The black swan moment has arrived for the political power elite. This clique has always buried its head in the sand. But even the sand will soon disappear if action is deferred beyond the tipping point.
The clock is ticking fast in the face of the ascendant fearless, formless, leaderless, tribeless and partyless, if not a hopeless, generation of disenfranchised change activists. The young radicals have no material base to lose, but a present to redeem and a future to claim.
There are about 20 million of them issuing orders and summoning Executive enablers for audiences on X Spaces. Head of Public Service Felix Kosgei, director of Immigration Services Evelyn Cheluget, the Huduma Centre director and all heads of departments were last week the unlucky recipients of Gen Z summonses.
The agenda could not have been clearer than they captured it. The tone of the summonses could not have been more assured than this: “Further, take note that Kenyans demand the following non-negotiable deliverables from your departments.”
The deliverables include a release/issuance of pending passport and ID applications that are older than seven days; scrapping and immediate abolishment of passport and ID fees for Kenyan citizens; all Kenyan national identity cards, driving licences, good conduct certificates, birth certificates and passports to be 100 per cent funded by the National Treasury without any further fees required from citizens.
They also further demanded the sacking and resignation of all corrupt and incompetent immigration officials. Other demands, they wrote, shall be stated during the public engagement on X Spaces.
And do they have a way of ensuring the summonses are respected?
“All officials in charge of information, processing, and production of national ID cards, birth certificates, certificates of good conduct, driving licences, and passports must be present for the public baraza. Failure to which we shall occupy Immigration and Huduma Centres countrywide and hold these meetings in your offices.”
There is a context to these rational demands: Thousands of 2023 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education graduates will be joining universities and other institutions of higher learning in September, but most of them do not have these mandatory identification documents.
The youth need ID cards, which they do not have, to apply for constrained university education support financing. They need birth certificates, which some do not have, to apply for ID cards.
Some of them applied for passports, a necessary travel document, years ago, without feedback from the Immigration Department. They need passports to travel to take up menial and servile jobs in Saudi Arabia, Germany and the United Arab Emirates.
Instead, even after paying and waiting, rude Immigration officials are soliciting bribes from children who have no means of compromising salaried government employees. The daily congestion around Immigration offices at Nyayo House, Nairobi, is a matter of public notoriety.
How did it get to this?
The youth surge, once described as a ‘ticking time bomb’, needs a patriotic leadership to denote. No one is better placed to do it than President William Ruto. Now to him whom much was supposedly given in 2022, much is expected. He must act decisively to redeem himself. This is the key to surviving the remainder of his term.
Better still, the President promised liberation from joblessness to these children, who were classified as ‘hustlers’ during the 2022 general election campaigns. Two years later, the Gen Z are aggrieved, angry and hungry for a pound of flesh.
So far, their pressure has extracted some gains — withdrawal of Finance Bill, 2024; scrapping the superfluous offices of Cabinet Administrative Secretaries; forced resignation of the Inspector General of Police, withdrawal of budget allocations for spouses of the president, deputy president and prime cabinet secretary, and confidential budgets for these offices, among other concessions.
The demands for change and accountability won’t stop there. Integrity will be an issue in the replacement of fired Cabinet secretaries. The public will be watching to ensure CS appointees are individuals of integrity, in the real meaning of Chapter Six of the Constitution. The fired lot must find new landing bases, away from the Executive.