Youths take part at the Uhuru Park grounds in Nairobi County during the Gen Z Memorial concert honour of those killed during anti-tax protests on July 7, 2024.
The Gen-Z revolt was a rejection of a fundamentally flawed system of governance.
This system is characterised by certain practices. First, the system is thoroughly corrupt. Since Jomo Kenyatta derisively asked his fellow detainee Bildad Kaggia what wealth he had acquired for himself, a culture of frantic accumulation of wealth was set in motion.
The purpose of being in government was to accumulate wealth through outright theft of public funds, doing business with government, or by using state office to monopolise opportunities in the public or private sectors.
That is why the sector that creates most millionaires in the shortest possible time is the public sector. During the re-vetting of dismissed cabinet secretaries, we learned that some of them had doubled or tripled their wealth in a matter of two years.
When a new administration assumes power, the new power elite goes on an orgy of wild shameless acquisition of wealth.
Secondly, while corruption is crippling because it siphons money from critical areas such as education, health or agricultural innovation, there is an attendant insidious and more pernicious cost.
This cost is twofold, the opportunity cost and the cost of negligence. When an officer is preoccupied with wealth accumulation, she cannot see opportunities - locally or abroad - that can benefit the public.
When she is looking for investment opportunities for herself, she neglects her official responsibilities. Therefore, with everyone in government caught in a rat race to acquire stupendous wealth, the economy stagnates, joblessness becomes endemic, poverty increases, and despair sets in.
The corruption and negligence are not sanctioned. In fact, by its very nature, the system encourages the vices. The judiciary, parliament and other institutions, themselves compromised by bribes, are incapable of stopping the looting and negligence.
The church is compromised by generous handouts from the corrupt. The middle class prefers not to rock the boat. The intelligentsia keeps analysing shifting tribal alliances in the contestation for power. They are incapable of subverting the paradigm.
That is why Gen-Z rebellion made the political class, the church, intelligentsia and everyone else panic. In fact, opposing sides of the political class quickly closed ranks.
The youth were rejecting the premise of the corrupt system. They presented a new vision for Kenya. The media reported on these youthful activists and invited them on TV talk shows.
It was inspirational and refreshing to hear something other than the usual tribal calculus. In their editorials, the media echoed the new vision.
Alarmingly, however, the new voices are fading from media spaces. On TV talk shows, we are back to the tired analytics of possible tribal alliances.
Regime apologists, in clerical, scholarly or lawyerly garb, are again parroting the usual platitudes. Once again, we are in danger of the agenda being set by the regime, its apologists, the church and intelligentsia. The media must bring back the fading voices of Gen-Z. The old voices present an existential threat to the Kenya nation-state.
