We are told that the mass demonstrations that have gripped the attention of the nation will continue indefinitely. And that the youthful demonstrators will neither retreat nor surrender in the face of government intimidation.
Elsewhere we hear that “the revolution has been stolen” – this phrase referring largely to the political reconciliation between President William Ruto and the veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, which has seen some of Raila’s key allies absorbed into the inner sanctums of Ruto’s political establishment as Cabinet secretaries.
But whatever the truth may be in this matter, I believe that all non-violent political movements, such as that now brought into existence by the Gen Z demonstrators, have only one logical endpoint and that is the successful promotion of a legislative agenda designed to give life to the ideals that the protestors stood for.
Such has been the case with any uprising, whether violent as in Ireland (by the Irish Republican Army), Kenya (the Mau Mau) or South Sudan (the SPLA); or non-violent as in India.
At the end of the day, the parties sat down and negotiated, based on the demands made by those who had risen to oppose the political system that they found to be unbearable.
In other words, even if what we have witnessed in recent weeks is indeed a non-violent revolution, it will still need a legislative agenda.
And such an agenda can only be constitutionally conducted by elected leaders sitting in parliament.
This is something I have written about before, but it bears repeating.
The question then arises: Come the next election, whether as scheduled in 2027, or compelled by events to take place at an earlier date, will we see a 'tribe-free' leadership emerge from the current 'tribeless' political movement, which currently is defined as the 'Gen Z revolution'?
This is really central to the political evolution of Kenya because, for decades now, Kenyan voting at presidential elections (as well as for the other seats) has been dominated by regional (that is to say, tribal) interests. And political parties, as much as political coalitions, were basically made up of regional political interests coming together to try and win the presidency as a prelude to the “sharing of the national cake” by the winners.
Now we are told that Kenya may have already moved to a new political dispensation in which voting will (at last) be based on 'issues' such as transparency and accountability in government and the prospect of an all-out war against corruption.
Reflecting on this, we might consider the example of South Africa, which shows what a general election substantially influenced by non-tribal voting patterns might look like.
In particular, I would point to the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party, which is mostly led by members of the white South African minority group.
Mind you, the white South Africans are not a minority in the same sense as Kenya’s white minority. We barely have 43,000 white Kenyans in our country of 50 million people, while South Africa’s white minority is some 4.5 million strong, and has notable voting power in their country of 60 million people.
But all the same, the fact that a political party like the DA could have the second largest electoral support, is a clear sign that the South Africans (at least some of them) were voting issues rather than ethnic groups in that election.
Indeed, even the political party that gathered more support than the DA – the iconic ANC – is not really a tribal outfit as so many of our own political parties shamelessly are. It has support within most of the South African ethnic groups, not because of any open ethnic partnerships, but just as the party that those individuals choose to support.
And this is something that many progressive Kenyans have dreamed of for decades now: that a day should come when the Kenyan voting public would be swayed by political manifestos and proposed policies, rather than the undisputed word of a regional political overlord.
Whether we are at last at this point, is something which we will only know when votes are cast at the next general election – whenever that may be.
