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Gen Z should take a strategic retreat but certainly not surrender. History is replete with instances of a direct link between suffering and revolution.

Infact, revolutions, including recent events in Bangladesh, are often the result of broad, cross-class discontent with the reigning order. Therefore, those ridiculing key figures in this Gen Z-led revolt should be ashamed of themselves.

Whether revolutions fail or succeed, the material conditions often remain worse, and it is incumbent upon all Kenyans to rise beyond their partisan interest because we are all out to improve the material conditions of the sovereign people. Where revolutions have succeeded, the benefits of economic growth remain conspicuously unevenly distributed.

The Mau Mau in Kenya succeeded but the descendants of our gallant fighters wallow in poverty. Scholarship shows that those who benefit the least from revolutions like the Mau Mau, the Umkhonto We Sizwe in South Africa and in many other countries perpetually lack basic political rights at best and economic benefits at worst.

Mama mbogas, boda boda guys, jua kali artisans, craftsmen, and shopkeepers have certainly suffered more during recent demonstrations in Kenya as their status and incomes have declined.

The bigger picture herein is that the majority poor and workers whose broad-based discontent with the reigning order, poor living conditions and despotic living conditions sparked the civil disobedience in Kenya are not part of the broad-based government and probably will be excluded from the political and economic gains of their fight.

Today, whereas Gen Z have awakened a hitherto unknown consciousness and achieved a lot in the last few weeks, there is an overt sustained ploy to savage them, ridicule them and drive this narrative that the anti-establishment demonstrations have been a flop.

But we have seen a new dawn, and it is incumbent upon the critical core of Gen Z to take stock, pick up the many successes of the last few weeks and walk with their heads high for the landmark milestone they have made in our democracy.

You see, Antonio Gramsci, in his analysis of why Karl Marx’s predicted revolt by the masses to dethrone the capitalist elite failed, came up with the theory of hegemony and the factors that keep these elites in power.

In what Althusser later called the ideological state apparatus, the elites use a combination of the brute military force, religion, the education system and the media to sell the make-belief world that is utopian but enough to keep the poor masses hoping that they are one step to the next level and out of the suffering of the masses.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers and other successful career young men and women have come out in one voice with mama mbogas, boda boda guys and your everyday hawker along the streets to stand up to police brutality and poor entitled leadership.

This group has risen beyond the gatekeeping tabs of the legacy media to reach the citizenry with real issues affecting all Kenyans. They have said no to the appropriation of both religion and ethnicity to advances self-preservation siasa.

They have stormed churches and made their point. They have exposed police brutality and given the whole world the savage treatment meted out on citizens exercising their civil rights, and most importantly they have said they will not relent until #RutoMustGo becomes a reality.

Indeed, they must keep the fight, and civil disobedience can continue along two realities. First, the reality that they are not only confronted by the State apparatus in the name of bloggers and other idlers, but they also have an additional foe in former allies who are now on the other side. Secondly, they must think of how to sustain the consciousness with respect and integrity all the way to the ballot in 2027.

— The writer is a PhD student in Political Communication