Facing a sudden outbreak of protests in Kenya a month ago, President William Ruto offered the angry young demonstrators a major concession: he withdrew a tax bill that had aimed to raise over $2.3bn.
But for the protesters, that was just a warm-up.
Almost six weeks into the leaderless, online-organised mass movement, Kenyan-Somali activist 28-year-old Hanifa Adan said: “Everyone is just asking for accountability from their leaders . . . A bunch of nobodies giving them a run, and then not finding anyone they could put their hands on, is what drives them crazy.”
More than 50 people have died and scores been arrested after the initially peaceful protests took a darker turn when demonstrators stormed parliament on June 25 and police began firing tear gas and live rounds.
After the president shelved the tax increases, the protesters — a combination of generation Z and millennial Kenyans, straddling ethnic lines that had previously marred the politics of the east African country — began calling for his resignation. In another concession, Ruto on Wednesday nominated four opposition figures to a “broad-based” cabinet, but that did not satisfy them.
“Zakayo has appointed corrupt people to fight corruption,” wrote activist Boniface Mwangi, on X, referring to the biblical tax collector Zacchaeus, whose Swahili name has become protesters’ preferred nickname for Ruto.
The fury of the tech-savvy protesters, who Adan called “leaderless, partyless and tribeless”, reflects a deep frustration with Kenya’s political class.
In Kenya, political dynasties have long played the ethnic card — which has often led to deadly violence — and roped in the opposition into their governments when things turned difficult. Now analysts believe that the protest movement known as Gen Z, through its efforts to bring down Ruto’s two-year-old government, may upend an order that has governed Kenya since independence from Britain in 1963.
“The old templates used by former presidents Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta must be shredded and forgotten,” read a Star newspaper editorial. “Zoomers have demonstrated that business as usual will not wash.”
Mwangi Maina, a Nairobi-based 28-year-old political commentator, said: “We have a very awake and very educated young population which has come to terms with the fact that the political elite has always divided Kenyans along tribal lines and resource-sharing.”
Maina added: “The political class has been cornered and they have yet to come to terms with what is happening in the country coming from the young people, something we have never seen here since independence.”
The unrest appears to be spreading to other countries. This week, young demonstrators were arrested in Uganda for defying ageing president Yoweri Museveni in an anti-corruption rally. In Nigeria, social media calls have mushroomed for protests against President Bola Tinubu next week, fuelled by discontent with poor governance and high living costs.
“Kenya will never be the same again because of what happened on 25th June,” Mwangi said, “when the young people of Kenya said an emphatic ‘No!’ to bad leadership, corruption, tribalism, and everything else that bedevils our country.”
After calling this week for protesters to lay flowers at parliament buildings in memory of those killed in the riots, Mwangi was arrested.
Demonstrators are united in believing Ruto has failed to grasp the scale of changes they seek. In nominating his new cabinet this week, he reappointed several people from the previous cabinet that he fired earlier this month.
“By reintroducing people he had sacked, he is showing us that he is recycling the same old people who have been killing innocent people. Recycling these old people will just make us more bitter,” said Davis Otieno, 25, an ethnic Luo who was among those who stormed parliament last month.
In the demonstrations’ early days Ruto appeared conciliatory, praising “our young people” for doing “a democratic duty to stand and be recognised”.
Last weekend he took a sharper tone, vowing to stop them and declaring that “enough is enough”. “I called them to the table for discussions, but they refused to come and speak to me,” he said. “They continue to say they are faceless, formless and leaderless.”
US secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke to Ruto this week and “emphasised the vital role played by youth” and “urged respect for their contributions to Kenya’s development”, according to the State Department.
A foreign diplomat in Nairobi said: “Ruto needs to learn to listen instead of just hearing, and the youngsters need to learn to talk.”
Earlier this month, on Saba Saba Day — which marks the day in 1990 when similar protests began that eventually forced the government of the late autocrat Daniel arap Moi to restore multi-party politics — hundreds of Kenyans attended a concert in Nairobi, many chanting: “Ruto must go!”
Lilian Kagai, a 22-year-old ethnic Luhya student at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, said she believed younger people had “entirely changed the political narrative” by uniting on platforms such as X, Instagram and TikTok.
“Historically, our parents used to vote on ethnic lines,” she said. “But our parents were raised in a totally different set-up.
“The young people have been raised in a tech-savvy environment where we interact daily on social platforms on issues of national importance,” she added. “We demand a changed Kenya.”
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