YVONNE'S TAKE: June 25 - Don't dare forget...

Two years ago today, Kenya witnessed something unprecedented.

Thousands of young people, many with no political affiliation, no formal leadership, and no experience in organised activism, forced a nation to stop and listen.

What began as opposition to a Finance Bill quickly became something larger. A conversation about accountability. About trust. About governance. About a generation demanding a seat at the table in decisions that would shape its future.

The images from that day remain etched in our national memory. The crowds. The chants. The tear gas. The chaos. The shock of seeing protesters breach the precincts of Parliament. And the tragedy that followed, as lives were lost and many more were injured.

More than a year later, memorials are still being held. Families continue to seek justice. Discussions around compensation remain ongoing. The nation pauses to remember.

But anniversaries invite more than remembrance. They invite reflection.

Because the question today is not simply what happened on June 25.

The question is: what changed because of it?

The protests revealed a deep frustration among young Kenyans, not just with a tax proposal, but with a broader feeling of exclusion from decisions affecting their lives. They demanded transparency. Accountability. Respect. A government willing to listen rather than lecture.

Two years later, have those concerns been meaningfully addressed?

Has trust between citizens and institutions improved?

Have we become better at listening to one another before frustration spills into the streets?

Or have we simply moved on, waiting for the next crisis to remind us of the lessons we never fully learned?

Because there is a danger that comes with the passing of time.

Nations do not only fail through injustice. They can also fail through forgetting.

The greater risk is forgetting the questions that were being asked.

Questions about how power is exercised.

Questions about whether public participation genuinely shapes policy.

Questions about the relationship between citizens and the State.

Questions about whether young people are seen merely as beneficiaries of policy, or as partners in shaping it.

Compensation, where it is due, is important. Justice is important. Accountability is important.

But these alone cannot be the measure of whether we have honoured the significance of that moment.

Because a nation honours difficult chapters in its history not simply by remembering them, but by learning from them.

Let me end by saying this, how we memorialise this day has less to do with whether one agrees with protests or not, it invites us all to elevate ourselves beyond hollow political slogans. Somewhere along the way, we have reduced even this conversation into competing political camps. If you support the protests, you are assumed to belong to one side. If you question them, you are assigned to another.

But surely a moment as consequential as June 25 deserves more of us than choosing between slogans. It invites us all to think beyond the William Rutos, the Edwin Sifunas or the Rigathi Gachaguas of today. Kenya existed long before they did, and will certainly outlast them and us all. What we need to think about today is the space between memory and accountability.

I urge us all to resist treating anniversaries as moments of closure. They are checkpoints. Let June 25 this year and in all the years to come, present a moment for us to determine whether the concerns people brought to the streets have been addressed. Those are eternal questions that will be relevant today, tomorrow, and for generations to come.