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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.
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