On 7th July 1990, the Saba Saba uprising marked a historic rupture in Kenya’s political order, as mass protests forced President Daniel arap Moi to abandon the suffocating one-party system and concede to multiparty reforms. It was a moment of profound symbolic victory, with leaders like Raila Odinga standing at the forefront of a struggle that promised democratic renewal. Yet beneath the surface of this apparent transformation, the architecture of oppression remained intact.
Opposition parties emerged as ideological replicas of the regime they opposed, beholden to neoliberal orthodoxy and foreign financial institutions. The colonial state was not dismantled but merely rebranded, as elites reshuffled power among themselves while the structural machinery of economic dependency and mass disenfranchisement continued to grind on.
A New Form of Protest: A New Generation – Same Old Chains
This year’s Saba Saba Day unfolded not in celebration but in bloodshed. What was once a symbol of democratic awakening has become a grim reminder of how far Kenya has strayed from the promise of political emancipation. At least eleven young lives were extinguished by state-sanctioned violence, and hundreds more were brutalized—proof that the postcolonial state, despite its democratic façade, still answers to the logic of coercion over consent.
The streets were flooded not by nostalgic veterans of the Second Liberation, but by Gen Z protesters – digital natives too young to remember the original struggle for multipartyism, yet keenly aware of its failure. Since June 18, 2024, these youth have ignited a formidable civic revolt, sparked by the Finance Bill but quickly escalating into a broader insurrection against entrenched corruption, institutional decay, and the suffocating grip of a comprador elite who serve external masters while bleeding the nation dry.
The tragic irony is impossible to ignore: the same capitalist state that once crushed calls for democracy now deploys its democratic credentials to justify repression. Beneath the polished veneer of electoral politics lies the same authoritarian impulse—now rebranded, not removed. Even former icons of resistance, most notably Raila Odinga, have become totems of disillusionment. His alliance with President William Ruto, under the pretext of a “broad-based government,” has revealed to Kenya’s youth the hollowness of the elite consensus.
What was framed as statesmanship now appears to them as capitulation—a calculated surrender dressed in the guise of national dialogue. In the eyes of Gen Z, Raila is no longer a revolutionary but a bourgeois relic, complicit in preserving the very system he once vowed to dismantle. Their rebellion is not only against state brutality, but against the myth of liberation that masks continued subjugation.
Ideological Bankruptcy and the Failure of Kenya’s Political Class
Kenya’s democratic crisis is not merely a function of poor leadership but a profound manifestation of ideological void. This vacuum has crippled the nation’s political imagination since the advent of multipartyism in the 1990s. Political parties, devoid of coherent vision or philosophical grounding, mutated into tribal vessels and elite syndicates—engineered for electoral arithmetic rather than structural transformation.
Beneath the periodic spectacle of elections, the foundations of power remained ensnared within the iron grip of neoliberal dogma: deregulation, privatization, austerity, and a slavish dependence on external capital. Regardless of who occupied the State House, every regime knelt obediently at the altar of the IMF and World Bank, rendering the promise of democracy a tragic illusion. What masqueraded as reform was, in truth, a reconfiguration of the same colonial capitalist state, where accumulation for the few thrived amidst systemic pauperisation of the many.
It is within this intellectual and political rot that the Gen Z uprising must be understood. These youth, alienated, unemployed, surveilled, and brutalised, are not just rejecting policies; they are repudiating a political order built on betrayal and economic cannibalism. For them, the entire post-1990 experiment is a bankrupt inheritance, a grand deception passed down by elites who hijacked the liberation project and weaponized it for personal gain.
Their rebellion is ontological, a struggle not merely for inclusion but for a reimagining of the state itself. Yet this revolt, however righteous, remains tragically unanchored. Without ideological scaffolding, organisational infrastructure, or revolutionary leadership, the Gen Z insurrection risks dissipating into cathartic unrest, potent in its symbolism but impotent in strategic consequence. The fire is there, but the compass is missing.
The Tragedy of Revolution Without Transition
The harshest truth confronting Kenya today is that even if President William Ruto were deposed, the architecture of oppression would remain firmly intact. Without a radical, ideologically coherent alternative, any regime change would merely reshuffle the faces of power while leaving the exploitative scaffolding untouched.
The postcolonial state—deeply entrenched in capitalist extraction and imperial subordination—continues to function as a machine of domination: surveilling, disciplining, and dispossessing its people under the guise of governance. In this political wasteland, where elections are ritual and reform is cosmetic, the ruling class reproduces itself with mechanical efficiency. The problem is not the individuals in power, but the inherited system they inhabit—a colonial shell dressed in democratic robes.
The Gen Z uprising, with its raw energy, digital agility, and moral clarity, has injected a defibrillating jolt into the nation’s conscience. Yet, for all its courage and creativity, the movement lacks the ideological foundation and organisational structure required to seize, reconfigure, or dismantle state power. It is a rebellion of immense symbolic power but limited strategic depth—an outcry against decay, not yet a blueprint for rebirth.
This is the central tragedy: a revolution without a transition plan, a rupture without a roadmap. To transcend the cycle of protest and pacification, Kenya must do more than change governments—it must bury the carcass of the colonial capitalist state and give birth to a new political order rooted in justice, sovereignty, and radical redistribution. Anything less is theatre—tragic, bloody, and ultimately futile.
Beyond Saba Saba: Toward Systemic Rebirth
As the blood of Kenya’s youth seeps into the asphalt of Nairobi and other environs, it becomes painfully evident that the promise of Saba Saba has been hollowed out by decades of elite treachery and imperial entanglement. What began as a clarion call for democratic liberation has degenerated into a tragic spectacle—a commemorative farce stripped of revolutionary substance.
Raila Odinga’s perceived descent from a resistance icon to a political opportunist is not merely a personal disillusionment; it epitomises the broader collapse of a political class that has failed to imagine, let alone construct, an equitable and sovereign society. Their complicity has turned the machinery of reform into a mechanism of repression, where the language of freedom is deployed to mask the perpetuation of structural violence and foreign domination.
Amidst this decay, the Gen Z rebellion emerges as both a rupture and a revelation. Though lacking a defined political architecture, the movement pulses with a rare moral clarity and an urgent historical consciousness that eluded prior generations. Its current imperative is to resist the seductions of co-option, the inertia of despair, and the fragmentation of purpose.
Kenya does not require another charismatic saviour riding the crest of elite compromise. It needs an insurgent organisation from below, built on radical pedagogy, ideological clarity, and sustained civic defiance. Only through such groundwork can Saba Saba be resurrected—not as a nostalgic ritual, but as the genesis of a new republic, wrenched from the jaws of empire and class tyranny, and built upon the resolute will of a people reclaiming their historical agency.
Okoth Osewe
About the Author
Ndugu, Thanks for the article. It’s very insightful analysis. It’s my hope that it is widely shared by our African comrades for it explains why Kenya, unlike Uganda and Tanzania, fight for their rights.