Kenya’s Third Liberation Movement

Kenya’s Third Liberation Movement

It’s no longer just about the finance bill. Kenyans want fundamental change.

July 16, 2024

If the point of protest is to create a counter-crisis, then the people’s movement in Kenya has succeeded. Emboldened by the 2010 Constitution, which transitioned the country into an open and democratic society, a people’s grab for power, unprecedented in scale and force, has captured global attention and put President William Ruto’s ruling party on the back foot.

The largest nationwide protests in a generation saw young Kenyans breach the Parliament building to symbolically take back “the people’s house,” where they were greeted by snipers and live gunfire that resulted in a mass casualty incident at the nation’s largest hospital and left many dead. The events of June 25 marked a turning point, transforming anti-taxation protests into broader claims of a government that has lost its legitimacy and a president unfit to rule. The violence unleashed (trigger warning) on innocent protestors, who had nothing but flags, placards, and their voices, has now put the political class in a fight for its survival against a leaderless, youth-led, and decentralised movement that it cannot cajole into dialogue. With social media as their primary tool for mobilisation, the hashtag #RutoMustGo has been trending since June 25.

From imperious to concessional, President Ruto seems to be scrambling as a steady drumbeat calls for his resignation. The “flying president,” who has not left the country in nearly a month, has capitulated to demands to trim government expenditure, making a series of pronouncements that removed unconstitutional offices of the first wives, cut back on government advisors, and slashed nonessential travel for public officers, all of which had cost taxpayers millions of dollars in the previous financial year. He also signed into law a bill paving the way for the reconstitution of the country’s electoral commission board, a key demand of the movement, which is eager to begin the recall process for members of parliament who are barely two years into their terms, forcing them into new elections. Among the targets are MPs who voted “yes” to the Finance Bill and others accused of murder (and clearly unfit for office). Bowing to demands for transparency over the country’s debt, President Ruto also promised a national debt audit, although his methods for carrying out this audit are under fire.

Yet none of these actions has decreased the tenor of protests in the country, and as civil unrest entered its fourth week with no signs of stoppage, the president announced the dissolution of all but one of his cabinet secretaries, firing 21 individuals including the attorney general. The last cabinet dissolution of this kind took place nearly two decades ago in 2005, when some of those taking to the streets were not yet alive. In a sign of how rapidly a counter-crisis is unfolding, a day after this, the head of the national police abruptly announced his resignation at the same time that severely mutilated bodies were being discovered at a quarry in Nairobi; leaving Kenyans digging in their heels in their demands for a total transformation of governance in the country.

Forty-one people are dead and counting. Most shot or beaten to death, post-mortems show. Twelve-year-old Kennedy Onyango had stepped out of his house to borrow a book from a friend when he was shot by police. Asked about Kennedy’s shooting during a roundtable TV interview, Ruto bit his lower lip before responding, “That boy, he’s alive, right?” A nation’s jaws collectively dropped to the floor; Onyango had been dead for two days. Beasley Kamau had just celebrated his 22nd birthday. Evans Kiratu was only 21 years old. Kenneth Njeru was 19, and Joseph Gitau 18.

David Chege, 39, was shot in the head by a sniper. The force of the bullet blew his head open and left his brain on a street outside Parliament (an image I will never forget) as police fired rounds of tear gas at citizens who tried to keep vigil over him, holding the flag in their hands. Denzel Omondi, 24, who had been missing for a week and was last seen filming himself on Parliament grounds, was found dead, floating in a quarry. Human rights organisations have also recorded at least 674 arbitrary arrests and detentions, including those of children. Another 361 people have been injured, some paralysed, and 36 others abducted or forcibly disappeared.

Accounts by those abducted are only beginning to come out, while posts on social media show loved ones still searching for their missing. To date, no one has been held accountable for the abductions, deaths, or rights violations taking place. But it is not just the violent tactics of the Ruto government against young people armed with nothing but their voices – and in the case of Kennedy, a desire to learn – that is sustaining the indignation of the movement. It is also the failure of the Ruto administration to deliver progress. Twenty-two months into office, the administration has accomplished less than 5% of their manifesto, as a digital tracker of the ruling party’s campaign promises shows. Of the 284 promises made to Kenyans, only 13 have been honoured and at least 22 broken.

After years of mismanagement of the country’s affairs by a small political elite that includes President Ruto – who has been in and out of elected office since 1997 – Kenya has become a miserable place to live in for those without power, wealth, or the requisite connections to attain either. Successive governments, borrowing heavily in the Kenyan people’s name in opaque debt arrangements have also left the country in a debt crisis. With a debt burden estimated at $80 billion – over 70 times Kenya’s annual GDP of $110 million – Kenyans have little to show for it. There are no jobs for the young and old, inadequate health care for the sick, a crumbling education sector for children, no affordable housing for families, or social welfare protections for those in need. Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to rise. Leaving Kenyans asking, “Where does our money go?”

Cases of massive corruption provide some answers and steady fodder for the country’s newspapers. An auditor-general report published this week shows the government “cannot show projects funded with Sh1.13 trillion [$8.5 billion] of expensive loans” borrowed between 2010–2021.

Further reporting by Africa Uncensored into budgeted corruption also found at least $10 billion lost to state corruption between 1978 and 2022. For context, Kenya’s outstanding debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stands at less than $4 billion. And the political class is so detached from the concerns of ordinary Kenyans, who languish in poverty, that annual national and county budgets have become wealth-enriching schemes. In the 2024–2025 financial budget, for example, over $15 million was allocated for new cars for senior government officials, with only $780,000 set aside for youth development. Critically, 35% of Kenya’s population is between the age of 15 to 35, and the unemployment rate for young people stands at 67%.

These statistics – and the fact that Ruto ran on a youth platform – might explain the president’s eagerness in the previously mentioned TV interview to extoll all the overseas jobs his globe-trotting is creating for young people. A scan of the government portal listing “Foreign Active Jobs” is filled with vacancies for housemaids, house helps, housekeepers, cleaners, and drivers in countries with documented human rights abuses against Kenyan labourers. The petite bourgeoisie, Kenyans say, have sold us out to enrich themselves.

In “What Must We Do to Be Free?” Ed Whitfield writes that chattel slavery in the Americas relied on “the use of power to take from a person the product of their own labour.” In Kenya, 61% of every shilling collected in taxpayer revenue, according to Ruto, is spent on servicing debt. Not only is this an admission of the government’s inability to meet the essential needs of Kenyans, but it amounts to the theft of the labour of the Kenyan people. Budgeted state corruption means Kenyan taxpayers are paying for loans, some of which never arrived in Kenya. Young Kenyans, who have rightfully identified the connection between the lack of control over their labour and its products (in tax revenues) are now seeking liberation from decades of economic violence and the yoke of Western extractionism and imperialism that the political class has tethered itself to. They are demanding a government that prioritises their interests and a country in which they can live, work, and thrive.

The country, they say, has enough revenue to meet its needs and provide jobs and futures for its young people, if only it can fix its expenditure problem. It is also capable of ridding itself of lenders like the IMF, whose conditionalities cause strife for its citizens. Reports show that the IMF not only approved the tax proposals in the contentious Finance Bill but had also anticipated the anti-tax protests long before Kenyans saw the bill and mobilised their rage. Terming the protests a “medium risk,” the IMF urged the Kenyan government to proceed with plans to increase taxation on an already overtaxed population. Fadhel Kaboub, writing for The Guardian, documents how IMF and US fiscal policies continue to fail the Kenyan people: “Kenya can have democracy or neocolonial extraction, but not both – because democracy means addressing the demands of the Kenyan people.”

What happens next is the question on everyone’s minds. There are more protests planned in the coming week. The dynamism of the Kenyan people’s movement, its ability to organise both online and offline, is its greatest strength. The use of social media platforms for civic education, community dialogue, and political mobilisation is generating organic demands and direct actions grounded in people’s lived experiences rather than driven by political agendas. This will make them sustainable in realising the Kenya we want. Increased scrutiny of the government and its dealings is also putting pressure on accountability and transparency. As a speaker noted in a recent X Space gathering, our “success is that our appeal is not to the president but to the Constitution itself.”

We are not appealing for a leader to save us but for the actualisation of the country the Kenyan people envisioned in 2010. And as political discourse infiltrates every public and private space in Kenya, it is clear that a third liberation movement has taken root, led by its young people. It is Kenyans aged 40 and under who will swing the next election in 2027, but it is an election too far off for a movement gaining ground and concretising around a core demand: Ruto Must Go.

@ Kari Mugo 2024 – shared with author full permission
 

AW Kamau 2024