Echoes of War

What happened at Melvin Jones Hall in Nakuru on April 10, 2025, is not just a policy failure — it is a national disgrace. It is a scar on our democratic conscience and a brutal assault on our children’s right to think, speak, and dream.

That a troop of armed police was deployed to prevent schoolgirls from Butere Girls High School from performing a play — Echoes of War — is a chilling reminder of how quickly Kenya can slide back into the shadows of authoritarianism. The same Kenya where the arts were once censored, where dissent was crushed under the boots of the regime, and where fear was the tool of governance. But even Daniel arap Moi, whose name is synonymous with repression, never went so far as to teargas schoolgirls. This, now, is the grotesque new face of “freedom” under Kenya Kwanza.

Authored by Cleophas Malalah — a playwright, politician, and one of Kenya’s unapologetic artistic voices — Echoes of War is a searing, dramatic critique of conflict, governance, and betrayal. That it was written by a former government insider only adds to its potency. But the response it received from the state — a violent shutdown, the intimidation of students, the arrest of Malalah, and the physical assault on journalists — is an unforgivable violation of Kenya’s Constitution, international human rights law, and our collective sense of decency.

Raila Odinga's condemnation of the incident — describing it as “horrifying” and reminiscent of the Moi era — is not hyperbole. It is an accurate diagnosis of a regime that has mistaken power for impunity. “Kenyans have a democratic right to critique their leaders and government through art,” he said. And he is right. Art is not the enemy of the state — fear is. And it is fear that this government is now peddling.

Legal and Constitutional Violations

Kenya’s 2010 Constitution could not be clearer. Article 33 guarantees freedom of expression, which includes artistic creativity and the freedom to receive or impart information and ideas. Article 34 protects freedom of the media, explicitly stating that “the State shall not interfere with any person engaged in broadcasting, the production or circulation of any publication or the dissemination of information by any medium.” The beating and harassment of journalists at Melvin Jones Hall — for doing their job — is a blatant constitutional breach.

Article 37 guarantees the right to peaceful assembly, while Article 28 upholds human dignity, which cannot coexist with the trauma of tear gas in a hall full of schoolgirls. Article 53 explicitly mandates that children be protected from all forms of violence, inhuman treatment and punishment.

Internationally, Kenya is bound by several covenants that it continues to defy. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19, protects freedom of expression and press freedom. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), under Articles 19 and 21, reaffirms these protections, while the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Articles 13, 14, and 19) obliges Kenya to safeguard children’s freedom of expression and protect them from all forms of violence — including from the state.

Kenya is also party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, which carry identical obligations.

Every journalist assaulted, every child tear-gassed, every camera smashed, is evidence of a government willing to shred every domestic and international legal commitment to preserve its image.

The Theory Behind the Tyranny

This is not merely a question of law — it is also a matter of political design. What we are witnessing is a textbook case of what political theorist Hannah Arendt warned against in The Origins of Totalitarianism — the systematic erosion of truth and independent thought through brute force and fear. Arendt argued that totalitarian regimes depend on creating a reality where only state-sanctioned narratives are allowed to survive. Any alternative — even a student play — is treated as a threat to national order.

This administration may not (yet) be totalitarian, but its behavior is unmistakably authoritarian. And authoritarian regimes, as history shows, always begin by silencing students and artists. They always fear the mirror that art holds up to power.

A Nation’s Shame, A Continent’s Warning

The images that emerged from Melvin Jones Hall — of fully grown men in state uniform, lobbing tear gas canisters at children in school uniform — are nothing short of grotesque. They are a stain on the flag and an echo of South Africa’s most painful era.

The Soweto Uprising of June 16, 1976 began when students protested against the imposition of Afrikaans — the language of their oppressors — as the medium of instruction. Thousands of children took to the streets of Soweto, armed only with placards and conviction. The apartheid police responded with bullets. Today, their names are memorialized — not because they were threats, but because they were brave enough to speak. Just like the girls of Butere.

Children were central to South Africa’s anti-apartheid resistance — through protests, boycotts, picketing, and defiance. Even when their parents were jailed or exiled, children stood in the frontlines. The government’s response then — as now — was brutal repression. If one wants to understand just how vile the recent statements by Donald Trump and Elon Musk about South Africa truly are, remember this: the apartheid regime their rhetoric seeks to sanitize or erase was built on the blood of children. Elon Musk’s inherited wealth comes from that regime. The images from Nakuru are a reminder that in some parts of Africa, that legacy lives on.

The Folly of Fear

What the state fails to understand is that fear cannot extinguish truth — it only spreads it faster. Beating children, jailing writers, and brutalizing journalists only reinforces the suspicion that Kenya Kwanza has something to hide. It paints them not as a government of the people, but as an insecure regime desperately grasping at control.

The irony is tragic: a play that sought to explore the trauma of war has now become a living metaphor for the state’s war against dissent.

If the Kenya Kwanza administration believes it can sanitize its image by silencing critique, it is sorely mistaken. Suppressing the voices of children only confirms the accusations embedded in their art. It does not erase them — it etches them deeper into public memory.

Kenya must find a better way to manage public perception and criticism — not through repression, but by engaging the concerns of its citizens, especially the youth. By attacking Butere Girls and detaining Cleophas Malalah, the government has proven the very point the play was trying to make: that unchecked power devours its own people.

The question now is not whether the play was dangerous. The question is: why is the truth so threatening to this administration?

Gem Musings is a seasoned International Relations and Public Affairs Strategist with extensive experience in global diplomacy, communication, and policy analysis.