In keeping with past centennials, this year’s Saba Saba Day did not disappoint. Save for pockets of the Nyanza, Coast and Rift Valley regions that experienced relative calm, the rest of the country lived up to the billing of past Saba Saba Days, characterised by running battles between protesters and law enforcement officers, as more youthful protesters, mainly Millennials and the Zoom generations joined the fray with great enthusiasm, passion, and unprecedented energy, to position themselves in the management of public affairs.

For starters, Saba Saba refers to countywide protests that were first held on July 7, 1990 as a significant section of Kenyans disaffected by decades of abuse of power and misgovernment resisted State tyranny and took to the streets to reclaim the shrinking political and civic space following decades of one-party rule under the country’s second and longest-serving President, Daniel Arap Moi.

Since then, initiators of the push for multipartism that were at the epicentre of the popular agitation for political reforms then, and subsequent generations that have come thereafter, have always observed the day through commemorative events and activities.

It is within this context that Kenyans from all walks of life, young and old, observed this year’s Saba Saba in variety of ways, methods, approaches and styles as diverse as the country’s nationalities and cultures. The media were instrumental in this regard, correctly situating this year’s Saba Saba within the context of intermittent youth-led protests that have characterised Kenya’s social and political life in the past couple of months.

The current spate of protests began in mid-2024 in opposition to the 2024 Finance Bill. After raising their concerns and misgivings on the 2023 Finance Bill, reservations that were largely ignored by the National Assembly and the powers that be, Kenyans seem to have decided that they would not live under another financial regime policy of penury and impecuniousness. Led by the youth, mostly Gen Zs, the people were determined, just as their forbearers heroically marched to Kamukunji grounds 35 years ago, mean-looking anti-riot police on standby, some on horseback, awaiting orders from their superiors to descend on the hapless dissenters.

And set on the peaceful and unarmed citizens with savage brutality they did, with blows and buttons as the coercive instruments of the State have always deployed, with unprecedented cruelty in a feckless bid to scatter in all directions and hopefully, scuttle the popular quest for reforms. But come what may, the people, then and now, have remained unbowed. In different places they sought to meet, and wherever they encountered police interference then just as today, that often took the form of the teargas canisters the uniformed and plain-clothed officers lobbed with liberal abandon, the water cannon they dispensed with unmatched generosity, not to mention the rubber and live bullets that left scores dead and injured, the people pushed back with the same if not greater zeal and resistance, a collective defiance that seems to have endured the entire continuum of generations past, present and future.

To be honest, the flame for street action and push for administrative and electoral reforms that the youth have waged since mid-2024 had begun to decline. But Police Deputy Inspector General Eliud Lagat came to the rescue, his blunder gifting them with the spark that reignited street protests.

The writer is the Executive Director of the Kenya National Civil Society Centre, and Chairperson of the Horn of Africa Civil Society Forum; [email protected]