Forgiveness must address parents living with graves of their children

A picture taken on May 16, 2016 in Nairobi shows Kenyan riot police beating an unresponsive fallen protester with wooden sticks until they break. [AFP] Forgiveness is a spiritual act and divine virtue that serves as a preservative for relationships. But in the political arena, forgiveness often functions as a calculated tactic. It is not only what is forgiven that matters but when, why, and to whom the forgiveness is extended. In the complex theatre of power, political forgiveness is itself a political tact. There's an 'I'm sorry' that rings hollow. It's not repentance, it is reputation management. "If I did wrong, forgive me" is not always an apology, some use it as a hedge. It tiptoes around guilt, offering conditional remorse without full ownership. Such a statement mimics humility, but it sidesteps responsibility. It travels light, too light to carry the weight of true remorse. It leaves the listener doing the emotional heavy lifting, deciding whether wrong was done at all. It's a polite evasion as a way to appear contrite while keeping one's conscience untouched. It seeks relief from tension and guilt, not restoration of trust. True repentance doesn't begin with 'if.' It begins with 'I did.' That small word 'if' changes everything. It casts doubt on the wrong, shifts the burden to the offended, and leaves the offender comfortably vague. It's not an admission, it's an escape clause. The sentence suggests: I don't think I did anything wrong, but in case you're offended, here's something to pacify you. It is possible to mock true forgiveness by faking it. True sorrow bends the heart; false sorrow just bends the truth. True forgiveness is costly. It acknowledges the wound, names the wrong, and chooses release not because the offence was small, but because grace is large. It is rooted in truth, not performance. It is not quick to forget, but willing to remember differently without vengeance. Fake repentance corrodes. False forgiveness is transactional. It's a cross without a crucifixion -clean, bloodless, and empty. In the aftermath of the Gen Z-led protests in Kenya, we have witnessed a troubling silence of admission for responsibility. When a form of repentance appeared in the National Prayer Breakfast, it was phrased tactically. The forgiveness tagged a demand that young people "respect the elders." But it's been a while and this generational positioning has shifted in favour of young voices being as valid as those of adults. Any politician who perceives Gen Z as children needs to both catch up and 'grow' up. As long as the presidency sees youth as children who must respect elders simply because of age, real engagement will remain minimal. Young people do not owe the older blind respect; they owe them a lesson that the distributor of wisdom and power doesn't skip the young! Leaders circumvent their responsibility over the death of innocent young people and avoid admitting that "We were wrong." But Kenya's young people see through the smoke. To the Gen Z who marched, mourned, and mobilised, pseudo repentance is not just hollow-it is offensive. Pseudo repentance does not heal; it reopens wounds. It turns courageous young citizens into cynical ones. It makes the next plea more bitter. And worst of all, it rewrites the story, casting the oppressors as peacemakers and the wounded as noise makers. It feels like betrayal dressed in borrowed humility. They watched friends disappear in tear gas clouds and read obituaries of their peers. They reject political repentance and demand authentic justice. The best they have received is a national performance of remorse - without resignations, without accountability, without truth. This kind of repentance does more damage than silence. It erodes the very foundation of trust. Forgiveness for optics teaches a dangerous lesson: that power need not answer to pain. That if you wait long enough, emotions will cool and memory will fade and no real reckoning is needed. That if you ignore them long enough, young people will shrink into the children they are perceived to be. But Gen Z is not forgetting. In their culture of 'keeping it real' they can see the lies - and it angers them. They are noting every evasion, every manipulation. They are taking note of the spiritual leaders who remain silent when cross-based virtue of forgiveness is mocked. Those in government and enjoying tax-funded lifestyles are in a rush to say the nation has 'moved on'. But, as if nature wants to keep them restless, the Gen Z dust keeps being blown up by a divine wind. It refuses to settle. With the Gen Z dust constantly in our eyes, we must ask: What does authentic forgiveness really look like in contemporary Kenya? It is not a handshake staged for the cameras. It is not a broad-base with a narrow love for the people. It is not a politician's apology laced with reluctance and sarcasm. It is not the passiveness of a pastor in the name of "giving the government time." Authentic forgiveness grows out of truth - truth that is hard, painful, and often humiliating. In a just society, forgiveness must follow confession. It must be anchored in a clear admission of wrongdoing: that lives were lost, that force was excessive, and that genuine voices of a generation were violently silenced. It must name the victims, not erase them in vague phrases like "incidents" or "unfortunate outcomes." An appeal for forgiveness must address the parents of the dead, who live with the graves of their children. Authenticity is inevitably evidenced by change. A country cannot ask its youth to forgive if the systems that wounded them remain untouched. If police brutality continues, if laws are weaponised against dissent, if investigations stall, then calls for forgiveness ring hollow. Forgiveness without reform is simply permission for future abuse. Kenya must resist the temptation of cheap grace. Our youth are not unreasonable. They are not asking for perfection. They are asking for honesty. For justice. For dignity. If the nation gets that right, then forgiveness will not just be possible-it will be powerful. If Kenya is to recover its soul, it must repent with its hands, not just its lips. That means naming what was done. It means restitution. It means creating a country where the death of one young protester is not treated as collateral damage, but as a national crisis. Only then will repentance be real. And only then will Gen Z begin to believe again.

Forgiveness must address parents living with graves of their children

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