Protests have returned to the streets of Kenya’s towns and cities, as the country gets to the latest stage of the slow-motion revolution it has been undergoing for over 40 years. Animated by anger over the state’s arrogance, corruption and long-running neglect of their needs as currently manifested in its tax proposals, a new generation has taken up the fight, and it is glorious to behold.

Two years ago, the same Kenyan youths were derided as “disengaged” for failing to register as voters and to turn up for the general election. “It’s a huge dent in democracy,” wailed one analyst. Yet far from being disengaged, the young are demonstrating that what they reject are what I described at the time as “the political rituals of their parents” – the formalised ways of democratic participation that their elders valorise but that have consistently failed to deliver on their promise. They are “opting for other, more effective modes of engagement with governance in the years in between elections”.

This is not new. Coming of age in the 80s and 90s, their parents too had rejected the rules of participation set for them by the independence generation, which privileged ideas like development, unity and peace – many times at the expense of democratic freedom and........

© Al Jazeera