Darius Okolla’s Generation #Occupy: The Anatomy of an Evolving Riot is brilliant, well written and delivered with sparkling clarity of thought.
Structured like an entry point into the abyss that the period between May and August 2024 was, each chapter is a portal that allows one to immerse themselves into and explore a particular section of the events.
This first chapter describes the genesis, background and context of the discontent, which could be summarized as four things – a heartless, callous, and uncaring political class; a predatory political system inherited at independence; rapacious international ties and agreements; and an army of unemployed yet highly intelligent Gen Zs no longer willing to subscribe to bad governance.
The second chapter explores the experiences and realities of the different generations. Aging Gen Xers unable to retire due to unpaid pensions and jobless dependents; cash-pressed millennials raising young children, supporting older parents, and suffocating from inflation and the high cost of living; energetic Gen Zs lacking jobs or future prospects, disinterested in politics, but cognizant of the correlation between working public systems and a decent quality of life.
Chapter 3 outlines the origins of Kenya’s corrupt ruling class, coming from Kenya having been set up as a ‘white man’s country’, to extract resources to serve a tiny aristocratic minority. Independence exchanged the white aristocracy for a black aristocracy, but the philosophy remains the same.
Chapter 4 looks at the narratives that were created during the protests, and how they spread across the social body. Mobile phones were key in mobilizing, documenting and pushing the momentum via narratives, even though they were later used to abduct protestors.
Chapter 5 explores how Kenya is perceived internationally, but even more, outlines how Kenya’s current international relations are set up to plunder the country and serve foreign interests, leaving local citizens worse off.
Chapter 6 uncovers how the dynamics between the media, citizens and the state played out during the protests, while chapter 7 looks at how art, such as music and literature were harnessed.
Chapter 8 dwells on how Kenya can prevent a falling into the abyss as a result of state capture by finally resolving its people’s historical grievances; chapter 9 surveys the motley of characters involved in the protests.
The theme that emerges most blatantly through the book, is the reality of a heartless, callous, uncaring political class, propped up over the years by a subdued, yet silently angry citizenry.
Generation #Occupy paints a picture of how the corruption, ostentatious displays of luxury, extensive global tours, billions of shillings spent on foreign trips, all laid bare on digital media, drove citizens to a point of madness. They viewed these as “…. a middle finger to their collective pain that the political class seems unaware of, and uncaring about.”
Hand in hand with the heartless political class, is a predatory governance system more driven to exploit and extract from its citizens, than to nurture and facilitate their wellbeing.
The rapacious governance system generally reveals itself in the availability of money to waste and splurge on political leaders, while absent for development and service delivery for citizens. The trillions of stolen money revealed by activists such as Morara Kebaso funding luxury lifestyles, the billions paying the bloated government with hundreds of advisors and unconstitutional CAS positions, all at a time when medical interns were fighting to get hired, junior secondary school teachers were fighting to receive contracts, and there had been a continual lack of oxygen cylinders in hospitals, and lack of vaccines in health facilities.
Finance was at the heart of the protests, given that the spark that exploded the flame was the passing of the IMF-led finance bill that sought to increase taxes to citizens already bled dry. The depressed economy that never picked up after the 2022 election, the exit of multinationals, the cutting back of jobs and closure of local companies, the cutting out of social welfare programs, had all come together and compounded.
Okolla reveals the blindness of the political class in not seeing the 8 million people – majority young – who did not vote in the 2022 elections, and the more than 18 million Kenyans who did not register to vote. Gen Zs as a generation, “…..have built an entire identity and persona online that is not beholden to the current political architecture.”
Rapacious international ties that lead to high taxes and lack of budgets for service delivery and social welfare are the third thing that Generation #Occupy calls our attention to. There is no intentionality about achieving financial sovereignty, the regime is all about incurring bad debts for political survival.
The number of bills and policies in agriculture, security, data privacy, human rights, proposed and passed in parliament are more oriented towards facilitating foreign interests at the expense of the citizenry. Laws set up create a tough predatory environment for citizens, laws are used to bully wananchi. It is as though the people’s representatives go the extra mile to work against the interests of the people that elected them.
The clarity with which Gen Zs recognized and pushed back on the problem in their numbers, was the real crux of the matter.
They came of age in a time when decades of economic, cultural and political violence had never been addressed. At personal, family, community and national levels. In their pushing back, they were saying no to the intergenerational trauma being served down to them.
Generation #Occupy highlights that while other generations have been content to play games designed to make them lose in this last decade, Gen Z were the ones prescient enough to step off of the treadmill to nowhere. “The Gen Zs, therefore, can be said to be the generation that lives at the end of an illusion of the Kenya state; a false equilibrium that demanded complacency from the citizenry. And even when it didn’t deliver on its promises, it could effectively deploy violence or the mere threat of violence to keep the masses in check.”
The last salient aspect about the Gen Zs that the book brings out is their lived reality as digital natives. In an age in which digital architecture and infrastructure have overridden, surpassed and engulfed real world architecture and infrastructure, they are not as beholden to the political class for favours and opportunities as their elders. They therefore do not feel that they have to remain silent or stifled about their pain and the injustices they see; all the world will know about it.
The digital world allows them to track corruption, the ostentatious lives of politicians, regime promises and completion rates and judicial court cases and outcomes of politicians.
While the book does not overtly centre trauma theory, it makes nods to the fact that Kenyans are not well – mentally, emotionally, and physically. Citing Hofstede’s Power-Distance Index which reflects the extent to which the masses will side with the powerful even at the expense of their own interest, Kenyans score high on Stockholm Syndrome, at 64 out of a possible 100.
If a traumatised, suppressed, gas-lit, beaten down on citizenry afraid to engage with their victimized reality has been the obstacle to change, Generation #Occupy begins to formulate solutions. “The future of this revolution lies in the ability of Kenyans to defactionalize national problems. We have to legitimize people’s feelings and frustrations, and give proper definitions to the national issues.”
Anger, often preached away by religious leaders to pacify their sheep, is the answer. Kenyans need to give the hot potato of shame back to their political leaders. “They make Kenyans interpret the public debt, ecological, political and economic issues as signs of personal failings rather than the manifestations of a perpetually incompetent leadership. The masses, must draw these clear mental demarcations and proper definitions of the Kenyan reality. We cannot continue to carry the weight of a mistakes-prone ruling class as our own problems, which they obviously aren’t.”
One year down the line, nothing has been resolved. A second showdown is clearly looming. “…… the economy is still in the doldrums and the president has to continue borrowing to keep the government operations going. The president’s men continue to make unforced errors which doesn’t help his image both at home and abroad. Gen Zs have the upper hand and they are biding their time…… the regime’s mishandling of the economy, and the long litany of terrible bills will keep fuelling anger from the civic public. The regime’s blunders, more than anything, are what will keep the revolution going into the future.”
The protests having tapped into a level of collective anger that none of us were aware existed, it would do well to keep fanning it’s flames so as to burn down an old and obsolete political way of life. Get yourself a copy of this book, and be enraged.
