OPPRESSION

Power does not corrupt, it reveals.

As blood stains are drying on the pavements of Nairobi, the current president of Kenya, William Samoei Ruto, stands as the culmination of Kenya’s democratic experiment. Although Ruto is cloaked in electoral democracy, Kenya’s institutional memory of oppression finds expression through him. By tracing Ruto’s despotic journey, we witness not the birth of a new tyrant, but the blooming of an old one.

Despotism is the power of individuals over society. It manifests when elites rule without legal constraint and without negotiating with those who are governed. Therefore, despotism emerges when a state starts to suppress voice of the people.

However, isn’t Kenya a vibrant multi-party democracy, featuring a bicameral Parliament and devolved county governments? So, how does a despotic regime persist within its ostensibly democratic system?

Well, my dear friend, Kenyans are terrified. I am terrified. These days, the youth are abducted in broad daylight and found murdered or are disappeared forever. These days, armed goons brandishing batons and bad intentions operate with the protection of the police. They descend upon protests with brutality, and in the ensuing chaos, hundreds of people are robbed, their cellphones taken to keep them from capturing the illegalities that unfold. Many protestors are then raped, maimed or murdered for good measure. As this unfolds, security agents brutalise unarmed bystanders and gun them down at point blank range. Amidst the furore, activists are also abducted and transported to black-sites, where they are tortured and disappeared, never to be seen again.

Our “Gen Z” generation has been taking to the streets in a historical civic awakening, and they are paying for it in blood. The Human Rights Watch found that between March and July 2023, police unleashed live ammunition, tear gas in schools and homes, torture, and even house-to-house beatings to crush dissent. The result, at least 31 people brazenly killed by Ruto’s administration and hundreds injured, including children. In June 2024, thousands of these Gen Z protesters mobilised again via social media platforms to “Reject” a draconian Finance Bill which sought to worsen the cost of living. Ruto’s response: at least 60 protesters killed, hundreds wounded, and dozens disappeared. And barely a week ago, the nationwide memorial of these casualties was also answered with an addition to the grim ledger of state violence: at least 20 killed, over 500 injured, some 15 enforced disappearances, 14 cases of rape (including gang rape), and over 170 arrested.

Without exception, every year of Ruto’s reign has so far preserved an unbroken continuum of death. But, how is he getting away with it? Although Ruto is drenched in the blood of thousands of Kenyans, he enjoys an uncanny international appeal. On May 2024, the Former US President Joe Biden welcomed him to the White House: the first U.S. state visit by an African leader in over 15 years. Biden lauded Ruto’s “bold leadership” and designated Kenya a major non‑NATO ally. Yesterday, Ruto also left Kenya for Spain and the UK, where he will meet other figures of the international community. Although this foreign endorsement reflects geopolitical interests rather than an admiration for Ruto’s domestic record, it is still quite intriguing.

This endorsement is also possible because Ruto has mastered the art of deception. He is a despot dressed like a democrat. This allows him to draw much less opprobrium than your ordinary dictator. As he roams abroad, he reigns at home over an “illiberal democracy”. This is a country where governments win elections but subsequently erode the liberal core of democracy. In such country, democratic institutions exist but they are functionally powerless.

By studying Ruto, we can map the anatomy of oppression in Kenya today. This may reveal how elites have navigated democratic transitions and how their authoritarian governance has survived, evolved, and now flourishes in contemporary Africa.

The Foundation of Fear (pre–1992)

Like many African nations, Kenya’s postcolonial government began as a form of personal rule. Power resided not in public offices but in the “Big Man”. Kenya’s first president, Kamau wa Ngengi alias Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, deployed his “Big Man” ambitions immediately he got into power. Within his first year, he oversaw constitutional amendments that shifted Kenya from a parliamentary system to a presidential one. This levelled up his role as prime minister into a powerful presidency, granting himself vast executive powers. These included commanding authority over all security forces, control over local governance through personally appointed commissioners, and the power to detain political opponents without trial. Within three years, Kenyatta had crushed all formal opposition, establishing Kenya as a de facto one-party state. This ensured he enjoyed a long, 15-year reign from which Kenya only found release after his death.

When Daniel arap Moi inherited the presidency, he traced Kenyatta’s path so precisely that he earned the moniker Nyayo, Swahili for “footsteps”. During his 24-year reign, Moi ruled with an iron fist, deploying disorder deliberately to solidify his grip on power. This is why for many Kenyans, especially those who endured Moi’s reign, Ruto’s playbook is eerily familiar.

The Young Apprentice: 1992 – 2002

Ruto’s political story begins in the early 1990s. This period was marked by a fierce repression of democratic reforms. Ahead of the first multiparty elections in 1992, a pro-Moi youth brigade was formed to help KANU, Moi’s ruling party, stamp out the rising opposition. Dubbed YK’92, this was Moi’s hit team. Its mandate: to defend the state by all means necessary.

From the outset, Ruto was on the wrong side of history. He joined YK’92 as a fresh graduate in his 20s. During this period, he cut his teeth under the tutelage of Cyrus Jirongo, the group’s leader, where he participated in crushing the pro-democracy agitators by whipping up ethnic fears and deploying violence. This early role in YK’92 plugged Ruto into Kenya’s patronage networks, and ingrained in him an instinct for power over principle.

Corruption was the lubricant of Moi-era politics, and Ruto slid in head first. The young Ruto witnessed how printed money was used by KANU to buy votes, how the provincial administration was used to reward supporters and how stolen public funds such as from the infamous Goldenberg scandal would be funnelled into slush accounts for future campaigns.

Ruto’s detractors alleged that he also “siphoned money from the YK’92 project and used it to go into business”. In a famous anecdote, Jirongo once claimed how he gave Ruto a contract to supply 10,000 campaign T-shirts. Ruto allegedly delivered only 1,000, but got paid for all 10,000 by colluding with storekeepers and repeatedly cycling the same boxes. Jirongo claimed he ended up paying Ruto about 1 million shillings for this phantom delivery. This was a tidy sum in those times (about $100,000 USD today), and it effectively may have been Ruto’s first pot of illicit wealth.

Crucially, Ruto also benefited from Moi’s tutelage. His loyalty in opposing pro-democracy reforms earned him Moi’s patronage, and Moi saw in the young Kalenjin a useful protégé. Moi used ethnic militias and state security organs liberally to intimidate the opposition. He maintained a fragmented opposition by co-opting some communities and marginalising others. Subsequently, the 1992 and 1997 elections, in which Moi contested and won, were marred by ethnic clashes. This was especially in Rift Valley, which is both Moi’s and Ruto’s home turf.

Moi also wrote the “handshake” blueprint, which demonstrated how the opposition can be coopted when it is too costly to be crushed. The Kenyan political arena was stunned when it witnessed Raila Odinga’s “handshake” with Moi, the tyrant who had detained him at least three times and put him behind bars for almost a decade. Raila ended up dissolving his own political party, which he merged with Moi’s KANU. As an added perk, he also accepted a seat in Moi’s cabinet as Energy Minister in 2001.

Ruto had a front seat to the deployment of these tactics. He internalised them and became especially fluent in the language of oppression, a language he would later speak with great eloquence. By the time he ran for a parliamentary seat in 1997 (Eldoret North), he had already matured. Defying expectations, he clinched that seat, partly through patronage. He also served as Moi’s Minister for Home Affairs (August to December 2002), and even though Moi reportedly dismissed him as “a disrespectful son of a pauper”, no one could deny Ruto’s sharp instinct for political survival.

Power and Bloodlust: 2002 – 2012

When Moi’s final term ended in 2002, Ruto had firmly established himself in the corridors of power. Moi anointed the young Uhuru Kenyatta (Jomo Kenyatta’s son) as his successor, and Ruto, the loyal Moi disciple, became one of the chief campaigners for Project Uhuru. As Raila and other disgruntled folk united to defeat Moi’s handpicked heir, Ruto opposed them, placing himself against the democratic wave. And so as Kenya had its first change of power, Ruto found himself on the losing side of that election as Uhuru lost to Mwai Kibaki amidst the nationwide mood for change.

Wounded and thrust into opposition politics, Ruto schemed and reinvented himself, and when Kibaki’s inner circle splintered, he astutely joined forces with Raila, Kibaki’s estranged ally. On the political stage, there had been placed a draft constitution set for a referendum in 2005. Ruto realised that the proposed oversight mechanisms in that document would limit the powers of the executive, and determined that it needed to be stopped. He also correctly strategised that opposing Kibaki would put him back in political influence. Therefore, Ruto and Raila led the “No” campaign together. They prevailed against Kibaki, co-founded the ODM party and rode their newfound success into the 2007 general election.

The 2007 election remains the darkest blot on Ruto’s record. ODM narrowly lost that election and Kibaki was hastily sworn in. Amidst allegations of rigging, Ruto and his fellow ODM hardliners called for “mass action” and Kenya erupted into violence. The post-election violence (PEV) that followed left over 1,100 dead and 650,000 persons internally displaced. The International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Ruto (and five others, including Uhuru Kenyatta from the other side of the conflict) in 2010.

The ICC prosecutor also named Ruto as an indirect co-perpetrator of crimes against humanity. Ruto was accused of orchestrating violence against Kibaki’s ethnic community as retribution and as leverage to force a power-sharing deal. His role in the PEV revealed his mastery of what James C. Scott calls the “weapons of the weak”: the capacity to mobilise powerless populations for political ends. The PEV ultimately ended in 2008 with a coalition government, effectively rewarding violence with shared power: Kibaki as President, Raila as Prime Minister, and Ruto, not to be left behind, securing a lucrative ministerial seat.

Ruto’s stint in this coalition as Minister of Agriculture was riddled with scandal. He was implicated in a maize import scandal (2009) regarding maize intended for famine relief. He was also tied to numerous land grabbing allegations, where a court ruled he had taken land from an internally displaced person. He also faced fraud charges over selling a piece of Ngong Forest land. Repeatedly, anti-corruption efforts struggled to pin him down, and even when they did, he always escaped accountability.

In 2010, a new constitution was put to a referendum. It aimed to check the despotic centralism that bedevilled the country by devolving authority, enshrining human rights and establishing an independent judiciary. Most observers saw this as progress, but Ruto opposed it powerfully. He was already envisioning himself at the helm one day, and a strong constitution was not to his liking. Positioning himself as a populist voice of “ordinary people” , he led the “No” campaign again. He crisscrossed the country, blending half-truths to play on sectarian fears around land and religion. Despite his efforts, he failed, and the new constitution was approved by 67% of voters.

The Hustler’s Heist: 2012-2022

Soon after this referendum, Kenya headed towards another general election. With prosecutors on his tail, Ruto cut a political deal with Uhuru Kenyatta. It was an alliance of convenience, born of a shared interest in resisting the ICC. Uniting their communities (Kalenjin and Kikuyu), they formed the Jubilee coalition and ran for the highest offices in the land, famously against Ruto’s former ally, Raila. The ‘UhuRuto’ duo won a highly controversial election that was marred with irregularities and illegalities. Raila challenged the result in court, but his petition was dismissed.

Before the duo rose to power, the civil society had warned that their ascent would cement a culture of impunity. Kenya’s democratic gains under Kibaki – a freer press, a more assertive judiciary, and a new constitution – were real but fragile. Without fail, the Jubilee government tested this hypothesis and validated it with calamitous effect.

As soon as the pair of ICC-indicted suspects landed in office, Ruto embarked upon entrenching himself within the state machinery. In his hands, corruption was more than mere enrichment, it was a strategy. Every inflated contract, every land grab, every questionable tender was laying the groundwork for his future presidency.

Ruto thrived in this “new” Kenya and presided over some of the largest corruption scandals in Kenya’s history. To list a few: the “Hustler Jet” affair (2013) where Ruto used $300,000 of public funds to charter a luxury jet for a personal African tour; the Eurobond scandal (2014) involving hundreds of billions of shillings not traceable to specific projects; the National Youth Service heist (2015) which siphoned millions through phantom contracts; and the notorious Arror and Kimwarer dams scandal (2017–2019), a $780 million project in Ruto’s Rift Valley backyard where funds were paid but dams never built.

Ruto publicly downplayed and ridiculed these corruption allegations. He projected himself as a “business-friendly leader”, but as commentators noted wryly, Jubilee’s development projects had mostly been conduits to bleed the public coffers dry. Ruto used this loot to buy defections from the opposition, finance grassroots campaigns and distribute cash at harambees. This earned him one of his monikers, “Chief Hustler”. By the end of Jubilee’s first term, Kenya’s international corruption rankings had worsened and public debt had skyrocketed.

From the start of the ICC cases against president Kenyatta and his deputy Ruto in 2011, there were reports of witness intimidation and bribery. Indeed, the case fell apart by 2016, when ICC judges vacated the charges due to insufficient evidence. Notably, one judge cited serious tainting of the trial process by way of intimidation of witnesses. According to ICC records, at least 16 of the original 42 witnesses in Ruto’s case withdrew or recanted testimony, many citing threats or fear. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three individuals on charges of interfering with witnesses on Ruto’s behalf. One of them, a Kenyan lawyer named Paul Gicheru, later surrendered but mysteriously died in 2022 before the verdict.

The duo whipped up nationalist sentiment to protect themselves. They painted the ICC process as a neo-colonial conspiracy against Kenya’s sovereignty. Meanwhile, the Kenyan state brazenly refused to cooperate: suspects weren’t surrendered and evidence was stonewalled. This systematic undermining of legal processes demonstrated Ruto’s Machiavellian ability to make accountability impossible. Eventually, Ruto walked free, legally innocent due to a collapsed trial. But to many Kenyans the message was clear: Ruto can literally get away with anything.

Jubilee’s first term climaxed in the highly contested 2017 election, where Raila challenged UhuRuto again. As you’d expect by now, that election also witnessed despotism per excellence. Who can forget Roselyn Akombe, a senior commissioner of Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), fleeing to the US saying she feared for her life? When the election results were transmitted, Raila cried foul. He pointed to irregularities especially after Chris Msando’s death, the IT manager at IEBC who was tortured to death just days before that general election. Although no culprits have ever been identified, many alleged someone in the Jubilee government ordered the hit to facilitate election rigging.

The Supreme Court, in a historic decision, nullified that presidential election citing massive irregularities. This was a huge blow to Uhuru and Ruto. Instead of humbly correcting course, they lashed out at the judiciary, doubling down on repression. Police used live ammunition in opposition strongholds killing a least 92 people and injuring hundreds more. Ruto took a hard public line, backing the security forces and dismissing protesters as looters. Raila boycotted the election re-run, citing lack of reforms, and Jubilee coasted to an illegitimate victory in an election with a dismal turnout.

While repression under the Jubilee regime was less overt than in Moi’s, a series of targeted assassinations and disappearances raised chilling questions. Several individuals who were perceived as threats to the status quo met violent ends. Two examples stand out. Meshack Yebei, a witness in Ruto’s ICC case, was abducted and murdered in 2015. Jacob Juma, a billionaire businessman who had accused Ruto of corruption, had ominously tweeted that Ruto wanted him dead. Days later, he was murdered, shot 7 times in his car in Nairobi. Opposition leaders pointed fingers at Ruto, while Ruto threatened to sue those linking him to it. To date, the killers remain unknown.

These murders mirror what political scientists like Barrington Moore call “selective repression”: the use of carefully targeted strikes to instil fear. These acts carried plausible deniability for the regime; it would condemn the killings and promise investigations that eventually led nowhere. By avoiding direct responsibility, the regime maximised the intimidation effect while minimising political costs. The message: speaking out too loudly or refusing to play ball will get you killed.

Another part of Ruto’s strategy was to quietly but effectively place loyalists in critical state organs. Although Uhuru was president, Ruto’s wing also had sway in government appointments. They secured influence over parastatals where procurement graft was lucrative, and controlled other vital units such as the National Intelligence Service.

During the second Jubilee term (2017-2022), a rift between Uhuru and his deputy started to show. Uhuru, likely moved by demands for reform, began distancing himself from Ruto. He attempted to purge some Ruto allies from government, a tacit admission of how deeply embedded they were. He also initiated an anti-corruption campaign that selectively went after his deputy’s allies. Uhuru’s infamous “handshake” with Raila also signalled a new alliance that excluded Ruto.

In this fiasco, Kenya’s cannibalistic autocracy was publicly feeding on itself. Ruto, who had benefited from Jubilee’s impunity, now found those same tools turned against him. Feeling betrayed, Ruto cried foul, claiming that the system was being rigged against him for 2022. Rather than accepting the role of loyal deputy, Ruto opted to run a shadow presidency from 2019 onwards that would enable him to contest for the real presidency. Rumours swirled of a “death squad” attached to him, though concrete evidence was scant. Conversely, Ruto also claimed there were plots by state operatives to assassinate him. Fortunately, Kenya didn’t slide into open violence at that point, but the tension was palpable.

By the end of 2021, Ruto had effectively positioned himself as the anti-establishment candidate, the self-made “hustler”. This was despite his own position at the apex of the regime as the sitting Deputy President. I must admit, this was a brilliant move. He campaigned against his own government’s failures, painting both Raila and Uhuru as dynastic elites. He also blamed the high cost of living on their “handshake”: a classic sleight of hand.

Underneath his hustler narrative, Ruto maintained his old networks and used state resources to cement loyalty nationwide. Thanks to the wanton bribery of MPs, Parliament had also largely been neutered. No substantive inquiry into mega-graft and extrajudicial killings ever got anywhere. This echoed Moi-era tactics updated to the modern context: instead of “Big Man rules”, it was “network rules”. And in effect, both Ruto and Uhuru enjoyed a period of unprecedented impunity.

Deputy Jesus and the Butcher of Sugoi: 2022–Present

And as 2022 loomed, I feared that Ruto’s ascension to the presidency would mean the full flowering of authoritarian rule. Oh, did my fears come true! Ruto was sworn in as Kenya’s 5th President on September 2022 after winning a narrow victory (50.5%) against Raila in a bitterly fought election. Although Raila rejected this outcome again, the Supreme Court upheld it. Now at the helm, Ruto moved quickly to consolidate power.

Within weeks, Ruto had turned the tables despite coming in with a minority in Parliament. He lured a slew of opposition MPs particularly from Raila’s Azimio coalition to defect to his side by promises of development funds and committee positions. Within months, key anti-corruption officials were replaced and Kenya’s Director of Public Prosecutions withdrew numerous graft cases against Ruto allies. Ruto then stacked his cabinet with hardliners and loyal lieutenants, including individuals whose corruption cases had been controversially dropped just weeks after his win. This not only demoralised the opposition but also hollowed it out, giving Ruto a de facto majority without a formal coalition.

In his Kenya Kwanza alliance, MPs were coerced to toe the line on controversial bills like the Finance Bill 2023. When that Finance Bill met resistance from the public for being laden with new taxes, Ruto leaned on MPs to pass it anyway, and it was rammed through the National Assembly amid national uproar. This evoked the Moi days when KANU MPs dared not vote against the President.

Early in his term, Ruto also courted the judiciary and earned their goodwill. He quickly appointed the six judges whom Uhuru had refused to confirm, and pressed an increased budgetary allocation into their palms. A pliant judiciary would allow him to sleep well at night. When activists sued in June 2023 and the High Court dared to suspend the implementation of parts of his new Finance Act, Ruto’s allies lashed out. One MP even threatened to “summon” the judge. Shortly after, an appellate court lifted the suspension.

Ruto also revived a nebulous office of Chief Administrative Secretary, essentially assistant ministers, which had been declared unconstitutional. When challenged in court, he simply swore them in swiftly, daring anyone to undo it. The net effect was the erosion of trust in the courts. Kenya’s judiciary had its finest hour nullifying the presidential election in 2017. Under Ruto, it appeared unable to summon such courage again.

Ruto also inherited a dire economic situation from Uhuru, but his policy responses were deplorable. On one hand, he removed fuel subsidies and cut spending, measures that hit the poor hardest. On the other, he vastly increased the budget for the presidency and created new offices for his deputies and their spouses, burdening the taxpayer further. Over the years, the State House budget has also shot up by billions of shillings to cater for renovations, luxury cars, prayer breakfasts, etc., even as health sector allocations are cut and education funding squeezed.

In effect, Ruto is extracting resources from the population with minimal accountability, reminiscent of how autocrats like Moi centralised wealth and then distributed it to cronies and concubines. Indeed, evidence suggests crony capitalism is thriving in Kenya, as major contracts for infrastructure, import deals and other ventures are going to companies linked to Ruto and his allies.

Ruto has also been using “development as legitimation” to galvanise support. He frequently travels to commission projects (roads, classrooms, ‘affordable’ houses, etc..), showcasing them as fruits of his leadership, while downplaying that many are funded by more public debt or simply continuations from previous regimes. Like Moi, he uses this narrative of creating jobs and development to justify his heavy-handed rule. However, critics have pointed out that this development is not inclusive: the wealth gap keeps widening and the ruling elite’s ostentatious lifestyles, including Ruto’s own lavish mansions and frequent international travels, betray a disdain for austerity.

“Deputy Jesus” (another of Ruto’s monikers), has also wielded religion as a cudgel to bludgeon Kenyans. Ruto sanctifies his rule with scripture while buying the silence of pulpits using monetary “donations” worth millions of shillings. By making the clergy complicit, he has turned Christians against their own churches. This led to the occupy the churches movement, which forced cancellations of political fundraisers and compelled the Catholic Church to reject and return Ruto’s tainted donations.

One of Ruto’s headline moves after taking office was also disbanding a special police unit, the Special Service Unit (SSU), which had been accused of extrajudicial killings under the previous regime. The disbandment came after a scandal involving two Indian IT consultants and their driver who were working on Ruto’s campaign. The three were abducted and killed just before Ruto’s inauguration, allegedly by the SSU. Ruto used this to claim he was cleaning up a “death squad” that Uhuru had used, and indeed a few officers were charged. Yet, as months went by, new patterns of abductions and killings emerged, now seemingly targeting Ruto’s critics.

Opposition figures and bloggers began to report harassment and short-term disappearances. As earlier described, youth are routinely abducted and later found detained incommunicado or dumped far away, alive or dead. This year, Albert Ojwang, a teacher, was arrested for a critical post about the police. He was murdered in police custody. His death ignited fresh protests in Nairobi, and the police responded with brutality. In one incident caught on video, Boniface Kariuki, an unarmed street vendor, was shot by a police officer at point-blank range. The officers then casually walked away as Boniface lay bleeding on the pavement. His family now reports that Boniface has been declared brain dead in hospital.

Ruto’s regime has also weaponised regressive cybercrime regulations to stifle dissent and curtail media freedom. On the one-year anniversary of the Finance Bill uprising, regulators also tried to strangle the media by ordering TV outlets to halt live coverage of the protests. Despite the information blackout, thousands of Kenyans across 27 counties still poured into the streets to commemorate those who were killed in 2024 and to demand justice.

Far from easing up as the public refuses to cower, Ruto’s government continues to double down on dictatorial tactics. Officials continue to label the youth-led demonstrations as mere “riots”, even as the Kenya Law Society reveals that authorities are the ones deploying armed vigilantes alongside police to terrorise and discredit the protests. In a leaked video, Ruto’s own Interior Minister was heard instructing police to “shoot” protesters, effectively endorsing deadly force. It is this systematic orchestration of violence that has earned Ruto the byname “The Butcher of Sugoi”, a reference to his ancestral home in Sugoi, Uasin Gishu County.

In response to the nationwide chants of “Ruto must go!”, Ruto recently retorted at the International MSMEs Day celebrations , “If it is Ruto must go, then tell me how you want me to go. What do you mean by Ruto must go?”

Well, Mr President, why don’t you do us a favour and follow the advice of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010, Article 146 (1)(b), and resign? Please do so in writing and addressing the Speaker of the National Assembly as the Constitution you once opposed instructs, and without waiting for the ink to dry, kindly return to Sugoi.

Perhaps the most worrying sign for Kenya’s future is how Ruto constantly threatens to reverse the gains of this 2010 Constitution. Already, Kenya Kwanza MPs have floated the idea of removing the presidential two-term limit. Although the proposal was walked back after national uproar, its very mention in Parliament was a blatant display of autocratic ambition. Ruto himself publicly said he is not interested in extending term limits, but similar denials were heard in Uganda and elsewhere before the limits were scrapped.

In the wake of the Ruto era, Kenya now stands at the precipice of complete authoritarian capture. To the friends of Kenya across the globe, this is your time to act. You must abandon the diplomatic niceties that have enabled Ruto’s reign of terror. Every handshake, every state dinner and every trade delegation with this butcher legitimises the relentless systematic murder of Kenyans. You must start to apply pressure on this government, including diplomatic isolation and calling for international criminal accountability. I pray, do not relent until Ruto’s global appeal has been destroyed as thoroughly as he has destroyed Kenya’s democratic institutions. Do not relent until Kenyans find justice.

To my fellow Kenyans: the Constitution of 2010 was not gifted to us, it was won by the blood, sweat, and tears of our predecessors who dared to dream of a better Kenya. This sacred document is your sword and shield. It enshrines your right to speak truth to power, to assemble and to resist tyranny in all its forms. Deploy it now, before the ongoing constitutional vandalism renders it meaningless.

My fellow Kenyans, the elite have grown fat on our suffering for long enough, treating us like livestock to be exploited at will. It is time to fight! Fight hard, not just to protect yourselves, but to extract these criminals from public office, to drag them before our courts of justice, and to ensure they face a punishment as severe as their crimes against our humanity. Fight now while while resistance remains legal. Fight now while you still possess the tools to reclaim your nation. Tomorrow may be too late, for when peaceful protest becomes treason, and when the Constitution itself becomes a crime to invoke, Kenya will have completed its tragic transformation into fascism.

V.

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