By Francis Kimanene
There seems to be a form of misguided seduction in playing risky games with flames, in the crackle and pungency of burning tyres, and in the shattering of glass among the anarchist arm of Kenya’s “protesters.” There is a siren song of the rowdy anarchist that defies sober logic. But how long must we entertain the lawlessness of anarchists that denies Kenyans the right to orderly picketing!
Walk with me through Kikuyu’s charred courtroom. Here, case files, evidence of land disputes, child custody battles, inheritance claims all lie ashen in the dirt. A widow seeking title to her husband’s farm must now restart her quest. A trader whose kiosk was reduced to cinders near Gikomba weeps not for shattered glass, but for her daughter’s school fees vaporised in smoke.
These are not abstract damages. Each burned building is a gutted dream and each looted pharmacy, a sentence of untreated illness for the poor. Anarchists only peddle a perverse alchemy as they visit destruction on institutions and property.
The anarchist is a slasher of fabrics. He arrives with petrol cans and crude weapons, not petitions. When genuine protesters gather, he infiltrates their ranks, weaponising their cause.
A group of Anti-Riot cops disperse protesters
Recall June 25th when peaceful marchers commemorating 2024’s fallen Gen-Zs found themselves flanked by goons hurling stones at ambulances. The anarchist cares nothing for justice. He thrives in the smoke where accountability vanishes.
On that same June 25th, Mombasa’s streets swelled with hundreds of souls mourning, demanding and remembering. Yet come sunset, not one building was torched unlike the carnage that Nairobi, Nakuru and Ol Kalau witnessed.
We must not romanticise wreckers as “misguided youth.” The man who torched Kikuyu Law Courts is a mercenary. The gangs looting Naivas supermarkets are not hungry comrades. No! These are criminal syndicates out to sow chaos. Rapists prowling protest crowds under cover of darkness cannot possibly be freedom fighters. These are monsters exploiting man-made disorder.
The anarchists serve no ideology but nihilism. Their shadowy patrons seek to destabilise rivals and divert attention from real grievances of genuine picketers. In the face of destroyers, our answer to injustice must be creation, not combustion. We must reject the theatre of violence and withdraw when anarchists gather. We must starve their cause by banishing them.
Those who flirt with fire and applaud when a police van is burning should think again. When you cheer a looted mall, you cheer the unemployment of tens of cashiers. When you excuse “spontaneous rage,” you excuse the rape of a woman fleeing chaos.
True revolutionaries build schools where prisons stood. They plant trees where checkpoints fester and draft laws in the sun, not shatter statutes in the dark. Those who carry building bricks – not torches, will forge Kenya’s future! And by those who raise voices, not fists.
Let the June 25th fires be our last lesson. When the anarchists come again with their pretty lies and ugly matches let us turn our backs on them.
Dr Kimanene is a conservation expert based in Geneva, Switzerland
