Brian Kagoro, the Pan-African lawyer and activist who was detained, interrogated and then deported from Kenya, is the latest scapegoat in the search for a bogeyman to blame for the Gen Z uprising.
Youth called out the William Ruto government for its insularity in the 2024 Gen Z protests. That is why the Cabinet was dissolved. It is the reason a “broad-based” government continues to evolve, swallowing up all opposition. A raft of promises were made, and then broken. Over 2oo lives have been lost, hundreds more disappeared, abducted and charged. It is why government factotums are rolling out the World Bank-funded National Youth Opportunity Towards Advancement programme.
Government knows that the Gen Z protests were born at home. They were not couriered in by diplomatic pouch. They were not wired in from foreign boardrooms. And they were not choreographed by shadowy fixers.
The protests were incubated in kitchens where the price of unga bites harder than official statistics admit; in campus hostels where degrees mean little; on timelines where policy arrogance collides with youthful clarity.
Despite this knowledge, and instead of confronting this reality, the government has been fumbling about in search of a bogeyman. If the protests were manufactured, then the government did need not to interrogate its own performance — nay, competence. If they were funded, then they need not have been felt. If they were foreign, then they needed no fixing. Government wants to have its cake and eat it.
The Gen Z wave was a spontaneous combustion of frustration ignited by tone-deaf policymaking and sustained by a generation that has grown up fluent in accountability. This is the generation that fact-checks the president’s speech in real time, circulates budget analyses by meme, and crowdsources civic education. They do not require per diem allowances to recognise lies. They require only internet bundles and their lived experience.
The government has reached for the oldest reflex in the authoritarian playbook by externalising blame. It first blamed the Ford Foundation, which had previously funded the First Lady’s organisation, wrote nasty letter to its headquarters, and made the organisation the subject of diplomatic discussions. Its officials have faced difficulties obtaining work permits.
Last year, immigration officials prevented Kenya Human Rights Commission’s Martin Mavenjina from returning home to his family in the country and renditioned him to Uganda under elastic claims of national security.
When Brian Kagoro is bundled out under opaque immigration justifications, the implication is that activists are foreign interlopers. But you cannot deport economic reality. You cannot rendition unemployment. You cannot vilify a foundation into lowering the cost of living.
For months, citizens had warned that fiscal policies were punitive, that consultation was cosmetic, that official communication was condescending. The response was not dialogue but dismissal. Young Kenyans were caricatured as excitable, misinformed and manipulated.
Then they filled the streets. Instead of asking, “Where did we misread the room?” the State asked, “Who is funding them?”
A confident administration would treat protests as data — raw, uncomfortable, but instructive. It would recognise that public anger is not a foreign conspiracy but a domestic feedback mechanism.
Instead, we have seen the securitisation of dissent. When the State implies that civic engagement must be foreign funded to be potent, it insults its own citizens. It suggests that Kenyan youth cannot organise unless bankrolled; that they cannot think unless instructed; that they cannot protest unless they are paid.
Kenyan youth — and African youth for that matter— do not need a paymaster. They do not need a foreign script.
Blaming outsiders betrays a misunderstanding of modern protest. Today’s movements are decentralised, digitally native, and leader-light. They do not rely on a single funder or figurehead. That is precisely why deporting a prominent activist solves nothing. The energy is distributed. The grievances are shared. The momentum is organic.
The more the government hunts for a mastermind, the more it reveals its discomfort with a citizenry that refuses to be managed. When government defaults to conspiracy, citizens begin to see through every official statement as spin, every security claim as camouflage.
The Gen Z protests presented an opportunity for a generational dialogue about taxation, transparency, technology and trust. They were a chance to demonstrate humility in office, and to show that authority can listen without losing face. Instead, we have been treated to deportations, renditions and denunciations.
No foreigner drafted the policies that triggered public fury. No activist forced the government’s communication missteps. No external actor compelled insensitivity to economic strain.
If the government truly seeks stability, it must abandon the search for bogeymen and look in the mirror. It must choose reform over repression, transparency over theatrics.
You cannot govern a generation you refuse to understand. The Gen Z uprising was a verdict, not a vendetta. The sooner the State stops chasing shadows and starts correcting substance, the sooner Kenya can move from confrontation to correction.
Until then, the bogeyman will remain elusive — because he does not exist.
The writer is a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and writes in his individual capacity. @kwamchetsi; [email protected]
