By Kenya’s political landscape has, since independence, been conditioned, dominated and shaped by political elites. These elites, often commanding popular tribal support, have shaped narratives which are easily construed as their respective communities and political parties’ standpoint. At independence, Kenya had Jomo Kenyatta, Oginga Odinga, Ronald Ngala, Tom Mboya, Masinde Muliro who commanded strong tribal backing and ended up shaping the political and economic narrative of the country. The trend extended to governance and the allocation of resources which was and has always been determined by how well your elite, as the community’s prize fighter, played his/her politics with the ruling elite. Consequently, Kenya became a deeply classist and fragmented society where winner or the winning elite, who are basically the most dominant bulls in the arena, determined who eats the national cake.
Traditional mainstream media, as the mainstay of Kenya’s access to information, equally did not do any justice to challenge this political elite-based trend. Rather, it was common for prime-time news to focus on what the elite wore, ate, where they worshipped and any gobbledygook that they spewed in such nondescript events. All this while, mainstream media ignored any other voice that could have made more remarkable, newsworthy event. Media entrenched political elitism, until social media occurred, and with it arose a new sheriff in Kenya’s political landscape.
This new actor, young in age, vibrant intellectually, agile both mentally and physically, entered the arena with neither recall for historical elites and their achievements of yore, nor deity-like worship that the elite has enjoyed over the years. Gen-Z, as they have come to be lumped together due to their generational placement, are a respecter of no persons, politically. Embracing the power of social media, they have overcome some of the challenges that in the immediate past, were a preserve of political elites. The most critical of these is political mobilization. Raila Odinga, the most influential political player in Kenya since the advent of multiparty politics, has for long enjoyed massive political following and its attendant trappings of power, principally because of his genius-grade political mobilization. No one has been able to hold hostage successive governments of Presidents Moi, Kibaki, Uhuru and now Ruto with the effectiveness of Raila Odinga. Until Gen-Zs happened. Raila is on the precipice of something so big and surprising, something that could eventually redefine his place in Kenya’s political landscape. If there is a generation that is capable of consigning Raila to political oblivion, then Gen-Z is that generation of the new political elite.
The main currency of political significance in Kenya is how well you can plan for, organize, mobilize and execute political protests. Some political elites, without Raila Odinga’s charisma, resort to paid-up protests. These transactional protests are neither organic nor effective, and have been easily quelled solely through police response. Even Raila’s protests have always been put off with strong police response. However, when Gen-Z mobilized against Kenya’s finance bill 2024, the protests were so massive they posed existential threat to the Ruto administration. The result of which for the first time Kenya deployed its military to the streets. Mobilized on the ‘tribeless, leaderless, formless’ pillars, there has never been a more powerful public vote of no confidence against any government as witnessed in these protests.
Gen-Zs in Kenya, as a generation, has surpassed all generations in responding to the conditions that underpinned elitist politics in Kenya. These include challenging tribal-based political mobilization, personality-cult in Kenya’s politics where only who-is-who could make significant political statements, misuse of mainstream media to anchor political elitism. The focus is on voter registration and eventual rallying around one political figurehead who will embody the aspirations of Gen-Zs. This is the last hurdle which will also be the last nail on the populist, elitist political coffin. Gen-Zs are currently, Kenyans’ best hope to set the country on a path to political and economic freedom, away from the stranglehold of few elitists who haven’t left much to write home about.
