By ELSIE EYAKUZE

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In light of my current support of what Young Kenya is trying to achieve in their political sphere, I may have given the impression that I am an ageist. I want to make it very clear: I am absolutely an ageist.

The 21st Century has no business reproducing the same-same issues and structures of the past, it has a lot of science fiction to live up to. I am also aware that we humans can be stubborn about change, but I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone in my dreams of the youth dragging us forth into a shining near-future. If only we would just let them lead?

Nearly half of the world’s people in over 70 polities will be holding some form of election this year- a bumper crop for democracy. Some countries are happier than others about their offerings. I was recently grilled in an interview about our own elections this year and next year and I learned that I am lacking enthusiasm. I feel frighteningly flat. Like a depressed liberal American.

There has been much ado about the age of the incumbent and his competitor in the USA. I am enjoying this in a dark kind of way. My fellow Africans: we have got to be winning the prize for superannuated dodderers when it comes to Presidents. We have thinly veiled monarchies passing for republics. I haven’t been excited about an election in at least a decade. For a Tanzanian, this is largely a mathematical problem.

If I live into my seventies, I might be lucky to see about six Presidents in my lifetime as a minimum, maybe more if we stop stealing elections wins from the opposition. It is not a bad number for the East African neighbourhood. However, of those six Presidents I will be very lucky if I get to be served by someone younger than me. And that sucks.

Read: EYAKUZE: Who’d have thought children would be given bullets, not bread?

Look, I am not at all cynical about this country- honestly the potential we are sitting on is a little bit frightening to consider in its entirety. But the bottleneck of geriatrics in power is frustrating me. They do not see the irony of recounting a modern history in which they feature as Independence Heros - who got their jobs in their twenties and thirties. They tell young people that they are too young to take charge. They are hypocrites.

Much of the chaos of the youth might actually be an outcome of this stagnation we are facing. What are they supposed to do with all that youthful vigour? They should be tilling the land and muscling this economy into the double digits of growth figures! Instead, they are condescended to and told to wait their turn.

If the youth must wait their turn, it means that I miss out on having a long and lovely middle age when my only social usefulness is the experience I have accrued so far. I am lazy, which is another word for “deeply efficient about energy conservation.” I want to skip over the headaches and responsibility of governing and go straight to an advisory role, and my generation could get that gift of freedom and optimism... if only the Elders would allow it.

So yes, I am an ageist. Anyone in their right mind should be. It is not just a matter of economics: this is how countries are catapulted forward, and this is how early retirement and real progressive taxation and four-day workweeks and cool technology become possible. And we could do with a lot of that.