Nairobi In this work, sometimes you’re making the news, and sometimes following the news. After months of planning a four-week intensive ACORN training program for our organizers in Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya in Nairobi, we find ourselves dodging the news all around us, as our time has inadvertently aligned with mass protests against Kenya’s President Ruto and his government. All of our work is with our members and groups in Korogocho, the oldest and one of the largest megaslums in Nairobi, which is a long, long way from the presidential palace, but this is big news, and there’s no escaping it for us or the rest of Nairobi’s citizens.
In the first days of the training three weeks ago, our entire team was trapped housebound for several days, as protests over the tax increases shut the entire city down. Though the whole contingent was staying in western Nairobi, the training session was disrupted by the sight and sound of thousands of marchers going along Ngong Road where they were housed. The protestors were many kilometers from the palace and the city center and had already been marching for hours, many having come from all around Kenya for the demonstration. All of the ACORN organizers ended up on our side of the road watching the march roll past.
President Ruto abruptly changed course, refusing to sign the tax bill that his government and party had initiated, but it didn’t stop the protests, as he might have hoped. More recently, he has fired his entire cabinet. The protestors are now demanding that he resign over a host of pent-up grievances. ACORN’s team now starts every day trying to parse Google Maps and determine where the police may have established roadblocks that would prevent us from getting to Korogocho. When the maps work, the organizers can identify a sudden splotch of red that is likely a roadblock. Sometimes the protests find a rhythm, starting at 11 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it’s not always a dependable guide.
On the Monday, I arrived; the organizers were delayed for hours coming back from the field by new roadblocks that had to be circumvented. On Tuesday, more protests were announced, after we debated about whether it would be possible to get to Korogocho, because there was also a strike by drivers for Uber, Bolt, and other companies, the team took their chances finding a Bolt driver who honored the strike by having them pay him in cash to deprive the company of their share. Strangely, they were able to come back to home base in a record 20 minutes rather than more than an hour. The highways were deserted. The headlines indicated protests had been fierce, with one protestor killed by police gunfire. The city had sought to shelter to weather the political storm.
There are sirens blaring now, intermittently on Ngong Road, as I write. The app drivers extended their strike deadline by one day. No one can predict the outcome of any of these protests. Everyone refers to them as Gen Z protests, meaning largely young people, organized with the help of social media apps with anonymous leaders designed to avoid some of the government repression. Human rights groups report more than 50 have been killed in the month-long protests. A majority of cities in Kenya report anti-government protests, so Nairobi may be the sharp point of the spear, but it’s everywhere now.
The president is unpopular for many reasons. He is seen as caving in to the International Monetary Fund to deal with Kenya’s debt, which always means cuts to social programs, tax increases, privatization and more. He is seen as paying more attention to foreign affairs than domestic concerns, winning praise for sending a peacekeeping force to Haiti and being feted at the first state dinner in the US for an African leader in fifteen years, but earning opposition for putting family in government posts, ignoring court orders, flaunting the rules on appointing government ministers, along with the usual corruption.
It goes on. I had to stop this report to go to the street after hearing marchers on Ngong Road going away from the city center. There was a traffic jam stalled across the road for miles as far as I could see. This movement demanding change is all around us, and it won’t be over soon.
Meanwhile, an action ACORN Kenya members did on Friday about trash pickup in Korogocho saw trucks picking up on Monday and Tuesday, so a win for us.
The demand for change seems everywhere in Nairobi now.