Five months since the leaderless, anti-tax, pro-good-governance “Gen Z” protests roiled Kenya in June and July 2024, their vanguardism inspiring young people in other African countries to stage their own, the uprising has been eclipsed by the dizzying fallout of a tectonic political shift. The conspirational October impeachment of former Deputy President Rigathi “Riggy G” Gachagua on charges of corruption, tribalism, and insubordination has all the hallmarks of a watershed moment, with a highly disorienting, burlesque, and bizarro quality to its circumstances, termed by his allies as a political lynching. But the former DP is no angel. His removal, nonetheless, characterized by internecine ruling party intrigues and the president’s connivance with a section of the opposition to edge him out, exemplifies the pornocratic nature of Kenyan politics, where opportunism, perfidy, rancor, and spectacle are currency.

The official reason for Gachagua’s ouster is that he is too big for his boots, a kleptocrat and a tribalist hell-bent on marginalizing regions and ethnic groups that did not vote for the ruling Kenya First coalition. This hinges on his outrage-causing statements from 2023 that likened Kenya to a shareholding entity, in which opposition strongholds would be last in line for development. The veritable root, however, of his woes lies in the court intrigues and supremacy battles between him and younger, sycophantic political entrepreneurs from the ruling party, many of them from his populous Kikuyu ethnic group, in the National Assembly. These Kikuyu legislators had been sparring behind the scenes with Riggy G for months over his chest-beating claim that as Ruto’s running mate, he is the undisputed Kikuyu “kingpin” whose sole presence on the ticket marshaled millions of voters from the densely populated Kikuyu heartland around Mount Kenya to carry Ruto to victory in 2022.

In their zeal to oust Gachagua, they are risking their political futures by shattering preciously held intra-ethnic loyalties dear to their constituents, besides breaking the omertà around the controversial issue of Kikuyu entitlement. But their motives are far from altruistic, for many of them, Kikuyu and non-Kikuyu alike, are seasoned ethnic baiters trailed by murmurs of kleptocracy.

The most astounding aspect of the impeachment, nonetheless, comes in the form of the connivance of a section of the opposition.  

This connivance has its origins in the political detente that opposition leader Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement reached with President Ruto in late 2023. It followed months of opposition-led anti-cost-of-living protests that were ferociously put down by the government with an ethnic bent, claiming an official 70 lives that opposition leaders estimated to be closer to 100. The detente blossomed into a full-blown rapprochement in July 2024, under the pretext of stabilizing the country following the upheaval of the Gen Z uprising. It led to the appointment of hardline Odinga loyalists into a broad-based cabinet, and by all appearances, set the stage for the booting of Gachagua, who had previously boasted of setting “traps” all over State House to impede Odinga, the sempiternal bête noire of Kikuyu chauvinist ideology, from entering government. 

Riggy G’s removal is aptly being described as a case of the political class eating itself. Kenyan politics is indeed like the mythological ouroboros that eats its tail, but with an extra twist: the head and tail shift every so often. William Ruto himself and many of his current loyalists are former Raila Odinga or Uhuru Kenyatta stalwarts who jumped ship; devoid of the ideological underpinnings of social or economic policies, Kenya’s political scene is akin to a swingers’ club. It’s a pornocracy, a misshapen polity whose members have instrumentalized negative ethnicity to reap votes, even though they would not as much as spit on a poor tribesman who is burning. “Handshakes”—political rapprochements à la Kenyan between seemingly bitterly inimical entities at the top—have come to represent a perverse reset to the cogs of this freak political machine, like a self-regulating mechanism ideated by a mad scientist.

William Ruto knows a thing or two about the nefarious fallout of a handshake. After the mysterious March 2018 Kenyatta—Odinga rapprochement, the newfangled duopoly soon embarked on a bromantic political adventure to completely shut Ruto out of government, resulting in the hallucinatory situation of a sitting Deputy President becoming the de facto opposition leader. Kikuyu voters and legislators, Gachagua included, were irate and instantly revolted against Kenyatta, unable to stomach the rapprochement. They threw their weight massively behind the persecuted Ruto, a man who had once faced crimes against humanity charges at the ICC, accused of orchestrating post-election anti-Kikuyu pogroms in the volatile Rift Valley province in 2008.

Fast forward to 2024. With the mind-bending shifts of yet another handshake giving rise to the broad-based (or bread-based and blood-based, as some have taken to calling it) government, and the stealthy reintroduction of sections of the reviled Finance Bill through amendments, it’s not surprising that the anger witnessed during the protests has not subsided. Many Kenyans have developed the temperament of a cat on a tin roof on a searing savannah day in relation to any policy move the Ruto administration makes. Riggy G’s ouster only served as proof for a disillusioned, fed-up section of society that the DP’s jettisoning was a cynical diversionary tactic, meant to distract Kenyans from the heavily unpopular, scammy and obscure new health insurance system, higher education funding model, and potential leasing of the country’s main airport to the controversial Adani Group from India, which collapsed spectacularly on November 21st 2024 after the Indian conglomerate’s honchos were charged with bribery and fraud in New York.

Indeed, during the constitutionally mandated public participation sessions that preceded Gachagua’s impeachment trial, many citizens insisted that if the DP went, then the man who put him on the ticket ought to as well; this was embodied in the enthusiastic adoption of the macabre catchphrase Kufa makanga, Kufa dereva! which was awash on social media and rolling off the tip of citizens’ tongues. This isn’t just another garden-variety viral phrase for our TikTok-era attention spans; it’s a gory, old-time reference to the minibus accidents that kill hundreds yearly on Kenya’s treacherous roads, and its nonchalant mainstreaming is a testament to the malaise and fatalism that has gripped the Kenyan body politic. If the bus conductor dies, then so does the driver; others took it as far as adding Kufa mechanic, kufa abiria, stating that anyone who has fixed for or hitched a ride on the coattails of the regime should be shown the door as well. 

Some of the exponents of the Kufa makanga, kufa dereva maxim were the other constituent parties of the ODM-dominated opposition Azimio coalition. Not on board with ODM’s participation in the broad-based government, these parties, alongside traditional civil society groups, have been steadfast in their demands for accountability following the Gen Z protests, showing great deference towards the youth movement. In a strange but natural turn for the pornocracy, the Azimio dissident parties are now casting their lot with Gachagua—the impeached, radioactive ethnic chauvinist with no national appeal—to form a newfangled opposition, covetous of the millions of votes he brings from the Kikuyu heartland. Riggy G himself, who revealed that the impeachment caused him Takotsubo cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome, is also tacitly casting himself as an ally of Gen Z, lamenting over-taxation, the scammy health insurance model, and the opaque Adani deal. He brings with him many sympathizers from the Kikuyu electorate, some of them ethnic bigots who, now politically homeless and seething post-break-up with Ruto, have started to set up camp in the online realms of the Gen Z movement.

These are sobering contexts that necessitate a re-analysis of the Gen Z uprising. The movement’s marquee achievement—having the contentious Finance Bill shelved—is now endangered by a perfidious government that is smuggling back some parts through amendments. While some sections of civil society, Azimio dissidents, and Gen Zs mull over renewed protests, they are not likely to attract many people, owing to how the government successfully deployed goons to infiltrate, loot, rob protestors, and cause mayhem in July, snuffing life out of the smoldering mobilizations. The Gen Z movement itself is fraying at an astonishing rate on the online grounds where it started. Whereas a truly non-aligned, activist faction has melted into the broader civil society, what’s left is now characterized by bickering, pontification, cancellations, and an I-do-not-see-race-esque claim to tribelessness, despite the influx of ethnic bigots. At this juncture, it seems that the uprising might well just go down as yet another false start in the long list of popular uprisings of the 2010s and 2020s, dubbed the “decade of mass protest,” whose common feel-good factor of being “leaderless,” “horizontal” and driven by social media was not enough to push them beyond the line of generating euphoric headlines.

On the surface, the Gen Z mobilization was propelled by young, newly socially conscious, urbane people on social media who were not affiliated with any political party. Many in this cohort, it should be noted, had their socio-political awakening with the internet-driven anti-femicide protests that took place in early 2024, hence their political non-alignment. Yet, branding the Gen Z protests as a wholly different animal solely on these grounds is a facile reading. Upon deeper assessment, the 2024 mobilization doesn’t actually differ all that much from other protest movements in Kenya, specifically 2023’s opposition-led cost of living demonstrations. The 2023 movement opposed that year’s Finance Bill, debuted the #ZakayoShuka ‘Get Down, Zacchaeus!’ call, premiered the fundraising and vigils for victims witnessed again in 2024, and critically presaged the carnage and illiberal abduction tactics that the government would unleash again. In short, the Gen Z movement simply occupied the vacuum left by an opposition that had bagged a detente with the head of state. Failing to locate the two mobilizations on the same continuum is what has given leeway to porno-crats and ethnic bigots who possess no interest in activism to start co-opting the movement stealthily.

Central to the Gen Z movement is the oft-repeated, platitudinous claim to tribelessness, somehow a first in anti-government mobilizations over the recent past. This was uncritically parroted by society and the media, despite its unsettling and very strange subtext—that the 2023 demonstrations were then somehow tribal, fronted by one ethnic group, to wit, Odinga’s Luo community, despite demonstrations taking place across major cities and towns in Kenya—including in Kikuyu heartland, led by Odinga’s 2022 running mate Martha Karua. Anti-government agitation in Kenya has always been tribeless—successive governments have simply gotten very good at cynically attributing them to one ethnic group, seizing on the biases of a balkanized society to pre-empt any broad-based support and rationalize deadly, ethnicized police violence.

All social classes took part in the Gen Z protests. The working class urban poor, who would have been worst hit by the punitive taxes contained in the Finance Bill, availed themselves in droves, like in 2023. Yet, since the 2024 movement had its roots on social media with the tech-savvy middle classes who turned out in larger numbers than ever, the institution of Western parachute journalism was gifted a perfect opportunity to live out its triple fetish for protest adventurism and sensationalism, the paternalistic Africa rising trope, and the age-old ooga-booga trope at the same time. It’s almost as if the news reports were just short of saying: Look! Here are young, WELL-SPOKEN, NON-TRIBAL Africans who use THE INTERNET to mobilize against their ultraviolent tyrannical government! 

The frisson was undeniable, high voltage, and addictive. It was also bad journalism. 

The Kenyan pornocracy loves to have its cake and eat it. Despite having circled the wagons around a radioactive president as the country smoldered, ODM leadership, capitalizing on the party’s long-standing resistance bona fides of having opposed both the 2023 and 2024 Finance Bills, insists that the party is still in the opposition, having merely dispatched “experts” into the broad-based cabinet to remedy the mess of the previously kakistocratic iteration. In a coup, the party has tapped Kasmuel McOure, the articulate and spectacularly coiffed breakout star of the Gen Z protests, to join its ranks, with the wunderkind stating that he refuses to keep associating with the Gen Zs, branding it a “social media movement” that has become “exclusionary, intolerant and performative,” intimating that he had been targeted with ethnicized cyberharassment by “so-called tribeless Kenyans” upon “embracing his identity as a Luo man”.

Azimio dissidents, for their part, are leaning into blood-and-soil alliances to woo Riggy G, who can’t run for office for the next ten years, while also trying to appeal to an amorphous, tribeless youth movement.

Gachagua’s ouster has had the unsettling result of reconfiguring Kenyan politics to the personal and ethnic alliances that almost led to the country’s implosion in early 2008. Although the specter of generalized violence does not loom large, a tightening illiberal and anti-democratic grip continues to constrict Kenya, with Gachagua not being spared, much to the schadenfreude of ODM sympathizers. In late November 2024, goons wielding stones and metal bars disrupted a funeral the former DP was attending, attacking mourners, uprooting marquees, and forcing Gachagua to flee. ODM sympathizers online were jubilant, maintaining that the one-time cock of the walk had finally become the proverbial feather in the duster. They accuse Riggy of being in charge of an operation in 2023 to transport weapons in ambulances to harm opposition protestors. 

Some Jeremiahs contend that the anti-democratic constriction may soon swallow us whole, doubting that there will even be elections in 2027, seeing as the reconstitution of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) that oversees polls has effectively been politically stonewalled. Three constituencies remain without representation in the National Assembly because by-elections cannot be held. 

This is certainly not an optimism-inducing panorama; it’s one that invites disengagement. And yet, the opposite is happening. Before the Gen Z protests, I was among the many Kenyans who, practicing information hygiene for the sake of our sanity in the wake of the violent, sham 2017 polls and the 2018 Kenyatta—Odinga handshake, had simply tuned out of the day to day absurdities of Kenyan politics, maintaining a tangential relationship. Many disengagers cite the 2017 police killing by bludgeoning of six-month-old Baby Pendo in the western Kisumu city, a Raila Odinga stronghold, following the elections, as the final straw. It’s a case that shocked the nation to its core and remains a tear-jerker. It has been argued that the election-costing low turnout witnessed in Odinga’s strongholds in 2022 was the consequence of an electorate that never forgave him for shaking hands with the man in whose name Pendo and others were killed. For us disengagers, the politics of a country where infants were bludgeoned to death in police pogroms were simply not worth following. 

Our outlook remained the same with the change of guard in 2022. Following the violent crackdown on the 2023 protests, it was total resignation to the caprices of bad governance if it kept the peace. 

Then came the Gen Z protests, with their sheer size and novel protagonism. President Ruto’s backtracking on the Finance Bill, and the resignation of the former Inspector General of Police who oversaw the deadly crackdowns across both years showed us that accountability could indeed be enforced through mass, non-partisan action. It jolted many of us back, making us watch National Assembly and Senate proceedings, forcing us to finally reckon with the many himbos, hucksters, schmucks, and outright criminals we sent to populate the two houses.  

As recovering disengagers, this is not our first rodeo. The illiberalism, the ouroboric self-cannibalization, the perfidies of the pornocracy, such as smuggling the Finance Bill back—are old hat to us. This time, however, having glimpsed what could be, our re-engagement is both thoughtful and steely.

The Gen Z movement might end up being reduced to an online subculture. But the uprising caused a silent ebullition in many previously apathetic hearts and minds. It’s sparked an unprecedented engagement and re-engagement with issues of governance. It’s occasioned a brooding that needs no ostentation—and that could move the needle eventually when it matters most.