Kenyans yesterday marked Saba Saba.This memorable event in Kenya’s history laid a firm foundation in the fight against one-party dictatorship.

During the Saba Saba protests in 1990, politicians like Masinde Muliro alongside Martin Shikuku and the ‘Young Turks’ James Orengo, Gitobu Imanyara and Paul Muite drove around the city demanding multiparty politics, a corrupt-free country and equity.

Opposition politicians such as the late Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia and Raila Odinga and lawyer George Khaminwa were detained before a planned rally, while Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was stopped from joining the demonstrations.

The Kanu regime always responded to the progressive voices pushing for democracy, equal opportunity and fair political competition with arrests, detention and police brutality.

Some of those detained paid with their lives, while others such as Matiba contracted ailments that completely destroyed them. Among the agitators was reverend Timothy Njoya, who was the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Kinoo, on the outskirts of Nairobi, from where he would pillory President Daniel Arap Moi’s government.

The image of Njoya being seriously beaten and injured while leading protests near the Parliament Buildings is a lingering reminder of the brutality of the Kanu dictatorship.

It has always been pointed out that the embers of freedom that were lit on Saba Saba 1990 galvanised progressive voices both in politics and civil society and paved the way for pluralist politics and culmi[1]nated in a new Constitution. It would be remembered that the clamour for multiparty democracy was in[1]spired by a group of youthful politicians.

Kenya was recently engulfed in protests by brave young Kenyans under the hashtag “RutoMustGo”.

The self-mobilised youths, using new tech as a tool of protest, forced a climb-down by President William Ruto on taxes and fiscal discipline. But we regret that like the Kanu dictatorship, the Ruto administration unleashed State apparatus on peaceful protesters, resulting in the deaths of dozens and the maiming of others.

At least 43 people were killed during the demonstrations, some as young as eight, and over 600 injured in various parts of the country, the Kenya Human Rights Commission reported. Only yesterday, an army of young people gathered in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park to mourn their fallen comrades.

The Gen Z protesters embody the Saba Saba spirit. And the Ruto administration must listen to their grievances