Due South: Dr. Caroline Mose Talks Kenyan Youth And Elections.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, good evening, good afternoon, or whenever and wherever you're listening to us from. This is the Due South Podcast with me, your host, Wilfred Waimiri, Africa correspondent for WarFronts, Fronts.co, and all our other associated properties.

And today I am joined by a very, very special guest, someone whose work I have had a chance to include in my own writings multiple times, when I was covering the protests in Kenya, when I was covering the impact of Raila Odinga's death on Kenya's political scene and what that would mean for the future of our country.

And basically, whenever there was a youth protest and I felt like I could include Hawak organically, it was always a pleasure getting to feature Hawak. Our guest today is Dr. Caroline Moze. Dr. Caroline is the host of the Under the Acacia podcast.

It's part of the Naboisho Leadership Institute's body of work. She's the founder and the executive director of the institute, and she's honestly one of the most brilliant people you'll ever encounter. And honestly, I'm not doing a good enough job of just describing how brilliant she is.

So let's pass the mic on to the good doctor and allow her to introduce herself. Doc, talk to the people.

Thank you very much Wilfred for having me on the podcast and as you have said, I like to think of myself as having come, currently coming into the founding and the directing the nabuhisha leadership institute we are we are i would say pretty new in the ecosystem but before that i have come from a very i would say a very it's it's been a long road to get to

Where i am right now so and that meant that means that i've won very many hats so i am a research strategist i'm a social entrepreneur and a cultural studies a student of culture i would say and so now i have come into founding and leading the naboisha leadership institute where we are doing research advisory and leadership initiatives that are focused on

Improving youth transitions across the continent and i'm sure we'll be talking about that because when you talk about youth you have to talk about youth transitions it's taken me over 15 years to get here my path has taken me through academia i have taught at a public university here in kenya for over seven years i have worked in market research across the

Continent all the way into west africa i've even lived in lagos for a number of months as a market researcher i've done program leadership philanthropy i have and now i'm i'm sitting in a space where i am working and helping universities foundations employers even governments translate evidence that strategize and strengthen education to work pathways and

Leadership development so that is me in a nutshell in terms of the professional and the education i have a phd in african studies and cultural studies that allows me to sit in this space where i can then understand research and understand the issues that i've just i have just mentioned and so here we are and in my spare time i write i write stories i write

Novels i climb mountains and I parent two hopefully very happy children.

So that's me in a nutshell, and I'm quite happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you, Doc.

You are one of the most accomplished guests I have ever had, and I think so far the only guest who has had a chance to live in Lagos because I have been there briefly, and I said I will never go back because of the traffic. The traffic was honestly something I never wanted to deal with again.

And, you know, I thought Nairobi traffic was bad, but you know, Legos showed me a whole different mess.

And for audience, I just want to let you guys know the good doctor is a really, really accomplished writer. Her work is absolutely brilliant. Doc, we cannot wait for your books to come out from what I've managed to read of your research that's online and the tweets you make, you are a really accomplished writer.

And I say this as someone who thinks of himself a good writer i actually have a story that was shortlisted for the clean prize for african writing it's called java stories i've written a story about java stories it's called java and it's in loloway if you go to loloway and look for it you'll find it there i have a couple of stories short stories up there but

I also can't wait to bring out my novel i'm actually looking for a publisher as we speak and i'm in that process so i can't wait to bring these stories to and i hope you'll all enjoy reading them as much as i've enjoyed writing them all right so if there's any publisher in our audience if there's anyone with connections in the publishing world please please

Reach out we'd love to see the good doctor's work published so yeah now let's move on to our main topic of the day we're going to talk about the kenyan youth the kenyan youth protests and where that anger has gone to because the initial wave of protests happened in 2024 about two years ago as we are recording this and just to give our audience a temporal

Signpost of where we are at today is the 28th of july 2026 this podcast will come out about three weeks from now so just to give you an idea of where we are at in terms of space and time so doc take us through the first wave of the protests what made kenyan youth so angry that they went out into the streets to protests and then we'll take it from there right

So before we start on the genesis of the protests, I always like to preface the protest because there is an assumption that these protests are very special and they came out of nowhere and they came from a singular moment and then they became now what are known as the 2024 Gen Z protests.

But I always like to give a bit of a context and a bit of a background as to why the protest why this anger that came about you have to first of all in that same 2024 and into the previous year of 2023 we did have very organic protests around femicide and around sexual violence and i think this was in 2023 or in early 2024 actually around january february

Where there was a end femicide protests in Nairobi where there were no politicians on the podium.

And in fact, when the current or then and current Nairobi women's representative attempted to snatch the microphone and snatch the moment of the protest and turn it into a form of political mileage, I remember the women that were present actually told her to step aside because this was not about her.

And in that moment something happened because protests before that in Kenya have always unnecessarily centered politicians.

The late Raila Amolo Odinga for example used to be the face of the protests and i mentioned him at this point because during the genzy protests which started in a very organic citizen-led manner i remember young people in the streets because it wasn't just you know it was the entire month leading up to the reading of the 2024 finance bill i remember young

People telling raela you know you we wanted to stay home don't come out into the streets you have been doing this for so long we've learned this from you we've picked this from you stay home we've got it from here this is this is this is now our thing you stay home we you know we have seen you have taught us we are taking this forward of course it didn't end

Up like that at the end of the day etc but there has been you know in that year and in the previous year there were pockets of protests that were not centered on politicians so that's the first preface that we have to start with for us to understand this protest and why they ended up being called the gen z protests so that's number one number two kenya has

Always had a history very robust history of protests we are seen you know we have always had this reputation internationally not regionally necessarily but internationally as kenya you know the famous kenyan hospitality so we are seen to be very friendly people very meek people maybe our immediate neighbors would not agree with that because you know we deal

With people differently but our view was our again you know how we bring out the best for visitors phenomenon has always had us seen as this meek people that are friendly that smile and they were green and great in that sense but we've always had a history of protests right from the early 1900s when there was a protest at Maseno school.

This, I think, was in 1908 or 1911.

So we've always had a history of protests. I mean, we can come all the way down to the Ma'umao protests, the push for independence and land rights, etc. But we've always had that history.

If you come to the recent history in the 1990s, we had the Young Turks and the protests around the single party state and then we went into multi-party democracy etc we have always had that so for 2024 basing on that history and then basing on what was happening at that time because the finance bill 2024 was like any other finance bill the finance bill 2023

I believe was worse than the 2024 finance bill because that's the bill that introduced the housing levy it was the bill that introduced the NSSF, I think, the enhanced one that, you know, the pinch has started being felt at the beginning of this year.

So the 2023 finance bill was worse. And I think people did not realize that we've always had these finance bills, we always pass them, and they always mean something, until the 2023 finance bill effects started pinching people.

And you have these young people they're watching their parents struggling they're watching the you know their their their elderly grandparents and parents they cannot access health anymore because the health fund the nhif was changed and then they brought in shah chief shah which was completely messed up and so there have been that 2023 finance bill i think

Is what started the move towards people feeling very disenfranchised the current government that was passing that bill had come in with a lot of narratives around how they were going to you know a bottoms up kind of economy where they would consider people at the bottom of the pyramid but after 2023 finance bill and coming into 2024 and looking at the 2024

Finance bill which people now took very seriously it was even being interpreted and translated into different vernacular languages and people are debating it on the social media and on radio etc so people became very aware and the anger was that this government that had come into power promising reprieve and concessions for the so-called hustler that promise

Was not only ravished in 2023 or that finance bill that brought in the housing levy and all these other levels it was now being cemented in the 2024 finance bill which was promising a you know a lot of taxes heavy taxation hidden in a lot of legalese etc so people became very angry with that and gen z specifically because they could see that they were now

Entering into this space and i talk about transitions a lot entering transitioning into this space where they were now going to take care of elderly parents elderly grandparents older siblings who cannot make it in this economy you know they're losing jobs they're being highly taxed and even i am waiting for these governments to create spaces for them and i

Remember in 2023 at the end of 2023 in a graduation ceremony i think it was at the kenyatta university or the or at jquot here in nairobi the then deputy president regarding saying to the graduates just be aware that there are no jobs there are no jobs out here you guys when you come out here you know you just have to just take care you know sort yourselves

Out so with all these different things happening directly towards young people and being directed to young people and they're being told there are no jobs and they can see you know the depressed economy depressed parents and there was shakahola at that time you know we are removing children and from graves so all these things are happening and they could see

That there was no proactivity from this government that had promised them all these things so i believe that's where the anger came from but you also have to historicize it and say that we've always had a history of protests where if we feel unhappy with something.

We will tend to keep quiet, but when it becomes too much, you know, that anger then explodes into what we saw in 2020. Thanks, Doc. So there has been a lot of historical anger towards the ruling class, towards just how poorly our governments tend to be run.

But one thing I do want to emphasize is some of these terms might be familiar to a Kenyan audience such as shaka hola and the finance bill i just want to give a brief description of each so that our international friends don't feel left out so shaka hola was one of the most devastating events in kagan history because we see a cult that had forced hundreds of

People to stop eating to live in dilapidated conditions and they were basically killing people en masse the government was pulling bodies out of mass graves, basically.

And it was just a horrible, horrible sight. And a lot of Kenyans were angry that this could be allowed to happen under the government's nose because Kenya does have a lot of protection when it comes to freedom of religion.

But people were questioning whether that freedom was being taken advantage of because such a large casualty numbers were unthinkable. And the fact that it was religion being used to drive these casualties, it was honestly one of the worst tragedies Kenya has seen.

And the finance bill, just for context, it's a document that guides how revenues will be raised specifically through taxes and what new tax measures or legal changes are coming.

It's a document that passes every year, as the doctor has said. But generally speaking, most Kenyans were not aware of it.

Kenyans were simply aware of the budget because there's so much pomp and circumstance when the budget is read every single year that you know that's what we associate with the idea of how government spends its money so that's what most people had focused on and then the 2023 finance bill being a really really punitive document for the kenyan people that

Awakened a level of consciousness and then the 2024 protests happened and speaking of those 2024 protests doc one thing you've talked about is how in 2023 the years before there had been protests specifically focused on femicide and your protest that had decentered politicians but one of the biggest challenges for the youth after the 2024 protest was how

Quickly President Trudeau's government managed to co-opt the opposition because as you've said the a lot of protests were centered around political figures specifically those in the opposition and specifically the late Raila Molodenga so what kind of impact did that have on the protest movement on their viability and you know on the political scene in the

Country that's that's i personally take a very long view on consequences and effects and after effects on things so the first thing that i think i want our listeners to understand is that in the kenyan system post the 2020 the 2010 constitution how it was yeah it was this was 2010. there really is no opposition in the country because we go in we elect a

President and a deputy president and they come in and then we elect you know because we decentralized our governance system so now in the past we only had a president and then he would come in or they would come in and select their vice president and the cabinet ministers etc so now we elect a president together on a ticket together with their deputy so we

Elect two individuals in into these offices and then following that we also elect you know we decentralize government we are electing governors we're electing senators we're electing members of parliament and then we are electing members of our county assemblies so because of that there really is no official opposition in the country what happens is that

Even within government you can find people that are pro certain policies and anti certain policies anti or pro different directions so when after the 2024 protests because for our listeners just to give them context after the 2024 protests during the protest themselves we saw a lot of what i am personally and i'm sure many people will agree with me was

One-ton and unprecedented violence meted out on protesters who were peaceful they were just carrying their phones bottles of water and the Kenyan flag.

And what we saw in the immediate aftermath, there was, you know, we had our protesters being shot in the streets of Nairobi and just being killed in broad daylight. And, you know, now this is the era of social media.

There were all these videos and photographs circulating in real time on social media showing dead people, bodies riddled with bullets, blood in the streets.

It was really, you know, particularly violent and you know it was a severe shock to the system aside from that in the immediate aftermath because what happened is that protesters you know went and stormed parliament after rightfully saying that this is the people's house we have selected representatives they are currently sitting in parliament and to give

Context as on june 25th 2024 The protests, you know, went a notch higher because as protesters were in the streets, you know, chanting and marching and asking their representatives who were in parliament at that time not to pass that finance bill.

The representatives had ignored the pleas of the people and were seated at that particular time in parliament passing the finance bill.

And so there was a lot of annoyance because we have elected you to represent us and you're currently, as we're standing outside here, you are in there, you are doing the thing we've told you not to do because you need to listen to us.

You represent us. And so the protesters, you know, there was this surge and they stormed parliament.

Of course, later there were many debates about how it's a protected space and people are not supposed to enter in there but then we started seeing some of the people who had been protesting people who had been vocal disappearing you know there were abductions and majority of the people who were abducted were eventually found killed murdered and dumped

Somewhere you know in quarries and in different other spaces so in the aftermath of that because now the country had reached a place where things were very unstable there were you know there were calls to go and storm state house and you know calls for the army to take over the country was in flux and looking back i understand the need that now the came up

And said you know being the person that he had been with a lot of clout with a lot of love from the people stepping in after being told to step aside by young people stepping in to say can we sit down and end this bloodshed because you know there was a lot of bloodshed it was you know there was chaos in the country.

Unfortunately those talks ended up in the formation of what we now call the broad-based government where people from Raila's side of the political divide the unofficial opposition were co-opted into government was that a bad thing no i actually think that was a positive thing because it is at that point that people now started the movements to dissenter

Politicians where people had the understanding that politicians will always move with their own interests and therefore you saw a lot of uprising in terms of very organic people-led movements you know there are people holding twitter spaces for example having these you know different discussions and strategizing and saying politicians will move always move

With their own interests how do we then make sure we are representing our own interests as a people so i feel in the if i take a long view of the protest i don't think they were a failure i actually think that they you know i always say that the nation is you know our african nations and scholars like have spoken about this how when the nation is first born

It's born as a mimicry of its colonial overload But over time, we go beyond mimicry and we start to morph into something else.

So when I take a long view of the Kenyan nation, I feel that we have been growing and growing. And 2024 was perhaps the country entering a metaphorical adolescence or entering a metaphorical adulthood or that process of moving between adolescence and adulthood.

So I personally think it was a good thing for that to happen, because it allowed us to see, one, we have people power. However you want to define that, whether you think it's small power or big power, we do have that. It's possible for people to call for things and for things to be done.

And it's also one of the best things that happened as a result of the 2024 protests is that politicians stopped being demigods. They've always held themselves in that at that level. And now it was very easy to call them out.

We call them out on social media, even when the blockers. and we challenge with state machinery and state power was broken in June of 2024 in Kenya and that's a good thing.

Doc, I agree with you that you know taking the long view of the impact of the protest that it wasn't necessarily a failure but there is a feeling and I'd like us to address it in this podcast there is a feeling among some observers that beyond cosmetic changes in the government you know a few reshuffles here and there and a lot of your politicians who were

Removed from the cabinet who eventually returned that's why i'm calling them cosmetic adjustments and the government withdrawing the finance bill and for audience i want you to understand just how absurd the scenes were in Kenya at the time.

All the politicians who supported the government's position that the finance bill was a necessity, that all these punitive taxes were absolutely necessary to fund the government and, you know, keep it from collapsing, they were also proudly saying yes.

And then when the president decided that, no, I'm going to withdraw the finance bill and appease the masses, all of them did a U-turn basically and said, you know what, we didn't even support this finance bill in the first place. So it was such an absurd scene.

And honestly, it was very disconcerting for the people because a few months later, one of the top officials in parliament on President Trudeau's side, Kimani Chua, He said that the government passed the finance bill in bits and pieces and overall, you know, the effect was still the same.

So that has led to a feeling that these protests were not as effective as they could have been.

And there's been a sense of a loss of momentum because of that feeling that even if people go out to protest, Even if people put their lives on the line, even if there's numbers and people can't reach parliament, regardless of it being a protected area, there's still a feeling that, as you rightfully said, politicians will put their own interest first.

And because they have state machinery on their side, nothing meaningful will really happen.

So, Doc, how do you square that and the weakening of the momentum in public protests? Is there a link? Is it because people think that no matter what they do, the politicians will still get their way?

Right. I always say this and I always get in trouble when I say this. But I start by this because history shows us that, you know, when you're talking about politics, because this is politics, I always tell people to think of politics as a tree and not, you know, a plant.

And I'll explain that. When you think about momentum, there's always this impatience that momentum has to be, you know, like a maize plant. I've put the seed in the ground today.

And within a couple of weeks, I see something sprouting.

And two, three months, I'll be harvesting the first cobs of maize. we that politics are like that but for me politics has always been like watching an oak tree grow some people who put the plant in the ground will not be alive to see it sprout its first branches it doesn't mean that the tree is not growing it doesn't mean they did it was useless and it

Doesn't mean that their efforts were wasted we have to learn the art of seeing politics not as an instant drink but as something that takes time something that grows and sometimes you know grows like a child it's like a child a child will have growth spots and you go away for a couple of weeks and then come back and find that a little bit taller and then you

Stay with them for two years and you feel like they're not growing at all but growth is taking place changes are taking place Some of these changes will not be immediately visible.

They will be visible after time.

So, for example, in 2024, after the unofficial opposition politicians were co-opted into government, and majority of them are from the very powerful, then very powerful, Orange Democratic Movement Party, the ODM party. That was in 2024. And I think people felt it's useless.

This is now one big party, which is ODM, which by then was part of the Azimio coalition of opposition parties, has now, you know, ODM, which was the largest of the Azimio coalition, moving and joining the then UDA, the United Democratic Alliance party that was in power. And I think people felt, you know, this is useless. We have done nothing.

But we are now in 2026, just two years down the line. And we can already see that ODM is currently on, I would confidently say, on its final legs as a party that was a national party.

Because what has happened is that with the things that have happened between then and now, including the ousting of their then Secretary General, who is the Senator for Nairobi County, Edwin Sifuna, when they ousted him because he did not agree with some of the party positions, especially joining the government. that transition into joining the government

And you know the discourse that happened afterward you know of course there was conflict within the party and they managed to oust him and of course this all happened with the passing of rayla molo dinga all these things are part of the tree growing so now odm is a very weak party uda itself which was almost invincible if uds stormed your background you knew

If you don't join them you're done now politicians that are aligned to ud from certain areas of the country are beginning to you know to think twice and ask themselves you know what's going on here as a result of the protests there was a falling out between the president and his then deputy president honorable regard who was then impeached and now we later

Find out that what we suspected was true that many legislators were paid money to impeach him this is something that has been admitted openly by politicians on various platforms you know so all these things all this is politics and i feel 2024 as i said was the nation shedding off like a snake we shed off one one piece of skin and are regrowing another and

That process will continue as the nation grows but it was not it was not useless i feel there are some things that happened then that will only make sense in 2026 and will make sense in 2030 and will make sense in 2040 although in 2024 people felt this was useless we died in vain even those deaths are not in vain because right now there is a concerted call

To make this president a one-time president and one of the things we are bringing in the forefront is the deaths the very unnecessary and violent deaths the young protesters from 2024 and i'm not saying that we need to build nations on the blood of our young although that has always been the unfortunate norm that we have built not just on the continent but

Worldwide that we build our nations on blood that has been shed quite unjustly but these are the things that we must develop a long view of that this is a tree and not a bean plant or a maize plant it's not always instantaneous it takes time but we get there doc that idea of building nations of blood is very important to me because kenya is fundamentally a

Nation that has been built on blood on the blood of you know multiple generations of protesters starting with the ones that protested against the british government the maomao and multiple other peaceful protesters who whose lives you know were lost in search for kenya's independence the protesters who protested i protested against Jomo Kenyatta, our first

President, his rule became increasingly authoritarian, multiple assassinations.

And of course, his successor, Daniel Toro, teacher of Moi, was worse in so many, so many aspects, so many different aspects that honestly, I feel like that deserves its own podcast. And Moi Kibaki, despite how much people have lionized him since his death, since the end of his presidential term, there was still a lot of bloodshed.

And of course, President Uhuru Kenyatta and President Ruto have their own skeletons in the closet.

So there's been a lot of bloodshed throughout the country's history. It has, and even more recently, there's been multiple instances of abductions, of protesters being killed. And I had Mwabili on this podcast a couple of weeks ago discussing his experience being abducted, his experience being affected by government overreach.

So does that scare people off from going to the streets? Because you're a parent, you have kids, and you can imagine if your kids wanted to go out there to protest against the excesses of the government, you'd want to keep them safe because I am not a parent, but I do have a younger sister who's in that age group that went out to protest.

I was right there beside her because I was genuinely scared for her life.

I have such a deep distrust that the government will protect the basic rights of people to protest without going into excesses of violence that I felt I had to be there with her, yes, as a protester, but also as a concerned elder sibling.

So how does the government's ability to inflict violence, and this is not even mentioning the guns because dear listeners, if you're not in Kenya, you might not be familiar with this, but our government has become very adept at using guns to inflict political violence on people it disagrees with.

So, Doc, do you think this upsurge of political violence, one, ruins people's, young people's, in particular, their faith in, you know, in peaceful democratic participation?

And two, do you think it diminishes their ability to participate in that space? that's that's that's a very i think loaded question because one of the things that in my view that allows the state to unleash this kind of violence and i also want us to you know in kenya we call these people that are armed by politicians as goons but really what they are is the

Paid militia you know they are i would almost call them terrorist small terror cells that are paid and armed by politicians and protected even by the police because you don't see any you know after you've got a period where these people have come out they have like for example just about a month or so ago we had these armed militia you know they came in they

Went to the all saints cathedral which ideally we shouldn't really be desecrating church spaces and that's a different podcast but you know we had them on camera we saw them they went in they went and unleashed terror they beat people up they caused harm they i think broke a few legs and you know stole things on cctv and nothing was done so from that

Perspective i one because we are you know we are trying to center the youth in this number one of the things is that because of our colonial history and the way we have fashioned the current state from that colonial model that was inherently very violent inherently saw the african as this quote-unquote native who is not educated is doesn't have value when

You think about it in capitalistic terms of a very low value if any we have really tended to cheapen the lives of our people and so people then become tools they become tools on the path to accessing power to accessing wealth.

And it's not just in Kenya. We've heard of cases, for example, in a place like on Amazon, in Amazon warehouses, where we hear that because it's a huge warehouse and the bathrooms are not inside the warehouse, and it's impossible for someone to leave their workstation and go to the bathroom and come back because you will be off your quarter of work.

People are using bins in the warehouse as toilets so that you don't, you know, there's no time for you to go to the toilet. When you live in this deeply capitalistic society, violence becomes norm because you reduce people to tools. So our people have been reduced to tools.

So that's number one. And that is something that we will have to have a national conversation and action about. Especially now that we are in this process of going into the 2027 presidential elections in Kenya.

That's number one. Number two, does the violence prevent people from participating actively? Yes, it does.

Because this violence, one, is not constitutional. The Constitution explicitly gives Kenyans the right to picket, the right to protest. Without even asking for permission, the Constitution asks us to inform the police that we of this and this place are going to have a march tomorrow because we want to express our sentiments about ABCD full stop.

We just inform them. But because of state state capture, state machinery and laws being drafted and bills being discussed in parliament, that right is slowly being curtailed. And yes, I was personally in the 2024 June protests, and I was marching alongside people who are my age, I'm in my 40s now, and people who are younger, much younger.

And I remember when we reached Ngarra, which is not far from the CBD, you know, the Nairobi Central Business District, somebody opened their phone and we saw photographs of dead people in the streets of Nairobi. people were being shot just outside parliament and i remember all of us because there was no traffic on the roads that day all of us sat down

Because you know the strength just left our bodies immediately because we knew we were marching to express our displeasure against the finance bill we were not armed we were not being violent we were just walking and talking and singing you know, just because it was a long distance.

Of course, we were tear gassed somewhere on the paths, et cetera.

But the moment we reached and somebody shared those photographs and we now all opened our phones, the strength left all our legs and many people turned back at Ngara before entering the CBD and went back home because we knew then we were marching to our deaths And we kept asking ourselves, not is it worth it?

Is it worth our parents coming to collect? I kept asking myself, is it worth my children coming to collect my bullet-riddled body in the middle of the road?

Because that's what we were seeing. so the violence one is of course it's it's it's it's it's illegal it's immoral it's not constitutional but the larger question is that we when we promulgated the 2020 constitution as the document and we like to put the first sentence in it we the people in that constitution the larger question for me is that we still deal

With a very rabid state that has no regard for the law that it promises to uphold for me that is the larger concern and the larger conversation we need to have because we right now have a candidate that is running on the promise of following the constitution but we know that the instruments of power are such that if he decides he doesn't want to follow some

Certain tenets he will not and there's nothing we the people can do about it in that moment for me that is the larger conversation but yes the violence does do that even for this year's the 2026 finance bill many mothers were saying we don't want to bury you guys we don't have the bandwidth to wait to stomach any more bloodshed in the streets you people

Being shot being abducted and being tortured we don't have the stomach for it let us wait for the next voting cycle which is one year down the line so that's where we are at as a country thanks doc i brought that question up specifically because as you rightfully said the holder of the office of the president has a lot of power and can choose whether to

Disregard regard or follow the tenets of the constitution because our constitution is a very progressive document it's very it protects people's rights but as you've said the violence inherent within the system because yes we are very capitalistic system that only views people as numbers as your figures instead of individuals with inherent value that system

Has allowed a police state that is violent most of our interactions with the police are just inherently violent most of our interactions with the security forces so i'm bringing this up because of a statement that president ruto made a few days ago about two days ago actually yes so he said that we were lenient to protesters and they have now graduated to

Guns and a lot of people saw that as him attempting to manufacture consent for the abduction of peaceful protesters and the suppression of lawful assembly and gatherings because if he says that you know these protesters are the ones who have become goons then you know the police are empowered to go after the protesters even much harder than they have in the

Past and you know it's not like the police was treating people with kid clouds we've seen we saw a police officer shot a shooter guy at point blank range who was just selling masks so it's a very important conversation that i feel like we should have especially as we're heading you know to the election season so what will you would you like to comment on

That just you know the idea that the president is trying to manufacture consent for increased police brutality?

So when I heard that, because I heard that statement, when I heard that statement, I was very alarmed because of two things. One, the president is conflating peaceful protesters who had a legitimate, you know, they had legitimate concerns. We, I was one of them.

We had legitimate concerns about how the country was being run. We had legitimate concerns about how this president ran. I still have the UDA manifesto and I refer it from time to time.

If you look at that manifesto and what the reality has been, it's like night and day. The things that he said he was going to do, he has not done. And so there were legitimate concerns.

So for me, number one was the concern that he was conflating protesters and paid militia. That's number one.

Number two, he was using obfuscation in the sense that this president knows, he knows that in this country where about 75 of the population of this country is under the age of 30, under the age of 30, majority of these young people, 18, actually from 15, because now we are getting young people as young as 15, leaving school and entering the world of work,

Quite unfortunately.

About 80% of that population do not have jobs. If you look at a MasterCard Foundation jobs evaluation report for 2026, a large percentage of young people without jobs are actually educated with, at the very least, a post-secondary qualification. So a certificate, a diploma, a degree, a master's degree.

And so when he, and he knows that politicians, and not just his politicians, this has been the norm with many politicians, because they've been enabled to adequately tackle, and there are ways to do that, to tackle the unemployment, underemployment, low employment of our young people, instead of addressing these issues, what politicians are doing is they're

Not co-opting these young people into their personal gangs.

And he knows that this is happening.

And I'm sure he watched a young man who was graduating from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology. saying that he is graduating, he's got this degree, and if he doesn't get a job, he's going to become a goon for a politician, because at least he will be getting some pay, because his family is waiting for him.

Now that he has graduated, he must start providing for his younger siblings and for the family, because he's now a man, you know, with a degree.

He is ignoring the realities that politicians such as himself and many others have been co-opting these young people into jobs as goons we have seen the videos we have seen the statistics this is not conjecture this is fact and so when a president is conflating these issues and flattening them and saying we were lenient on protesters and now they've turned

Into goons for me that's a very alarmist statement to make because one you're not addressing unemployment in the country and you know that the wealthy the elites the you know and politicians are opting young people into their personal guns especially now as we head into the into the highly politically charged 2027 almost every mca and every mp governor and

Senator and aspirants you know political aspirants are hiring young people as quote-unquote political mobilizers but you know what that term means on the ground number two protesters are people who have legitimate concerns you cannot just lump them with goons and number three what you have just said that when you say protesters are goons then it means

There's no space for protesters even when they have legitimate concerns and they're expressing something that is legitimate and protected in the constitution for me these are very alarming statements and one of the things that I've enjoyed watching in the last couple of weeks is whenever now we have political aspirants you know going into into specific

Places but especially when they have a large following like for example the senator Sifuna that just this previous weekend was having a tour of western Kenya and I remember the young people in those area saying we are not going to be goons for hire we are not going to be mobilized by anybody we are not going to take your money to cause violence and if we see

Any of politicians who don't like what we are doing which is legitimate sending in their their their their goons here we will deal with them and we have seen you know a lot of cities and justice we did see this in Olkala where there was an attempt to cause violence and to thwart the voting process in Olkalau, where the UDA candidate was soundly defeated by a

Candidate from another party that has emerged in central Kenya as the party to watch, which is the DCP party, by the impeached former our deputy president, Srigathi Kashagwa, we saw how we had, you know, what I'm calling citizen-led justice.

They found these young people who were causing violence, they stopped them, they put them somewhere, they removed their clothes and they just let them sit there in full view of the public without their clothes on.

And of course, they could not do anything because they had to sit down and conceal their more private areas, et cetera. So this is what we are seeing. We are seeing ways in which to thwart this.

But overall, when the president says this, it should get lost because what he's doing is actually manipulating consent by lumping different groups in the society that have different grievances into one lump of goon and therefore making it okay, quote unquote, to shoot them, kill them. Because he had even give a shoot the leg order during the 2024 protests.

So we do see this and it really should give us pause we need to find ways of working around that going into 2027.

Doc, it's perfect that you're bringing up Okalawa because I wanted to circle back to a point that you had made earlier about growth in the political space.

The fact that our Kenyan youth are actively saying we will not be used as goons by these politicians is for me a very big sign of you know political growth it's that idea that no matter how dire the situation is we are not going to jeopardize our communities for a few shillings which you know is something that has happened multiple times now in all allow we

Saw a very concerted effort by the government to do everything within their power to basically bribe voters you and i have had conversations about this on twitter just laughing at the lengths that the independent electoral boundaries commission iebc will go to defend what the government was doing and to avoid charging them you know we saw one commissioner

Saying that it's not voter bribery it's voter treatment but we saw you know the oklahoma residents vote for the opposition candidate by such a wide margin, regardless of, you know, the goodies that they had been given by the government.

We're talking about things like gas cylinders, mattresses, money, a lot of money changed hands in Okalau.

So what do you think of that? Do you see it as a trend that can be replicated in the rest of the country where, you know, despite the government's best efforts to bribe voters or intimidate voters?

Because as you rightfully said, there are a lot of goons in Olkalao, do you see it as something that can be replicated that people will stand up and say this is not what we want, no matter how much you try to bribe us or intimidate us, we're going to vote for the opposition?

I actually think that while Olkalao was a seminal moment, remember I've say that what happened in 2024 we may begin to see it now i actually strongly believe that what happened in oklahoma is as a result of what happened in 2024 and the aftermath where we are now seeing citizens telling you know political elite that we see you we know your tricks and i we

Know you imagine that we as the electoral as the voters the electrolytes are very are very silly are foolish but we will show you that we have more wisdom than you might imagine for example one of the pollsters i think it's tifa went out to okalo and did a poll that showed the UDA candidate who is of course part of the ruling coalition of the current

President.

That poll was actually correct because the people of Olkalau had agreed with them within themselves and of course with the you know the leaders that they actually wanted to elect had agreed that they would even tell the pollsters that they would vote for the candidate that was bringing them money we saw roads being fixed we saw electricity poles being

Erected people are being given shoes you know and this is six years after independence some of those roads have been to nyandarwa because i said i climb mountains a lot and some of these mountains especially in the upper days you access them through nyandarwa and the roads have been in really bad shape you know they had started to fix the roads but the roads

As you go into the interior spaces are still pretty bad but we've had a chance to fix them some of them were being fixed during that vote and so they told tifa yes we will vote for the candidate that you know who eventually lost and of course tifa comes out and says that you know the people have saved this candidate they will vote for this candidate it is

True that people had said that they would vote for that candidate and so we're even now seeing a situation where on the ground people will even tell pollsters what they imagine pollsters want to hear or what they imagine the central government wants to hear we have reached that place but the more i think the more important thing is that after witnessing what

Happened in people became emboldened that oh this is actually possible you know we can actually do this And this previous weekend, when Edwin Sifuna was actually going into the rally in Western Kenya, we did see people actually giving him money.

They were giving him money very openly.

And this is unprecedented because it is politicians who usually give electorate money.

They come in with, I understand in Olkalao over 1 billion Kenyan shillings was used just to bribe voters, not even to fix the roads and it was money that was liquid money to bribe people, money changed hands, over 1 billion Kenyan shillings was absorbed into the pockets of the people in Olkalao as bribes. And of course we know what happened there.

Now we see, we've even seen politicians in Western Kenya giving people money and then people take the money and they ask for the pay bills and till numbers which are the mobile way of transferring money to give to the politicians they want to support so it is unprecedented i love what happened in kalau that people openly took the bribes and welcomed the you

Know the bribery but they went and voted for the person they wanted and now we can see this happening across the country.

And like I said, 2024 was the point at which the invincibility of our politicians and the political state was shattered. And now we're beginning to see the weak underbelly of our politicians and their political systems.

And, you know, the tactics they use, come in, bribe the voters, and then you tell them to vote for you and they vote for you. that playbook is now being has been thrown in the fire and now we are yet to see what other playbook they will unleash if there's if there's even enough time to come up with a new playbook but yes i think that was a turning point but

It was not a turning point by itself i think we have always we were always going to come to this place and here and here we are and here we are as of this moment as you've rightfully said this is a culmination of so many different things and you're just rising political consciousness i keep going back to the metaphor you used of a tree it feels like you know

The tree of kenya's political consciousness is about to bloom and the place for you to do that is the upcoming 2027 general elections the independent electoral boundaries commission the ibc registered more than 2.6 million new voters during you know the enhanced registration phase in 2026. so do you see you these new voters a lot them being young people who

Have never voted before i saw lines upon lines upon lines all throughout nairobi of young people who are ready and just really angry they want to vote they want to exercise their their democratic rights do you see them you know making a difference towards you know the upcoming elections or and you know this might be a bit of a loaded question do you think

Young people need to form their own political movement because the issue with kenyan politics for anyone who might not be familiar is that it's very heavily a numbers game and that has traditionally meant tribal coalitions where tribal kingpins can guarantee a certain number of votes and you know that's how a president is chosen if he has the strongest

Possible coalition with the most number of voters from certain regions so doc do you think that you know in light of that knowledge in light of the fact that our politics are very heavily tribal the young people you know who have now amassed at least 2.6 million votes do you think do you see a situation in which they're forced to ally you know with the old

Political forces in order to overcome this as a barrier because getting as 50 plus one of the vote and you know a majority of the vote in about 24 of the 47 counties in the country that is a very tall order so what do you think in that instant so that's a very good question now in the abstract in the abstract Do young people need to form their own coalition?

I feel that for us to answer that question we need to sort of pull back and ask ourselves some certain questions.

If you look at the because the current our current parliament and senate etc is not just filled with the old timers because when we talk about Kenyan politics there is a tendency to imagine that when young people say we are marginalized we've been left behind it's very easy to imagine there are no young people who have been voted in as senators as mps as

Mcas certainly not at presidential level we haven't reached there yet we are hoping to reach there soon but even when you look at the young voter you know the young leaders that we have today majority of them have been a huge disappointment for example if you look at somebody like the so-called toto who came i think from i don't know if it's charangani or

One of those places in the south rift has been a total disappointment if you look at people like peter salacia for example if you look at jalango for example who is the member of parliament for kibra if you look at all these no no i don't think it's great i think it's langata if you look at all these young young politicians they've been quite quite the

Disappointment they go in there majority of them do not really have any political knowledge so even articulating political issues on behalf of the people they represent on the floor of senate or on the floor of parliament is a problem and of course the political mentorship in our country is broken just like mentorship across all other sectors so nobody is

Really coaching young people to say this is how we do politics these are the procedures this is what we need to do this is the language you need to learn when you are thinking about reading bills and interpreting bills and contributing on the floors of either senate or parliament or even as an mca nobody is giving that level of education to young aspirants

So what young aspirants are coming in to do is to emulate the system that exists which is very ethnic based you have to come in with ethnic numbers you have to get the blessing of the elders from your ethnic group if you're a woman vying you have to especially get blessings from the elders or you will be delegitimized as a as a leader or a potential leader

All these different barriers this is what young people are finding and have to navigate so in many ways i don't really blame them because that is the system they are co-opted into and that's the game they have to play what i can say is that we need a critical mass of young people in political office we need more young people in parliament more young people

In senate we need more young people as MCAs.

But we cannot have a country exclusively led by young people. Why? Remember when I started this, I said I sit in the transition space and our transition spaces are broken.

That means that the wisdom, the knowledge that our elders have or even had keeps getting lost. So we are always reinventing ourselves. We are always beginning from scratch, which is very unfortunate because every time we reach the same place our elders reached, we are now old, and the young people start the cycle all over again.

I'll give you an example. Our grandparents, for those of us who have them or who have passed in the recent past, went away with a lot of knowledge, a lot of history, a lot of dates, a lot of things they experienced. Some of them were alive during the emergency period.

But now, if we did not take the opportunity to record, to learn the things they knew and put them down, it means we have a generation of people who lived in the pre-independence Kenya that are not with us anymore.

We have no idea what the realities were. we will be left with books that were written by colonialists basically, or people who have misinterpreted, disinterpreted the events of history. And that is the danger we sit in now, if we say only young people must rule, because what are they ruling?

What are the rules of engagement? What are the skills they need to, by the time they acquire these skills, they'll be old and then we'll be bringing in the current gen bettas who are being born now, who will be the first generation to see the 22nd century. What will they be leading?

What will they be doing at that time? So what we need to do is have more young people because majority of our population is people under 35 anyway. We need more young people, but we also need our older cohorts of leaders to begin to take seriously the business of mentorship and grooming the next generation of young people.

In that conversation, in that process of grooming the next generation of young people, a lot of misconceptions, ethnic underpinnings will be challenged because now you have young men from different places in the country saying they are willing to vote outside of their ethnic identity. Not that they have lost it.

In fact, I find that more young people, especially in the Gen Z age group and younger millennials, embracing their ethnicity more and more and learning their languages, etc., which is a good thing.

So it's not that they are abandoning their ethnic identities, but they are not allowing ethnicity to be the key mobilizing strategy through which they access power, wealth, and other resources. So are we likely to see young people go and vote? I'm hoping yes, because in the last election, many young people did not vote.

Yes, I was saying, will we see more young people going to vote? I hope so. In the last election, young people were accused of not going outside to vote, which was true.

And it is a person's right to vote or not vote. But I think in the last three, four years, people have seen the result of allowing themselves to be absent at the ballot.

Especially in Olkala, where we saw Mainakiai's contribution to electoral law come alive, where we vote right here, you count the votes in our presence right here, and we televise those votes.

And then when everybody leaves that place, we are all sure that no votes have been stolen, you know, because that has been, you know, has been the thing that was done in the past. You would either stuff the ballot boxes with your candidate of choice if you were to rig that election. There are a lot of things that were being done.

But now we are seeing more and more that when people are more involved at the point of the vote, you know, you tend not to see the immediate results of your choice. but beyond voting i am also hoping to see more young people continue to because it's not just about voting it's about holding your leaders to account when they introduce these bills in parliament

We are there we are reading these bills now we are debating we are putting more demands on our leaders and placing the feet to the fire well that process is not yet fully defined and fully visible i think we're getting there so overall i think these 2.6 million new votes will be critical i think in 2027 because if majority as you see of this young of these

Are young people i think we're going to see a very different result because young people are speaking a different language that many politicians many people in power don't seem to understand yeah so i think that is that's that's where we are heading we will see we will see i think everything is still in flux we 2027 is still a distance away but we can

Speculate and say that these 2.6 million new votes new voters will be a determining factor all right and with that we'll end the podcast here we've gone a little over the hour that i usually a lot for this podcast and doc thank you so much for being gracious enough to stay with us you're much longer than the hour we had agreed upon for the podcast we really

Really appreciate you so doc is there anything you'd like to share with our audience before you leave maybe about the nabo issue leadership institute or the under the acacia podcast or just anything about that you want to share i won't limit you right so i we have recently started the i recently founded an abortion leadership institute and so what we do is

That we sit within what i call the ecologies of becoming i've just said right now that young people form the majority of the population not just in kenya but across the continent everybody keeps saying we are the youngest we are the youngest continent and that's true by 2030 75 percent of africans will be 35 and below that's a huge that's a huge number but

Unfortunately because we have delegitimized a lot of things or defunded things like educations and our social systems we have dismantled these we now have a cohort of young people across the continent and here in kenya as well of course that is completely completely left alone and are becoming something that even they are not aware of if you look at a

Country like kenya i was with young people at indaba x last week and i kept asking them and i keep asking this question to young people everywhere if you were to count 10 people 10 men on one hand and 10 women on the other hand that have a national platform that you look up to majority of young people burst into laughter Because they themselves admit that

They cannot go, you know, and I tell them apart from their parents, they say, even if we counted our parents, probably wouldn't reach five.

For me, that is a failure of the older generation. And I count myself as being in that older generation because we have been modeling corruption.

You know, we are generally, we've become very corrupt as an older generation. love shortcuts we have taken nepotism into into every conversation that and every practice whether it's government wherever bribery is the order of the day if you want to get anything done anywhere you've got to bribe your way in into it we're and we are teaching these things to

Our children because if you listen to various podcasts you hear young people who used to be in very good schools coming in and saying oh yes it was norm for us to cheat in exams the teachers would bring us you know the exams before before the exam date and we would look at all the questions we knew what was coming and that's how we passed so we are bringing

A generation of young people these ones who are going to be the majority 75 percent from the world of being children into the world of adulthood but by the time they reach there we have already clipped their wings and so majority of them are coming are becoming these to use it very loosely this thing that we have crippled this wingless bird which is very

Unfortunate i think because if you think about the continent 10 years from now and these are the majority of the people and we have not imparted the skills the we've not modeled the values the integrity that they will require to live and to be in the world that is here in the world to come then it means we will have failed the entire continent and from where

I sit you know when i'm having my conspiracy theory moments i think will be right for a recolonization that will be intellectual because if we have these big corporations and businesses and we cannot run them you know our young people cannot run them people from elsewhere will come and run them on our behalf because you don't have the skills and you don't

Have the knowledge etc for me that is the biggest my biggest concern and so for naboisha leadership institute we sit at the intersection of ecosystem of program and of of media those are our three main arms that we do where we sit in a space where we are actually we are developing something called youth transitions intelligence which is a framework for

Understanding the things young people are saying and they're doing that the older people who are in charge of you know the employers governments etc do not seem to understand a key example i would give you was the recent speech of school bannings that we saw across kenya and the interpretations of those school bannings left me feeling very depleted because

They were all wrong they were all wrong young people are speaking a language but it seems to be gibberish and so we sit in a space where we attempt to translate what young people are saying and saying look this is what young people are saying when they say this is what they mean and this is what they require from us as the older generation as we are molding

Them and bringing them up and grooming them to take over power responsibility in the years to come so that's number one number two we are also in the process of now seeking funding to do this thing we are saying this youth transitions intelligence and how we are practicing it to actually have young people in our programs going through that leadership

Training that grooming imparting impartation of values etc through different mentors and through different conversations within the purview of our program so that when they come through a program and we're not even bringing them in as youth you know as young people youth youth we are bringing them in as in different segments because we've already done a

Segmentation study we have seen the different needs across different different contexts of young people so when they come in we take them within the context in which they are we give them the skills the tools the opportunities and the spaces to then come out of our programs and enter into this world where they can make a difference and the third thing we are

Doing is now the media arm our media arm is called under the acacia now bush in itself is a masai word meaning oneness and unity of purpose our logo is the emblem of the umbrella occasion acacia tree in kimasa it's called old depesy and so our media arm is called under the acacia ideally sitting under this umbrella acacia tree and one of the things we are

Doing the media arm is to give voice and visibility to the issues of young people by speaking to young people themselves and speaking to people who work with alongside for young people just to give visibility to the issues around young people and the issues that we are gathering from our youth transitions intelligence framework that is currently undergoing

Trademark so these are the things we are doing one of the things we have done is we have a podcast under the acacia podcast it's on youtube at nabusha leadership institute because that is the channel for the umbrella work we are doing one of which is that particular podcast under the acacia we've just started we are doing fundraising and we are talking to

Various people employ employers and different entities as we develop our youth transitions intelligence so that we are speaking we are understanding the language young people are speaking and therefore you know creating a world that we will we are the minority in that world and so we have to create a world and it's our responsibility to do that because we

Are the ones with the skills and the knowledge and the experience it's our duty i feel to explicitly and openly build a world for young people because they will be the majority in that world and then leave that those responsibilities and that world to them to carry forward into the 22nd century so that's that's the work we do it sounds very ambitious but

It's also quite simple well it's both ambitious and simple i've done this work i did my thesis on popular culture urban culture i've written academic papers on culture and young people including those gen z protests so for me this is part of how i feel i am giving back to the world by creating this thing that must outlive me and then leave young people to

Run with it and carry it forward into the future so that's what we're doing at nabwisho of course nabwisho is a masai word i have masai roots myself and so really leaning on to that cultural system of going back to our roots and of course our symbol is the acacia tree the acacia tree is very hardy it grows in spaces where there's very little rainfall or

Where it can get very hot we find relief and succor under the acacia tree in a nutshell that's that's that's who we are and that's what i'm doing currently thank you so much doc for sharing what you're doing with our listeners for sharing your time with us we really really appreciate it and we don't take it for granted and we would love to have you again on

This podcast it was such an interesting discussion you are again one of the guests that i am extremely happy that i was able to land you're someone who is obviously a very big inspiration to me on a personal and professional level and again thank you so much for being here to our listeners if you've gotten this far into our podcast one you have to be a

Subscriber of fronts.co and we're grateful so grateful for you guys because without you we wouldn't be able to do the kind of work we do here we wouldn't be able to have guests as cool as dr caroline on our podcast we wouldn't even have a podcast in the first place so the fact that you continue to support us you continue to just share our work as widely as

You have is something we're absolutely grateful for so i just want to let you know we don't take you guys for granted and yeah with that, we will see you on the next edition of the Dear South podcast.

Have a lovely day. We'll catch you in the next one.