Protests the people’s global sign of discontent

The continuing political stalemate in Kenya is happening at a particularly disruptive period in human history that requires astute leadership to ensure inclusivity in democracy and development.

Citizens globally are demanding their rights, freedoms and justice as the world faces new and eerily familiar risks compounded by disruptions and economic hardships. Protests in Kenya, South Africa, Tunisia, Senegal and even developed countries such as France and Israel reflect the people’s growing frustrations amid shared challenges and deepening divisions.

The health and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have spiralled into compounding crises in food and energy aggravated by the war in Ukraine, triggering problems that decades of progress had sought to solve. Older risks of cost of living crisis, inflation, trade wars, capital outflows from emerging markets, widespread social unrest, geopolitical confrontation and the spectre of nuclear warfare confront this generation’s public policymakers and business leaders.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023, these older risks are being amplified by comparatively new developments in the global risks landscape. These include unsustainable levels of debt, a new era of low growth, low global investment and de-globalisation, a decline in human development after decades of progress and rapid and unconstrained development of dual-use (civilian and military) technologies.

Combined with the growing pressure of climate change impacts and ambitions, these local and global risks are converging to shape a unique, uncertain and turbulent future, eroding future resilience.  It is extremely necessary for the national leadership to veer away from hardline positions contributing to the perpetual political stalemate deepening polarisation, intolerance and erosion of social cohesion.

Protest is the people’s natural recourse to perceived marginalisation and exclusion from the political and economic mainstream. Protest, therefore, becomes a political resource, an instrument and a mode of activity behind a cause such as the war on poverty, injustice and economic deprivation. Political protest consists of a multitude of methods used by individuals and groups within a political system to express dissatisfaction with the status quo by pressure or persuasion.

Mass protests have succeeded in unseating unpopular or intolerant regimes. Successful historic protests include the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran and installed Ayatollah Khomeini, and the People Power Revolution of 1986 that deposed Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Many of the stated aims of protests have highlighted distributive justice claims through, for example, reparations to descendants of African slaves in the Black Lives Matter movement and the redistribution of economic capital in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests.

While protests have occasionally succeeded in achieving political objectives, questions still abound on whether protests can lead to meaningful changes in government policy, particularly around the redistribution of economic resources. Scholars are, however, united in the conviction that dialogue and political compromise can help resolve the local and global risks facing humanity and societies instead of reacting to protests with force under the pretext of security, law and order.

It is universally agreed that the right to protest is essential in a democracy such as Kenya’s. It is a means for the people to express dissatisfaction with the current situation and assert demands for social, political and economic change. The lesson learned is that protests can make change happen and throughout the course of history it has taken sustained protests over long periods to bring about substantive change in governmental policies and the lives of people.

— The writer comments on political and economic affairs