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Lesedi: Hi, this is Radio Workshop. I’m Lesedi Mogoatlhe. Over the last few weeks, all eyes have been on Kenya. Hundreds of peaceful protesters took to the streets of Nairobi on June 18th. Two days later, thousands marched in the capital and throughout the country. Police forces responded. They used tear gas and water cannons to restrain the crowds.
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The protests were led by young Kenyans who wanted to put an end to the Kenya Finance Bill, legislation passed by Parliament to increase taxes. Kenya has a lot of national debt, some 80 billion US dollars, an amount that could lead to default and a significant impact on the economy.
The proposed tax increase was part of a government effort to lower the debt by nearly 3 billion dollars by levying taxes on subsistence items like bread and cooking oil. It also included a reduction in government subsidies for utilities like electricity, which would trigger an increase in living costs. Young people who are already struggling financially took to the streets in response.
By June 25th, a week into the protests, angry crowds broke through police barricades and entered the grounds of Parliament, they set several buildings on fire. Police responded by shooting into the crowd. And several people were killed. The Kenyan Human Rights Commission reported that 39 people died in the protests. The President says he will press pause on the bill for now. Until there is, quote, a conversation as a nation as to how to manage the affairs of the nation together.
Right now, as we are reporting this, it’s unclear what those talks will look like and who will be involved. But, there’s a larger question to ask. What have young people in Kenya actually won? To explore that question, I have on the line, Immanuel Muasya, former BBC senior journalist and documentary filmmaker, based in Nairobi.
Immanuel: Thank you for having me. I’m a bit tired after weeks of protests. Um, but yes, we keep on going on. We keep on doing what needs to be done.
Lesedi: Yeah. Yeah. I know that you spent the last weekend, you know, searching for friends, worried for them after they were arrested during the protests. I really want to ask you more about that. But first, can you take us to the streets where you were filming and reporting? Downtown Nairobi in the Central Business District, the heart of the protests. What did you see?
Immanuel: Um, it’s been very interesting. I’ve covered several demos and protests in town for the last 10 years, mostly led by the opposition and mostly led by political individuals. This time round, it was very different. It’s the biggest number of people I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world. The thing that has struck me the most and that was different was the amount of young people on the streets. how peaceful they were and how organized they were.
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Lesedi: The protests in Kenya have been nicknamed the Gen Z protests, not just because of the age of most protesters, but also because of how they organized. Online. Immanuel told me it was the largest number of people he’d ever seen gather on X, previously known as Twitter.
Immanuel: At first, actually, what happened when news of the finance bill went out and news of what the government wanted to do went out, Kenyans started, um, you know, assembling on digital media, mostly on Twitter, X, and TikTok. And I think these Twitter spaces really help people understand that we need to do something. I’m not the only one who’s mad. I’m not the only one who’s going through something.
There were hundreds and thousands of Kenyans who are able to speak in these Twitter spaces. We’ve never seen these kinds of audiences on any Twitter space, and it was actually something quite remarkable to think that you’re sitting here listening to this, and there are 130, 000 Kenyans listening out there.
Most people sat at home with their families listening. I saw someone tweeting that they were at a wedding. And they were listening with their parents. So goes to show how much Kenyans really wanted to have this discussion and to show how Kenyans have been organizing and making sure that their thoughts are in the same place online first before going on ground.
Lesedi: Yeah. I mean, I know you’ve been participating in these protests as a journalist, but you know, I’d like to ask you to maybe take that hat off for a moment and speak to me as just a Kenyan, a young Kenyan, I want to ask you to take me back to that moment where you first heard that the protests would take place. Where were you? Who were you with?
Immanuel: So the first time I heard about, you know, people planning to go out in the streets, I was just at home. I was on Twitter and I saw the conversation shift very fast to if these people are not listening to us, why don’t we go to parliament? And I remember I was with a few friends in the house and I told them, have you seen this discussion going on online that, you know, we should go to parliament to present our grievances? And everyone was like, no, I don’t think we can do that. You know, Kenyan cops, the way they are, we’ll all be killed. It will be very difficult.
A lot of people had always been saying in Kenya, one day the youths will come together. One day the youths will decide this is enough. So it was very interesting to see sort of this point come up and come up really fast because all this from the digital protest, texting MPs to people going in the streets was less than a week.
So this happened really, really fast. And in my first protest, I thought, are we going to be able to do this because there really weren’t, um, any big numbers. Um, most of the people who were on the streets that day were getting arrested. The police were doing the same thing they’ve been doing, you know, tear-gassing people and shooting live bullets.
But I think on the second protest where I went, I just remember getting to the CBD and I just had goosebumps all over me.
Protesters chanting: We are peaceful. We are peaceful. We are peaceful. We are peaceful. We are peaceful…
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Lesedi: What struck me as I followed the news from Kenya is that not too long ago when President Ruto came into power in 2022, he was seen as a champion for many Kenyan youth. Pictures of young people celebrating his win were everywhere in the news, on social media, his campaign coined him the President of the Hustlers. A man who came from humble beginnings, who didn’t let that deter him from hustling or working his way into power. But what changed? Why had young people who once believed that Ruto would defend the poorest of the poor now turn on him?
Remember, Ruto promised to fight against the government raising taxes. Now the young people who cheered him on are frustrated he didn’t keep his promise. During the protests, they chanted, “Ruto must go.” Immanuel says over the past two years, they’ve seen Ruto’s administration take a real turn.
Immanuel: So we started seeing them, you know, dressing in designer clothes. We started seeing them, um, allocating more offices to some of their cronies, to some of their wives. And this is something that has always made me mad because you’d come to somewhere like Nairobi when I’m doing my journalism and you’ll meet all these MPs driving very flashy cars, living in very flashy houses.
And some of these things happen in less than a year after they get into power. So you just know that these people are stealing. And then you travel maybe two or three hours out of the city and you find people who. Don’t know where the next meal is going to come from. And these are issues that I’ve been covering consistently for 10 years. And you can see nothing is changing. The political class keep getting richer. Um, we keep on having more and more corruption scandals.
This is why I was in the streets to voice my anger, to shout at the government a bit, and to just make it known that I’m not happy about what’s going on and so are other people not really happy about what’s going on.
Lesedi: One image that struck me from your Instagram stories is where you have a Kenyan flag tied around your neck and you have your head bent all the way back and you have a young woman pouring eyedrop solution into your eyes. You captioned it getting help from a random stranger. What was happening there? Do you remember?
Immanuel: At some point, we were getting tear gassed and I ran into a pizza shop and they closed the doors and I was in there, I was struggling to breathe, I couldn’t really see. And this lady just approached me and she was like, are you okay? Can I help you? And she gave me eyedrops. Um, I don’t know this lady’s name. I have never seen her. She gave me eyedrops and she bought me coffee and ice cream. And there was so much of this going on during the protest. And I think that’s something that a lot of Kenyans will never forget about this protest, how Kenyans have just been able to come together to help each other and to be there for each other, not only on the streets but also online.
We saw, um, at any mention, if someone got lost, you’d see every kind of person trying to see, can we go to the police station? Who can we call? Um, you know, there are all kinds of, um, different Kenyans just trying to be nice and helpful.
Lesedi: Why do you think that was the case? I mean, it’s maybe a difficult question to answer, but what brought that energy into this movement?
Immanuel: I think what, what we’ve always seen in Kenya when it comes to politics and protest was, this is, has mostly been taken over by the political class. And when you go for like protests, um, the politicians bring goons, so they’ll go to the slums and go to areas that are not well off. They’ll buy several hundred youth alcohol and other things and then pay them to come to the protest.
So normally when you’re in a protest, it’s not safe, people are very rowdy, but this was very different. We have quite a large amount of Kenyan youth. Um, the Kenyan population is, um, is its highest from 18 to around 35. These are people who are very well educated. They’re very well-mannered. Most of them went through the Kenyan free school system, uh, with the past president, and they really know what they want.
And most of the people before coming on ground had said that we’ll do everything to make this protest peaceful. We’ll do everything to make sure that everyone has been accommodated. So it’s just young people who are coming together and realizing what they need to do for their country.
Protesters chanting: Zakaio Shuka, Zakaio Shuka, Zakaio Shuka, Zakaio Shuka…
Lesedi: Immanuel, when I think of a lot of uprisings and protests, I think of the protest songs.
Immanuel: Yes, Lesedi. Um, there were songs like Zakaio Shuka, Zakaio Shuka. And if you look at most of the pictures or videos, you’ll see there’s someone up in a tree and there are people singing Zakaio Shuka, Zakaio Shuka. This is because Kenyans have nicknamed, um, President Ruto Zacchaeus from the Bible, who was a tax collector.
And everyone is like, um, Zakaio, we need you to come down. Zacchaeus, we need you to come down from the tree. There were chants like, it is not prayer. Um, uh, it’s in Swahili it goes siyo maombi ni muizi, which should say it’s not prayers, he’s a thief. So songs like that to say that this person is not, it’s not God working with him. He’s actually a thief.
There were hundreds of other songs. Um, we heard people singing about they’re peaceful. So you could see cops holding guns and pointing tear gases to people and the people will just be chanting back, we are peaceful, we are peaceful, we are peaceful. And if you see some of the videos, you can see a whole street of people just chanting that. Um, but yet there will still be tear gassed, they’ll still be shot at.
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Lesedi: After a week of protests, property damage, police brutality and lives lost, President Ruto spoke to the nation.
President Ruto: Having reflected on the continuing conversation around the content of the Finance Bill 2024 and listening keenly to the people of Kenya who have said loudly that they want nothing to do with this Finance Bill 2024, I concede.
Lesedi: I asked Immanuel if this was a victory for young people and he answered no, no victory at all.
Immanuel: People are saying we don’t trust you. We don’t trust what you’re telling us now. We don’t trust that this bill has been shut down. We don’t trust anything you’re saying so actually no victory. There’s no one you’ll talk to the streets who’ll be like, you know, he dropped the finance bill.
Lesedi: Immanuel spoke to young protesters who had gone back into the streets after the president’s announcement.
Immanuel at the protest: Why are young Kenyans still out in the streets after this bill was dropped by parliament, by the president, sorry?
Protester: You know, it was not dropped, eh? According to the law, the president cannot withdraw a whole bill, it means that it has to go back to parliament. And that’s what he was trying to play our minds with. So in 14 days, the bill will still pass. But he was doing it to appease the Kenyans. Exactly.
Lesedi: Immanuel says some of the protesters carried red roses in honour of those who died. They laid the flowers on the floor. Some gave them to the police who were on guard.
Immanuel: Some of these people, they’re really young girls. It was just really young women, um, all over the streets. At some point I was working with a group of like 10 young women.
Immanuel at the protest: So could you just, um, tell me your name and what you do?
Protester: Um, my name is Ngeto Makena. I am, uh, I’m an artist. I’m a writer. Yeah.
Immanuel at the protest: Why are you protesting today?
Protester: Because enough is enough. It’s so ironic to me that we have a president who literally committed crimes against humanity when I was a child and this is the person I am still fighting to date.
Immanuel at the protest: Maybe you can tell me one thing that has been the most striking for you since this protest started last week. What’s the most striking thing for you?
Protester: He’s scared. He’s scared and he’s retaliating. Who shoots at peaceful protesters? People were holding roses and they’re getting shot at with tear gas and rubber bullets. He’s scared and he needs to be scared because Kenyans will not relent. We need him gone.
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Lesedi: Can we circle back to how you spent the last weekend of June searching for your own friends who’d been arrested by the police? Um, can you take me through what that was like for you and, and what happened?
Immanuel: Um, this was, this was very scary. So actually there were some of my friends who, they were the ones who are handing out flowers, who are the ones who are arrested. So, um, it was first frantic search to know where these people were.
We’d go to all these police stations and we’d ask where these people, the police would just say they’re not here. And even if they’re there, the police would tell you they’re not really there. So on Saturday, we were able to track up where some of these people were. We worked with the Law Society of Kenya, which has done a really great job of making sure that no young Kenyan sleeps in the jail because they’re not supposed to do that. And the Kenyan police has no rights to hold them and these people are not doing anything wrong.
But we were able to find all of them. They had not eaten. They had not been able to speak to their lawyers. Their phones were taken away from them. They were threatened. We’ve seen some of the bloggers who were abducted from their homes and detained for two days. Some of them have been too traumatized to speak until now we don’t know what happened to them.
Lesedi: It sounds really scary. I mean, I can’t imagine spending my weekend looking for friends who’ve gone missing or have been arrested and going through the unthinkable. How are you after that experience?
Immanuel: I’m very tired. Um, I haven’t really worked for the last three weeks. A lot of Kenyans online are saying the same thing. They’ve not been able to work. Um, it’s, it’s difficult to concentrate on anything. Um, it’s difficult to sleep. Several of us have found ourselves just sitting at home crying, you know, crying for some of the young men who got shot.
It hurts a lot to see someone on the streets, um, cheerful, waving a flag. And the next minute you see their head blown out on the streets with the same flag covering their head. Um, it’s been very, very heartbreaking.
Lesedi: I’m so sorry to hear that. Um, Yeah. I’m just really wishing you a lot of strength. We’re all holding you as protesters and young Kenyans and young people speaking up for the truth in our hearts. I just want to say that.
Immanuel: Thank you, Lesedi. I think one, one thing that’s really, um, that has really helped and a lot of Kenyans are clinging on is on the fact that In the last two weeks, three weeks that we’ve been on the streets, we’ve seen change that we’ve never have thought we’d ever see. Um, a lot of the older generation are coming to say to the young guys, you’re doing the right thing. You have to keep on going.
Um, we’ve seen in other places like Uganda, where there was a finance bill and President Museveni dropped it last week, which we, we see this as victory. We don’t see this as victory for only, um, Kenyan youths. The young generation in Africa is the biggest in the world and it’s about time they are listened to. It’s about time they live the lives that they want to. It’s about time as Africans, we make policies and we make laws that work for Africans and that work for African youth. We know what we want and we should be listened to.
It feels like we’re doing the right thing at the right time and not only the right thing for Kenya, but the right thing for Africa.
Lesedi: And that’s the victory.
Immanuel: That’s the victory.
Lesedi: Yeah, before we, we end our conversation, Immanuel, I mean, I, I know you don’t have a crystal ball or anything, but you know, based on, on your reporting and your time living in Kenya and being part of the protest and the movement, what’s going to happen next?
Immanuel: This is a very interesting question, Lesedi, um, while reporting and while doing journalism across the country, you could see that a lot of young people were not really interested in what’s going on in politics, but that has now shifted.
If you go to Kenyan social media right now, there’s barely anyone sharing memes or cracking jokes. Everyone is just looking at this different part of government. Why is it working like this? And I would really hate to be a politician right now or an MP because the kind of scrutiny Kenyans have now brought to the table is not going to change.
And I know for a fact that the protests on the 25th of June have changed this country. These, the, the young youth are not going to relent. Um, I don’t see, and a lot of the people I’ve talked to don’t see the president stepping down, but whatever the case is going to have a very hard three years before the next elections.
Lesedi: A luta continua.
Immanuel: A luta continua. There’s still there’s still a lot that needs to be done. Um, it’s hard to change a system that has been there for 30, 40 years, 60 years since the independence of our country, but the amount we’ve changed them, the amount of change we’ve seen within the political class, the amount of awakening we’ve seen within the masses, um, it helps us know that we are on the journey now.
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Lesedi: After days of protests, President Ruto announced spending cuts and additional borrowing to fill the budget hole following the withdrawal of the proposed tax increase. The president then hosted a live audio forum on X. He engaged with young Kenyans who expressed their grievances and confronted him about the hundreds of arbitrary arrests and abductions that were reported over the three weeks of protests.
Checking in with Immanuel, he told me, “It is far from the end. Pockets of protests continue around the country demanding accountability for the deaths of protesters.” And he says a plan to go back out on the streets in the coming week is firming up on online platforms even though, on the 12th of July, Ruto dismissed his entire cabinet. He says, Kenyan youth will not stop until the current wave of unchecked police brutality comes to an end.
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A big thank you to Immanuel Muasya for taking the time to speak with us and for the additional sound used in this episode.
This episode was produced for Radio Workshop by me, Lesedi Mogoatlhe, and edited by Rob Rosenthal. Special thanks to Melissa Mbugua for her support in making this story. This episode was recorded at Semabox Africa, and our studio engineer was Doris Onyango.
Our managing producer is Jo Jackson. Podcast artwork by Elejha-Ze Gengan. Music by Qhamani Sambu at Edible Audio in Cape Town. Sound engineering by Naomi Grewan and Mike Rahfaldt.
This episode would not be possible without support from Luminate.
Find out more about what we do and support our work at radioworkshop.org.
Sources:
News
Kenya’s young protesters plot next moves after dramatic tax win, Reuters
‘I concede’: Kenya’s president pulls controversial bill after deadly protest, CNN
After deadly protests, Kenyans tell of brutal abductions, New York Times
Kenya on the Brink | A roundtable interview with President William Ruto, Citizen TV Kenya
Kenya protests were ‘treasonous’ says William Ruto, BBC Africa
Organisations
Kenyan Human Rights Commission
Acknowledgements:
This episode was made possible through the support of Luminate