Saba Saba Day remembered as Gen Z leads new fight for change

The young tech-savvy digital buffs have over the last three weeks stunned the country by taking matters in their own hands as they called for major governance reforms and an overhaul of the political order.

"The young people have decided to take care of the future of the country by forming one constituency to protest without being tied down by politicians, political parties and other partisan considerations and we should leave them to occupy these spaces," says ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna.

In the 1980s and 1990s young people, especially university students led by their leaders played a significant role in the fight for change but those protests were largely overshadowed by the involvement of politicians.

During the Saba Saba riots in 1990, elderly politicians like Masinde Muliro together with Martin Shikuku and the Young Turks James Orengo, Gitobu Imanyara and Paul Muite drove around the city with thousands of young running around Nairobi demanding for multi-party politics, equity and corrupt-free country.

Other senior figures like Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia had been detained before the riots, while Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was stopped from joining the demonstrations.

Scholar, writer and veteran journalist Barrack Muluka argues that while the issues raised by current protesters and their predecessors remain largely the same, the process now is a bottom-up uprising by the youth.

"The young sensitive generation that we have in the country today has decided to speak out loudly while protesting to those in power and they have to be listened to," says Muluka.

The country also witnessed riots in 1999, this time pushed by the Conference of Catholic Bishops among them then Arch-Bishop of Nairobi Ndingi Mwana 'a Nzeki, the National Churches of Kenya, the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims and the civil society.

A group of youth protested on the streets of Nairobi during the Reject Finance Bill demonstrations. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

Muluka regrets that most of the issues that people are protesting against now remain the same as those that were there from the Saba Saba riots and all through the 1980s and 1990s, which indicates that there is a reversal of values and gains.

On March 3, 1992, the Moi government forcibly dispersed demonstrators who had joined mothers at Uhuru Park led by Prof Wangari Maathai. They were demanding the release of political prisoners, to which the government yielded.

Anti-riot police forces beat the protesters with batons, fired gunshots into the air and hurled tear gas into the tent where the mothers were gathered. To ward off the police, three of the protesting mothers stripped off their dresses and while shaking breasts shouted: "What kind of government is this that beats women? Kill us! Kill us now! We shall die with our children!"

Muluka also recounted that in the 1992 protests, police beat, clobbered and chased protestors all the way to Majengo, California, Kaloleni, Makongeni, Muthurwa, and other estates in the Eastlands area of Nairobi.

"We did not have the kind of thing we see now, where young people have been shot using live bullets, yet Moi was receiving all manner of insults that were being thrown at him and the Kanu regime," says Muluka.

The only time when young people took the streets in large numbers in previous riots was in 1982 during the attempted coup when university students joined some Kenya Air Force renegades who wanted to overthrow the government.

The then chairman of the Students Organisation of Nairobi University Titus Adungosi was among those who went on air at the then Voice of Kenya to announce that they had taken over the government.

"We were in our early 20's and so you can say that in a sense that mirrors in age dimensions to what is happening today but again police did not shoot the students. Soldiers were on the streets but no peaceful protesters were killed," recounts Muluka.

Opposition-led protests were also held many times during President Uhuru Kenyatta's reign especially in his first term from 2013 to 2017 before his famous handshake with ODM leader Raila Odinga.

After the 2022 presidential elections won by President Ruto, the opposition again contested the results and decided to organise street protests after the Supreme Court dismissed the petition for lack of evidence.

Raila who narrowly lost the election, led his supporters in calling for the IEBC servers to be opened, stopping the reconstitution of IEBC that was ongoing and lowering the high cost of living among other demands.

The Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition leaders called for bi-weekly protests that led to serious running battles between protestors and ant-riot police who were again using tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and water cannons.

The protests were later called off after the death of at least three people when President Ruto agreed to dialogue with Raila and the opposition by forming the National Dialogue Committee co-chaired by Kalonzo Musyoka and Kimani Ichung'wah.

Its recommendations remain unfulfilled but further rapprochement has taken place between Ruto and Raila, after the President proposed the opposition leader's name for the position of African Union chairperson.