A participant follows proceeding with a hawk on his head during the Gen-Z Shujaaz Memorial concert on July 7, 2024 at Uhuru Park in Nairobi.
Today, I debunk, demystify, and deconstruct the youth. But not in the way your noggin might mislead you to think. I complexify the phenomenon. That’s because different demographics – political and social – view the youth with dread, paranoia, hope, or despair.
Some of us just want to be parents of our youth and raise them the right way – to be responsible, empathetic, progressive, patriotic, and to do unto others what they would be done unto them. The political class is generally predatory upon the youth.
Our politicians see the youth as objects of exploitation and weaponisation. To them, the youth are putty in their myopic political games. They see the naiveté of the youth as an opportunity for manipulation.
Franz Omar Fanon, one of the greatest anti-colonial thinkers, once said that “each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.” In his telling, the Martinique-born black philosopher doesn’t give a quarter for any generation to be without a raison d'etre for its existence. Because in that case, history would be dead and humans would be no better than beasts. For what separates us from other animals is the ability to think, organise, and effect change for us and the environment – for better, or worse. In Kenya, for example, to be a youth in the colonial period, it was your imperative to fight and drive the European colonialists out. No more, no less.
Historical mission
The historical mission to drive out British imperialists was the burden of the youth. In the 1970s and 1980s – the age of my youth – our mission was to oppose post-colonial predations by African ruling elites and imperialist global capitalism. Our singular mission was to democratise Africa and free it from the yoke of exploitation by our rulers in cahoots with the West. One expression of this was to either become human rights activists, Marxists, or both. But you were a betrayer if you sat on the sidelines. Our other mission was to free ourselves from the mental enslavement of Eurocentrism and its Siamese twin Christian indoctrination. It was to recover our African identity. Sadly, we aren’t there yet.
Every generation has struggled with its mission — from Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1980), Millennials (1981-1996), Generation Z (1997-2012), and now Generation Alpha. These “generations” don’t really translate across space and time because they are essentially a Western cultural concoction. But since our minds are so colonised, Americanised, and Eurocentric, I use them as a rough reference for youth in various age brackets.
The point is simply to ask what each youth demographic has done to respond to the challenges and opportunities of its day. So, we might ask, therefore, what gremlins do Gen Z see? What bold new Canaan do they want us to leap into? Have they found the genius of the society of the future?
One way to think about the various generations is to imagine both disruption and continuity as one historical continuum because there really is never a complete break with the past. The past is always in your future. Take, for example, the concept and practice of political democracy. It has many flaws and belabours some insufferable conceptual demons.
Democracy
So is human rights and ideas of the rule of law. As Winston Churchill, the unapologetic British imperialist himself said, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others. Generations, therefore, overthrow one another even as they build on their pasts. But the overthrow is never a complete repudiation of the forebears, or ancestors. That’s why Gen Zs are hooked on the iPhone, the iconic Apple product invented by Baby Boomer Steve Jobs. Or the computer that came to the fore with Bill Gates, another Baby Boomer.
Imagine the Gen Z revolts in Kenya wouldn’t have happened quite the same way without the iPhone. The question is how do future generations use the tools given by their historical forebears to make life better. It’s not to throw those tools – minus nuclear weapons – into the garbage heap of history. Even AI will have to be purposed to become beneficent to our human race. It’s the work of Gen Zs and Gen As to figure that out.
Every generation has had its youth, and today it’s Gen Z. What we saw last year with the anti-government protests was one vision of Gen Z. For the most part, it was an attempt by Gen Z to identify their mission and fulfil, or betray, it.
Each generation — and Gen Z isn’t an exception — must avoid the manipulation by predatory political classes. Today, if you listen to Kenyan politicians across the political divide, you would think Gen Z is the best thing since sliced bread was invented. I ask the Gen Z to enjoy the toothy grins and syrupy sweet-nothings of our politicians, but not to believe them. All they want is to capture you to the country’s detriment.
Prof Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. On X: @makaumutua.
