Recycling Seasons

People think that these demonstrations by our children are a new thing.

But I want to demonstrate to us that this is a recycling thing that has been growing with the changing times.

I have looked at Kenya from the fifties and realised that a similar thing has been happening in cycles of between fifteen and twenty years.

But allow me to start with one thing.

Young people are not scared to die. And they love adventure, any adventure.

The truth is that to many young people, death is desirable to living; and that not because of a hard life.

I have severally talked with young men leading normal lives, even holding jobs, who have told me that they would not like to live to be forty.

The dare devil spirit runs in young people. Adventure of whichever shade is desirable to a vast majority of young people than the status quo.

How many die because they must test the limits of a fast car or bike?

You see, a young person has no baggage. They have no responsibilities beyond self. They have no dependents.

This means that they are really living for the present, and nothing else.

Create a cause for them and they will fling themselves headlong.

The fact that they are demonstrating is therefore not a new thing. It is only that times have changed, opening them to new methods of pouring their lives to a cause.

Let me now go to the cycles.

The fifties saw young people dare the British empire with pangas and homemade guns.

Fast forward to the early to mid-seventies.

There was a movement that led the government of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta make some people disappear.

There were very few radios then and of course almost no TVs

In any case there was only one broadcaster belonging to the same government.

But I remember some young people produced vinyl records that were of course banned. But they still got to the villages. And it was fun listening to a song the government would arrest you for listening. I was a child then.

I will jump the coup because it was the product of greedy ambition.

In the late eighties there was the clamor for the scrapping of the infamous section 2A that culminated in the famous Saba Saba in 1990

Then more people had radios. There were also TVs since that was the time Greatwall had made TV accessible to the wananchi. We also had another TV station, KTN, that gave another perspective though it was owned by KANU. The same station also broadcast CNN since it did not have adequate content for the 24 hours broadcast. VoK, later named KBC, only broadcast between 4 and 10pm on weekdays.

Fast forward to the mid-2000s and we have the infamous post-election clashes.

Then we had mobile phones. We also had internet, but only in cyber cafes. Even then, the calling rates were high for anything but essential communication.

The battle increased in intensity and scope.

Remember what immediately happened after the clashes?

Students burnt schools until it almost appeared as if that will not end.

It is the people who were children under ten then who are the engineers of this new thing we are seeing.

Why is it new?

In the past, due to the paucity of information, there needed to be a leader or leaders to guide the boiling blood.

Today they have all the tools in their hands; a phone that can do everything all the other generations combined could not even dream of, and social media.

They can simply and quickly talk to people they have not and may never meet and plan things.

A million can hold a meeting without the need of any meeting place with the logistics of the same as easy as getting the phone connected to the internet.

In the past, you could disrupt a meeting by simply blocking a venue. But how do you block a tweeter meeting?

One could very easily buy a few leaders of the movement to kill the momentum as has happened in all those cycles I have described. But is it possible to bribe people on social media?

Due to the nature of their interactions, they have no leader and may not need one since they are one humongous kamukunji.

Even the tribalism leaders talk about was a creation of the leaders of those movements for their own ends since young people are not bound by such shackles.

I just pray for wisdom for our president that he will accurately and wisely interact with this community since there are no precedents as it has never been done anywhere.

And the whole world will be taking notes because it is a first in the whole world.

But young people have always been like that. It is the dynamic that has changed.

Earlier generations were not cowards as I see many saying. It is their circumstances that were different.

Unless you tell me that taking a panga to confront a fighter jet and automatic machine gun is cowardice.

When people are as young as you are, they will behave just like you behave, but in their space.

I also pray that God will raise leaders from this young blood for the church of Christ since we are about to exit the scene.

God bless you