Young Kenyans should turn the tide and become own saviours

Two men taking a nap near the GPO stage along Kenyatta Avenue in Nairobi. [David Gichuru, Standard]

I send my warmest regards to the youth of Kenya. Moments such as these can sound and feel contradictory, underwhelming even.

You may wonder whether to enjoy the joy of Idd-ul-Fittr, which marked the end of the Holy month of Ramadhan, or to embrace the pervasive cynicism sweeping across the land partly due to global recession.

Let me preface this open letter with the famous words of Franz Fannon that "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it."

The most urgent question of now is, have we discovered our mission? Are we serving it? How well are we doing it? That we are living in moments of upheavals cannot be gainsaid. The traditional institutions and the conventional wisdom of the past have crumbled in the face of debilitating challenges.

The worst drought in 40 years, a debt crisis never witnessed before, an economy so badly bartered that for the first time in a long time, the middle-class has been shaken. In moments such as these, it's normal to resort to buck-passing. Blaming others, outsiders, government, foreign governments and all but ourselves.

However, I will admit this from the outset. Part of the attendant despair that permeates every sector of our society is not as a result of the failure of the Kenyan people per se, but its more about the failure of the Kenya's leadership over the last several decades to imagine the future.

That reimagination of the future is precisely what will take us to the calm harbors of economic prosperity and social cohesion. Generations of Kenyans, have toiled to build this country, from the struggle for independence, to the struggle against single party dictatorship to the clamour for multiparty democracy and the new Constitution. Majority of those who were willing to lead all those epoches, were young people, some with neither a fancy title many who without education and most of them without any material success to write home about.

However, they stepped forward and challenged the empire and we got independence. They stood up to the bullies of the single-party era and the walls of oppression came tumbling down. The ingenuity and the enterprising spirit Kenyans have lifted this country whenever we appear to move too close to the edge of the cliff.

It's the young people, who freely donated blood to the victims of the Westgate raid. It's us, the young and the young at heart who rejected violence as a tool of expression in the political processes during the 2022 elections. We must again step forward now to creatively and intelligently find solutions to our problems.

For starters, I will suggest that we, the Kenyan youth, must reject as false the allure of one-liners mistaken for solid political philosophy. We must now interrogate the philosophy and the thinking in all our major political parties and banish to the garbage hip of history those that remain hostages of nostalgia. Political leadership, requires that our words and actions must inspire hope and I dare add change.

In that change, we will not let anyone lead us down the old beaten path of sloganeering and empty rhetoric devoid of either strategy or a genuine desire to organize. The next five years must not look like the last 10. .

In our unity lies the power, let's forge a unity of purpose that is going to provide the human resource that is going to implement the 15 billion trees project by the president, not in 10 years but in five years for climate change, loss of biodiversity and pollution have become an existential threat.

Let's audit the performance of our elected representatives in Parliament. Let us measure their utterances against their ability and willingness to discharge their legislative mandate. We must remind them that we will not participate in the theatre of the absurd where they complain about the debt situation but are unwilling to jumpstart a process of debt audit for the last 10 years.

The young people must stop waiting for some savior. We are our own saviors. In the words of the scripture ''Arise and shine.''

-Mr Mwaga is a Governance and Policy Expert. [email protected]