On August 8, 2024, Kenya’s security agencies only managed to suppress the protests through the conversion of the nation to a police state.
The Nairobi Metropolis was completely sealed off preventing any form of entry into the capital city. The cops inspected and ransacked all vehicles, including private ones with reports confirming targeting of young people under the age of 30. Simply, no one would be allowed into the city.
They turned public service vehicles back, and in essence, forced absence came up as the primary riot control approach. What got lost on the agencies, and the ruling regime is that the total city shutdown still made the protests effective.
Given the energy displayed in mobilization, the Gen Z population cohort will keep coming back and back. They may elect to indicate intention to agitate, pull off/out and observe the police execute control acrobatics. It should never be lost to President William Ruto’s administration that the creative agitators can never run out of ideas on how to extract legitimacy from his regime. The excessive police presence was also observed in Karatina, a recently emergent agitation hotspot.
The young people of this country want a working nation. Which also happens to be the wish of every other Kenyan only that awareness levels differ. Global exposure has illustrated that it is possible to achieve your dreams and live the desired life.
The young people do not want a situation where they work hard to get opportunities but cannot work because of delays in documents’ processing, an unstable taxation regime, insecurity, and corruption-induced activities.
I will share two examples. One, a young 23-year-old has just cleared their college diploma in Murang’a University. Given that formal job trajectories are as undefined and chaotic as the rural road network in Murang’a, the young man partners with three other peers to set up a furniture shop.
The thinking is to do some serious value addition and create market-ready furniture. The sheer number of licences required and the inter-county movement guidelines create steep headaches for the quad entrepreneurs. Some of these licences can only be granted through hefty bribes to arrogant officials. The licences and all allied charges including environmental fees only mean that they can only sell at above market prices. Expectedly using borrowed capital, the four optimistic industrialists can clearly view their dream shattering. Do not expect such an individual to give up for a better nation. S/he clearly understands what is wrong with the nation and precisely knows what he/she wants.
Another young individual from Nairobi fails to access a job, enlists for an online training course accessing web development certification. They perfect their skill as they take up interning jobs. They will eventually list up with a global tech facility under a remote-working arrangement. Four years into the job, they are working as senior security engineer with a $4,000 monthly income. The government will still come in to take its taxable share.
That government is also likely to fix a housing levy somewhere. In the two scenarios, the young people consider that the government has done nothing to enhance their hustles and view it as a bothering party. You can throw in the third scenario of a young individual forced to get all manners of jobs in downtown Nairobi for survival and determine that young people feel aptly justified in their agitation.
The physical protests are a tip of that famous iceberg compared to digital protests. There is a long-held assumption on agitation only taking place on X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok. What change apathetic characters forget is that WhatsApp remains the major distribution channel for all forms of digital content. The materials find their way to everyone keeping the reform energy alive. It could be one of the reasons why, at some point, 35/47 counties had serious demonstrations to the shock of regime apologists.
As the persistent digital civic education rages on, the majority may get around to understand the full impact of bad governance. If the Mama Mboga internalized the impact of bad governance in cost of agricultural inputs, strange college fee changes for their children, and brutality meted by county government askaris, that hustler will fiercely join the agitation.
If the bodaboda rider captures the fuel changes machinations, low customer rate due to a sick economy, and harassment cultures from security agents, they will add direct energy into the protests. The Gen Z reformists encouraged a 360 focus on citizens from leaders. Regime-challenging leaders have joined, and will still join, the train making it clear thatRuto, in one way or the other, will have to genuinely pave way for absolute reforms.
Mwangi comments of political and current affairs
