Gen Z are driving a war against thieves, wastage and opulence

Protestors breach Parliament during anti-Finance Bill demonstrations in Nairobi on June 25, 2024. [Denis Kibuchi, Standard]

We are living in anxious and baffling times. But they are also beautiful times. The Kenyan nation is getting reborn. We are going through a revolution, an African Renaissance.

“What is happening? Where are we going? What next?” These are the questions you run into, everywhere. They are especially asked now that President William Ruto has sacked his entire Cabinet, and left us yawning, waiting for the next step.

We don’t know what the president will do next, after he sacked some of his closest political friends. But we know what is happening. Our digital natives are having a serious conversation with their country. They are already ahead in the dialogue that our Gen-X president has proposed. 

They began this dialogue in the space they understand best – the cyberspace. They are baffled that anyone should be calling for another dialogue. In this dialogue, the Gen-Zs are telling us that we African people who are called Kenyans are a First World nation. However, we love living in the Fourth World. We would live in the Fifth, if there was one. “We are not our parents,” they say.

For, their parents are First World natives who have borne the pain of living in the Fourth World, like the eagle that accepts to live among chickens. Where it should be soaring high up in the skies, this African eagle accepts to scratch the earth, like a poor chicken.  Gen-Zs are saying they will no longer tolerate this. They want us all to soar up in the skies.

Nobody will stand in the way. If you try, they will run through you, with cyberspace hot knives like the butter that you are. Now, in the cyberspace where they spend most time, they travel around the world in minutes. They make nonsense of Jules Verne’s Mr Phileas Fogg, who once, long ago, travelled Around the World in 80 Days.  

Theirs is the world of machine learning, 3D tech, blockchains, robotics, internet of things, and artificial intelligence, among more virtual stuff. They can visit all great palaces, and tour modern and ancient places from the comforts of their bedrooms.

They can travel forwards and backwards in time and space, like the Time Traveller in H G Wells’ Time Machine. They know how countries are ruled and nations governed. They know what happens to thieves in the First World. They know the business of government is not about stealing and flaunting what you have stolen.  

When they look at our country, they see a lot of wealth and a lot of thieves. They see infinite opportunities and untapped potential. They are frustrated that some pin-brained thieves in strategic places cannot see the big picture. The pinheads ostentatiously splash our stolen billions and vomit on our feet.  So, our digital citizens have decided to go to war. Most time, they will wage war in the space they are most familiar with – cyberspace. Here, they will rain cyber bullets and sundry missiles on their adversaries. They have digital surface-to-surface missiles, and surface-to-air war-heads.

They can visit you, and greet you, anytime, no matter where you may be. They greet you with sophisticated sea-to-sea, sea-to-air and sea-to-surface digital bombs. 

Their digital cluster explosives strike you through your own digital gadgets. A million of these cluster ammos arrive at the speed of 310 terabytes per second. The digital commander only needs to say, “Fire!” Your poor cellular phone will at once experience digital constipation, diarrhoea, headache, backache, broken shoulders, and acute pelvic crises. And all these pains translate straight into your body frame.  Once in a while, these people will come into the streets, carrying bottled water and cell phones, just to remind you of a few things. They fear nothing.

Death itself means next to nothing. They will even take their own lives, or give them away for causes they believe in. Accordingly, what is happening is that Kenya is being reborn through the youth. President Ruto is the midwife, and they will keep him on maternity toes. They are happy he has sacked his Cabinet. But they are waiting for the informal Cabinet to be sacked, too. They are driving change. War against thieves, wastefulness, opulence and madharau.

They are waiting to see whether President Ruto will return to Cabinet the people he has sacked. They are watching him to see if he means business about changing Kenya, or if he’s only fooling everyone. If he means business, they will give him space. But if not, a proper cyberspace-to-street, and street-to-cyberspace dance will begin; a dance like none before. 

-Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke