Silence Is The New Treason

By: Midmark Onyonka Onsongo

After months of strategic silence and soul-searching, I return not to warm the bench of journalism but to disrupt, to educate, and to awaken. I am not back to joyride in the comfort of recycled narratives or safe reporting. I am back to shake the tree until rotten fruits fall. This is not a comeback. This is a mission. And in this piece, I dare to make it plain: the truth has been gagged for too long and someone must speak when silence becomes betrayal.

Kenya, and much of Africa, is staring at a fork in the road. One path leads to progress. The other is a well-paved road to decay, and many are marching down it wearing suits of ignorance, shoes of tribalism, and belts of borrowed ideologies. We have normalized abnormality. Celebrated mediocrity. Elevated the corrupt while crucifying the righteous. That era must die, and we must write its obituary without fear.

Where Are the Thinkers? We cannot build a continent with slogans, rallies, and hashtags. We must raise think not just echo chambers. Where are the scholars whose pens were once rivers of revolution? Where are the writers who sparked mental fires in the darkest days of dictatorship? Why have we traded our sharp pens for hollow praise songs?

Our education system has become a meat grinder, churning out certificate holders, not solution givers. Millions graduate yearly, yet few can question, fewer still can innovate. We’ve made it fashionable to be literate but not intelligent. Degrees are no longer a badge of service; they’re a currency in corruption markets and political auditions.

The Price of Silence. Look at Sudan. Look at Congo. Look at Haiti. And yes, look at Kenya. The most dangerous citizens today are not criminals with guns but civilians with voices who choose silence in the face of injustice. We are plagued not by a lack of democracy, but by a lack of courage.

When your leaders steal billions and you joke about it online—that’s cowardice wearing a comedy mask. When your village lacks water but you praise a governor for launching a stadium—that’s not loyalty; it’s mental colonization. We must understand: silence does not protect you. It only prepares your children for slavery.

Youth: The Sleeping Volcano. This continent is 70% youth. But you’d think we are 90% pensioners from how muted our energy is. Why are we so docile in a system built on our backs? We riot for concerts and influencers but go mute on policy, on law, on budget theft, on oppressive reforms. Our youth are loud but misdirected. We are digital warriors fighting irrelevant wars while our futures are auctioned behind mahogany doors.

It’s time for the Gen Z and millennials to redirect their fire. Burn not with gossip, but with governance. Become not just content creators, but nation builders. We cannot TikTok our way to liberation. We cannot meme our way out of unemployment. The revolution will not be viral it will be intentional. Truth Must Offend. You cannot fix what you’re too scared to name. The truth must offend before it liberates. So let me offend a little.

Some clergy are no longer prophets but profits. Politicians no longer lie they advertise their lies on billboards. Our media, once the fourth estate, now often feels like the estate agent of propaganda. And the civil society? Some have become NGOs of convenience, not conviction.

We need to restore boldness. Journalists must report like it’s their last story. Activists must speak like their children’s lives depend on it—because they do. Writers must write like pens were made for battle, not for beauty.

Healing Is Political. Forget the myth that politics is dirty. What’s dirty is avoiding it and hoping for miracles. Every public toilet you complain about is a political decision. Every strike, every pothole, every food shortage they’re political symptoms of leadership failure.

To those who say, “I’m not into politics,” I ask: Are you not into your stomach? Your safety? Your future? Because that’s what politics is. Ignoring politics is like ignoring cancer because you hate hospitals.

We must vote not for names, tribes, or bribes but for ideologies. We must interrogate manifestos with the same energy we interrogate celebrities. You cannot build a nation by electing comedians and crying philosophers. Leadership is not a joke. If you laugh at it during elections, you’ll weep at it in real life.

The Pan-African Question? Why is Africa, with all its beauty and brains, still trapped in cycles of debt, conflict, and dependency? The answer lies in broken unity. Colonialism divided us, neocolonialism distracts us, and tribalism destroys us. Until we see ourselves as African first and national second, we will be slaves in our own lands.

We need a continental consciousness. An East African youth should care about coups in Niger and floods in Nigeria. A South African thinker should rage when Kenyans are gagged. Why? Because injustice anywhere in Africa is a threat to justice everywhere on this continent.

Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba they did not die for us to twerk in ignorance. We owe them more. We owe ourselves more. This Pen Has No Brakes. From now on, I will write as if every piece is my last. Because it might be. The truth is expensive. It demands enemies. But if my words plant a seed of discomfort in just one reader—enough to make them question, resist, or rise then it’s worth it. I am not back to be liked. I am back to be heard. To be quoted. To be feared by systems and cheered by conscience. The Nobel Prize? That’s not a fantasy. It’s a destination for those who dare to risk comfort in pursuit of a just world.

Scripted by

MIDMARK ONYONKA ONSONGO, SGS

(Socio-Geographer)