“All happy families resemble one another,” Tolstoy once said, “but each unhappy family is unhappy in its way.” So, too, are countries.
There are many unhappy people in Kenya these days. The Finance Bill 2024 ignited and unleashed streams of furiousness, many screams in the void, and outrage found a platform in the streets. This is how the deliberately unheard and preferably not listened to population put the fear of God in Kenya’s ruling class.
Since the youth protests kicked off in June, Kenya watchers, self-styled revolutionaries, romantics, reactionaries, and realists have gone into a frenzy of speculation, unleashing a mass of hunches, theories, and threads of what was happening and how we should view this moment in history.
The central question, however, remains: what exactly is happening in Kenya, and why now?
Exactly a year ago, the nation was rattled by a viral video of a 24-year-old who was disturbed enough by the state of affairs. With the benefit of hindsight, that 5-minute outpouring by Mercy Tarus was a preamble of things to come.
Mercy, a would-be beneficiary of a controversial students airlift program by the county government paid for by beneficiaries themselves, undressed politicians who had sabotaged her dream. She revealed how the failed scheme sank her into depression and her family into debt.
The story goes that the county government convinced her parents and hundreds of others to put a downpayment in a scheme allowing the county to shop for schools abroad that would accept their children and offer a way out of Kenya through education.
The families taking this offer had clarity of purpose; Kenya was not offering opportunities to her children, and this was a magic bullet out of the poverty cycle.
Like the rest of Kenyans, this community was making a bet that escaping this country was the only choice as bad governance and corruption had managed to spit away jobs and opportunities in the country. And, so, they genuinely signed up for this “airlift.”
However, the corrupting influence of Kenya politics caught up with these families investing their last coins to escape the vagaries of economic hardship occasioned by bad governance.
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So, Mercy standing up for herself as a final act of desperation and desolation became a vital anecdote explaining the youthquake that visited Kenya months later, on the back of generations before that that had failed to realise the dividends of democracy.
Her profile mirrors thousands appearing later in June and July, having been activated from their supposed slumber by unpopular government policies and arrogance.
“I am a graduate selling cups of porridge in the streets of Eldoret,” Tarus told the crowd. This is a familiar story in many Kenyan homes; it has indeed become routine for educated youth to take up any work in a tough economy.
Kenya’s manufacturing has been sharply falling. The nation once boasted of its prowess as the manufacturing hub of East Africa, but it has progressively lost its competitive advantage.
The economy churns fewer jobs than graduates each year. Young Kenyans’ frustrations have been building with no respite from the ruling class, which has failed to offer solutions to what many consider a time bomb.
It has become a norm that civil servants and politicians drawing a salary from the public purse advise other Kenyans to venture into entrepreneurship since ‘there are no jobs’ for them.
“It’s okay if you send goons to kill me. I have nothing to die for; at least, I wouldn’t have killed myself.” Mercy ended her rant on a familiar note, resigned to her fate.
Once the Kenyan youth had convinced themselves that there was no hope, there would be no good sleep for the ruling class.
“The farther backward you can look,” Churchill tells us, “the farther forward you are likely to see.”
Since 2013, the most crucial barometer of citizens’ attitudes towards government has been consistent. Kenyans have told pollsters that the country was headed “in the wrong direction.”
This percentage of citizens feeling their government wasn’t exactly working for them has increased steadily. Kenya has conducted three general elections, with citizens’ confidence in politicians slipping. But, a certain caliber of politicians has risen; the willfully ignorant rouble-rousers with checkered histories.
The ruling class didn’t seem to notice that the Kenyan public was building its angst, and even if they did, they buttressed their perceptions of Kenyans as people who were “resilient” and would always find means and ways out of the difficulties.
This overriding perception of Kenyans as hard workers has created a country where public service is non-existent, leading to Kenyans being accused of mastering privatisation of public problems.
Here is how that has worked: Because Kenyans accepted that the political class cannot and will not deliver on public goods, such as education, healthcare, or even security, they created a thriving private solution for all public problems.
The small middle class served as a buffer for relatives and friends, and the pay slips were stretched to meet immediate family needs and social functions, such as increasing medical aid.
Twaweza, a research outfit specializing in collecting and synthesising citizens’ voices in East Africa, has interesting data showing Kenya citizens have been more optimistic about their circumstances than the state economy. In other words, the citizens somehow figured that they could work outside of a failed system. In contrast, Tanzanian citizens have a differing opinion. They are more optimistic about the national economy than their circumstances.
An age-old criticism of Kenyans has followed a familiar pattern that suggests citizens are disengaged by this creation of private solutions to public problems. But, for more than a critique, the Kenyan political class has developed strategies that deliberately seem to ignore Kenyans’ concerns as a strategy.
This dismissal of public views, now known as gas-lighting by the younger folk, has made the Kenyan public seem dormant and even compliant. Both the governed and the governors in Kenya have a distant, non-existent, and abusive relationship.
David Ndii, a government critic-turned economic advisor, captured this relationship in one of his most-read opinion pieces: “Kenya is a cruel marriage; let’s talk divorce.” This was before he was co-opted into government.
The political class’s insistence on the Finance Bill 2024 was a raid on Kenya’s slim middle class with far-reaching effects on even those ostracised by the system.
What the political class and their advisors still need to count on, and still don’t, is that they have lived in ivory towers for a long time and are entirely unaware of the pain of being a Kenyan on the edges. And, so, this arrogance of pushing through the Finance Bill 2024 was supposed to go quietly and uneventfully.
However, while this might have been true for the previous generations, we need to update Kenya’s political perceptions and align with the country’s realities. Whatever Mercy Tarus complained about in that viral video was commonplace at many of Kenya’s dinner tables.
Many families have collapsed under the weight of a dysfunctional economy, young people have no sense of opportunities in both the public and private sectors, and Kenya has no safety net. Combined, these factors have created the most unequal and harsh societies in East Africa with an added factor, an educated lot.
Kenya has made great strides in education compared to its neighbors. The free primary education program ushered in by Kenya’s third president, Mwai Kibaki, in 2003 assured families of education, at the very least.
After educating millions of young people who turned up to a non-functioning economy, it was only a matter of time before they had something clever to say.
This group, known as Generation Z, has had to experience seeing their parents struggling with Kenya’s economy, unable to retire and forced to hustle. Gen Z has been forced to watch their elder siblings, millennials barely breaking into the Kenyan economy. Then it dawned on them that this system that frustrates their parents and stagnates their elders won’t possibly work for them.
And they refused to imbibe respectability in politics and decided to have their thoughts heard.
Ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus said, “You can’t step into the same river twice.” He created an applicable paradox that can help us understand the response of Kenya’s ruling class: Heraclitus suggests that the second time you put your foot into a stream, the waters you initially disturbed have flowed to the sea. The river is not the same anymore.
In response to the street protests, the Kenyan political class has followed a familiar playbook. According to them, the public is apathetic and stagnant; therefore, any activity done by the political class would assuage the public and return things to normal.
In essence, all the claims about an economy that doesn’t work, stolen taxes, and a country without a safety net are just that, short stories without political legs.
In this playbook, President Ruto and his arch-nemesis Raila Odinga have been forced to consolidate in this ‘come we stay marriage’ and fight off the Kenyan people’s claim for a change in the republic. The street action, by itself, is a complete repudiation of the ruling class in toto, and because of that threat, the Kenyan opposition chose to side with their kind.
The underrating of citizens’ views is just kicking the can down the road because the Kenyan youth have a history of rising, and the Kenyan institutions have moments of brilliance that provide certain clarity and momentum that upset the political class.
First, the Mau-Mau youth in the 1950s created so much organized chaos in the uprising against the British, who were forced to deploy the most despicable violence known in history to quell the popular movement.
Eventually, the Brits lost, marking a watershed moment in history for what the Kenyan youth can do. Events that followed this Mau-Mau rebellion showed the public something about courage and defiance; the Kenyan people could no longer be chained.
In the late 1980s, the Kenyan youth reappeared, defying one-party rule and a brutal dictatorial regime in the name of KANU, winning concessions that forced the country into a multi-party state. Again, the Kenyan public learned lessons on this occasion about a long-drawn battle with the political class.
When President Uhuru Kenyatta and his hand-shake partner Raila Odinga attempted to reverse gains in Kenya’s new constitution, they were met with a blockage at the Judiciary, losing the BBI case and puncturing the momentum for candidate Raila Odinga. The BBI, a profoundly unpopular document, strived to change essential parts of the constitution through the back door. Through this process, the public witnessed the lack of imagination of the political class.
The public space is replete with moments where the public makes gains as the state retreats.
On the night of June 25, after protesters breached parliament while making good on the protest’s clarion call for the day, #occupyparliament. President William Ruto emerged from State House Nairobi. He addressed the nation in a speech that was out of step with the country’s mood.
He called the protesters “dangerous criminals” who had attempted to hijack symbols of democracy and said that the country’s security agencies would firmly deal with them.
As he made this comment, the breach of parliament videos were being watched and re-watched on TikTok, and instances of young men and women recording themselves on the lawns of parliament went viral. The young people had achieved their target and delivered a strategic blow to the political class; no one could unsee the success of the breach of Parliament.
Let me explain for context. The events of June 25th, 2024, began in May when the Budget Committee introduced the Finance Bill 2024 in parliament. By this time, the public had been raging against their representatives on proposals contained in the Bill.
Every news story reporting on Members of Parliament’s intention to vote on the Finance Bill was the most read and viewed piece of journalism.
However, the representatives were arrogant, refused to listen, and passed the Bill regardless of the public’s views.
In a strict sense, the public had an axe to grind with their representatives, whom they decided to “visit” on June 25. This is instructive and lends itself to the general belief that Parliament had been auctioned to the executive when President William Ruto showed up to defend Parliamentarians and not the House Speaker. He was, in fact, more bereaved by the events of June 25 than MPs.
This single act demonstrates the lack of a relationship between members of the public and their representatives, and that relationship has suffered fatal body blows.
That moment, when the president is more angered by the breach of parliament than MPs, clarifies to the republic that Parliament is an extension of the Executive. We can’t unsee the fear that MPs had on that day taking flight, leaving their food in the canteen. The public can’t unsee the extreme state excesses where numerous young men were killed by snipers and at close range, and, most importantly, the public can’t unsee how within reach the Kenyan political class is. Their invisibility is gone.
In 326 BCE, Alexander of Macedon led his troops into Punjab. By this time, even the most exposed Westerners and Easterners knew almost nothing of each other’s existence. But Alexander, being the great he was, promised his men that they would soon bathe in the waters of the ocean, the great river that encircled the world.
And so, with this promise, his men marched in anticipation of seeing water, a vast water body. Instead, the Ganges plain unfolded before them, dotted with fortified cities, and there was mutiny. This was not the promise.
The great Alexander lost the debate and was forced into a U-turn heading home.
President Ruto, as a candidate and deputy president, ran one of the most euphoric political campaigns Kenya has ever seen. He tapped into the republic’s economic anxieties and promised to change fortunes by upsetting the state architecture.
His bottom-up economic model won the people’s trust because, fundamentally, the Kenyan people have attempted and continue to pursue the revision of the Kenyan state to accommodate everyone.
Like Alexandar and his promises, the youthful Kenyans have judged that he might have promised the opposite. This mutiny reflects a loss of trust that can only be remedied by finding the North Star again.
“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war,” said Winston Churchill. The Kenyan public has always preferred talks and discussions over armed combat. Those in control of the political instruments could learn to reform the Kenyan state quickly and avoid a total crisis.
The country’s economic collapse has happened over decades and is in dire state since Kenya is one of the best clients for the IMF after her twin Pakistan. For 51 years, Kenya has had 23 bailouts, only beaten by Pakistan’s 27. These bailouts have done little to repair Kenya’s economic situation; if anything, they have only made careers in the IMF and World Bank.
From President Jomo Kenyatta’s first bailout, brought about by high inflation due to the Oil price crisis that began in 1973, Kenya has repeatedly returned to the IMF, with the net effect being that the public has been left worse off. The political class has been far enriched.
The story of the bailouts after unsustainable debt is the story of the unproductive elite living off as parasites on state resources.
There have been theories on how to be a Kenyan; they are all grounded on some version of “don’t ask your country for anything and do it yourself.” However, it’s become clear that Kenyans need to work on their way out of bad governance. Kenyans’ attempt to entrepreneur their way out of bad governance hasn’t worked either.
The state of affairs today is this: a new country is fighting to be born, while the old one is fighting not to die.
The Kenyan youth, having analysed and seen that this state is designed not to offer them anything, have correctly taken a position to do what they can to engage in politics and change the country.
One poster held up high by the Gen Z protestors aptly captures the nation’s struggle: “We are not our parents…”
James Smart is the Nation Managing Editor, Newsroom Production and Partnerships
