To those who lived through the KANU dictatorship and now urge us to be silent – we hear you. We know your fear because we grew up watching it shape you. We saw you lower your voices and retreat into survival mode as the regime killed and looted the country. But we are not you. We did not inherit your fear.

You warn us to be careful, to stop provoking the President, to remember that he was part of the brutal Youth for KANU (YK-92) leadership that defended Moi’s dictatorship through intimidation, political violence, and bribery. You remind us that dictators are insecure and do not hesitate to kill dissidents, that Moi’s torture chambers and prisons silenced many patriots who dared to imagine a new Kenya. And maybe you are right. But you misunderstand one thing – we are not you. We are not afraid!

We are not a generation that kneels. We were raised in a political atmosphere thick with the promise of democracy and respect for human dignity. We witnessed the dawn of President Mwai Kibaki’s leadership – an era of economic revitalization, infrastructural development, expanded access to education, and the birth of a progressive constitution that enshrined the people’s sovereignty and human rights. We have read about the historical resistance waged by our people against unjust power. We grew up knowing that oppression is meant to be challenged, not feared.

You say we are reckless, that we do not understand the consequences of speaking out. That we risk taking the bloody path of Pio Gama Pinto, Bishop Muge, or Rex Masai—those silenced permanently by the regime. But your silence is the real death sentence. For what is life if you are trapped in an endless cycle of indignity? What is the point of living in a country where we have no future? Where uncertainty is the only certainty?

Your generation became voting machines, and are easily manipulated. Election after election, you support the same tribal lords. You place your trust in the very thieves who rob your children’s future, hoping that this time, things will change. You convince yourselves that corruption is only evil when a person who is not your tribesman benefits. But when your children demand their country back from these parasites, you are shocked. We get that you are terrified – afraid of losing us to the regime’s bullets and prisons. Yes, we get that! But you are also afraid of admitting something else: that your silence was a mistake all along.

You were told that personal survival was more important than collective action. That if you worked hard enough as individuals, you could escape poverty and the failures of the state. But we have seen the truth. We have watched most of you work hard your entire lives only to lose everything to a failed healthcare system. We have seen your homes grabbed by the powerful or lost to auctioneers. We have watched as government bulldozers erased your livelihoods. Many of you are still laboring in old age for crumbs, or queuing in public hospitals with no doctors or medicine. We know that this system is designed to keep us in chains. We understand that our struggles are interconnected and that we can break free only through collective resistance.

You tell us to wait. That our time will come. But isn’t that the same lie they fed you? How many years did you wait, only to find yourselves stuck in the same cycle of suffering and indignity? Look around – you are now approaching old age and the healthcare system is on its knees, yet you stayed silent when they transferred billions of taxpayers’ money meant to streamline healthcare to their offshore accounts.

What did your silence earn you? Was it worth it?

After all this, you still vote the same way – loyal to your tribes, devoted to backward political parties that only look out for the interests of the rich minority. We see you come out in large numbers to listen to your tribal leaders who are always pretending to speak for ‘their region’. You still hope that your realities might somehow change this time if they are elected to office – repeating history as if expecting different results. History indeed does repeat itself, first as a tragedy, and second as a farce.

And when we demand more, when we refuse to bow, you call us rude, reckless, ungrateful, and inexperienced. But what exactly should we be grateful for? For our poverty? For watching helplessly as our loved ones painfully suffer and die in under-equipped public hospitals? For witnessing dreams perish because of unaffordable education? Tell us, what should we be grateful for?

How many more of us – your children and younger siblings – must be driven into despair, abducted, tortured, or gunned down in the streets before you realize that waiting is not a strategy? That the silence will not save you?

But it is not too late. You may have been forced into silence once, but you do not have to remain silent forever. You have lived through broken promises, false dawns, and betrayals from the political class – we today ask you to stand with us so that history does not repeat itself. We do not seek to shame you; we seek to fight and struggle alongside you. You know the cost of fear, but you’ve also witnessed the power of resistance. We do not have to be divided by history. Together, we can make sure that no more generations will have to write letters like this one.

Our generation will not kneel. We will not fear or be silent. We will not sit and watch these criminals rob our future. We will fight! And if we fall, let history remember that we fell fighting- but let it also remember those who fought side by side with us.