Saba Saba's long harvest and why struggle is never wasted

On 7 July, 1990 we filled the streets, the courts, the jails and, ultimately, the nation’s imagination. We marched for multiparty democracy, (I didn’t make it to Kamukunji, since I was in Nyayo House torture chambers having been arrested three days earlier and subsequently detained without trial together with Kenneth Matiba, Charles Rubia, Raila Odinga, John Khaminwa and Mohamed Ibrahim), risking death and detention under a regime that treated dissent as treason. 

Kanu did not fall that Saturday. Parliament sat and the single-party state lived to fight another day. Pundits called our defiance naïve, even reckless. Yet, 35 years later fruits of that audacity are everywhere: an entrenched Bill of Rights, competitive elections, a Constitution that locates sovereignty in “We the People,” and most recently, a fearless Gen Z that has discovered its voice.

History seldom turns on a single protest; it unfolds in increments, like the slow unfurling of a clenched fist. I was in my early thirties then, powered by equal parts idealism and indignation. We survived, though scarred by tear gas, truncheons and the ache of betrayal when erstwhile comrades fled to the safety of silence or State House. We carry those scars with pride.

They are receipts for victories that arrived in installments: repeal of Section 2A in 1991, limitation of presidential term of office to two terms, constitutional referendum of 2010, the jurisprudence that now anchors public interest litigation. Each advance taught the same lesson: today’s “failure” may be tomorrow’s foundation stone. 

That lesson matters now more than ever. Since June 2024, Kenya’s Gen Z has staged the most imaginative civic uprising in a generation. Armed with smartphones and moral clarity, they decoded tax clauses, live-streamed police abuse and weaponised hashtags faster than the State could draft rebuttals.

When their bodies filled Kenyatta Avenue chanting “#RejectFinanceBill,” the Treasury blinked, the President climbed down and Parliament tasted rare humiliation. Critics sniffed at “leaderless protests,” but last year’s youth made two things undeniable: first, that digital natives can bend analogue power; second, that austerity imposed without consent is political suicide. Those are not footnotes; they are constitutional doctrine forged in real time. 

Skeptics will point to the unfinished ledger: the cost-of-living crisis persists, grand corruption mutates, and impunity still stalks our police stations. True. But progress is rarely a cliff; it is a staircase.

Each rung demands new resolve. In 1990 our rallying cry was “multipartyism.” We got it, only to learn that ballots alone cannot tame kleptocracy. In 2024 the rallying cry was “fiscal justice.” We forced amendments, yet discovered that a regressive tax code is the symptom, not the disease. The cure is continuous civic vigilance, backed by structures that outlive trending hashtags.

We owe the young our archives, legal precedents, organisational tactics, cautionary tales of how surveillance adapts and how power rewards exhaustion. Saba Saba is not a public holiday; it is a living syllabus. Let us teach it. But let us also listen. When I watched youths in thrifted jeans project budget spreadsheets onto city walls, I realised my own toolbox was dated. Their fluency in memes, data visualisation and encrypted chat restored a truth older than independence: every generation must invent its own instruments of freedom. 

To President Ruto and his allies, I offer an unsolicited memo: repression is a deferred bill, not a solution.  

To my peers tempted by cynicism, I say this: do not confuse wrinkles with wisdom. The young are not naïve; they are daring. We were too, once. Had we surrendered to despair after 1990, the autocrats would still be counting votes in the basement of Nyayo House. Instead, we litigated, organised, wrote, bled, and lived to see children we never met march under freedoms we midwived. That is the dividend of perseverance. 

And to Gen Z, my closing counsel: celebrate the wins but institutionalise them. Push for statutory debt ceilings, independent budget offices, climate-proof employment policies, ideas that outlast election cycles and influencers. Register to vote, then guard that vote like the last tree in a desert. 

You, runners of 2024 and beyond, have accelerated the pace. The finish line, social justice, economic dignity, accountable governance, remains ahead, but it is closer because you refused to walk.