President William Ruto knows he’s in trouble. A few weeks ago Mr. Ruto was barricaded inside his official compound in Nairobi, Kenya, while thousands of young Kenyans marched on the streets. Since then, nationwide protests that started over a potential tax hike on basic goods and services have evolved into something much bigger: a demand for Mr. Ruto’s ouster — and an end to a culture in which Kenya’s political class enriches itself at the expense of the social and economic needs of its citizens.
From the start, this movement felt different from other protests. Most of the demonstrators were part of the country’s young majority, spreading information about where and when to show up on TikTok, Instagram and WhatsApp. No central political figure or unifying political party stood behind the crowds, and no common ideology united them beyond anger at the government’s plan to increase taxes while social services collapsed, public university fees soared and an unemployment crisis deepened. Even as the street action has faded, more Kenyans are now openly following graft cases on social media, circulating excerpts from the constitution and calling and texting legislators.
This marks a seismic shift in a nation where young people have been accused of political apathy. During general elections in 2022, most young Kenyans didn’t even register to vote. Now, for the first time since the country adopted a new constitution in 2010, the country’s youth are a critical part of a movement in which people are risking their lives to fight for the democratic gains they have been promised. It is clear Mr. Ruto senses his tenure is in danger; on Thursday he sacked all but one of his cabinet secretaries, bowing to public pressure.
Mr. Ruto is a protégé of Daniel arap Moi, the dictator who ruled Kenya between 1978 and 2002. From the beginning of his political career, Mr. Ruto appeared to share his mentor’s disregard for democracy. Some of his early political work involved organizing teams of university students to work for Mr. Moi during their school holidays; he later helped disrupt opposition rallies during the 1992 elections, Kenya’s first multiparty voting in decades.
When Mr. Moi left office, Mr. Ruto became a key member of the opposition, slowly building up his reputation for a presidential run. In 2007 he sought his party’s nomination for the presidency but lost in the primaries. Waves of violence erupted in Kenya after those polls, killing more than 1,200 people and displacing 600,000 from their homes. Mr. Ruto was one of six Kenyans indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2011, on charges that he had a role in the violence, which he has denied. He was accused of “murder, deportation or forcible transfer of population and persecution.”
Since then, Mr. Ruto has fought the democratic reforms that millions of Kenyans support. In 2010 he opposed the country’s new constitution, which sought to reform the political structure that enabled Mr. Moi’s dictatorship, give rights to people who had previously been disenfranchised, introduce new laws to prevent graft by government officials and prevent those with criminal convictions from assuming political office.
In 2013 Uhuru Kenyatta, who was also indicted by the I.C.C., added Mr. Ruto to his presidential ticket as his deputy. Together they won, and soon after the I.C.C. charges against them were dropped. Mr. Ruto was elected president in 2022. In both jobs, he has undermined the constitution by blatantly disregarding court orders, ignoring constitutional requirements for appointing people to state office, appointing members of his family to government jobs and using his party’s numerical superiority in Parliament to try to weaken integrity laws for state officials.
He has also failed to deliver on his core 2022 campaign promises: to fight income inequality and create jobs for Kenya’s youth. Instead, he has cut social welfare programs and increased taxes he said were needed to pay Kenya’s debt burden. In this, there is truth: The International Monetary Fund, as part of its conditions in helping alleviate Kenya’s massive debt, has urged the Ruto government to increase revenue collection. But the I.M.F. has also pointed out that a big part of Kenya’s fiscal predicament comes from graft. Last month, when Mr. Ruto announced his plan to boost revenue by introducing new taxes on essential goods like bread, sanitary pads, diapers, vegetable oil and fuel, a significant part of the public’s anger was fueled by their belief that much of the money collected would be used to line the pockets of Mr. Ruto’s allies.
Though he has been at the center of Kenyan politics for decades, in the latest wave of protests Mr. Ruto is confronting something entirely new. During previous periods of unrest over unpopular taxes, the president was accused of bribing opposition members of Parliament and setting up meetings with politicians planning anti-tax rallies in order to cajole them into stopping the action. But the young people on the streets today don’t speak that political language. There is no central leadership to bribe, threaten or push into endless “peace dialogues.”
The state has nevertheless tried its best. Since the protests began on June 18, at least 41 protesters were killed and hundreds more have been injured in clashes with the police. Others have said they were abducted from their houses in the middle of the night or picked off the street by plainclothes police officers and held incommunicado for days without charge. Mr. Ruto, for his part, thanked the police for their work. When confronted with information about the dead protesters, he claimed that they were criminals and that he had no blood on his hands.
The violence has turned anger about the taxes into fury over the killings — and Mr. Ruto’s government in general. At the height of the demonstrations, protesters stormed Parliament and declared their intentions to march to the State House, the president’s official residence. In response, the globe-trotting president took refuge inside it, closing off several roads nearby and issuing statements referring to the young protesters as treasonous criminals. Weeks later, Kenyans continue to demand Mr. Ruto’s resignation. They have also called for an end to corruption in his government, the revocation of unconstitutional offices that he has created and the prosecution of his allies accused of the grand theft of government funds.
Mr. Ruto says he’s listening. In addition to the cabinet overhaul, he has withdrawn the finance bill that included the tax hike. Unusually, he has engaged with critics on social media and encouraged members of his government to do the same, and condemned some of his allies for their arrogant statements toward protesters. Several high-profile politicians have also addressed the protesters’ complaints by offering public disavowals of their own recent salary bumps or demanding public audits of state funds.
This is a profound shift from two years ago, when young Kenyans were written off as indifferent — and unimportant — to the entire political process. The new movement is accomplishing something big in Kenya, and people sense it. Yes, they’re going to the streets to fight for this country’s democracy. But they are also going to see history in the making. When their children and grandchildren someday ask where they were during the Kenyan protests in 2024, they don’t want to say they weren’t there.