Kenya's protests are a triumph of citizen accountability

The street demonstrations against higher taxes are part of a broader statement by Kenyans for far-reaching accountability mechanisms beyond the corridors of government.

Credit: X/@SirAlexas

Kenya has been rocked by weeks of protests that have left scores of citizens dead and many others injured. The demonstrations were sparked by outrage over proposed tax hikes that the government argued were necessary in order to raise approximately $2.7 billion needed to reduce a budget deficit and fund development projects. The tax proposals were contained in a bill that was introduced in May by lawmakers.

Opposition to the bill gathered steam online and moved offline as the bill advanced through parliament despite the widespread hostility to it. Street demonstrations bourgeoned in less than a week after the bill was passed and paved the way for the events of June 25, when demonstrators stormed the premises of the national parliament in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

A part of the building was set on fire while several rooms were ransacked, vehicles parked outside were vandalized and the ceremonial mace used during legislative proceedings was stolen. In other parts of the country, protests also got violent as government buildings were set ablaze and reports of looting trickled out.

The June 25 protests turned deadly when Kenya’s security forces opened fire on demonstrators. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said that 19 people died during demonstrations in Nairobi on the day. Kenya’s defense minister deployed the army to assist law enforcement in restoring order across the city.

The following day, President William Ruto announced that he would not sign the finance bill citing the protests as a reason. He also directed the National Treasury to implement cost-cutting measures that would affect national and subnational governments. In addition, Ruto pledged to implement governance reforms and proposed a “National Multi-Sectoral Forum” that he said would be the framework for “addressing the concerns raised by the youth.” In a televised media roundtable on June 30, he reiterated his willingness to “engage” with the protesters and took part in a virtual discussion with Kenyans on X last week.

But many citizens are skeptical of Ruto’s sincerity and protesters have announced plans for more demonstrations in the coming weeks. It is unclear what direction the protest movement is headed but the activists insist that their grievances extend beyond the finance bill and more broadly to a system of governance that they say must be overhauled.

The events of the past few weeks featured debates among Kenyans and outside observers about many issues like taxation, corruption, democratic accountability and the role of multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in African economic affairs. In my own discussions with Kenyan friends about the protests in their country, I remarked how much I was struck by the many similarities between the protests against the finance bill and Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests in 2020 in terms of the organic growth of the demonstrations, their decentralized nature, attempts by the state and its acolytes to sow divisions among the activists and the deadly crackdown that the demonstrations wrought.

As is customary in these pages, I wanted to scratch beyond the surface to find the story behind the story of Kenya’s protests. Here are some of my still-percolating thoughts on the demonstrations.

#RejectFinanceBill2024 is about much more than taxes or debt

On the face of it, the Kenyan protests are a revolt over higher taxes. Popular refrains of “Zakayo shuka” (meaning “Zacchaeus, come down” in Swahili) — a clever reference to Zacchaeus, the tax collector in the Bible who climbed a tree to get a view of Jesus — are as humorous as they are pointed. Widespread opposition to the finance bill is impossible to dispute. But the proposed taxes in it were merely a proximate cause of an uprising with much deeper roots.

In recent years, inflation has hovered around 6% as the real value of Kenyan wages has stagnated. The average growth rate was 4.5% in the decade from 2013 through 2023, well below the 10% target set out in Kenya’s Vision 2030 document. Years of corruption, financial mismanagement and questionable infrastructural investments during the administration of former President Uhuru Kenyatta, in addition to external shocks like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, reversed many of the socioeconomic gains Kenya made after the turn of the century.

As a presidential candidate, Ruto tapped into popular disaffection with Kenyatta’s policies by positioning himself as a champion of the “hustler nation,” the ordinary, hardworking Kenyans from humble backgrounds struggling to make ends meet. Despite serving as Kenyatta’s deputy for nearly a decade, millions of “hustlers” voted for Ruto due to his pledge to lower the cost of living and turn the page on Kenya’s dynastic politics.

But in the 22 months since Ruto’s inauguration, Kenyans have not seen an improvement in their living conditions. Under pressure from the IMF, which Kenya turned to in 2021 for help with managing its estimated $80 billion debt, Ruto launched his presidency with a series of unpopular measures like the elimination of fuel and maize flour subsidies. He has also hiked income taxes for high earners, raised the cost of transfers on mobile money services like M-Pesa, introduced a housing levy and launched a health insurance scheme with high costs for contributors.

The worst drought in the Horn of Africa in decades brought catastrophic impacts to Kenyans by destroying livestock and farmlands, in turn driving up the price of food and other commodities and triggering food insecurity across the country. In 2023, mass protests over the rising cost of living led by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga — Ruto’s closest challenger in the 2022 presidential race — saw the deaths of at least 30 people. Last November, the Federation of Kenyan Employers reported that 70,000 employees in the private sector had lost their jobs and warned that many more jobs could still be cut.

Earlier this year, floods during the “long rains” season killed more than 300 people, displaced hundreds of thousands of others and destroyed physical infrastructure and farmlands across the country. Health workers and intern teachers have also initiated their own demonstrations and industrial action amid disputes with the government over pay and working conditions.

Kenyans don’t have much confidence that a higher tax burden will be accompanied by fiscal prudence, accountability and better social services, and it is not hard to understand why. Many citizens were outraged at reports that Ruto spent $1.5m on a private jet for his four-day state visit to the United States in May. He denied that the plane cost that much, saying that “some friends” helped foot the bill for the jet.

Last year, Ruto attempted to expand the size of the executive branch by appointing 50 “chief administrative secretaries,” mostly to reward his cronies and political allies. In recent weeks, digital spaces have been suffused with details of the large sums of public funds allocated to and spent by Kenyan political elites including Ruto, his deputy and their spouses.

On the question of corruption, the Ruto administration has found itself enmeshed in a number of controversies including one involving the agriculture minister who was implicated in a scheme to distribute fake fertilizers but remains in office to this day. An article titled “From Jomo to Ruto: Opulence, Hubris and the creation of Wabenzi culture” aptly sums up the flamboyance with which Kenyan political elites including Ruto and his allies have come to be associated.

The protests can thus be understood as an expression of vexation with a president who promised so much on the campaign trail but has so far delivered very little, all the while he and his underlings have displayed contempt for citizens they are accountable to. For Kenyans, the unidirectional demands of government-imposed austerity are not only unjust and hypocritical, but a betrayal of the social contract between citizen and state at a time when the Ruto administration is demanding that citizens entrust it with more of their hard-earned money.

Describing #RejectFinanceBill2024 as a “Gen Z protest” sells it short

No sooner had lawmakers introduced the finance bill than Kenyans mobilized to defeat it. Hashtags like #RejectFinanceBill2024, #OccupyKenya, #RejectBudgetedCorruption and #RutoMustGo have dominated online spaces in the weeks since the tax proposals were rolled out. Particularly in the case of Kenyans in the 18-25 age range, who have made up the backbone of the mobilization against the bill, their decentralized, networked activism is said to represent a political awakening for Kenya’s so-called Generation Z, which is believed to make up no less than 33 percent of the country’s population.

But it would be far too simple and constrictive to limit analysis of Kenya’s protests to the issue of “youth.” Popular descriptions of the mobilization and demonstrations against the proposed taxes as “Gen Z protests” and a “youth uprising” are a misnomer, and reflect a common tendency to exceptionalize “youth” in the discourse of Africa’s societal issues.

While it is undoubtedly true that young Kenyans — who make up a lion’s share of their country’s population — have borne a heavy brunt of years of economic hardship and the protests likely would not have materialized without their relentless activism, by no means was opposition to the bill particular to “Gen Z.” Citizens across various segments of Kenyan society, from artisans, civil servants and students to white-collar professionals, trade associations and retirees, opposed it in equal measure.

Even corporations in Kenya, which typically err on the side of caution regarding open disagreement with the government, were unsparing in their criticism of provisions in a bill that they believed would adversely affect their bottom line. Public demonstrations were recorded in at least 35 of Kenya’s 47 counties, and included “Gen Z” activists as well as teenagers, millennials and even elders. Indeed, the protests — described by some as the country’s largest since the 1990 Saba Saba pro-democracy marches — have been heralded by many Kenyans for being “tribeless, leaderless and partyless,” underscoring the cosmopolitan, decentralized and nonpartisan nature of a protest movement that is seen as the first of its kind in the country’s history.

Democracy is alive and well in Africa, and Kenya is the latest illustration …

In recent years, it has become a truism in some quarters that Africans are “rejecting democracy.” Amid a troubling pattern of military coups primarily in West and Central Africa, many commentators have drawn many theories about the drivers of these revolts ranging from purported Russian and Chinese malign influence to public disaffection with worsening socioeconomic conditions.

In Kenya, a popular narrative from the outcome of the 2022 general election was that voters — who cast ballots at lower rates that year than in previous polls — were “apathetic” about political participation. These claims of “democratic decline” in Africa are typically based on hyperbolic extrapolations from a small sample size, conflate causes and symptoms and rely on a narrow, inadequate definition of democracy i.e. elections and formal institutions.

Kenya’s protests have been a remarkable exercise in civic participation and democratic articulation that undermines many of those arguments. Ordinary citizens from all walks of life have exercised their right to free speech and assembly to demand accountability from their government despite the threats to their safety that such dissent was likely to elicit. Their campaign against the finance bill has broadened to include critiques against government corruption and the complicity of religious establishments and cultural institutions in legitimizing graft. Demonstrators have raised much-needed funds for their fellow citizens including the families of protesters killed by security forces, and Kenyans held a concert on Sunday honoring those who lost their lives during the demonstrations.

Protests against the finance bill began online on social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp, where Kenyans put their considerable digital skills to collective use. This kind of activism, which has extensive roots in Kenyan civic spaces, resembled similar efforts across the continent and the world more broadly. As the writer Kari Mugo wrote:

With the use of technology, the innovation emerging from the protest movement is truly breathtaking. There is a USSD platform that allows protestors to coordinate, spread awareness, access emergency services, and log cases of police abuse; and a Finance Bill GPT that can be used to help understand the Bill. Concerns over an internet shutdown during protests led citizens to deploy Starlink satellites, that would keep a very-online set of protestors livestreaming their actions. 

Content creators set aside their usual promotional content to educate the public about the Bill. Popular comedian Mike Muchiri created a TikTok video explaining key contentious provisions. By Thursday, requests to translate Muchiri’s video into local languages had made it accessible in Dholuo, Kikuyu, Kimeru, Kisii, Kiswahili, Kamba, and Taita, helping spread the anti-tax message to rural and older Kenyans. “Get Ready With Me” (GRWM) videos and “Protest 101 for Baddies” posts emerged as Gen-Z shared helpful safety tips while staying “on-brand”. 

Lawyers mobilized by setting up legal aid hotlines and offering pro-bono assistance to those facing arrest. Medics provided care at a makeshift clinic staffed by 1,000 volunteers, businesses offered free food, water, medical supplies, and charging stations.

Protesters also shared the phone numbers of lawmakers in order to enable citizens reach their elected representatives and pressure them to vote against the bill. Facing heat from the public, lawmakers “amended” it to remove some provisions like a reviled “eco levy” that the government argued was necessary for Kenya to be able to meet its environmental sustainability targets but which would have raised the price of essential items like diapers, sanitary pads and mobile telephones. Those adjustments did not satisfy the protesters who insisted that the entire bill be scrapped and saw the “amendments” as a feeble attempt to placate a public that they believed lawmakers had mostly ignored amid the uproar.

When protesters felt that their initial approach did not achieve the objective of killing the bill, they took to the streets. Predictably, Kenyan security forces responded to the public protests with violence including arrests, detentions, torture as well as the use of teargas, water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition. A wave of abductions of activists and organizers involved in the protests alarmed citizens who promptly broadcast information about the seizures.

But the heavy-handed response to the demonstrations did not deter the protesters. If anything, it caused them to escalate their agitation. Videos posted on social media showed Kenyans participating in coordinated “midnight protests” against the finance bill in bars and nightclubs across towns and cities like Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nakuru, Naivasha, Eldoret and Narok. Those protests were a precursor to the “7 Days of Rage” that culminated in the stormy events of June 25, when protesters planned an #OccupyParliament demonstration outside the Parliament Building in Nairobi and called for a “total shutdown” of the country via a nationwide strike.

Kenya’s human rights commission said that 39 people have died and 361 injured since the public protests began on June 18. But many Kenyans believe the official death toll is an undercount given the number of protesters who have been reported missing and remain unaccounted for. Social media platforms were full of unverified videos showing volumes of bloodied corpses deposited in hospitals since the street protests began. In the Nairobi suburb of Githurai as well as the nearby town of Ongata Rongai, some residents reported seeing security forces shooting indiscriminately at unarmed civilians at different points during the week that protesters stormed parliament.

It says something that many Kenyans appeared willing to risk their lives to fight for a better future. That is a louder statement of democratic intent than the result of an election could indicate.

… but Kenya’s institutions are weaker than they appear

Kenya is commonly described in international commentary as a calm outlier in a “troubled” Eastern Africa region that encompasses the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa. As the area’s economic anchor and one of a few countries there to have never experienced military rule, Kenya is seen by some as a “stable democracy” with a constitution that has often been described as one of the most progressive in the world.

Kenya's judiciary is generally thought to be independent and resistant to political interference, and it won praise for annulling the result of the 2017 presidential election and invalidating the Building Bridges Initiative three years ago. Government laws and policies are regularly challenged in the courts, where they can be and often are struck down.

Many Kenyans believe that their litigious political culture underlines the existence of strong legal institutions that serve as a guardrail against autocracy. But far from being an encouraging sign, the active involvement of the judiciary in sociopolitical issues points to a severe weakness of political institutions that cannot mediate disputes and appear content to pass on that burden to judges. Put another way, Kenyan courts are routinely asked to provide legal answers to political questions that are above the pay grade of jurists.

A good example is a recent ruling by the Kenyan high court that upheld the government’s decision to deploy the army during the June 25 uprising. Some legal experts argued that the deployment violated the constitution and sought to evade restrictions on the government’s ability to declare a state of emergency. The Law Society of Kenya (LSK) agreed with them and challenged the defense minister’s order in court, but it sided with the Ruto administration while compelling the government to define the scope of the deployment.

If one is a proponent of healthy civil-military relations and keeping the armed forces out of civic life, it is hard to see many upsides from the verdict. The court’s ruling was a triumph of proceduralism at best. At worst, it was a dangerous legitimation of the insertion of the armed forces into civilian life, a step Kenyatta took to ill effect four years ago. This is not to suggest or imply that Kenya is close to a military takeover at this time but the point is to illustrate how norms and institutions can be abused and gradually weakened in ways that are less obvious to the naked eye.

Consider if the court had sided with the LSK but the government refused to comply with the ruling. How would the law have resolved that particular political crisis in practical terms? As stated by Elisha Ongoya, a legal scholar and advocate of the High Court of Kenya, “the law is not the answer to all our problems.”

Some Kenyans argued that their military is renowned for its professionalism and was unlikely to harm demonstrators. This seems dangerously naïve to say the least, not to mention ignorant of the Kenyan armed forces’ history of human rights abuses. The “professionalism” of a military does not invalidate arguments that armed forces are unsuitable for domestic responsibilities. Nor does it prevent them from committing atrocities against civilians, a lesson the U.S. and other Western states have been forced to learn the hard way in more than two decades of the Global War on Terror. No good could emerge from inserting the army into domestic affairs and it is a precedent Kenyans would do well to resist.

The responsibility to quell the ongoing tension falls primarily on Ruto and other Kenyan political elites. They have an opportunity to level up with their constituents about the scale of their country’s challenges, accept responsibility for the events of the past few weeks and articulate steps to addressing the protesters’ demands in good faith. This process must begin with a path to justice for those who have been killed during the protests. None of this will be easy but it is not an excuse not to try, especially at a time when few alternatives exist.