IN THE BEGINNING
Sometimes in 2023 President William Ruto allegedly told some UDA MPs at State House, Nairobi that the first thing he did when he became president, was to find some work for former President Uhuru Kenyatta: That of being a peace ambassador for the East and Central African region. He then told them he was in the process of getting Raila Odinga a job at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “I’m remaining with one more task to accomplish – rope in Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, and in 2027 I will be sorted,” the President is reported to have gloated.
What the president was saying, in a roundabout way, is that for him to rule smoothly without “hitches”, he had to keep his potential opponents busy and away from the national politics; literally. Have a former president gallivanting around the region ostensibly suing for peace among quarrelling neighbours. Keep an even more lethal threat some hundreds of kilometres away from the capital city Nairobi. Raila’s always excitable mob of supporters had begun talking of re-baptising Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa to Addis ya Baba.
Harold Wilson, the British Labour Prime Minister in 1964 told journalists that “a week is a long time in politics”. The tumultuous two weeks of June 18–July 2, 2024 might as well turn out to be the longest in President Ruto’s presidency, whether it ends in 2027 or 2032, or somewhere in between. As he confided in some of his loyalists about how he was (ably) re-organising national politics, little did he know that in the coming months, he would be faced with a zillennial zeitgeist that would completely subvert his game plan.
Me, myself and I
According to an MP who was present at State House when President Ruto made the remarks, he, Ruto, believed that if all went as planned – getting the Opposition as currently constituted out of his way, there would only be three candidates in the presidential race, 2027 – me, myself and I. It was a political vista that President Ruto hoped he would carry along with little or no disruption going forward.
When the zillennials burst into the scene, on June 18, the government’s reaction was archaic and stereotypical: Send in the police beat up and scatter the protestors, possibly kill two or three to send a clear message home that, it wasn’t going to tolerate any dissent of whatever kind. Instead, the police confronted an unconventionally peaceful, organised and united demonstrators articulate in their demands: These were not their usual riots on the streets. The demonstrators had read and understood the contents of the ill-informed Finance Bill 2024. They did not want it; not in part, but in whole. They were resolute in their demands.
The security apparatuses looking for criminally-inclined, violent-prone looters and rioters, who are mostly mobilised from the low-income ghetto areas of Nairobi city, could find none. These protestors were polished, thoroughly urbanised, highly intelligent and carried themselves with a level of sophistication that even the bejewelled police marvelled at. For example, the zillennials had developed an app which operated like a walkie-talkie on their phones, that relayed relevant info such as, the demos’ progression, which streets to avoid, what to carry, what to wear and where to congregate. The surprising youthful corpus of protestors were also cheeky and friendly to the sombre looking police. They had a surprisingly disarming effect on the usually rough-hewn anti-police brigade.
Likeable, friendly and talkative
A General Service Unit (GSU) paramilitary officer friend once told me that when they are sent to the streets to quell riots, they are admittedly reminded that the protestors are their enemy and must crash them. They must not display any signs of emotions – empathetic or otherwise. They must not talk to them. Indeed, as one of the anti-riot police officers revealingly told me, “I’ve not met such daring and fearless protestors in my two decades in the police, like these kids. I couldn’t believe it – they were likeable, friendly and talkative.”
So, the first two demos of June 18 and June 20 were successful and because of this, it bamboozled both the government and the security apparatuses. How do you confront a people who are not violent, are not destroying property and are talking to you respectfully? Hence, the government was caught flat-footed because it didn’t believe initially that the demos were not your usual conventional party-affiliated or opposition-led demos. Your usual demos are organised by opposition politicians, are recruited from the slums of the Nairobi and are paid facilitation fees to mobilise and participate.
That is why the government, in the second week of June 25 and June 27 protests, the government security apparatuses in a frantic effort went kidnapping some of the demonstrators who they imagined could have been in the forefront of storming the streets. They were looking for any (incriminating) information or intel that could lead to pinning down the demos to some forces or key lead ring leaders of the protestors, who they would later label as “forces of darkness.” The government also spread fear and despondency in the hope that they would frighten the zillennials out of the streets.
Little wonder the Kenya Defence Force (KDF) soldiers deployed to “crash” the spiralling hydra-headed, leaderless, demos couldn’t last long on the streets: They were cool, empathetic and friendly. On a Nairobi street where they were patrolling in their armoured vehicles, some of the soldiers engaged the protestors and told them they were on the streets strictly because they were obeying orders. They had zero intentions of harming or stopping them from pursuing a legitimate protest. Some soldiers even bumped a fist greeting with some zillennials. The KDF professionally trained to defend Kenya from external aggression, and not beat up fellow Kenyans, exemplified their empathy towards the zillennials by “waving them on” and even allowed them to hang on their infantry combat vehicles.
Looking for the smoking gun
Even as the government was looking for the smoking gun, some of the state officials and Kenya Kwanza coalition MPs, resorted to bastardising, blindsiding and gaslighting the zillennials. Later, they “retracted” their emotional and irrational reactions by becoming condescending and patronising. They bastardised them by referring to them as “criminals”. This was President Ruto. They blindsided them by referring to them as over-indulged posh kids, who didn’t know what it is that they were agitating for. They also gaslighted them by subtly calling them putschists and “terrorists.” But in a matter of days, they all beat a hasty retreat, including President Ruto and now patronised them by calling them “our children”. Condescendingly they praised them for practising their democratic right to demonstrate.
The unprecedented move that the zillennial zeitgeist unleashed on the political landscape is such that it forced a closing of ranks among the political barons across the political divide. An endangered species, the Kenya political class has come together in a baronial conspiracy in the name of “dialogue” – a misnomer – but in reality, fighting to remain relevant in a political atmosphere that threatens to declare them useless. A real fear that when it grasps the political elite class, it becomes a danger to society.
The sheer thought of being dethroned and displaced by a motley group of well-organised and well-attuned generational subverters – not linked to, or controlled by political godfathers – has spread absolute fear between the political class, that has always thrived on ethnic machinations. So much so that within no time of the zillennial’s easing of their demonstrations, on July 7, 2024, the political class had met and cobbled-up an elite consensus for its preservation and survival.
If there was any lingering doubt that the political class – whether in the opposition or as the ruling elite – have always stood united in their ultimate ambition and mission of perpetually controlling the political levers has been exposed. The zeitgeist has exposed them all as ethnic lords and oppressor class, whose sole mission has always been and remains self-aggrandizement.
"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet”.
The Ruto regime aficionados must be a very worried lot because the zillennials have come to subvert the “Hustler” narrative – of the “haves” and “have-nots”. That’s why their initial reaction to the class-less and tribe-less demos were labelled as, I-Phone waving, mineral water quenching, Uber hailing and (Java) coffee drinking posh kids, who were having some expensive fun on the streets. The “Hustler” narrative, which dichotomised Kenyans, not on ethnicity this time around, but on class differentiation, carried Ruto into the presidency. The deliberate effort by the Ruto regime to bifurcate the Kenyan society in Marxian class terms, was always seen as a double-edged sword.
A deliberate effort by some state mandarins hoped ingeniously to drive a wedge between the hoi polloi (presumed hustlers) and the bourgeoisie class, by telling them that the middle-class Kenyans didn’t want them to enjoy the same facilities as them. That is why for example they are opposed to the Housing levy and the incredulous motor vehicle tax, which was removed from the Finance Bill, after a hue and cry from Kenyans.
The zillennial uproar supported by scores of Kenyans across the class spectrum, debunked the notion that there is a schism among Kenyans’ who have quickly gotten tired of this government. The zillennials were drawn from all class sectors. They spoke the same language united only by their zeal to bring the government to listen to the needs and wants of Kenyans.
It is this zeal that has up-ended President Ruto’s game of seemingly providing jobs to his political nemeses as a buy-out plan for easy sail in 2027. On July 12, President Ruto fired his entire cabinet. The zillennials had claimed their second pound of flesh. I hate to say this, but You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet just like the lyrics by Batman-Turner Over drive band goes.
