Kenya’s youth uprising was documented in real time through music, murals, memes, and essays. Publishing that history became an act of resistance in its own right.
Often, history is written as a recollection of the past. It is treated as the entry of passive data, only to be archived for posterity. But what happens when history, or its making, runs parallel to its archival process?
This is the opportunity offered by the 2024–2025 youth uprisings in Kenya. They gave us room to make history, to analyze events as they unfolded daily, and to document them at the same time. However, proper analysis and recourse were insufficient to help tilt the scale from the state to the masses.
Nevertheless, the documentation of the contestations between the masses and the machinery of the state has been extensive. They have been documented in music, memes, spoken word, poems, graffiti, murals, and essays such as our recent scrapbook titled From Mau Mau to Ruto Must Go.
As a contribution to the struggle, From Mau Mau to Ruto Must Go collects essays from an intergenerational tapestry of activists, community organizers, writers, and legal minds. It is a conversation between the old and the new, produced in the trenches of the youth uprisings, forging an intergenerational continuum of resistance.
The question of sovereignty appears in all the discussions in From Mau Mau to Ruto Must Go. From the streets to the book, external interference in the country’s affairs has been a constant reminder of the incomplete independence we gained in 1963.
One of the book’s main sovereignty concerns stems from the role of multilateral lending institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Some contributors have also analyzed this very question by focusing on the rising foreign military “partnerships” with countries such as the UK, which runs the oldest foreign military unit in Kenya, the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK), which was set up at independence in 1964. Similarly, the US operates Camp Simba and Manda Bay Airfield, and Emmanuel Macron is the new entrant in these defense “cooperations”; his government signed a defense and security partnership with the Kenyan government, which saw 800 French troops visit Mombasa in May 2026 for an exercise under the agreement.
The book also looks at ongoing cooperation between different Kenyan police units with the Israeli state, which is known for gross violations of human rights. Israel continues to equip the Kenyan police with further skills and technology to enable extensive monitoring of protestors, activists, community organizers, and journalists who are considered dissidents.
We also discuss the Seed and Plant Varieties Act of 2022, which sought to criminalize the saving, sharing, and exchanging of uncertified seeds. For many across the country, this was seen as a takeover of our food system. Labeling indigenous seeds and cultivars as uncertified would have made way for agricultural corporations to create a monopoly on the seed market, giving them a firm grip on our food system. Thankfully, through organizing, the act was defeated in November 2025, when the High Court of Kenya in Machakos declared sections of the act unconstitutional.
From the publishing of the book to the launch, we have had our fair share of challenges. The process has been full of fear, tension, and intimidation, but also one full of courage and determination. After months compiling our voices through the essays, proofreading and editing, the manuscript was ready for publishing. Kenya, being a nation with a considerable size of progressive forces and some level of political freedom, we never anticipated that the book would be “too hot a potato to handle” for most publishing houses. The title scared every potential publisher in the country, comrades, and even some safe spaces that we initially thought could provide a home for the book.
We got many suggestions from different quarters to revise the manuscript title to From Mau Mau to Gen Zs. Various justifications were given for why it was a bad idea to proceed with the current title. Some saw it as a way of exposing ourselves too much, while others felt the state might misinterpret the title. As a contributor and one of the people who were involved in its various processes, I knew that the title came with its fair share of risks and burdens to shoulder, but we were all ready for it. To us, “Ruto Must Go” was not just a slogan or a fleeting chant, but a movement that understood what Ruto or Rutoism represented. “Ruto Must Go” meant death to the system whose image is mirrored in Ruto’s presidency. It means uprooting the more than 60-year foundation of the colonial-neocolonial state that Kenya has been; abolishing state capture, misgovernance, deep-rooted corruption, greed, and neocolonial servitude. In the book, Ruto is an epitome of what African youth are loudly rejecting. And for these reasons, we chose to remain with our bold and daring title.
In Kenya, we failed to secure a publisher, and no one seemed interested in supporting us in any way. Luckily, from the most unlikely corner of the growing and ferocious East African “dictatorship states,” we found an oasis of intellectual refuge and solidarity in Uganda, through the Editors’ House Facility. After the publication of the book, 300 copies were printed, and the first 200 copies were dispatched to Kenya at the end of May 2026. Our launch, which was to coincide with the June 1 Madaraka Day celebration (the declaration of internal self-governance), failed to take place as we learned that the books were confiscated at the Kenya-Uganda border. To date, the authorities have failed to release these books.
The driver of the bus that was ferrying the books contacted us and described how he was interrogated and told that they were illegal material in Kenya. He was full of anxiety after being interrogated aggressively for a long period at the border. Through other covert means, we managed to get 55 copies through the border and, later, 45 copies. After we got the copies, we hoped to get the help of some progressive libraries and spaces to help with stocking and distribution, but they distanced themselves.
Luckily, we managed to get Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC) as our first stockist and anchor partner in planning for resource mobilization for the first launch. Also, Nuria Bookstores and Cheche Bookshop agreed to stock and distribute the book despite the growing intimidation.
In Mathare, the host of the launch venue was called multiple times by officers at a local police station, informing him to stop the launch after the poster was shared widely. He was summoned to the police station on the eve of the first launch. On the same day, several armed police officers stormed the MSJC offices. Even though they never arrested anyone or asked for the book, they interrogated staff and looked around the bookshelves. Despite this, members of the community came out in greater numbers than we had anticipated.
To avoid disruption on the launch day, the main gate leading to the hall was closed to deny entry to civilian-clothed police officers who kept an eye on the area the whole day. Community members even used a hidden entrance, outsmarting the police who awaited them at the main gate.
The Cheche launch, which targeted activists and writers, went well without any challenges. For the main launch, we were denied several venues, but we managed to get the August 7 Bomblast Memorial Park, which was built to remember the August 7, 1998, US Embassy in Nairobi bombing. With the booking of this venue, the details of the event were not revealed, as that would have caused another cancellation. This event also went well despite the presence of plainclothes officers who hung around the venue and, at one time, came to the park wanting to gather information about the book launch. The media that were invited failed to come to give the event coverage, and the few that came failed to air the launch. As a result, we turned to activists and community journalists, using social media pages and their circles, to spread the “new gospel” in town.
Following the book launch, plans began for the second anniversary of the June 2024 uprisings. From the beginning, this was envisioned as a commemoration and not a protest like the 2025 anniversary. Letters of notification were served to different police stations, including the infamous Central Police Station, where Albert Ojwang lost his life under very suspicious circumstances. On this day, we had planned to lay flower wreaths at Parliament, at spots where protestors were killed, and near important monuments such as the Dedan Kimathi statue. A week before, the government led by President Ruto and his loyal lieutenants were beating the drums of war and promising to “deal” firmly with protestors. Some of his closest allies, including those holding critical security dockets, issued intimidating statements, warning those who planned to participate in the commemorations.
We woke up to a barricaded city, despite the government’s chest-thumping assurances that June 25 would be a normal working day. All roads leading to the city were barricaded, with heavily armed police erecting roadblocks every two to three kilometers. Commuters were left to walk several kilometers to access the city, while being harshly interrogated as if they were treasonous people. In long queues, Kenyans were frisked while getting to the central business district, just like in the colonial days when Africans, armed with their kipande (passcard), were subjected to racial laws that made their access to the city highly controlled and troublesome.
Without a doubt, on June 25 it was illegal to have a Kenyan flag, flowers, or candles—they made you a target.
It was a crime to be a patriotic citizen.
The few who made it to the city, like me, spent most of the time escaping the police surveillance dragnet, formed by a heavy contingent of plainclothes police and uniformed units in balaclavas. Most of the hundreds of us who were arrested while laying flowers in the CBD were charged with the very flimsy offense of obstructing traffic, yet there was basically zero traffic in the city. The police who obstructed traffic on all roads for both motorists and pedestrians decided, ironically, to charge us with the offense that they themselves committed.
Most of us were held for more than 24 hours and denied access to telephones to inform our relatives and friends of our whereabouts.
For those who were abducted, their ordeal was more than horrifying; they were never booked at any police station and endured torture for days, asked repeatedly who was funding them, before being dumped in different locations in Nairobi. Davis Lichuma, a community organizer and activist from Mathare, was abducted on the same day and only released on June 28. He was found heavily tortured and severely traumatized from his ordeal.
With access to the book still limited, we are planning a series of engagements in the coming months to broaden its reach. This will be through the use of the Social Justice Centre’s Traveling Theatre, which will develop scripts and skits for performance in different communities. We will also hold forums in universities to make sure the institutions of higher learning, which were once the voice of reason and organizing, get the inspiration needed to play this role again. Also, we shall have public reading sessions in different parts of Nairobi, especially around areas where people gather in the central business district.
This we will do, as we move from Mau Mau to Ruto Must Go. This book was born in the streets, and to the streets shall it return.