Despite prevailing difficulties, Gen Zs give us hope for a better tomorrow

There are positive signs that Kenya’s future is bright despite discouragements that dot the country. The many negatives include over-taxation, extra-judicial killings, abductions, and gross misappropriation of public funds. Regular reports about public money paying for ghost institutions or luxuries for top officials, as public services collapse, are disheartening. Such misdeeds create national despair as people watch in dismay and lose hope. There is, however, a flicker of encouragement arising from the youth, particularly in the solidarity that Gen Zs keep demonstrating.

The Gen Zs seemingly have fresh vigour and purpose that is political, socio-economic, intellectual, and techno savvy. They tend to attract the admiration and probable envy of older generations, beginning with their dot.com parents. The Gen Zs are daring, bold, fearless, and focused. In taking desperate actions to correct the misdeeds of their elders, they had three things going for them. First, as Mwai Kibaki’s children, they had a good education because they went to functioning schools, read books that challenged them to think, and their teachers taught.

Second, they are also the digital generation that sprouted when Uhuru Kenyatta was president and became so good cyber and social media operators that they can communicate in real time to any part of the world. Third, the combined youth education and cyber readiness in 2024 collided with President William Ruto’s seeming desire to drive Kenya into the past. whose effect was to increase poverty; this was seemingly at the behest of external forces. Subsequently, Dr Ruto emerges as the leading promoter of external interests in Africa.

That collision shocked political heavyweights. They then came out to design counter strategies to disempower the Gen Zs. Among them, was the rise of ‘youth’ counter groups, at times called ‘goons’, who appeared to have police escort. Since the ‘goon’ demonstrations were old style, destroy property, and hurt people, they were proxies. Second, is the virtual government admission that it might be guilty of abductions, killings, and injuries. It did that by minting a ‘compensation’ committee to investigate and pay for the dead and the injured. Former National Assembly Speaker and Attorney General Justin Muturi believes the committee “is a deliberate destruction from the real path to justice” and that Faith Odhiambo’s and Irungu Houghton’s involvement “betrays a dangerous naivety”.

The Gen Zs, besides causing such government reactions, show solidarity in facing such socio-cultural challenges as deaths. It happened when a Strathmore University student, Emmanuel Wainaina Waweru aka ‘Manu’, died while on a hiking trip. While parents, relatives, and friends and Kahawa Sukari neighbours understandably grieved, it was the Gen Z's show of solidarity that captured attention. Apart from Strathmore students, the youth in various estates in Nairobi showed up at Kahawa Sukari in big numbers in order to give one of their own a Gen Z send off.

That send off involved having an evening candle lit vigil in memory of ‘Manu’ accompanied by a release of helium filled balloons into space. Releasing the balloons symbolised their collective release of Manu’s spirit to leave the earth and go to eternity. And they then talked of celebrating Manu’s birthday roughly a week after his death because that would have been his birthday. So they let his spirit go but they were not willing to let his memory go; in their minds, he was still one of them. That is Gen Z solidarity.

There is big hope in the country, despite the many bad deeds. Kenya’s future is safe because young people have collective solidarity in confronting obstacles. They are alert, aware of the wrong things, and raise difficult questions. Their strength has two sources; solidarity and focus. While few deviants might try to derail the objective of safeguarding Kenya through vigilance, the collective Gen Zs are solid in solidarity and in focus. Their parents, the dot.coms and older, want them to maintain that solidarity in doing the right things to make Kenya safe.