When in June last year young people turned to protest against the Finance Bill, there was promise of a peaceful process, and as such the police went ahead to provide security to the protesters.
Whilst there have been many protests before including during the agitation for multi-party democracy, young people were the obvious majority in the streets.
In fact, in the early protests, young politicians including James Orengo, Anyang Nyong’o, Anyona, Shikuku, Gitobu Imanyara et al were known as the “Young Turks”.
But last year the crop of young people now popularly referred to as Gen-Z were a little bit different.
For the first time, there were as many as female protesters as male and what’s more? they were mainly cool kids and University as well as college students.
By this, it means there looked like middle class youth who were techno-servy and who would break to have lunch at the pricy fast-food joints such as Pizza Inn, Java Coffe house and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
They applied social media to mobilise and used an anonymous digital based radio-call to sustain the agitation.
In a surprise but cordial move, some would offer police water to drink as the tear gas took a toll on both the protesters and police in the first Tuesday and Thursday of the protests.
But on the third day and second Tuesday of the protests, hell broke loose, goons were unleashed into the streets and whose only objective was to loot and steal from businesses in the CBD and the River Road area that is popularly referred to as “Downtown” area of Nairobi.
The soft targets were supermarkets, electronic shops especially for laptops and mobile phones and when they felt angry, they helped themselves with food from food outlets.
The damage was massive. KFC on the Jubilee Insurance House opposite City Hall, for instance, has never recovered.
On the same building, DS Damat fashion store folded altogether and this coming against a backdrop of an economy trying to pick pieces from the effects of COVID-19 pandemic, it was a double jeopardy.
The goon infiltration got uglier when some businesses were set on fire and the biggest of all was setting fire on kanya’s political nerve, Parliament even as City Hall went up in flames before the inferno was controlled.
Many businesses closed during the clashes including banks and other essential services such as hospitals who feared damage of their businesses and safety of customers.
International Conferences were cancelled at a time when the country had gained momentum as a MICE preferred destination.
Many flights were cancelled and so were bookings for tourists I hotels in the Maasai Mara, the coats and other national parks and tourist spots in the country.
When the dust finally settled, Kenyans were counting their losses that conservative estimates put at Sh 1 trillion. This is over Five per cent of the country’s GDP.
Many jobs were lost slowing down one of the government’s Bottom-Up Transformational Agenda (BUTA) as the households licked their wounds for lack of providence.
This was further exacerbated by the many tragic deaths of protesters during the riots.
It will take over two years, before a full recovery of the economic meltdown occasioned by the 2024 Gen Z riots and one can only hope that the demonstrations called by the same as an anniversary will not end in the same way.
