In my previous writings, I have critiqued online artivism in Kenya, a staple for millennials and Gen Zs. With good internet speeds, smartphones, and freedom of expression enshrined in the Constitution of Kenya (CoK) 2010, these young generations have been active on Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram using memes for fun and also, to criticize government and its policies by using satire. While memes have allowed citizens to express their dissatisfaction with the current style of leadership and governance, they have also played a role in watering down and trivializing critical debates of national importance. Through memes, critical issues have been made to look funny or laughable, allowing Kenyans to laugh at their problems, and preventing them from getting angry, which is needed as a precursor for any revolution or for holding elected officials accountable. Memes, satire, and laughter allowed Kenyans to cope with bad governance for a long time even when pressed hard against the wall instead of revolting and demanding accountability. They have pacified the youth, through laughter and consolation, just as religion has been used as an opium of the oppressed. This has been numbing the most important demographic, to whom the power of liberating the country was vested.
Reject Finance Bill 2024 protests relied heavily on online mobilization. The success of this campaign has shown the power of social media in bringing political change through people-driven organic mobilization. The ‘happy masks’ worn by sun-beaten faces of a frustrated unemployed graduate, a depressed and struggling content creator, a young lady who could not afford sanitary towels, and a teen mother struggling to buy diapers every day could not be jolted, into the slightest of laughter by memes. Any attempt ended up rekindling the rage of past betrayals and igniting the courage to change the future. This time, our memes successfully failed to pacify the anger of the people who have been oppressed and impoverished by successive regimes since colonial times, through exploitative policies such as the Hut Tax during the colonial era to the current Finance Bill 2024. The bill proposed a raft of measures such as the tax on equipment used in cancer treatment, and 16% VAT on bread and other essentials, while at the same time drastically reducing budget allocations for health, education, and agriculture. With the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) riddled with graft, the inaccessibility of university education to middle classes courtesy of a new funding model for higher education, and the rising cost of living, the anger of the youth had reached a tipping point; it was only a matter of time before the explosion could sweep everything in its path.
The campaign had many firsts in its success. This was the first time for the current generation to unite beyond their ethnic lines, religious backgrounds, and political affiliations to fight for a common course without the usual political mobilizers. Nation-wide protests have never been witnessed on this scale and magnitude due to the political, regional, religious, and ethnic divisions that have for years successfully fragmented the people- the middle class from the poor, the people of the mountain from those from the lake and coast, Muslims from Christians for example. These divisions have for the most part been perpetuated by the political class for their expediency. In addition, the precincts of the Kenya National Assembly have never been breached before the 25th of June 2024 will go down in the history of our country as the day when the people symbolically took back the power they had entrusted parliament with by seizing the mace which symbolizes the authority of Kenya’s legislature.
The call to Occupy Parliament was to reclaim the power given to the representatives who have failed terribly in their mandate as an independent arm of the government – they had been operating as an appendage of the executive. The huge turnout of protestors on June 25th happened simultaneously across more than 35 counties out of 47! The resistance had no central command; it was an amorphous movement of agitated citizens with a common goal. This made it tough for the government to pacify the protests as they were decentralized. Bloggers, content creators, artists, and other influential personalities on social media played a pivotal role in pushing for this, and as a result, they were unfairly targeted through abductions by the state machinery. Nevertheless, the protests initiated by the youth went on as planned as they were not pegged around personalities but rather on a cause.
The abductions of the luminaries of the movement went contrary to the ruling coalition’s election campaign promise to bring an end to enforced disappearances, abductions, extra-judicial killings, and the misuse of the National Police Service. The hashtag #RejectFinanceBill2024 helped to amplify the voices of the people beyond the borders of the country, allowing the international community to follow the happenings in the country and consequently offer solidarity. The hashtag, which accumulated more than five million tweets, illustrates the role of social media in organizing which has been instrumental in this campaign. The campaign also exposed the unholy alliance that continues to exist between the state and the church, which had made the church an accomplice in the state’s corruption and largesse. The church, which has been benefiting from fundraisers patronized by corrupt state officials, had been conspicuously silent until recently when the pulpits were raided by young Kenyans with one clear message, for the church to take a stand.
The Gen Zs had been labelled by pro-government legislators as inept, naïve, and without an understanding of legal matters and the constitutional processes. Being tech-savvy, armed with their phones with AI at their disposal, the youths shocked our country as they went ahead to break down the finance bill while sharing in detail its negative impact through social media. They even went ahead and organized translations of the different clauses that affected the common mwananchi in languages spoken by Kenyans of different ethnicities allowing all to have a grasp of the contentious bill. This was done by volunteers in the same way placards and posters were designed alongside the creation of videos. The youth ‘funded’ the campaign through their skills and time invalidating the notion that youth are unskilled and lazy. Their grasp of the Constitution, their rights as citizens, and the legal process stood out during several interviews done by different media houses which showed a demographic that had an intimate understanding of governance and the Constitution, unlike the majority of their predecessors who had no access to the internet.
Lastly, the campaign was an inter-sectional one as it understood the fine lines and complexities that were at play in the making of the bill. They showed an understanding of how neoliberalism and imperialism have co-opted our elected leaders at the expense of the masses. Through their placards, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the government of the United States through its ambassador, Meg Whitman were exposed for meddling in the socio-political and economic sovereignty of our nation. Whitman has been a vocal proponent of the taxation measures introduced by Ruto in the country supporting various privatization measures including for essential services. Through the structural adjustment programs (SAPS) proposed by IMF, women, and children were the most affected by introducing budget cuts in healthcare, education, and also agriculture, while increasing the allocation to the executive and other unconstitutional and non-existent offices such as the office of the spouse of the prime cabinet secretary and cabinet administrative secretaries. They linked decisions made in Washington through Bretton Wood Institutions, to our legislative process in the National Assembly and its repercussions to ordinary citizens.
The poor, both in urban and rural areas have borne the brunt of the adverse effects of the SAPS because of their vulnerable position; they struggle to pay for essential commodities like water in the face of privatization and suffer with the withdrawal of free maternity and subsidies which were in place to cushion them. Reject Finance Bill 2024 campaign, was the first of its kind that broke the thick barrier that separated online activism from people’s power which was shown on the streets. As their placards read, “rage and courage”, it was the compound power of rage and courage by the youth that shook the government with all its state machinery and inspired other fellow young people across the continent to shape their future. The youth in Kenya have broken and trounced the tribal, political, and religious modes of mobilizing that have traditionally been used in the post-colonial state. A new dispensation has been ushered in. Despite the police brutally ending more than 60 lives, and injuring hundreds of peaceful protestors, the struggle for the third liberation is on, being largely constitutional, political, and economic liberation of our country from both external capture by imperialists and internal political sabotage by the political class.
