Gatekeeping the struggle: The quiet tragedy of activism in Kenya

In the story of Kenya’s long march towards democracy, some names, among them, Gitobu Imanyara, Martha Karua, Rev. Timothy Njoya, Wille Mutunga and Njeri Kabereri have earned their place in the annals of our democratic struggle. They were part of a pantheon of heroes who stood firm against the repression of the single party state; they fought hard, took risks, endured state harassment, violence and detention as they championed the second liberation. They were the conscience of the nation that helped to shine a light in its darkest hours.

But, history, like time, is an unforgiving judge. It remembers both the valor of youth and the compromises of middle age. For some of the activists, the moment one of their own enters State House, the calculus of protest changes. What follows, most often than not, is a tragic arch of compromise, gatekeeping, ethnic loyalty and total alienation from the very struggle they once defined. This, indeed, and to the shock of many, happened in 2002. A critical mind is then left to question whether political activism in this country is in pursuit of higher democratic ideals or whether it serves ethnic interests.

Today, many of the living activists of yester-years face an inconvenient truth: What happens when the struggle outgrows the struggler? What happens when former heroes fail to evolve? How does one seek redemption after sacrificing idealism on the altar of ethnicity?

In 2026, the tragedy of the aging activist lies not in their past, but in their inability to read the times and release the stage. And in order to understand how they got here, we must revisit the uneasy path from heroism to hubris that some of them have charted.

In 2002, Mwai Kibaki ascended to the presidency and for many former activists, especially those from his Mount Kenya region, it felt like the mission had been accomplished. Indeed, as soon as Moi left power, John Michuki captured the politics of the day in the metaphor of juggling the liver when he asserted that all they had wanted was Moi to leave power and that people should stop asking questions. And so, "one of us is now in power” became the refrain for the activists who had long fought Moi. Even though the Kibaki administration had rode to power on the promise of a new Constitution in 100 Days, as a remedy to the ills of the past decades of misrule, this was no longer a priority. Very unfortunately, the issue of the new constitution and the Raila-Kibaki MoU found a convenient place in a dustbin at state house. Kenya was once again on the path of tribal hegemony that had been disrupted by the Moi role.

Many of the activists who had agitated for a new constitutional order under Moi had by now transitioned into government roles or adjacent civil society spaces and had become protectors of power rather than challengers of it. These leaders who had fought for a new social contract for decades now helped to delay it by nearly a decade simply because the urgency of reform clashed with the comfort of ethnic proximity to power. Moi the “outsider” president from Baringo was gone, they were no longer fighting the system, they were now part of it.

Moreover, the Kibaki years saw a transition within the civil society. The vacuum that was left by these activists who moved into government was filled by a new generation of younger activists who came to the fore and civil society became more stratified. These younger, youthful, better educated and more globally exposed activists started to demand their space; they had fresh ideas, the language and were building networks. However, they faced an entrenched barrier, the donor funds that had sustained civil society continued to flow through structures built in the 1990s and the older activists now comfortably positioned in government or near state power, used their influence to gate-keep and ring-fence access.

The result was a civil society that was struggling to be dynamic at the grassroots driven by the younger generation but tightly controlled at the top. The older activists dismissed the younger ones as inexperienced, not ‘grounded in the history of the struggle and lacking in the philosophies that define a struggle’, even as the older activists shunned the streets. The streets became an inconvenient place, they sent the younger ones to face police batons and teargas while they retreated and became masters of giving key speeches at workshops and always on the next foreign trips. The younger activists became disillusioned, saw the exploitation and witnessed the transition during the Kibaki years in which the civil society became a closed loop that rewarded loyalty to personalities and not the cause. Those who had once fought to break down walls were now building new ones.

The fight for control wasn’t only about access to donor funds, it also became about narrative control, where the older activists framed themselves as the sole custodians of Kenya’s democratic transition and dismissed the younger emergent group. In donor roundtables and media interviews, they spoke of a movement they no longer led, as they employed stories of the past to invalidate the urgency of the present challenges which were rapidly evolving under Kibaki.

The result was a complete alienation of the young activists and this is the era that saw these young people who were invisible to power start to create alternative movements. They began researching, using the fledgling internet platforms like Bidii Africa forums to mobilise and drive conversation. The most painful outcome of these betrayal by the older activists was in the failure to mentor and empower the next generation, they, unfortunately, became competitors, experts in hoarding influence rather than multiplying it through the young generation.

These generational tensions were compounded by the ethnic contradictions that had long plagued Kenya’s civil society. During the Moi era, many of the activists who had stood up against his rule, were in truth comfortable viewing activism through tribal lenses. In the 1990’s the resistance to the KANU regime was shaped by ethnic coalitions particularly from Mount Kenya and Luo Nyanza. The activists framed their opposition as a quest for democratic and regional redemption. When Kibaki came to power, many activists from his ethnic block suddenly lost their activist edge. In fact, some of the activists, whose only credentials were to throw stones at Moi, now found themselves taking up jobs at the revamped judiciary that was now paying well. A judiciary that had been sustained by patriotic Kenyans while earning peanuts.

By the time Uhuru Kenyatta was getting into Statehouse ten years later, the silence from these quarters had become deafening, and it seems that the activists of yester-years could not bring themselves to hold their own to account.

A new generation of young activists had emerged and briefly pushed the older folk into a coalition beyond the ethnic and political strongholds to rally around the need for a new constitution. The fragility of the state pushed these older activists within the Kibaki administration into a self-preservation mode; their survival could only be guaranteed through a new constitutional order.

The new generation of youthful activists were fearless and issue based. They were not nostalgic for the past but were keen to fix the present; they focused on varied causes, gender equality, education rights, health equity, tax justice, disability rights, environmental justice among many others. Their methods were online mobilization, strategic litigation, policy research and community engagement.

The emergence of the internet and its growth enabled them to amplify the message of their agitation past the traditional gate-keepers in the media. They were passionate crusaders who managed to navigate the hostility from the older activists who had served in the Kibaki regime.

Fast forward to 2022; and the tragedy of yesterday’s hero who doesn’t know its over becomes so magnified. Many of the older activists now found themselves in an identity crisis. The Azimio campaign which had one of their champions, Martha Karua, as running mate, had ignited their hope for a return to prominence and coming out they did; trying to build bridges with the younger activists to try and win state power. What was apparent to the keen eye though, was that they were out of synch with modern organizing tools and increasingly irrelevant to the youth-driven civil society; and this is partially why their Azimio candidate lost. Unfortunately, rather than exit gracefully or support the younger ones, some attempted to return to the spotlight by reigniting opposition to the new administration led by President William Ruto, not from principle but from personal dislocation.

It was interesting to observe that William Ruto who came from a different ethnic and political tradition from these veterans, seemed to have pushed some of the older activists who were quiet during the past twenty years to rediscover their voices. It felt though, like this belated urgency was rather opportunistic, for where were they during the Kibaki and Uhuru administrations when certain systems of oppression flourished.

For twenty years, they were silent and then now; Rage! The hypocrisy is jarring.

And now, as we steadily approach the 2027 elections, I am reminded of my experience around 1990 -1992. Like many other Kenyans, I, too, wanted Moi to leave. But indeed, like many other Kenyans I chose to stand with Moi because the more I looked at the crusade against Moi, the more it became clear that it was more to do with tribe than democratic ideals. It became vivid that the push to remove Moi was more to do with his tribe than with chants by the anti-Moi crusade. And when Kibaki took over power, sure enough, Michuki and his liver metaphor vindicated me.

I can see history repeating itself. Unless activist, and the elites from Mt. Kenya guard against this they may give Ruto a sure pass and let it not be said that 1992 was too distant for us to have remembered.