A month ago, when protests suddenly erupted in Kenya, President William Ruto offered a major concession to angry young demonstrators: he withdrew a tax bill that would have raised taxes by more than $2.3 billion.
But for the protesters, it was just a warm-up.
Nearly six weeks into the leaderless, online-organized mass movement, Hanifa Adan, a 28-year-old Kenyan-Somali activist, said: “Everybody just wants the leaders to be accountable. The fact that unknown people are manipulating them and there’s no one to catch them is what’s driving them crazy.”
What began as peaceful protests turned ugly on June 25 when demonstrators stormed the parliament and police began firing tear gas and live ammunition, leaving more than 50 people dead and dozens arrested.
After the president shelved the tax increases, protesters began calling for his resignation. The protesters are a mix of Gen Z and millennials across the ethnic lines that have historically tainted the East African country’s politics. In another concession on Wednesday, Ruto named four opposition figures to a “broad-based” cabinet, but that wasn’t enough.
“Zakayo appointed corrupt people to fight corruption,” activist Boniface Mwangi wrote on X. Mwangi was referring to the biblical tax collector Zacchaeus, whose Swahili name has become a favorite nickname for Ruto among protesters.
The anger of the tech-savvy protesters, whom Adan calls “leaderless, party-less and tribe-less”, reflects deep dissatisfaction with Kenya’s political class.
In Kenya, political dynasties have long played the ethnic card, often leading to deadly violence, to lure opponents into government when things got tough. Now analysts believe a protest movement known as Generation Z could upend the order that has governed Kenya since independence from Britain in 1963, with a push to topple Ruto’s two-year-old government.
“The old templates used by former presidents Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta must be discarded and forgotten,” the Star editorial said. “The Zoomers have demonstrated that business as usual does not work.”
“Kenya has a very woke and well-educated young population that has accepted the fact that the political elite has always divided Kenyans along tribal lines and the allocation of resources,” said Mwangi Maina, a 28-year-old political commentator in Nairobi.
Maina added: “Politicians are being pushed into a corner and are yet to get a sense from the youth about what is going on in the country. We have never seen anything like this since independence.”
The unrest appears to be spreading to other countries. Young people in Uganda were arrested this week after they defied elderly President Yoweri Museveni at an anti-corruption rally, while in Nigeria, frustration over poor governance and the rising cost of living has led to a surge in social media calls for protests against President Bola Tinubu next week.
“Kenya will never be the same again because of what happened on June 25,” Mwangi said. “Kenyan youth said a powerful ‘no’ to bad leadership, corruption, tribalism and everything else that plagues the country.”
Mwangi was arrested this week after he called on protesters to lay flowers at Parliament House in honour of those killed in the riots.
The protesters are united in believing that Prime Minister Ruto does not understand the scale of the reforms they are seeking, and in naming his new cabinet this week, he reappointed several members of the previous cabinet he fired earlier this month.
“By putting the people he fired back in office, the president is showing that he is putting the same old men who have been killing innocent people back in office. Putting these old men back in office will only increase our anger,” said Davis Otieno, 25, a Luo man who stormed parliament last month.
At the start of the protests, Prime Minister Ruto took a conciliatory stance, praising “young people” for fulfilling their “democratic duty to stand up and be recognised”.
Last weekend, he struck a tougher tone, vowing to stop them and declaring “enough is enough.” “I’ve called them to the table, but they refuse to come and talk,” he said. “They continue to say they are faceless, shapeless and leaderless.”
According to the State Department, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Foreign Minister Ruto this week and “emphasized the important role that young people play” and “called for respecting the contributions young people make to Kenya’s development.”
A diplomat in Nairobi said: “Mr Ruto needs to learn to listen, not just hear, and young people need to learn to speak.”
Earlier this month, on Saba Saba Day – the anniversary of similar protests in 1990 that forced the late dictator Daniel arap Moi to reinstate multiparty rule – hundreds of Kenyans attended a concert in Nairobi, many chanting “Ruto must go!”
Lilian Kagai, a 22-year-old Luhya student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, said she believed young people had “completely changed the political narrative” by uniting on platforms such as X, Instagram and TikTok.
“Historically, our parents voted based on their ethnicity,” she said, “but our parents were raised in very different environments.”
“Young people are growing up in a tech-savvy environment and interact daily on social platforms on issues of national importance,” she added. “We want a changed Kenya.”
