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, I was reminded of something simple and hard: rupture is not the end of the story.

Last time, I sat with the idea that decolonization isn't polite—it's a rupture, not an upgrade. This forces a harder question: what happens the day after?

A fragile peace, a familiar script

Urban elites form parties, promise development, and rebrand the old order. Rural peasants distrust the pace and the plan. Trade unions are embraced until they get in the way—then they're treated as a threat.

The floorplan changes; the hierarchy doesn't.

Celebration is followed by disillusionment. The colonizer's flag comes down, the nationalist flag goes up, but the lived experience for many barely shifts.

You see the outlines of a fragile peace: enough pageantry to say "things are different now," but familiar scripts re-emerge quickly.