Wifi, mzinga and zero ambition: The ugly side of 'pampers Gen Z'

Shot of an unrecognizable woman using a mobile phone indoors [Courtesy]

They arrive like a new species; well-fed, well-spoken, well-entitled yet strangely undercooked by life. You look at them twice, sometimes thrice, not out of admiration, but out of biological confusion. Is this truly my child? The nose says yes. The attitude says: Imported.

Then science joins the confusion. DNA results now roam the streets like unpaid debts, whispering uncomfortable truths. Men who paid school fees with monk-like discipline are discovering they have been sponsoring other people’s bloodlines.

Fatherhood, once sacred, now behaves like a raffle. You invest sweat and sacrifice, only to realise you were a long-term donor in a drama you never auditioned for.

Doubt creeps in quietly. You revisit memories. That stubbornness; was it really yours? That laziness! Surely not ancestral. Even resemblance starts to look like a forged signature.

But the real theatre is not in the lab. It is in the living room.

A trending video is making the rounds. A 27-year-old son, fully grown in bone but not in burden, lounges in his father’s house like a stalled government project, fully funded, zero progress. He sips tea brewed by a man who has wrestled life barehanded. Then, with the confidence of a motivational speaker who has never been motivated, he asks, “Do you expect me to suffer as you did?”

Suffer.

To him, work is suffering. Effort is oppression. Responsibility is a colonial relic.

His father, whose wrinkles are minutes of meetings with hardship, asks, “Am I your servant?”

The son scrolls calmly. “I didn’t ask to be born.”

Ah. The new gospel.

Once upon a time, one wrong word to your father and you would sprint to your uncle’s home like a fugitive. Not because of beatings, but because curses were feared like drought. Today? A child adjusts Bluetooth and says, “Unabonga shiet,” like a dissatisfied customer. These do not fear curses. They negotiate them.

This is the generation that calls you twenty times during a meeting. You excuse yourself, heart racing, imagining catastrophe. You rush out, whispering, “Hello, what’s wrong?”

A relaxed voice replies, “Kwani haujalipa tokens? WiFi imekatwa.”

You look at the sky. Not for answers. For patience.

Maturity here is still in diapers. No shame when a woman pays rent, buys food, even innerwear. Once, a man would wear torn dignity before borrowing underwear. Today, he models sponsored boxers like a brand ambassador. Love has become a subscription service.

These are men who escort girlfriends to “weekend visits” with sponsors; uncles they barely know, mubabas who finance affection. They drop them off like parcels, wait like riders, and return energised by 'mzinga' and betting coins. They even mock those whose girlfriends lack a 'network'.

Jealousy has been declared toxic. Testosterone outsourced. Love is a joint venture. Loyalty negotiable. Intimacy is a public utility. They hotspot partners like WiFi secured, but widely shared. Risk is marketed as fun. Diseases are treated like outdated folklore.

Biology itself has become biashara smart. Some sell their seed to single mothers at the price of a night’s thrill, quickly converted into weed, mzinga, or a hopeful bet. Entrepreneurship without ethics.

Legacy without responsibility. So when you walk the streets and see a familiar face, do not doubt. Those may be your relatives, quietly sired by Kevo, Jonte, Brio, and other four-letter names that sound like passwords, but unlock generations.

Meanwhile, in the villages, reality whispers loudly. Grandparents, who should be negotiating with arthritis, are raising abandoned children. Old men rock babies like reluctant DJs. Grandmothers, bent like commas, chase toddlers who should be chasing dreams.

The actual parents? Somewhere in Nairobi, around Mirema, Roysambu, and Pipeline, drowning in neon lights, swallowing mzinga as it contains wisdom in the company of fake gold merchants.

And the children? Some suckle goats, not out of culture, but due to parental neglect. Tiny bodies negotiating survival too early. You see them at rallies, thin and invisible, lining up for promises they cannot eat. You see them queuing for bursaries, escorted by grandparents who look like footnotes in history.

These are not just children. They are receipts. Education has become performance. Parents attend graduations only to discover their children are missing from the booklet. Some hire gowns for unfinished stories; pending supplementary exams, dissertations gathering dust. Confidence inflated. Substance missing. Some even ask lecturers not for clues, but for the marking scheme. Why struggle when results can be negotiated?

This is a generation that can organise a hunger strike and expect the hunger to cooperate. They boycott efforts and demand outcomes. And when everything collapses, they return home, where the father they dismissed must fund recovery.

Parents are financing rebellion. Feeding disrespect. Housing idleness. A public advisory: Do not visit your children in universities unannounced. Not because they are studying, but because what you might find may introduce you to a terminal disease you never applied for. Sometimes ignorance is insurance.

Yet beneath the laughter lies a wound. How did we raise a generation that wants everything except responsibility? A generation that can threaten collapse over heartbreak, a lost phone, or delayed pocket money?

Perhaps we loved without limits but forgot discipline. Provided without preparation. Mistook comfort for character. Or perhaps this is modernity’s invoice delivered late, with interest.

Because if a grown man can reject work, outsource dignity, and still demand provision with CEO confidence, then we are not raising children. We are manufacturing liabilities.

And liabilities, unlike children, do not grow up; they accumulate! So don’t waste money on witchcraft and night prayers; you are not alone. We are all paying for borrowed lifestyles without borrowed discipline. Meza Brufen pole pole.

And if you don’t have such a child, pause… just pause. Chances are, once upon a time, you were one only people in your generation who still feared curses. And that fear raised you.