By Obed K Katureebe
Kenya’s Generation Z teams were last week on the streets of Nairobi again ostensibly to commemorate one year since they protested the new tax policies passed by parliament in June 2024. They were also remembering some of their colleagues who were arrested and those that died as police and other security agencies attempted to manage the ensuing chaos. Sadly, it is said that eight people lost their lives in this second round of protests.
Kenya’s Constitution affirms the inalienable right to protest under Article 37 which states that, every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petitions to public authorities. Granted. The worry is, how will the protesters manage the excesses that come with such endless protests where selfish persons turn such moments into occasions to deprive peoples’ property through robbery. And then of course selfish politicians who want to use such moments to drive their agenda of tarnishing the image of the government in power and get political mileage.
In the first round of protests, Kenya’s Gen Z were protesting tax bills that had been enacted by parliament but were deemed prohibitive. Kenyans felt those taxes were hell bent to increase the cost of living. People across Kenya cheered the Gen Z and indeed government was sensitive enough to quash those laws and assured citizens that nothing was going to change. Shockingly, this did not make the Gen Z to get out of the streets, they instead shifted the goal posts and demanded the sitting president William Ruto to leave office.
The protests unfortunately degenerated into violence and people shops were looted, some building including the Uganda House in the central business area of Nairobi was set on fire and everything was tilting into total chaos until government called in the army to tame the mess. Indeed, the mess was tamed at a huge cost though.
Last week protests were equally destructive as the so-called Gen Z were involved in looting and destroying supermarkets and other physical infrastructure, they got their hands on before police arrived. Shocking is the fact that some politicians joined in these anniversary protests largely to increase pressure on the ruling government to either abdicate “the throne” or continue to taint their image before the citizens until the next circle of elections where they hope to score political dividends.
As it is turning out, these are no longer the youth who are demanding for political accountability, they are now embedded with politicians and are demanding for regime change using protests. Their catch word says it all, ‘Ruto Must Go’. They are building something like the Orange Revolution of Ukraine in 2004 or the Tahir Square protests that toppled the government of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011.
Copying from their Kenyan colleagues, Uganda’s Gen Z also tried to cause similar protests last year by raiding Parliament in July 2024 accusing it of being corrupt. This was after many media stories in both traditional and new media depicted parliament as a house of making dirty financial deals.
These were however, nipped in the bud and their protests were not as big as those in Kenya. No property was destroyed, and the disruption was very negligible. True, Kenya and other African governments must address the restive young populations and optimally to address political exclusion, poverty, inequalities, and unemployment. However, this must be done in a way that does not threaten peace and tranquillity of the entire country and probably drive the country into a civil unrest.
These mass protests could easily spiral out of hand and result in the violent collapse of the government. These Gen Zs are not different from the Arab Springs in the northern Africa that saw the collapse of at least three governments and disrupted others in 2011. But apart from collapsing autocratic three governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya they literally changed nothing. In fact, they removed one group of the so-called autocrats and another one emerged. This time some countries like Libya collapsed completely. As we speak, Libya is literally a failed state with no central government. It is a country divided and ruled by sections of dangerous militia groups. They only succeeded in hugely disrupting their economies and reversed their development programmes and millions of lives were lost. In Egypt, a democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi was arrested by the army in a coup and later he died in prison.
Twelve years after the mass popular uprising known as the Arab Spring began in January of 2011, optimism can be hard to find. Despite the participation of thousands of people particularly the young against the ‘autocratic’ rulers, little seems to have changed. Tunisians brought down a dictator and established a representative democracy, but that fledgling republic is still struggling. Other countries, such as Egypt, have only replaced one military ruler (Hosni Mubarak) for another (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi), while still others, like Libya, there is nothing to write about once a thriving modern country.
For all we have known, Kenya is a country that embraces dialogue. After the 2007 general election mess, the two main protagonists i.e. Raila Odinga and president Mwai Kibaki (RIP)dialogued, and peace returned. The two worked out power sharing deal with the help of mediators and armistice was reached. Even after the gruelling 2022 general elections that had current president William Ruto squaring up with Raila Odinga in which Ruto emerged winner with small majority though, Ruto was kind enough to speak to his nemesis Raila Odinga for a peace deal.
Similar deals involving the restless Gen Zs should be pursued such that this great country does not slide into ungovernable levels. There is no need for any other young man or woman to be dying through street protests. Their lives matter.

The writer is the Acting Executive Director
Uganda Media Centre