Gen Zs: We are not our parents' tribes, we're genuinely Kenyan

“Tribal politics is for our parents. We are beyond tribes.” These words were spoken to a teacher friend of mine by one of his students, a young Kenyan who has grown up in the shadow of our nation’s political failures, but who still dares to dream of a country different from the one we inherited.

The student wasn’t being disrespectful to our elders, rather, she was naming a profound truth that Kenya’s youth are now living: we are no longer bound by the chains of tribal identity that once defined, divided, and destroyed us.

The youth are not tribal. They are Kenyan. And that is precisely why attempts by the political elite to frame rising national disaffection with President William Ruto’s administration as a tribal rebellion are falling flat. The old playbook of tribal scapegoating no longer works.

Not because our leaders have matured, but because the people have. We are witnessing a generation that refuses to inherit both bad governance and tribalism. They will not accept both as inevitable burdens of adulthood. They are choosing one struggle, fight for good governance, and rejecting the other, toxic politics of ethnic manipulation. They don’t know who a Kikuyu is, or a Luo, or a Kalenjin, or a Luhya, or a Giriama, or a Maasai, or a Somali. They don’t care. What they do know is that they are citizens of one indivisible republic called Kenya, trying to protect, preserve, and honour God’s creation within our 582,646 square kilometre homeland. Their identity is Kenyan. Their language is justice. Their tribe is accountability. Their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to any ethnic chief. 

From the streets of Kisumu to Githurai, from the campuses in Eldoret to markets of Mombasa, the young people chanting for justice and protesting against state violence are not chanting tribal slogans. They are not burning effigies of rival communities. They are not calling for tribal alliances. They are calling for fair taxation, equal opportunity, dignity, and a future. This is not a tribal uprising. This is a Kenyan awakening. 

For decades, tribalism has been the preferred political strategy of those unwilling or unable to govern. When leaders failed to deliver clean water, they blamed “other communities.” When they stole from public coffers, they asked their tribes to protect them. When they were rejected at the ballot, they cried ethnic marginalisation. It worked again and again. But it is not working anymore. That terrifies the political class.  Why? Because tribal politics thrives in a nation that is poor, divided, and unthinking. But Kenya’s youth are digitally connected, economically desperate, and intellectually fearless. They are not interested in who is from where. They are interested in what you stand for. 

So when Gen Z and their allies rise to question why food prices are unbearable, why police are abducting citizens, why billions are being spent on luxury projects while hospitals lack gloves, they are not doing so as tribes. They are doing so as citizens. And no politician knows how to control a citizenry that no longer speaks tribal. This is why we are seeing frantic attempts to re-tribalise the protest movement. The regime and its allies are suggesting that certain communities are “behind the chaos” or that certain business interests are “targeted.” It is all smoke. All distraction. All desperate.

But the people are not buying it. They have rejected the inheritance of hatred. Our parents did what they could with what they had. Many of them were indoctrinated by colonial structures that defined everything in ethnic terms. They lived through coups, detentions, and stolen elections. They were told that the only way to survive was to rally behind “our people.”

In today’s Kenya, there are only two sides: those who benefit from a broken system and those who want to fix it. It’s not Kikuyus versus Luos. It’s not Kalenjins versus Luhyas. It’s the corrupt versus the committed.

Injustice is not tribal. And neither is resistance. A New nation is being born. A new Kenya is being born in the fire of protests, on the hashtags of truth-tellers, in the classrooms where students reject ethnic logic, and in the hearts of citizens who demand better. This Kenya will not be ruled by ethnic barons or tribal contracts. It will be ruled by the Constitution, powered by the people, and grounded in justice.