On this day, one year ago, the streets of Nairobi pulsed with chants of resistance. Flags waved, placards rose high, and smartphones live-streamed a revolution. The Gen Z uprising sparked by a rejection of a punitive Finance Bill quickly became something far greater: a fight for dignity, justice, and a future robbed by corruption and political neglect.
But the government met courage with bullets.
What began as a peaceful protest became Kenya’s deadliest wave of political violence in recent decades. Police opened fire on unarmed youth. They shot to kill. They maimed and disappeared young Kenyans whose only crime was to care loudly and boldly about their country.
We remember them not as statistics, but as sons and daughters, siblings, friends. Rex Masai, 29, gunned down in Nairobi CBD. Kennedy Onyango, just 12, executed in broad daylight. Austin Maldioha, Ericson Mutinya, Sammy Maina, Eric Shieni, Evans Karobi, Shaquille Obimge, Kanramidy Wakini. Their names, etched in pain and protest, are part of a movement that refuses to be silenced.
"Since Rex passed, nothing has filled the void he left. The inquest drags on without real progress, but I still hold on to hope. I'm just an ordinary Kenyan. I have no one in high places to speak for my son." Gillian Munyau, mother of Rex Masai
According to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, thirty-nine (39) people were killed and three hundred and sixty-one (361) injured between June 18 and July 1, 2024. Seventeen of the deaths were recorded in Nairobi, with others in Uasin Gishu, Kajiado, Kisumu, Nakuru, and Mombasa among other counties. There were also thirty-two (32) cases of enforced or involuntary disappearances and six hundred and twenty-seven (627) instances of arrests of protestors. Many others went into hiding after receiving threats on their lives.
This is not just data. These are lives. Stories cut short. Futures stolen.
The resistance was raw, agile, and unprecedented. Without a central leader or political party backing, Kenya’s youth mobilized themselves through digital channels. TikTok tutorials on how to navigate tear gas were shared alongside viral protest chants. This was a revolution curated online and fought offline with the full weight of the state bearing down on it.
In response to the pressure, President Ruto initially stood firm but eventually withdrew the Finance Bill 2024. Some cabinet members were reshuffled, and public statements were issued promising dialogue. Yet for most Gen Z protesters, these moves felt performative. No real justice has come. No police officer has stood trial for the killings. Instead, the state deployed the military and clung to narratives of “national security.”
The betrayal was not just physical it was emotional and psychological. A generation constantly told they were “the future” watched their peers fall, bleed, and disappear at the hands of the very state meant to protect them. What was supposed to be an awakening felt like a crucifixion.
The Gen Z revolution wasn’t just a moment, it was a mirror. It showed us the rotting core of our institutions. It exposed a regime more willing to protect its power than its people. And it offered us a choice.
Do we continue to allow this culture of impunity, where state-sanctioned murder is met with press briefings and shrugged shoulders?
Or do we demand more not just from our leaders, but from ourselves?
Today, the youth are not marching in naïveté. They march with memory. With mourning. With defiance. They are still in the streets. Still online. Still organizing.
But fatigue is real. The cost is high. Some are turning away, disillusioned by silence and retraumatized by every hashtag that trends but delivers no justice. The risk now is that this generation, so awake, might retreat not out of apathy, but out of exhaustion.
And yet, the fight continues.
In every conversation about electoral reform. In every new podcast dissecting governance and leadership. Let's not allow the fire die.
The revolution may not be televised anymore. But it lives in the hashtags, in the documentaries, in the art, in the spaces of healing and strategy. It lives in every Kenyan who dared to say enough.
ALUTA CONTINUA.
