June 25th protests should spark our national renewal

What does it take to build a coherent nation? As we near the first anniversary of the June 25, 2024 protests, it is worth reflecting on this question.

In the aftermath of the protests, there was a brief window in which it seemed like we would turn the corner as a country. President William Ruto and his administration looked shaken and surprised by the general public anger. Politicians quaked in their boots. The public was unwilling to entertain empty promises and poor performance that had become the norm in the public sector.

And then the system reverted to factory settings. Instead of a genuine engagement with the proximate drivers of the protests – that is, exorbitant taxation in a context of general deterioration of public services, mismanagement of the economy, grand corruption in government, and policy brutality – the administration doubled down on.

The political elite formed the so-called “broad-based government” in a desperate attempt to give the administration a veneer of legitimacy. There was also a concerted attempt to tribalise the protests and divide the Gen-Z and others who were in charge. This tactic was not new. In 1966 the government dealt with the Kenya People’s Union (KPU) by only allowing it to operate in specific parts of the country, effectively making it an ethnic party. Then followed a full-on ethnicisation and division of the opposition for decades.

The problem is you cannot unscramble an egg. There are lots of Kenyans fed up with the low quality of governance. They want a better Kenya and are willing to go to the streets and, if need be, die for it. One haunting refrain you keep hearing in the protests are young people declaring that they have nothing to live for. This should give all Kenyans of goodwill pause. Why have we pushed so many of our young people to this limit?

Which takes us back to the opening question: what does it take to build a coherent nation? In Kenyan context, it would take four core things. First, you need leadership that, despite its failings, is generally public-spirited. Leaders are important for coordinating behaviour and worldviews.

If you have leadership that views being in power as little more than an opportunity to amass and flaunt wealth (and set the police on critics), you are in trouble. Notice that leaders need not be perfect, they just need to be public-spirited.

Second, you need a working state that delivers on national projects – typically through visibly successful policies. What are the things that we do collectively that we are proud of? Third, you need mechanisms that take the steam off of politics, so that politics are not zero-sum games. This was the logic of devolution, before we went about re-centralising development policy and allowing grand corruption in county governments.

Finally, you need a society culturally moored on specific national values. All these four reinforce each other, and should be on top of mind as we make the June 25, 2024 protests the beginning of our national renewal.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University