Protesters march along University Way in Nairobi on June 25, 2026, during demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the 2024 Gen Z anti-Finance Bill protests.
I have developed a strange habit every June. I stop listening to what the government says and start watching what it does. Governments are often at their most truthful when they are not speaking.
Speeches are crafted, press statements are rehearsed, and interviews are carefully managed. Actions, however, have a way of betraying what leaders genuinely believe. And nowhere is that contradiction more visible than in the days leading up to June 25.
Every year, the script unfolds almost identically. Around April, the official position is one of complete indifference. June 25 is dismissed as just another date on the calendar, with government officials projecting confidence that the country has moved on. By May, however, the nervousness begins to creep in.
Cabinet Secretaries suddenly become regular guests on television. Police commanders hold endless press briefings warning of unnamed threats. Intelligence agencies speak in vague, ominous language about criminal infiltration. Politicians who spend the rest of the year insulting young people suddenly rediscover the language of peace, patriotism, and dialogue.
Repel an invasion
Then June finally arrives, and the government that insists it is completely unbothered proceeds to barricade an entire capital city. Roads are sealed before dawn. Thousands of anti-riot police flood every major junction. Armoured vehicles occupy the streets. Public transport is disrupted. Businesses remain uncertain whether to open. It is an extraordinary contradiction to witness.
A government that claims June 25 means nothing behaves like a government preparing to repel an invasion. Watching it insist everything is normal while surrounding itself with razor wire and heavily armed officers is like watching someone loudly declare they are fearless while constantly looking over their shoulder.
That contradiction tells us everything we need to know. June 25 is no longer simply the anniversary of a protest. It has become a psychological scar within the Kenyan State. It is a reminder of the day ordinary citizens, led largely by young people with no political patrons, disrupted the country's political order.
It was the day power discovered that titles, sirens, and high walls offer very little protection when citizens collectively decide they have had enough.
Before anything else, though, June 25 demands remembrance. May all our comrades continue to rest in peace.
We remember those who walked into Nairobi carrying nothing but a Kenyan flag, a smartphone, and hope, yet never made it back home. We remember families whose lives were permanently divided into two chapters: before June 25 and after June 25. We remember friends who became photographs on placards instead of familiar voices on our phones. They were shot and killed for demanding something every constitution promises its citizens — the right to be heard. Kenya has never truly recovered from that day, and neither have many of us who witnessed it.
This year's anniversary carried the weight of those memories. Yet in many ways, the biggest demonstration of the day appeared to come from the State itself. Before sunrise, roads leading into Nairobi's central business district were already blocked. Thousands of police officers occupied the streets in numbers that suggested they were preparing for a foreign army rather than Kenyan taxpayers.
For days beforehand, government officials had repeatedly assured the public that June 25 would be an ordinary working day. It turns out that the government's definition of ordinary includes barricading an entire city before breakfast.
Even with this overwhelming security operation, familiar patterns of abuse remained impossible to ignore. Videos circulated online showing police officers rough-handling a person living with a disability before throwing him into a police vehicle. The footage was disturbing, but sadly, it was not surprising.
One thing I have refused to do is congratulate the government simply because fewer lives were lost this year. Naturally, there is relief. Every Kenyan wants to see their loved ones return home safely after a protest. No family should experience the horror of waiting for news that never comes. But relief should never become gratitude for the bare minimum. We do not applaud fish for swimming.
The State does not deserve praise for choosing not to kill its own citizens.
Predictably, politicians also rushed to claim ownership of the day. Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua suggested that the relatively quieter streets proved Gen Z had listened to his advice against protesting. It was an interpretation that revealed a deeper misunderstanding shared across Kenya's political class. They continue to struggle with the idea that not every movement requires political sponsorship. June 25 was never born inside party headquarters. It was not negotiated in coalition meetings or tribal caucuses. It belonged to young Kenyans long before politicians realised there was political capital to be harvested from it.
It is even more curious listening to revisionist history from leaders who comfortably served within government when the original protests unfolded. Many Kenyans still remember the threats, the warnings, and the declarations that protesters should not expect flowers from police officers. History cannot simply be rewritten because alliances have shifted.
Those who once defended state violence cannot now present themselves as custodians of the resistance without confronting their own role in creating the very crisis they now condemn.
We must equally remain suspicious of opportunists who suddenly wrap themselves in the language of revolution. We saw many of them during the protests. The moment teargas filled the air and bullets began flying, they disappeared. They abandoned the mothers, students, and ordinary citizens they had encouraged to march. They fled to the safety of their tinted SUVs while everyone else faced the consequences. Too many politicians treat citizen suffering as campaign material rather than a genuine struggle.
Wounded strangers
That is why June 25 cannot belong to the government, opposition, or political opportunists. It belongs to ordinary Kenyans. It belongs to university students who skipped lectures because they believed their future mattered more than attendance registers. It belongs to boda boda riders who ferried wounded strangers to hospitals without asking how they voted. It belongs to volunteer medics, lawyers, journalists, families, and countless anonymous citizens who stood together when the country needed them most.
Most importantly, it belongs to a generation that discovered something every government fears: its own collective power. That is why anxiety returns every June. Press conferences become more frequent. Warnings become louder. Barricades appear earlier. Governments do not spend enormous public resources preparing for dates they have defeated. They prepare for dates they still fear.
But memory alone is no longer enough. The streets awakened an entire generation, but lasting change cannot depend solely on annual demonstrations. The next chapter must be political organisation. Young Kenyans must build institutions capable of contesting power itself. They must organise beyond hashtags, register voters, build ideological parties, and occupy the very offices where today's decisions are made.
Real transformation will not come simply from confronting barricades outside Parliament. It will come when the generation that demanded accountability finally sits at the tables where power is exercised.
Governments will continue trying to reduce June 25 to another date on the calendar. Yet every barricade they erect, every warning they issue, and every anxious press conference they convene only confirms one undeniable truth: June 25 still shakes them. That is precisely why Kenya will never forget it.
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This writer is a journalist and a human rights defender. [email protected]
