Why ruling class must solve Gen-Z grievances after 'containing' riots

In 1922, following Harry Thuku’s detention at Kingsway Police Station, youthful demonstrators shook the colonial establishment into imposing policies designed to contain native agitations. These included creating Local Native Councils presided by local white DCs and establishing Kabete Technical School to stress ‘practical’ subjects for ‘natives’ instead of such ‘thinking’ subjects as history and philosophy. Those measures, however, did not stop people from thinking of ways to challenge the colonial state. The youth continued questioning of the colonial state led to the Mau Mau War in the 1950s which ended the colonial state. In managing the Mau Mau challenge, colonial authorities infiltrated the Mau Mau, promoted obedient ‘natives’ to high offices, and sowed seeds of post-colonial discord in a future independent Kenya. Since independence removed the white skin and left colonial structures intact, the Mau Mau was effectively contained by removing ‘race’ as the main factor in colonial control.

Post-colonial Kenya entered the world stage at the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union competing for global dominance. The US suffered youthful upheavals arising from contradictions between its professed ideals of freedom and equality on one side and the actual practice of racism against black people within the US and against the Global South, especially the war in Vietnam.

To manage both in an effort to counter Soviet appeals, American officials came up with such policy palliatives as civil rights proposals for domestic purposes and also exercised its ‘soft power’ prowess by using three interrelated organs/types of American imperialism. First was to stress a discipline called ‘Development’ with W.W.W. Rostow as the high priest trying to counter the intellectual attractions of Karl Marx Socialistic/Communistic arguments as implemented by the Soviets, the Chinese, and increasingly Cubans. Second John F. Kennedy tried to export ‘Development’ through ‘Alliance for Progress’ for Latin America and third, to export a novelty involving the American youth called ‘Peace Corps’ operators.

With its ‘revolutionary’ Mau Mau reputation, postcolonial Kenya received ‘Development’ assistance to counter likely ‘socialistic’ attractions. Managing the Mau Mau in both colonial and postcolonial Kenya was a way of managing Kenyan youth at different times, especially during Daniel arap Moi’s presidency which instilled fear and discouraged thinking. Its seeming admiration for the Tuskegee education philosophy made him to introduce 8.4.4 and force university-bound youth into the National Youth Service for discipline training. With Moi ordering Vice President Mwai Kibaki to stop thinking because thinking was a presidential prerogative, many academics became part of what Casper Odegi Awuondo termed ‘the Cheering Crowd’ that did its best to keep safe distance from Kamiti Maximum Prison. They became split between the few intellectual ‘Mau Maus’ who continued thinking and intellectual ‘Home guards’ who ensured that their colleagues went for re-education in Kamiti or the basement of a tall building in Nairobi’s CBD. The intellectual ‘home guards’, what Michael Chege called ‘Africa’s Murderous Professors’, were handsomely rewarded, just like their colonial predecessors. Although Moi overreached himself during the 1988 mlolongo fiasco, he lost the political initiative in the 1990 saba saba confrontations, fixed himself, and had to exit in 2002. The fear he had instilled in the populace, however, lingered into the second decade of the 21st Century.

There was worldwide talk about the youth bulge and the challenges the ‘bulge’ presented to the security of specific countries. Youth demonstrations, with some American help, led to the ouster of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. By 2017, there were reports about Generation Z uprisings whose unique characteristic was that it was cyber-reliant rather than dependent on old communication technologies. The cyber had become, in advanced military/security thinking, the fifth domain of security calculations. Despite the billions of dollars that powerful countries spend in cyber security research, no state can guarantee cyber security because the cyber enemy is hard to pinpoint.

By then, big powers were paying serious attention to all aspects of ‘the cyber’ and suggesting policies to safeguard their perceived interests and protect their youth from external manipulation through advanced information technology. French President Emmanuel Macron considered information and cyber control to be strategic functions, as possible weapons of war. US President Joe Biden talked of the “technological revolution” reshaping the world and urged the US to “reimagine cyberspace as a tool” and promised ‘a diverse and robust national workforce’ to ‘disrupt adversaries’. He specified Russia and China as real threats to US cyber interests.

In turn, Russia and China raced to beef up cyber defense operations. Russia’s Vladimir Putin proclaimed the Doctrine of Information Security of the Russian Federation noting that “information technologies have become global and transboundary in their nature” and the need “for an international security system aimed at countering threats of the use of information technologies to compromise the strategic stability… of the Russian Federation.”  Similarly, China’s Xi Jinping believes the cyberspace is the new ‘field of competition for global governance’ and wants China to be a ‘Cyber Superpower’. Stressing cybersecurity and informatization to ensure that CCP ideas are the ‘strongest voice in cyberspace’ Xi argued, “We must grasp the historical opportunity of the current information technology transformation and new military transformations.” For Xi, there is no national security without cybersecurity.  

As big powers grapple with managing the cyber to protect the youth in the evolving frontier of national security, those without capacity become highly vulnerable. While managing that frontier is problematic for all countries, the problem is acute in poor countries like Kenya whose cyber capacity is limited due to several reasons. Policymakers lack vision and policy clarity and have no ability or willingness to devote resources to cyber challenges. Disdainful of their own citizens, they are overly dependent on ‘donor’ thinking as they surrender national institutions and assets to external forces. They play nyapara and appear to have little interest in the well-being of the countries they supposedly lead.   

Kenya’s Gen Z cyber uprising fitted the global pattern of vulnerability with policymakers hardly prepared for the challenge. The uprisings were mostly cyber information operations that caught the political class in temporary slumber, having ignored its warnings. Once it awoke, however, the political class ganged up and temporarily fixed the Gen Zs by seemingly reverting to the old Tuskegee mentality of undermining critical thinking as education deteriorates into an organised sham which, with thousands denied opportunities, is a recipe for more youthful uprisings. While they lasted, the Kenyan Gen Zs inspired the youth across Africa because of two common realities. First, they have terrible mind-stifling governing policies reinforced by contrived incompetence in high places. Second, critical-thinking youth with high competence in advanced information technology raised questions about why things went wrong. While the youth have yet to learn how to manage the crafty elders, it would be unwise for the grandees to return to the old ways of playing nyapara and ignoring grievances simply because they have ‘contained’ the youth.