Why The Gen-Z Movement Must Identify With Progressive Pro-Youth Political Players And Esteemed Intellectuals
Gen-Z Movement
By Peter Agoro
What the Gen-z are attempting to do is a revolution, both in the intellectual and practical sense. Karl Marx is therefore the obvious foremost reference. His idea of a proletariat ragtag unit of workers dislodging a bourgeoisie class of owners of means of production appears attractive to any young mind, and did influence many university students to take up arms against the government during the Moi era, with remarkable success. Similar attempts in the Maghreb have succeeded in getting governments out of power through coups and popular demonstrations but have yielded little in terms of well-rounded transformation of the people’s way of life. Counter-revolutionaries and revisionists hijacked such initiatives leaving anarchy in their trail. Libya, Somalia, Tunisia, Sudan, Egypt, Burkina Faso and many others have not been able to positively navigate the effects of non-ideological quests.
Conversely, some of the European and Asian revolutions that had sound intellectual and progressive backers were able to achieve a wholesome shift in political paradigm. Look at the Bolshevik revolution led by Lenin, Trotsky and other comrades, the French revolution led by a band of ideologically diverse political leaders like Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, Maximilien Robespierre, Marquis de Lafayette, Napoleon Bonaparte and many others, the Chinese revolution with Dr. Sun Yat-sen as a forerunner and subsequently led by Mao Zedong, the Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek and supported by many young urban elites. These revolutions had solid political and intellectual leaders who were able to marshal support from all sections of the masses, ride on the wave of popular grievances and chaperone the establishment of modern states.
The Gen-z, millennials and all young people must therefore coalesce around honest and bold leaders. They must seek the assistance of sound intellectuals to identify ideologies that every Kenyan can identify with because in as much as these protests are planned and organized by young people, the country belongs to young and old alike. They must support these leaders by the might of their voice and must force change in institutions like the IEBC, the Judiciary, the police. Finally, they must vote these leaders into power and continue to support them until the halls of government have been purged of the current crop of status quo politicians. That is the true meaning of revolution.
The writer is the Chairperson, Consortium of Civil Societies, a Human Rights, good governance advocate and a Gen-Z apologist.
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