YVONNE'S TAKE: Presidents...and fellow adults

A trend where leaders increasingly speak about dissent not as something to engage, but as something to suppress.

This week, Samia Suluhu Hassan said of activists that “atawapiga mkwaju”, that they would be beaten. The remarks came in reference to the wave of activism sweeping across the region, during which activists, including Kenyans and Ugandans, have recently been detained and mistreated in Tanzania.

Here in Kenya, during the Gen Z protests, President William Ruto repeatedly framed young protesters as children in need of discipline. There were calls for “respect for elders.” A tone that suggested dissent was not democratic participation, but disobedience.

Not to mention President Yoweri Museveni, who also gives what are seemingly polite lectures to his bazukulu, or grandchildren. While it may sound affectionate or paternal, politically it reinforces the same hierarchy — leader as the elder, citizen as the child. And once citizens are reduced to children, dissent becomes disrespect, criticism becomes disobedience and all of these must be “punished”.

Because increasingly, young citizens are being infantilised whenever they question authority.

Sometimes brutally.

But strangely, these same “children” are still expected to: Pay taxes. Build the economy. Carry the burden of the nation and finance the very governments silencing them.

You cannot demand citizenship responsibilities from people while denying them the dignity of citizenship itself.

Presidents are not leading a country of inferior beings who can never speak or question.

They are not leading children who must only be seen and never heard, like in the ancient days of tyrannical fathers with loud booming voices, where wives and children scattered into silence the moment he walked through the door.

That is not democracy. That is fear. And fear is not leadership.

Presidents are leading a country of equals. A country of citizens. Not slaves. Slavery was abolished centuries ago.

Citizens are not whipped into obedience. They are engaged. They are persuaded. They are listened to.

Because presidents are not slave masters. They are public servants employed by the people.

And perhaps somewhere along the way — let me address them directly now — you, the leaders, have confused authority with ownership. You speak as though citizens exist for the comfort of the state.

But in truth, the state exists for the people. Not above them. Not beyond them. And certainly not against them.

Leadership is not about forcing people into silence. It is about bringing people together, often people with different views, different frustrations, different ideas of how to build a country.

And yes, sometimes that means criticism. Sometimes anger. Sometimes dissent.

In fact, what is truly insubordinate is when leaders forget who employs them. When they torture citizens. When they threaten them. When they beat them for speaking.

And if the instinct is to beat people into submission, to whip them into silence, to punish every opposing voice, then perhaps the presidency is the wrong job for you.

It is about walking with citizens toward a common goal — not the leader’s goal, but a national one. A shared one.