One year ago, Kenya’s parliament burned, not with the slow, bureaucratic smolder of corruption, but with the raw, unfiltered rage of a generation pushed to the brink. The Finance Bill of 2024 was the spark, but the kindling had been piling up for years: youth unemployment at a staggering 67%, a government addicted to predatory loans, and a police force that treats live ammunition as its first, and only, response to dissent. On June 25, 2024, Gen Z, often referred to as the “digital natives” dismissed as too distracted by TikTok to care about politics, stormed the halls of power. They were met not with dialogue, but with bullets. At least 60 were killed, their blood soaking the same streets where their parents once marched for multiparty democracy, only to inherit a new era of kleptocrats draped in the hollow robes of reform.
Now, as Kenya braces for another “Day of Remembrance” on June 25, 2025, the irony is so thick you could carve it with a panga. The same government that last year sneered at protesters as “jobless youths with too much time” now solemnly declares that security forces are “fully prepared.” Prepared for what? To protect citizens, or to protect power from citizens? President William Ruto, the self-proclaimed “hustler” who rode to power on the backs of the poor, now presides over a regime that taxes the air they breathe while handing out tax breaks to the wealthy. His latest act? A delicate ballet of hypocrisy: condemning police brutality while his officers gun down unarmed vendors and arrest journalists for “incitement” when they dare to document the carnage.
The police, ever the loyal performers, have their script memorized: “We do not condone unlawful assemblies,” they declare, unless those assemblies are pro-government goons armed with clubs and escorted by officers on payroll. “The rogue officer has been apprehended,” they announce. Still, only after the video of their atrocities trends on X. “Protests must remain peaceful,” they warn, as they launch tear gas canisters into crowds of teenagers holding nothing but placards and smartphones. Meanwhile, the opposition, that grand theater of the absurd, has traded its megaphones for whispers in the boardroom. Raila Odinga, the eternal “people’s president,” is now in bed with the government, while erstwhile Gen Z firebrands morph into “party loyalists,” their revolutionary fervor diluted by the allure of power’s crumbs.
And what of the international audience? The same Western powers that fund Kenya’s “democracy initiatives” also demand austerity measures that strangle the poor. The IMF applauds Ruto’s “bold economic reforms” while mothers skip meals to afford school fees. The U.S. Embassy issues cautious travel advisories but stays conspicuously silent as its ally’s police turn protest zones into killing fields. The message is clear: in Kenya, democracy is a commodity, bought and sold to the highest bidder, while the people foot the bill in blood.
Let us speak now of the dead, not as statistics, but as ghosts who refuse to be silenced. The 60-plus killed last June, their names reduced to hashtags, their bodies buried in unmarked graves. Albert Ojwang, the blogger who mocked a police chief and was rewarded with a fatal beating, his death certificate reads “suicide by blunt force trauma.” Boniface Kariuki, the mask vendor shot in the head for standing too close to a protest, his crime being poverty in the wrong place at the wrong time. The state’s refrain? “Investigations are ongoing.” A phrase as empty as campaign promises, as hollow as the barrels of the guns that cut them down.
But Gen Z does not mourn in silence. They do not need aging politicians to lead them, they have something far more dangerous: smartphones, Wi-Fi, and a refusal to be erased. Last year’s protests were orchestrated on TikTok and X, where tear gas became a backdrop for viral defiance. This year, the government mutters about a “Social Media Bill” to muzzle dissent, but the youth have already mastered the art of digital resistance. Their weapons? Sarcasm sharper than a policeman’s bayonet: “Raise taxes, not hope,” one sign read. Shame weaponized through livestreams that force the state to feign accountability, but only when the world is watching. Solidarity that transcends tribe and class, uniting the slums of Kibera with the leafy suburbs of Karen in a chorus of enough is enough.
As June 25 looms, the state has two scripts at the ready. The first: the conciliatory farce. “We hear you, let us dialogue,” they will say, even as armored trucks roll into Nairobi. The second: the iron fist. “We will not tolerate chaos,” they will declare, chaos being any gathering not sanctioned by the regime. The police promise “enhanced security measures,” the churches call for prayers, and the youth? They sharpen their wit, charge their phones, and prepare for war. Because in Kenya, democracy is a funeral where the mourners are forced to dig their own graves.
So here’s to June 25, a day of remembrance, a day of rage, a day when the farce will be laid bare once more. The government will kill, the police will lie, the politicians will posture, and the world will look away. But the children of the revolution will rise again, louder, angrier, and more relentless than before. For every hashtag, every tear gas canister, every empty promise, they will return, because Kenya’s Gen Z does not protest because they hate their country. They protest because they love it enough to fight for its soul. And history has a funny way of siding with those who refuse to be silenced.
See you on the streets!!
#June25Memory #KenyaIsBleeding
