Wakora Revolution

In several of my Musings, I’ve questioned the ability of those shouting the loudest to actually unseat President Ruto at the ballot. Not because Kenya doesn’t deserve better—but because those doing the shouting might not be it. The assumption has been that Kenya is done with the Ruto brigade, that the tide has turned. But politics, like people, rarely follows a neat script.

President Ruto’s recent tours across Central and Eastern Kenya—Embu, Meru, Kirinyaga, Nyeri, Tharaka Nithi, and Laikipia—revealed something curious. The crowds were large, welcoming, even enthusiastic. So much so that some netizens claimed newspapers had faked the photos or recycled old images. One viral claim focused on outdated fuel prices in the background of a Maua photo. But the facts held: the people showed up.

This reality challenges the carefully crafted narrative that Ruto is politically finished in the mountain. It also exposes a deeper hypocrisy: the same actors who hound Raila Odinga for “dining with the President” are now publicly demanding the very favours they claim were unfairly given to his base. Their gripe isn’t about justice. It’s about position.

And who exactly are these actors? They come not as the vanguard of a movement—but as shapeshifters. Crooks and old-order politicians, many of them symbols of the worst of the KANU era, now wrapping themselves in Gen Z language, wearing hashtags like revolutionary uniforms. They don’t represent the youth—they’re exploiting them.

To understand this moment, Antonio Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution and transformism is instructive. Gramsci warned that when ruling elites feel threatened by bottom-up pressure, they often don the language of rebellion not to empower the people, but to neutralize real change. As he wrote: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

We are witnessing such monsters: tribal apologists disguised as reformers, recycling old grievances in trendy language. They have no real ideology, no plan, no coalition for progress. Just bitterness wrapped in slogans, and a frightening comfort with negative ethnicity. Some openly propose excluding entire regions from a future government—not because of their politics, but because of their ethnic identity. This isn’t revolutionary. It’s reactionary.

These people don’t challenge power—they imitate its worst traits. They accuse others of the very evils they embody. It's projection as strategy. And for all their noise, they fail to articulate even a basic vision beyond “Ruto Must Go.” That is not a policy agenda. That is not a governing philosophy. That is a tantrum.

Kenya deserves better.

Kenya needs the real Gen Z—legit, intelligent, action-oriented young people who rise above tribe, bitterness, and performance activism. We need builders, not wreckers. Thinkers, not shouty empty vessels. Kenya doesn’t need Wakora revolutionaries dressed in rebellion. Kenya needs courageous, ethical leadership rooted in truth, not trauma theatre.

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