Final Friday, Albert Ojwang, a younger blogger within the western Kenyan city of Migori, was arrested over a criticism by a senior police officer relating to a submit on X and brought 350km (217 miles) away to the Central Police Station within the capital, Nairobi. By the following day, he was useless, with police claiming – extremely – that he had dedicated suicide by banging his head towards the cell partitions. The reality, as confirmed by a postmortem, is that he was crushed to demise.
This comes as no shock to Kenyans who’re depressingly aware of police violence. However Ojwang’s arrest and brutal homicide had been greater than that. The incident is a chilling message to a hard era because the nation approaches what has turn into its protest season – “don’t take a look at us”.
Not lengthy earlier than, Rose Njeri, one other younger Kenyan, was arrested. Her “crime”? Designing a digital instrument to make it simpler for the general public to take part in hearings on the federal government’s controversial 2025 Finance Invoice. The irony is each merciless and stark: a authorities that routinely exhorts residents to interact in “public participation” arrested a citizen for doing exactly that effectively and at scale.
These arrests should not remoted incidents. They’re the newest flare-ups in a rising and deliberate crackdown on youth-led dissent. And they’re a reminder that Kenya’s more and more paranoid ruling elite remains to be haunted by the spectre of final 12 months’s Gen Z protests – huge, spontaneous, decentralised demonstrations that erupted in response to the Finance Invoice and its punishing financial proposals.
The truth is, over the past decade, the annual publication of, and public debate over, the federal government income and tax proposals have turn into the primary point of interest of antigovernment protests, linked to widespread anger over the price of dwelling. Final 12 months’s protests, nevertheless, took a brand new flip, sidelining the nation’s politicians, giving voice to a brand new era, and even forcing President William Ruto to veto his personal invoice and hearth his cupboard.
That rebellion was in contrast to some other in Kenya’s current historical past: leaderless, tech-savvy, offended, and hopeful. It drew power from on-line platforms and casual networks, chopping throughout ethnic and sophistication divisions. For weeks, younger folks took to the streets, demanding an finish not simply to a selected invoice, however to a broader system of exclusion, corruption, and indifference. The state responded with pressure. Dozens had been killed. Others disappeared. The violence didn’t break the spirit of protest, nevertheless it did ship a message: this authorities is keen to make use of lethal pressure to silence dissent.
And now, because the 2025 Finance Invoice winds its means by the general public session course of, the early indicators are that the cycle could repeat. The arrests of Ojwang and Njeri, even earlier than protests have correctly begun, recommend a technique of preemptive suppression: neutralise the nodes of mobilisation earlier than the community can activate.
However this paranoia is just not uniquely Kenyan. Simply weeks in the past, Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi and Ugandan journalist Agather Atuhaire had been arrested whereas in Tanzania to attend the trial of opposition chief Tundu Lissu, and allegedly tortured and raped by Tanzanian police. This factors to the emergence of a regional authoritarian consensus. Fearing a coming collectively of common actions of their particular person nations impressed by the successes of Kenya’s Gen Z motion, the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan governments are forming their very own casual alliance, sharing not simply intelligence and sources, however political fears and ways.
Their calculus is evident. Every is led by a regime going through financial turmoil, discredited democratic processes, and fragmented opposition actions. Every sees youth-led mobilisation as probably the most potent risk to its maintain on energy. Every has, in recent times, responded to such mobilisation with brutality. And, crucially, every is aware of that the prices of repression are decrease than ever.
For a lot of the post-Chilly Struggle period, authoritarian excesses in Africa had been tempered by the concern of inciting Western disapproval. Rhetorical condemnation was not simply embarrassing however carried actual dangers, not solely of shedding help or feeling the load of financial sanctions, however, maybe extra consequentially, a lack of common legitimacy. Nonetheless, democratic decline and ethical disarray within the West have dramatically altered that equation.
As we speak, the West is shedding the false picture of ethical superiority which cloaked its domination of the globe. From arming and supporting a genocide in Gaza to the brutal suppression of dissent by itself streets and the demonisation of immigrants and refugees, it seems that the primary world is simply the third world in drag. Their phrases of condemnation for the atrocities and brutalities of others would now merely reek of dishonesty and hypocrisy.
Additional, the identical governments that after demanded good governance and civil rights now prioritise counterterrorism, migration management, and market entry. They strike offers with autocrats, flip a blind eye to repression, and reframe their pursuits as “stability”. Western help for civil society has withered. Funding has declined. Visibility has shrunk. The result’s a shrinking civic area and a rising sense of impunity amongst East African elites.
From the vantage level of those governments, this second presents each a risk and a possibility. The risk is evident: protests might spiral right into a full-scale political reckoning. The chance is darker: to behave now, preemptively and brutally, whereas the world is just not wanting and the opposition is disorganised.
However it is usually a second of risk for the actions these regimes try to suppress.
The 2024 Gen Z protests in Kenya marked a political awakening. They confirmed that it’s potential to bypass conventional gatekeepers – political events, NGOs, overseas donors – and mobilise round financial justice and dignity. They rejected the logic of ethnic patronage and elite negotiation. And crucially, they uncovered the hollowness of the previous accusations that civic protest is at all times the work of “overseas puppets”.
By framing civic activism as inherently un-African or externally manipulated, regimes try and delegitimise protest and sow doubt. However immediately’s youth activists are pushing again – not by in search of validation from the West, however by grounding their struggles in lived actuality: the every day ache of excessive taxes, joblessness, debt, and corruption.
The present crackdown is proof that these actions have rattled the highly effective. However concern is just not the identical as victory. The lesson of the previous years is that organised, principled dissent is feasible, and efficient. What comes subsequent have to be regional. If authoritarianism is changing into a cross-border challenge, then so too should resistance. Kenya’s civic actors should stand with Tanzanian and Ugandan activists. Solidarity have to be constructed not solely by shared hashtags, however by shared technique: authorized defence networks, knowledge assortment on abuses, safe communication channels, joint campaigns.
Albert Ojwang’s demise, Rose Njeri’s arrest, the violations towards Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire – these should not aberrations. They’re indicators. Alerts that the ruling courses of East Africa are getting ready for a combat. The query is whether or not the remainder of us are getting ready to combat as effectively.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
