On Monday this week, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission started the Continuous Voter Registration targeting 6.3 million new voters.
Among the targets are approximately 4.4 million young voters, the majority of them Gen Z born between 1997 and 2012.
The youngest of this group were born in the aftermath of the deadly post-election violence of 2007. They will be turning 18 at the end of the year.
Together with their elder Gen Z, they lived through one of the most shameful periods of this country’s history.
In their short lives, they have scraped through four governments during which they have seen the best and the worst of us as a people.
The oldest of them lived through the trials of the last five years of President Daniel Arap Moi’s rule. They lived through the triumphs and tribulations of Presidents Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta’s rules.
The oldest of them first voted in 2017. The vote was annulled by Chief Justice David Maraga. They voted again in a bogus repeat poll, survived the Covid scare and voted again in 2022.
By the time President William Ruto was finishing his second year in office, this generation was fed up with the barrenness of our politics.
The dearth of conscientious leadership, arrogance of the political class, betrayal by the clergy and the helplessness of their parents was too much to take.
They poured into the streets and almost succeeded in deconstructing our body politic, the whole kit and caboodle. Stoic even in the wake of infiltration, Gen Z wrote their wish-lists in the streets, decorating them with blood and tears.
Face-saving concessions were made to placate them, and they worked. As soon as the smell of tear gas dissipated from our skies, we resumed our old habits.
Up to now, there has not been any serious, national initiative to harness Gen Z’s spirit and goodwill. It is as if the protests did not happen at all.
As we tread through the remaining days ahead of 2027, it is clear the message is yet to reach the political class. We see it every day in the manner in which the political class is organising itself for the election, using the old playbook.
It is also obvious that the now naturalised disposition of an ordinary Kenyan politician is starkly incongruous with the aspirations of Gen Z.
Luckily for Gen Z and their supporters, there is an opportunity to revisit the change project in 2027.
The opportunity accorded by the ongoing continuous voter registration and the upcoming mass drives is immense. Young people now have two years ahead of them to mobilise to overthrow the political order they so much dislike.
Sadly, the turnout so far is appalling. On Monday, for instance, just about 11 young people had turned up to register as voters in Nakuru.
In Ndaragwa constituency, 10 young people had shown up, Mombasa county had fewer than five and Bomet Central recorded zero turnout of young voters.
Media reports quoted young people giving all manner of excuses. Many of them claimed that they are busy looking for jobs. Others complained about the distance to the registration centres.
All these are lame excuses. Over the protest period last year, many Gen Z flooded the streets with zero facilitation from the state. We hailed them for their splendid organisation, commitment to cause and mobilisation capacity.
We want to see these capacities at work over the continuous voter registration drive. We want to sneak into their mobilisation WhatsApp groups and to hear of their day-long X Spaces conversations on voter registration.
It is one thing to merely desire political change and another thing to actualise it. The moment has now been presented to take practical steps towards real change.
In the coming days, Gen Z need to prove to the country that their desire for change was not fake. We want to see them register in droves.
In the same way they occupied our streets, let them occupy IEBC offices, register as voters and turn up to vote in 2027.
Senior Project Manager, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, member, Media Complaints Commission, and advocate of the High Court of Kenya
