KAIKAI’S KICKER: Don’t lecture youth, address the issues they raise

On my kicker tonight, an old saying goes: “Give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him.” I have been observing with great alarm some comments about the youth in Kenya. Recently, the highly toxic atmosphere in the Kenyan online space was the subject of some remarks by a high-ranking government official who suggested that some of the hateful messages on social media were posted by people struggling with mental illness and drugs.

Now, there is no denying the Kenyan social media space is a rough, ungoverned territory where, literally, anything goes. But there is also no denying that social media has grown into a ruthlessly effective space for alternative voices, especially in Kenya’s increasingly formless political landscape. And it also goes without saying that the vast majority of these voices are from young people – the youth of this country.

Mid last year, the youth, styling themselves under the banner of Gen Z, turned social media into an unprecedented tool of mobilization, using it to organize peaceful protests that eventually led to the withdrawal of a punitive Finance Bill and the dissolution of the Cabinet. The events of June took Kenyans by surprise, and both sides of the political establishment by utter shock. Gen Z has since become synonymous with the youth in Kenya.

These youth have been the targets of some fairly disturbing remarks, especially from political leaders. Drugs and mental illness are only the latest slurs made in an attempt to explain the supposedly bad ways of our youth. Before that, it was the parents to blame. Raise your children well! Kenyans were told! Asiyefunzwa na mamaye hufunzwa na ulimwengu – some posted on social media on behalf of the established political classes. Talk of giving a dog a bad name…

It is a trend that must stop for two reasons. First, it is plain wrong and unfair to negatively profile an entire generation of youth. They cannot be so suddenly reduced to mentally ill, drug-consuming, and poorly raised retards. Secondly, being young should neither be criminalized nor demonized—not even for political reasons.

Yes, the deficiencies of our youth must be pointed out. And yes, the veracity of their arguments must be challenged. But it is the issues that they raise that cannot be dismissed. Mid last year, it took some young people presenting themselves as nameless, partyless, tribeless, and leaderless for Kenya to confront some of its adult-driven shortcomings, including unemployment, debt, punitive taxes, and an unresponsive political environment.

Those issues, whether raised on TikTok, Facebook, or even WhatsApp groups, remain touchy to date. And so, it is not the state of mind of those raising them that should be at issue. In any case, in his timeless drama, Betrayal in the City, author Professor Francis Imbuga introduced us to a young man called Jasper Wendo who, long before the internet was invented, got very angry with the state of affairs in his country called Kafira. Of Jasper’s disturbed mental state, Prof. Imbuga advised; “When the madness of an entire nation disturbs a solitary mind, it is not enough to say the man is mad.”

Let me end on a divine note: Proverbs 20:29 says, “The glory of the young is their strength; the grey hair of experience is the splendor of the old.”