In Kenya, the Swahili word for demonstrations or collective protest, maandamano, has transcended its political usage into a vibrant civic dissent, democratic negotiation and historical memory.
Gradually, Kenyan streets have become public spaces for citizens to challenge exclusion, to reveal state paradoxes and to continually reimagine justice, freedom and belonging in the postcolonial nation state.
Such interpretations are often read as a sign of instability or democracy's fragility in Africa; but they camouflage some of the Afrocentric and historical roots of the culture of protest in Africa.
The public disorder that is maandamano is more than just an occurrence in Kenya; it is a longstanding political tool that that the citizens use to challenge domination, inequality, and the constant silencing of marginalised voices.
Democracy in Kenya, has been redefined beyond its theoretical depicted as living archive for a common dreams of justice and citizenship that is continually constructed.
The colonial violence and the historical foundations of protest
Colonialism's violent architecture in Kenya is embedded in its protest culture, which manifests in racial separation, land dispossession, forced labour, taxation and systematic exclusion from political power.
In the early 1900s, labour organisations, women's organisations, nationalists, churches, and peasant groups joined together to organize strikes, boycotts, to speak out orally, to sing songs of defiance, to organise secret groups, and to reject colonial authority through symbolic means.
A major theme in this history is the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s. It is frequently referred to as a mere insurgency, but it was actually a fight for land, sovereignty and African self-determination.
Resistance persisted in kinship networks, through oral memory, ritual solidarity and communal mobilisation networks despite the violent repression.
In this genealogy of anti-colonialism, maandamano is a language of protest and a voice reclaiming from the historically voiceless.
Afro-centric and indigenous political thoughts and the making of democracy
This Afrocentric perspective on protest culture in Kenya critiques Eurocentric views that democracy came to Kenya only as a result of colonial modernity. African societies had long been in place with their own complex systems of governance that were based on consultation, collective responsibility, reciprocity, and restorative justice, well before colonialism.
In many communities across Kenya there was a form of decision making structures through councils of elders, communal assemblies, age grade systems and public forums of leadership which had legitimacy because of the principles of social accountability and public debate.
One such interpretation of maandamano in the contemporary period is continuity rather than a breakage with the politics of Africa. Protest takes the form of a new expression of older communal practices which are employed to address injustice and to negotiate social order.
From anti-colonial resistance to digital activism
The very dawn of independence in 1963 was envisioned as marking the point of an era of democratic inclusion, economic justice, and African self-determination in Kenya.
However, the post-colonial state established numerous centralised colonial institutions, in an atmosphere of censorship, detention, intimidation and restrictions on freedom of expression.
The universities were the arena for ideological conflicts, and journalists and opposition figures were subjected to surveillance and repression. Here maandamano did not just become a form of protest, but a continuing language of democracy's resistance and a symbol of the voice of freedom itself.
The continuation of protest in Kenya indicates that the country still has many unresolved issues of national significance that have been looming in the post-colonial state since Kenya's independence: What is the value of freedom to? Whose voice is heard in a democracy? Who is left out of economic and political citizenship?
The unplatonised nature of postcolonial democracy in Africa is evident in these unresolved tensions. Africa should define adapt democracy that fits in the context and culture and history of the people to satisfy the needs of the people.
In the contemporary period, digital technology has led to organisation of a more structured sophisticated Maandamano. Social media is now a new decentralised political space where satire, civic education, political critique, and mobilisation can rapidly flow.
Hashtags facilitate collective action and viral imagery reveals the violence of the state and failures of institutions. But there is a historical continuity beneath these technological changes, as many citizens are still feeling alienated from the claims of independence and democratic inclusion.
The series of protests in Kenya are thus less about economic discontent and more about existential crises.
They represent a fight for dignity, recognition and for citizenship. A nation of maandamano is not just a nation of perpetual protest, but also a society in perpetual negotiation with unfinished freedom, justice and democratic belonging in postcolonial Africa.
Kenya's streets have become sites of dissent more than ever. They are democratic archives of life in which history can be heard, memory is defiant and Africa's democratic fantasy can be extended.
The writer is a Kenyan historian, lecturer at Kibabii University and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Lagos under the ARUA–Mastercard Foundation programme.
