Using morbid humour to stay alive, but also to remind that youth have nothing to lose

Here protestors probably decided to consult Word War 1 fallen soldiers on survival tactics on the battlefield at the World War 1 Memorial Stature along Kenyatta Avenue during Justice For Albert Ojwang Protests on June 17, 2025. [Kanyiri Wahito, Standard]

Multiple memes appeared online as youthful protesters imagined their demise—as potential victims of police brutality— and memorialisation. There are multiple ways of looking at these communications, first as critiques of police violence as an act of dehumanisation, but also taking power off police guns.

Only hours earlier, Prezzo Bill Ruto and his Interior Cabinet Secretary had hailed the police for doing a great job of “protecting” the nation and its people and urging them to deal “ruthlessly with criminals.”

Kenyans know who the criminals are: they call them by name and when sighted among crowds, as happened during the Wednesday protests, take law in their own hands and toss them out of their midst.

“In case they shoot me tomorrow, read this (sic) loud to my mom and dad and tell them I did my best,” read one meme by a 25-year-old man. “He was not just a mechanical engineer by training, a DJ by passion, or a skilled creative. He was a fighter for justice, equity and dignity… He died standing for something.”

There is plenty of stuff going on here. The young man is flashing a business card, illustrating his solid qualifications, counterbalanced by his diminished prospects of securing a job. Consequently, he highlights his creative agility, and values envisioning Kenya as a just and equitable society where all can enjoy dignified existence.

But the “death wish” from young Kenyans isn’t just morbid humour; it is a renunciation of a State that deprives its own an opportunity to make something out of their lives, and using repression to quell dissent. Consequently, they are saying, they have nothing to lose.