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On Tuesday, June 25, 2024, Kenya witnessed the largest street demonstrations in the country’s history. Hundreds of thousands of youthful protestors (mostly Generation Z but with a significant number of millennials) marched in towns and cities across 34 of the 47 counties in Kenya. From Kisumu to Kirinyaga, Mombasa to Marsabit, and Nakuru to Nairobi, multitudes of young Kenyans who had been mobilising for weeks on social media came out to express their opposition to the Finance Bill 2024–2025. The contentious bill was going through its third and final reading in parliament on that day. Even though members of parliament still voted to pass the bill, the president bowed to public pressure and decided not to sign the bill into law. Since then, many of the same groups of protestors have organised and participated in demonstrations against a wide range of issues, including high rates of femicide, extrajudicial killings, abductions of government critics, police brutality against journalists, and the delayed hiring of trainee doctors and other health workers in the country.
Over the past twelve months, journalists, activists, and politicians who are sympathetic to the Gen Z movement have likened it to the Mau Mau movement that fought for Kenya’s independence from Britain in the 1950s. More importantly, Gen Z protestors themselves have been invoking the history and memory of Mau Mau by gathering at the statue of the Mau Mau leader Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi in downtown Nairobi. The eponymous Kimathi Street has thus become one of the epicentres of mass protests in the city. As Kenyans mark the first anniversary of the birth of the Gen Z movement, this article considers the historical validity of comparing Gen Z to Mau Mau and highlights important similarities and differences between the two movements. It also reflects on some of the key lessons that today’s Gen Z activists can learn from Mau Mau.
Echoes of Mau Mau
The Mau Mau movement began in the late 1940s among migrant Kikuyu farmworkers on European settler farms in Rift Valley Province. The farmworkers, colloquially known as squatters, were protesting new labour contracts that settler farmers introduced after World War II. The new contracts tightly restricted how much settler land squatters could use to farm and keep livestock for themselves – the two economic activities that had long supplemented low squatter wages. Squatters who refused to sign the new contracts were forcibly evicted from the so-called White Highlands and sent back “home” to Central Province where the population density was already the highest in the colony.
Despite these forced evictions, large numbers of squatters refused to sign and instead joined Mau Mau by swearing an oath and paying a membership fee. As the evicted squatters left Rift Valley Province, they spread the message and methods of Mau Mau wherever they went. Between 1948 and 1952, the Mau Mau oathing campaign expanded to the landless inhabitants of Central Province and the unemployed residents of Nairobi. All these marginalised groups saw in Mau Mau’s plan of organised violence their last hope for a better future. The Mau Mau movement went on to fight against government security forces in a long-drawn-out guerrilla war that ultimately brought independence to Kenya in December 1963.
As a historian of the Mau Mau War, I see two striking similarities between the Gen Z and Mau Mau movements. First, similar to Gen Z, Mau Mau was an extremely youthful movement. By the time the colonial authorities in Kenya declared a state of emergency in October 1952, most Mau Mau members were in their twenties and thirties, and some were even in their late teens. Among the top military leaders, for example, Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi was thirty-two, General Kago was thirty-two, General China was thirty, General Kassam was twenty-eight, General Karari Njama was twenty-six, and General Kimbo was twenty-four. The same was true for noncombatant Mau Mau members. At the start of the emergency, Josiah Mwangi (alias JM) Kariuki was twenty-three, and Wambui Waiyaki Otieno was only sixteen.
Second, just like the current Gen Z movement, the Mau Mau movement was highly decentralised. Even though there was a nominal central command known as Muhimu, which was based at Kiburi House in downtown Nairobi, Mau Mau guerrillas in the forest reserves in Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Range exercised full control over military affairs. And while Dedan Kimathi and General China were, respectively, the de facto leaders on the Aberdare Range and Mount Kenya fronts, individual guerrilla units still enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in their military activities. Operations such as killing a government chief in Murang’a, looting an Asian-owned shop in Nakuru, or torching the granaries of a European farmer in Nanyuki were usually planned and executed locally. Individual guerrilla units or several groups that were active in a specific area decided who to attack, when, and how to do it.
Both the youthfulness and decentralised nature of the Gen Z movement have been in full display over the past twelve months of regular protests. Most of the protestors have been in their twenties and thirties, and many teenagers have also joined the demonstrations. Likewise, the nationwide protests seem to have been organised locally in what the protestors have dubbed a leaderless movement. While there has been central coordination in choosing protest dates and designing and distributing flyers ahead of the demonstrations, most of the organisation and mobilisation appears to have been conducted at the county and sub-county levels through social media.
This decentralisation was exemplified during the historic protests of June 25, 2024. There has yet to be an official inquiry into the events of that day, but it is still possible to make some tentative conclusions based on the available media reports. When protestors learned around 2:30 p.m. that parliament had passed the finance bill despite their strong opposition, a surge of righteous indignation appears to have swept through the country, resulting in spontaneous acts of violence. Until that point, protests across the country had largely been peaceful, with a carnival-like atmosphere of chanting, singing, and marching. But within twenty minutes of parliament passing the bill, protestors in downtown Nairobi broke through the police cordon and surrounded Parliament Buildings.
At 3:00 p.m., thousands of protestors overwhelmed the police and stormed parliament where they shuttered glass panels and set fire to a section of the building. Between 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., protestors engaged in similar acts of vandalism across the country, targeting national and county government buildings, ruling party offices, and the homes and businesses of MPs who had passed the bill. These acts of violence were reported in Embu, Kiambu, Makueni, Nairobi, Nakuru, Nyeri, and Uasin Gishu counties, and they appear to have been the spontaneous actions of local actors who were deciding in real time how to express their anger.
A new movement
Yet the similarities between Mau Mau and the Gen Z movement should not be overstated as there are significant differences between the two. To begin with, unlike Mau Mau, which was dominated by the Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru communities of central Kenya, the Gen Z movement has brought together young Kenyans from every corner of the country under the banner of a tribeless movement. Furthermore, whereas female guerrillas constituted only about 5 per cent of Mau Mau fighters, with most of these women relegated to domestic chores and sexual services within the ranks, the Gen Z movement stands out in sharp relief because thousands of young women have been playing active and leading roles in the online mobilisation and street protests.
Lastly, in contrast to Mau Mau, which was primarily a movement of the most marginalised groups in society, the Gen Z movement is a broad coalition that also includes professional bodies, civil society organisations, and other sections of the Kenyan middle class. In sum, the Gen Z movement is a new, more inclusive, broad-based movement that is in many ways unprecedented in Kenyan history. Any comparisons of Gen Z to Mau Mau should therefore consider both the historical similarities and differences between the two movements.
Lessons from Mau Mau
Although the Mau Mau movement began in the late 1940s, Mau Mau acts of organised violence did not start until 1952. The intervening four years were spent building the movement through mass oathing and the stockpiling of arms and ammunition. No one could join Mau Mau without swearing the secret, sacred oath of unity, which denounced the British annexation of Kenya and called on everyone to join hands to reclaim the White Highlands. The oathing ceremony was divided into two parts: the ritual portion where participants made vows of commitment to the movement, and a lecture segment where oath administrators instructed the new recruits on the aims of the Mau Mau struggle and the political and socioeconomic history of Kenya under British colonialism.
Significantly, Mau Mau oathing ceremonies always took place in the presence of community members who were already part of the movement. Mau Mau members thus participated in countless oathing ceremonies where the aims and history of their struggle were learned and relearned. Given that the vast majority of Mau Mau members were illiterate and semi-literate, the political education disseminated through mass oathing was critical to the growth and expansion of the movement. The effectiveness of this political education was evidenced by the overwhelming moral and material support that Mau Mau civilians provided to guerrillas after the war began.
Among the key lessons that today’s Gen Z activists can learn from Mau Mau, the most essential are building an organised movement and expanding political education among the youth. Over the past twelve months, Gen Z activists have shown that they are extremely effective at mobilising thousands of young Kenyans through social media to come out to protest. The street demonstrations have become an important avenue for these youths to grieve in community, release pent-up anger and frustration, and ensure that their voices are being heard. The period of mobilisation and actual demonstrations usually lasts for about a week before the energy begins to fizzle out. Everyone then goes back to their daily routine, the conversations continue online, and several weeks or months go by before the next round of protests starts all over again.
But what would happen if the periods of lull after every cycle of protests were used to build and expand the Gen Z movement? What difference would it make if members of the Gen Z movement congregated on their own terms rather than in response to yet another police killing or abduction of a government critic? What if the WhatsApp groups that have been so effective at mobilising protestors were used to organise study groups and distribute weekly readings? What if the X Spaces that have become protest strategy rooms were refashioned into virtual classrooms where study groups could meet every week to discuss the distributed readings? Or what if the X Spaces were transformed into lecture rooms where veterans of Mwakenya and December Twelve Movement could be hosted every fortnight to share their experiences? The possibilities are endless, but the point is that Gen Z’s methods of mass mobilisation can be repurposed into useful tools for expanding political education among the youth.
Expanding political education would create valuable spaces for members of the Gen Z movement to discuss, debate, and formulate their own political agenda, which currently risks being co-opted by different factions of the ruling elites. It would also allow the Gen Z movement to learn from other political movements in history, studying their aims, methods, achievements, and failures. The need for the Gen Z movement to prioritise political education was clearly demonstrated during the Nane Nane Protests on August 8, 2024. What was initially billed as the “mother of all protests” was later described as a failure because only youth in Nairobi had taken to the streets. Their counterparts in Nyanza, Western, and Coast regions had all snubbed the protests. Whether by design or coincidence, August 8 was the same day that President William Ruto swore in his new cabinet, which included four leading opposition figures from the same regions that had ignored the protests.
When interviewed about the failure of Nane Nane in the Coast region, Gen Z activists in Lamu and Mombasa explained that the inclusion of former Mombasa governor Hassan Joho in the new cabinet had made them feel “part and parcel of President William Ruto’s government”. While this explanation might seem naïve to Gen Z activists in Nairobi, it points to a deeper history of exclusion and belonging that has long characterised the Kenyan body politic. The Gen Z slogan of a tribeless movement is undoubtedly genuine, but it is an aspiration that must grapple with the harsh reality of six decades of tribalism and regional marginalisation in the political economy of independent Kenya. Expanding political education would allow members of the Gen Z movement to learn about the shared histories and distinct struggles of different regions of the country. From the Luo youth of Kisumu who have long challenged police brutality under the slogan Luo Lives Matter, to the Somali youth of Garissa, Mandera, and Wajir who know all too well what it is like to be treated as a foreigner in your own country, to the Nubians of Kibera who have to jump through countless hoops to simply obtain a National Identity Card, prioritising political education would enable Gen Z to build a truly nationalist movement that can recognise and accommodate the needs and aspirations of all Kenyans.
In conclusion, the memoirs of Mau Mau War veterans all emphasise the significance of oathing to the organisation of their movement. In The Swords of Kirinyaga, for example, Kahinga Wachanga made the following insightful observation:
Although Kimathi, Mathenge, and Kaniu were our ‘big leaders’ in the forest, there were [other leaders] in the movement [who were] not in the forest. They opposed the government in their [own] ways. There were [also] leaders in prison, detention, and in the reserves and towns. [Therefore,] no leader could reach all the people in the movement. We had no [single] leader or commandant except the oath. The oath was our leader.
Wachanga’s reflection is instructive because it highlights the decentralised nature of the Mau Mau movement and the importance of the political education that was disseminated through mass oathing. If the Gen Z movement wishes to follow in the footsteps of Mau Mau, then it must undertake the slow, difficult, but vital work of building an organised movement and expanding political education among the youth.
