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The June 25, 2025, demonstrations commemorated Kenya’s Generation Z show of public outrage over the then-proposed Finance Bill 2024.
The youth confronted brute force with the epitaph, “In Loving Memory of…”.
They were memorialising under an odious threat of bloodshed, worse than in 2024. But our youth
embraced the threats in their peculiar way. Some, like Edwin from Kisii and David Wachira (JNationist), published their eulogies; well-written pieces telling their life histories, their educational backgrounds and social cornerstones, their years of birth, with 25 June 2025 given as the date of death. They marched out expecting to die at the hands of the trigger-happy police, and so they asked their colleagues to accord them decent burials.
In another startling move, some of the Gen Z booked the mortuary services of Dr Ann Mwangangi, a well-known mortician, in case they met their deaths on the streets. One even made a downpayment as others called her hospital to inquire about her mortician’s services.
How should we interpret the young people’s stand?
A religious leader made a spiritual determination and saw the youth’s posture as cultivating a
“climate of death”. To the religious, their contacting the morgue and making funeral arrangements was a “dark spiritual wind… of premature death”.
It is impossible to rule out spiritual inspiration in these protests. However, I find it ludicrous to
dismiss these youths’ stance as “a DEMONIC SEDUCTION of a generation INTO PREMATURE
DEATH”, according to this religious leader. I am not persuaded that this is “a demonic
manipulation of destiny”. Is it not obvious who is driving the Kenyan youth prematurely to their
graves? Who other than the government is “stirring [the] spiritual climate of death” that the religious leaders are talking about? No, our youth are not “romanticizing their death before it comes”, nor are they “erecting altars of blood” as the religious contend.
There is another way to interpret this phenomenon; through a sociological prism. The
choice to take such fatal risks is an intensely personal decision. We may intuitively think that this
has to do with spirits, mind and mood, and little to do with the world outside.
We can learn from the eminent French sociologist, Emile Durkheim. In Le Suicide (1897), he
identifies the yearning for self-extinction as “anomie”, which he defines as “rulelessness”. Here,
the norms governing a society and creating a sense of organic solidarity no longer function. Thus,
the rules that are supposed to guide society are ignored and no longer obeyed. Hard work no longer pays, obtaining a good education does not yield stable employment, social status is meaningless, and mobility and financial security are uncertain. This alienation, according to Durkheim, is what WEB Dubois termed as a debilitating state. It manifests itself in self-loathing such that individuals feel cast aside and participate in society only through sadness.
Kenya is gripped with anomie, manifested in a series of self-annihilating pathologies. Such
include nepotism, corruption, government wastage, extrajudicial killings, police brutality,
abductions, high cost of living and government high-handedness. Can we claim that our youth have a sense of being part of a project larger than the self? A project expressed through meaningful work, democratic participation, worship and even patriotism as well as shared national beliefs and values? Our youth are without any psychological protection from impending brutality and the meaninglessness that comes with being isolated and rejected. They are thus most susceptible to self-destruction. In Durkheim’s assessment, such individuals face the prospect of having to choose death rather than life. Listen to how Erick self-eulogised:
“In case they shoot me tomorrow, read this loud to my mom and dad and tell them I did
my best. ‘Born in Kisii, raised with humility and hope, Edwin carried the dreams of many.
He was not just a mechanical engineer by training, a DJ by passion, or a skilled creative.
He was a fighter for justice, equity, and dignity. He refused to be silenced in the face of
corruption, tyranny, and hopelessness.’”
It is because of our society’s loss of a shared moral code that “life is being mocked, and death is being normalised”. When the police kill the youth, the hired goons enjoy political and police protection; which “altar is crying for blood behind the scenes”?
Our young people are not “perishing at the gates of FALSE MARTYRDOM”, as the religious
leaders have concluded. This is what it means to live in a society that has not achieved Durkheim’s
“life-sustaining equilibrium”, that is, a healthy balance between individual initiative, self-
actualisation and communal solidarity. These are the social bonds that should provide meaning, a sense of purpose, status and dignity.
Although we are aware of our shortcomings, Durkheim argues, we can’t free ourselves from the
rage that cripples our lives. One hopes that the self-elimination act would salvage the future
generation. Like Edwin, we see ourselves as active in people’s memories after death. Erick is not
gone, he wrote: “He lives in every chant on the streets, every mixtape still spinning, every young
person now wide awake. He died standing for something, for change. We will carry his torch. We
will echo his cry. We will take back the country he loved so much.”
I am thinking this unimaginable stance by our youth is socially induced and may not be
spiritual. We can infer, as in Emile Durkheim’s study, that the disintegration of social bonds
triggered these acts of self-destruction among our youth.
Perhaps this is how courage and accomplishment meet contempt, detraction, and lies.
