The people of Kenya once again took to the streets with resolve in a show of defiance, anger. Sparked by the death of a teacher and blogger, Albert Ojwang, in police custody, the current wave of protests sweeping through the country is not just a spontaneous outburst but a continuation of a broader struggle and revolt against economic injustice, state repression, and elite betrayal. This is not simply about one incident. It is about the masses, particularly the youth and working classes, who are fed up with decades of neoliberal exploitation and authoritarian rule.
From #RejectFinanceBill2024 to renewed uprising
In June 2024, a youth-led mass mobilisation erupted across Kenya under the banner of #RejectFinanceBill2024, rejecting proposed tax increases on essentials like bread, fuel, mobile transfers under International Monetary Fund (IMF) mandated austerity. Although President Ruto vetoed the bill, the protests morphed into broader demands for justice, corruption eradication, and police accountability. The protests climaxed on 25 June 2024, when about 3000 protesters breached the Parliament grounds. Security forces responded to the protests with brutal violence using tear gas and live rounds of ammunition. They killed 60 or more people. And the security forces abducted and tortured hundreds more.
That uprising cracked open a latent working‑class anger, and the ensuing repression left it simmering, laying the groundwork for the current wave, which was reignited in June 2025.
Renewal in 2025: death of Albert Ojwang & spiralling repression
The death of Albert Ojwang, a teacher and blogger, in police custody on 17 June 2025, served as the immediate spark. Ojwang had been arrested for alleged defamation of character over his expose of a police boss. Within days, protests surged in at least 17 of Kenya’s 47 counties, including Nairobi, marking a return to the street in resonance with 2024’s flash point. In a series of mass actions from mid-June, working people and youth trooped to the streets to protest the police killings, to commemorate a year since the deadly #RejectfinanceBill2024 protest and the Saba Saba day.
Police responded ruthlessly using batons, tear gas, water cannon and live bullets. The July 7 Saba Saba Day saw at least 31 killed (bringing the overall death toll to over 50 in two months) and hundreds injured, as protestors commemorated the 1990 democratic uprising. Among the casualties was a 12‑year‑old girl killed by a stray bullet, prompting widespread condemnation on the internet.
President Ruto intensified state violence, infamously instructing police to “shoot them in the leg” an unconstitutional and thuggish move, in suppression. Activists have documented mass arrests, enforced disappearances, and the use of plain‑clothes thugs operating alongside security agents, signalling a coordinated assault on protest spaces. The Ruto administration ordered media outlets to cease to live broadcasts of the protests in a move to suppress information.
Ruling class manipulation: political factions and divisive tactics
In the aftermath of the Finance Bill protests, the Ruto administration pursued a classic strategy of political absorption by courting the opposition ODM party into government in a “unity” pact, orchestrating the impeachment of his deputy Rigathi Gachagua, under accusations of “funding the protests” in attempts to mollify the opposition parties, and strip momentum from the Gen‑Z wave.
The Ruto administration and other competing factions of the ruling class have attempted to shore up solidarity among the poor masses by appealing to ethnic differences and rearing up bigoted conspiracies of “Kikiyu vs Kalenji” inter-ethnic conflict as the real problem.
This divide-and-conquer posture serves to disorient and mislead the working people, whip up ethnic bigotry to protesters see their comrades at the barricades as being , sow chaos to justify repression and maintain hegemony.
The working-class and poor masses: demands & lived realities
This movement is fundamentally a working‑class upsurge and not a a ruling class’s political spectacle. Kenya’s youth unemployment is cripplingly high at 67%, with over 34% living under $2.15/day, and 38% under national poverty lines.
Protesters have demanded repeal of neoliberal tax hikes and austerity; justice for police violence victims (Kariuki, Ojwang, others); accountability; and an end to disappearances. Their demands also include demilitarisation of the police, basic social welfare, resignation of the Ruto regime and parliamentary overhaul.
As one Gen‑Z protester said in June 2024: “We can’t feed our families.. we have to be on the street to stop the increasing prices..”
A decade of unrest: 2015–2025 in context
Kenya, like Nigeria has a long history of popular uprisings, protests and demonstration which pace have accelerated in recent years. These include the 2017 post‑election unrest triggered by disputed results and police violence in Kenya and the nationwide protests against police brutality killings and the #EndSARS movement in Nigeria.
Kenya’s 2025 movement echoes Nigeria’s #EndSARS (2020) and #EndBadGovernance (2024) protests. They were youth‑led, digitally organised, and met with brutal crackdowns. In Nigeria, security forces deployed violence and summary executions against protesters. The government approved the anti-democratic Cybersecurity and Prohibition Bill to criminalise criticism and dissent.
From Nigeria’s Cybersecurity Bill to Kenya’s live ammunition‑fire policing, civilian regimes are resorting more to force rather than civil reform. These actions are not aberrations but calculated moves to repress working-class movements, curtail the growth of class consciousness, and preserve capitalist rule.
The problem of co‑optation and the road to revolutionary pan‑Africanism
The most significant threat to this rising African working-class movement is not only state violence. It is the risk of being co-opted by some section or the other of the same ruling class they are fighting.
This happened in Nigeria when opposition parties appropriated the language of protest to win power in the 2015 general elections, only to perpetuate the same system. Kenya is at a similar crossroads. The danger is that parts of the movement will be seduced by token reforms, elite partnerships, or by becoming “youth wings” of ruling parties.
For working-class movements to avoid this co-optation and dilution we must build strong, independent leftist formations rooted in working-class politics; reject all alliances with capitalist parties, however progressive they may sound; embrace Pan-African rooted in class politics and socialist internationalism, linking working class struggles across borders; and develop independent worker-led parties and unions. All of this must serve as a backdrop to the socialist revolution. The only way to deliver genuine economic justice is to overthrow the structural class power of the bosses.
What is happening in Kenya is historic. It is a signal that the African working class is fed up with the exploitative bosses, both local and foreign. But spontaneous protests alone cannot defeat neoliberal capitalism. What is needed is organisation, socialist perspective, and revolutionary vision.
by Emmanuel EDOMWONYI
