By Dr. Dan Kidha
Since June 2024, Kenyan streets have seen a bold uprising led by Gen Z.
This generation has refused to remain silent in the face of political deception, economic despair, and institutional betrayal.
These young Kenyans have not inherited the old fears.
They are not asking politely for a better future—they are demanding it.
Their bodies, creativity, and clarity have revived the national conscience.
Yet while they march for economic justice, another force pulls the country backward.
From political podiums, primarily in Mt. Kenya, a troubling rhetoric is being revived—one that cloaks entitlement in the language of grievance.
Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, now the de facto voice of opposition, repeatedly claims that President William Ruto “hates the mountain.”
This is a thinly veiled euphemism for Kikuyu alienation.
Gachagua’s message is clear: the mountain is owed something special. His warnings, “usiguze mlima” (“do not touch the mountain”), echo a familiar logic of ethnic exceptionalism.
It is the same logic that fueled post-independence power arrangements, where political loyalty determined state patronage, and where the center of power was presumed to be Mount Kenya, both literally and symbolically.
However, Kenya does not belong to the mountains, the valleys, the lakes, or the coast. Kenya belongs to its people, all of them.
Officially, we are 42 ethnic groups.
Unofficially, Kenya is home to more than 120 cultural communities, languages, and spiritual geographies. Yet the idea of Kenya has never truly made space for this richness.
The very name “Kenya” came not from the people but from colonial distortion.
It was a European mishearing of Kirinyaga, the sacred mountain of the Kikuyu, turned into a territorial label for people who never chose to be one.
From its inception, Kenya was a state without a shared narrative—a patchwork of identities stitched together for the sake of British administration.
At independence, that colonial machinery remained intact. Power shifted hands, but not structure.
One ethnicity replaced another at the center.
The rest were expected to fall in line or stay invisible.
This is why today’s crisis is not only about taxes or representation—it is about the soul of the republic. When Gachagua declares that the mountain has been abandoned, he is not simply expressing regional grievance.
He is reinforcing the myth that certain groups are more central to the nation than others.
This logic is dangerous.
It reduces Kenya to a series of competing tribes, rather than a shared civic project.
It perpetuates the myth that unity arises from dominance, rather than dialogue.
In truth, Kenya has never paused to ask itself: Do we want to be one people, and if so, on what terms? Elections or census figures cannot answer that question.
It must be answered by covenant—by a deliberate act of mutual recognition, where every community, regardless of size or history, is treated as co-founder of the republic.
Gen Z has given us a gift.
They have reminded the nation that it is possible to think beyond fear, beyond inherited loyalty, and tribal loyalties.
They chant slogans, but they also chant truth: that Kenya’s future cannot be built on ancestral privilege or colonial inheritance. It must be built on justice, equity, and shared imagination.
A state that serves only its majorities, or its loudest minorities, will collapse under the weight of its own exclusion.
A true nation must be founded in dialogue, not demographic arithmetic.
We can learn from models like Switzerland, where diverse ethnic and linguistic communities govern together through consensus, not conquest.
But even more, we can learn from our own indigenous traditions—elders councils, village assemblies, moral deliberations.
Before the colonizer came, African communities knew how to listen across differences.
They knew that power is sacred only when it is shared.
Kenya must now become a name we choose—together.
Not a name imposed by empire. Not aKenya’s Crisis Is Not Just Economic—It’s Identity
EDITED BY: HOPE BARBRA
