Gen Z protests, two years on: What did our heroes die for?
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Human rights activist Boniface Mwangi (centre) and other protesters march along Koinange Street towards Central Police Station, Nairobi on June 25, 2026, during demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the Gen Z anti-Finance Bill protests.
We have a justice system so timid before power that the Treasury can be emptied in public and still the files move like snails in a funeral procession.
We have an oversight authority sitting on dozens of death files, with only a handful of cases in court and not a single officer convicted for the killings
Two years ago, Kenya buried its innocence in broad daylight. The children of this country walked into the heart of Nairobi and asked their government for something so modest it should have embarrassed no one to refuse. They wanted a state that worked. They wanted taxes that did not strangle the kiosk and the factory in the same breath. They wanted jobs for the degrees they had borrowed to earn, hospitals that were properly equipped, roads that led somewhere other than a politician’s pocket, and a country where public money served the public.
More than 120 Kenyans are now dead from the protests that began with the Finance Bill and never quite stopped. Rex Masai was the first, on Moi Avenue. Ibrahim Kamau was only nineteen. Wilson Sitati was killed on his own birthday. Eric Shieni was killed inside the grounds of Parliament itself. They were young citizens asking their country to become worthy of their hope.
