35 years later, Saba Saba continues: Meeting of different generations, same script

When protesters decided to 'consult' statues of Word War 1 fallen at Kenyatta Avenue during Justice For Albert Ojwang Protests on June 17, 2025. [Kanyiri Wahito, Standard]

Tomorrow, Monday 7 July, Kenya’s Gen-Z protests are set to intersect with the struggle for constitutional democracy that began more than four decades ago.

The Saba Saba commemorations are not celebrations of a moment. They instead call up public consciousness to decades of strife for good governance, since independence.

What have been the changing faces of this struggle, even as generations have come and gone? Have there been any meaningful gains, or has the struggle only manifested in unending orgies of violence, noise and destruction?  

The struggle for democracy in Kenya has usually hibernated in the harshest of seasons, only to bounce back with renewed vigour, when least expected. Such was the dynamic that 35 years ago brought Nairobi to a standstill. It has since stopped the country once each year, to commemorate that Saturday of rare courage.

The strife has been fraught with many highs and lows. It has witnessed strange disappearances of people, torture, mayhem, and often death, from one regime to the next. Equally the baton of protest has passed from one generation to the next with stoic courage.

Yet, we are tempted to ask, with Tanzanian pioneering author, Anicenti Kitereza of Ukerewe Islands, when will it end? Next, why do the champions of yesterday morph into villains, once the trophy is in their lap?  

We were young people in our early thirties when Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia declared on New Year’s day in 1990 that Kenya had just entered the year of multiparty democracy. It was nearly two years since the two had been rigged out of Parliament, in the infamous Mlolongo elections of 1988. The democratic space had steadily thinned out since 9 June 1982 when, in one short afternoon, Mwai Kibaki and Charles Njonjo led a captive Parliament in making Kenya a one-party dictatorship.

Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and George Anyona had recently announced that they were going to launch a socialist political party, after being expelled from Kanu. In a knee-jerk response, the state arm-twisted Parliament into a tempestuous change of constitution, with far-reaching consequences.

Kenya’s mother law now banned multiparty democracy.  The constitution declared Kanu the sole party. Jaramogi was placed under house arrest. Anyona was detained alongside university lecturers Alamin Mazrui and Mukaru Ng’ang’a. 

Kanu itself became increasingly draconian. Even ministers knelt down and shed tears before the dreaded David Okiki Amayo, who chaired the party’s disciplinary committee. The 1985 Kanu party elections were the harbinger of terrible things to come. They represented the first experiment with election rigging through queue voting.

Voters queued behind the candidate of choice. The one with the shortest queue easily found himself declared the winner. Progressives were rigged out, as Nyayo people dominated political space, everywhere, from the countryside to the party headquarters in Nairobi.  

Protesters hang on KBS bus during the Saba Saba demonstrations in Nairobi on July 7, 1990. [File, Standard]

As the party morphed into a dreaded behemoth, dissent went underground. The Mzalendo Mwakenya movement was born, as a secret society. The state cracked clamped down on it. Every week someone was detained. Another one was tried at night and sent to jail. Others simply disappeared never to be seen, or heard of again. And yet some more were tossed down to their death from the rooftop of Nyayo House.

Others were killed before being tossed over. This absurdity picked up astounding pace after the mlolongo elections of 1988. Publications were banned. Printing presses were disabled. Writers were jailed.

Everywhere, people spoke in whispers, casting their heads over their shoulders. You trusted nobody, even those you lived with under the same roof, and called them your family. And we were there, as young adults, to witness these happenings and capture them for posterity, as living history. The strife against this order is what Saba Saba signifies. Yet, the face of the struggle has changed once again. Even the spaces have changed hands.

In recent years, the demonstrations have been associated with ODM leader, Raila Odinga, and his party. From October 2002, when he led the rebellion against Kanu, Raila has been the metaphor for the politically oppressed, the voice of the voiceless.

Under his watch, Kenya’s cry for social and political justice has been enacted in theatres of protest in the streets of Nairobi’s Kawangware, Kibera, Mathari and Kariobangi, and Dandora. These are largely informal settlements, predominantly occupied by the Luo and Luhya people, who have been seen to constitute the majority of the Raila diehards. 

Outside Nairobi, the demos have historically been mainly in Kisumu, Homa Bay, Migori, and Siaya, as well as the Western counties of Kakamega and Busia. But when the Gen-Zs happened, last year, Raila suddenly built bridges with President William Ruto. They now run a joint administration, called “the broad-based government.” They have a joint Cabinet, formally appointed and presided over by President Ruto. The composition of the administration, its business, and direction of the Cabinet are matters that are jointly agreed upon by the two principals in government. They are also jointly represented everywhere else in government; at home in all state entities, and abroad in foreign and diaspora affairs.  

The new Ruto-Raila political axis has invariably had impact on the face of protest. The traditional homes of protest have suddenly gone mute. Kisumu remains quiet, as do all other Luo-speaking counties, in the wake of renewed Gen-Z protests. When asked why in vox-pop TV interviews in the streets, the protestors of yesteryear say that they are now in government. They don’t see the need “to fight our own government.”

The spinoff has been the relocation of the theatres of protest to places that had hitherto remained outside the circle of demonstration. Mt Kenya regions of Nyeri, Murang’a, Laikipia, and Kiambu are the new arenas of demonstration.

Martin Shikuku addresses the crowd at Kamukunji with James Orengo during the first Saba Saba rally in July 7, 1990. [File, Standard]

Tomorrow’s demos are likely to be pronounced in the headquarters of these counties, and less in the Luo Nyanza counties. Accordingly, the Ruto-Raila axis is demonizing the Gen-Z protests, by casting them as “tribal.” Without any supporting evidence, they have attributed them to former President Rigathi Gachagua, who has been on the rampage since his impeachment in August last year. 

The risk of losing sight of the salient issues that Gen Z have protested against is real. Diversion of broad-based public grievances by giving them a tribal outlook has worked well for successive regimes in Kenya.

Soon after independence, the Jomo Kenyatta government began going off the rails of public expectations. Widespread corruption and accumulation of personal wealth by the new class around the President  began raising eyebrows. The government profiled those who raised their voices against this nascent corruption as the lost sheep of the house of Kenya. But they were also cast as “disgruntled tribal elements” that were “the enemies of independence, and as colonial quislings and enemies of the Mt. Kenya communities.” 

It did not help matters that the voices at the forefront were led by Jaramogi, a Luo from Nyanza. When he broke away from Kanu in 1966 with a raft of MPs, even Tom Mboya, a Bantu-Luo, classified Jaramogi’s new Kenya People’s Union as “a tribal party,” and Jaramogi himself as “a tribal leader.” Mt. Kenya politicians on the same side with Jaramogi were painted at home in the colours of traitors. Among these were Kung’u Karumba and Bildad Kaggia, who had previously been detained with Kenyatta in colonial days.  

There was rampant corrupt grabbing of land, and questionable business investment. The land grabs were mainly by former home guard families, now in power. They were also the ones dominating business under so-called Kenyanization and Africanization programmes.

President Kenyatta personally rebuked his former colleagues in detention. “Look at me, and look at yourselves, “ he told them through a public rally. “Look at what I have done for myself. Look at Paul Ngei. See what he has done for himself. What have you done for yourselves?” an angry President Kenyatta quipped. He told them that there were no free things in Kenya. Then came his recurrent rider, “Even independence was not given to us on a platter! We grabbed it.”  

With Jaramogi effectively profiled as a malcontent who wanted to grab power from the House of Mumbi, the Mountain was effectively locked out of the struggle for a better Kenya in the Jomo Kenyatta years.

The Ruto-Raila axis is today playing the same card against the Gen-Z protests. They are profiling them as Mt Kenya ethnic-driven, power-thirsty ventures.  The objective is to divert popular support for Gen-Zs among non-Mt Kenya populations. The Mountain must be seen as tribal, selfish and greedy. It does not help at all that Opposition excursions into largely Bantu-speaking communities, in Rigathi Gachagua fronted campaigns, have invented the “political cousins” moniker. 

The new united Opposition  movement is playing straight into the hands of the Ruto-Raila axis. It is alienating massive populations from Rift Valley and Luo Nyanza, who otherwise share in broad-based grief against the Ruto-Raila administration. Their trademark salute of “Hi, Cousins” is, in the end, counterproductive. It would appear set to work against both the political Opposition and the Gen-Zs, if the youth protests are not seen as ploughing their own furrow.

For its part, the United Opposition needs to get back to its workshop of political messaging, propaganda and connection with diverse publics. Their situation is made worse by the manifest fact that all the champions are from four major Bantu-speaking language communities that are the Kikuyu, Luhya, Akamba, and Kisii. 

A Gen Z population that calls itself “leaderless, party-less and tribeless”, for its part, will do well to see the red flags that both the Ruto-Raila and the Cousins axes are flaunting. If they buy into either camp, they risk being reduced to regular gunpowder whose usefulness is expended once it has been used. As in the past, the revolution will be stolen, and the youth remembered not any more than statistics of the numbers that turned up in the streets, how many were maimed, and how many killed. 

As they prepare to confront state-hired goons, chaperoned by a police entity that, on the authority of the responsible CS, has been instructed to kill, the Gen-Zs and the Millennials will want to begin seeing beyond the demos.

What next after the demonstrations? For every so often, they will explode into the streets, fight with goons and the police and retire in the evening. They will bask in the glory of media coverage for a few hours, and go away to lament about the dead and the maimed. But what next?

At some point, clear leadership will be inevitable, unless their defined mission does not go beyond sensitizing the nation on what ails it. Demos, strikes and picketing in Europe, for example, will clearly define the goals they tend to achieve. They may be by dairy farmers in Germany, protesting against poor returns on dairy produce. They will bring out their trucks and block all the roads. Then they will pour milk in the streets. They will refuse to leave the streets, until what they want has been achieved. 

Martin Shikuku addresses the crowd at Kamukunji with James Orengo during the first Saba Saba rally in July 7, 1990. [File, Standard]

Gen Zs have yet to learn back-solving as a strategy in goal seeking.  Back-solving will usually begin from the goal. What do you want to achieve? What will indicate that you have achieved what you are after? In this case, a street demo cannot be an end in itself. So what after the demo? If you know what you want, you will define the value inputs and actions that must lead to the goal. Is it the goal that Ruto must go? If it is, when? And next to that is how? President Ruto has himself by default helped to place the Gen-Zs on this thought trajectory when he recently asked at a public gathering, “How do they want me to go?”

Definition of these granular details requires trustworthy visionary leadership. It goes beyond three-piece wearing leadership with extra pieces in the breast pocket. Nor is it defined by itinerant Kaunda suit-clad individuals, ostensibly on a mission to expose failed state projects as conduits of corruption.  Such characters only play to the gallery and will soon name their price to the powers that be. 

That aside, the significance of Saba Saba remains. It was a bold curtain raiser to the baby strides that have been made over the years. It speaks to both the power of the resolve of the people and the impact of the Media.

In 1990, Matiba and Rubia did not relent on their call for restoration of multiparty democracy and the year as the start of the journey. Quite early in the year, they declared 7 July as the day that they would address a multiparty rally in the Kamukunji grounds in Shauri Moyo. It was an absurd call. Who would believe in the dreaded Nyayo years that such a wild dream was possible to realise.

Kibaki referred to Matiba and Rubia as daydreamers who were trying to fell the Mugumo tree with a razor blade. As Jaramogi, Masinde Muliro, Martin Shikuku, Ahmed Bamariz, Francis Nthenge, Paul Muite, and Philip Gachoka joined the fray, Kanu bigwigs went into panic and insolence. Vice President George Saitoti referred to Jaramogi as “Mzee mkumbafu (sic).” He advised him to “stop hallucinating that he can advise our President.”

But the excitement about July Seven did not go down a notch. On 4 July, Matiba and Rubia were set to address the country on the preparations for the big day. They were intercepted in the streets by the Kenya police and escorted to detention.

Yet on Saturday 7 July 1990 Shikuku, Gachoka, Nthenge and James Orengo  approached Kamukunji via Landhies Road, keen to continue from where Matiba and Rubia had left off. We were in the prime of our youth, some of us. We walked all the way towards Kamukunji in great cheer, ready to listen to what had been billed the first multiparty rally since 1969. But it did not happen. The police scattered us to the four winds firing live bullets at the pick-up van on which the champions of democracy were riding, while the rest of us were served teargas. 

Thirty-five years on, the demos continue. It is a meeting of different generations, different actors, around the same script and concerns. Earlier efforts brought back multiparty democracy and a new constitution. They devolved development and increased the watchtowers of freedom. But the state fights on, with its new troupe under President Ruto and Raila. The one thing that is not in doubt is that a revolution is in progress.