The Deadly Protests That Forced Kenya's President To Scrap Tax Hikes

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The sound of live ammunition and tear guest canisters punctured the air in Kennya's capital, Nairobi this week, as peaceful protests turned bloody and a brutal crackdown left scores dead. The cause plans to push through a raft of unpopular tax hikes in a bid to generate billions of dollars in additional revenue for the cash strapped country. In unprecedented scenes on Tuesday, protesters stormed the Parliament building, battling police

Today's events mark a critical Tanning point on how we respond to grieve threats to our national security.

But after the violence led to the deaths of at least twenty three people, Ruto was forced into an about face just twenty four hours later, pulling his support for the contentious tax bill backed by the IMF, I concede I.

Will not sign the twenty twenty four finance.

On today's podcast, we'll discuss whether the Kenyan government is stuck in an unwinnable fight having to choose between the IMF and the streets. And as Ruto admits defeat on these measures, could there still be more reforms to come and will Kenya's economy be up for the challenge. I'm Jennifer's Abasaja and this is the Next Africa Podcast, bringing you one story each week from the continent, driving the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg can provide.

Tuesday was quite interesting, I think for the first time I don't think of I remember seeing protesters making their way into the parliament buildings and they took their protests inside Parliament, literally inside the where the legislators sit, where they make decisions, and they disrupted everything that the legislators were doing. They broke windows, some firewalls started in some points at Parliament. Within the Parliament compound, we had tear

Why now Bella We describe, of course over the taxes that the president is trying to implement, But why is it that young people now are so engaged and so enraged.

If you look at the unemployment rate in Changite over fifty percent, so we have people graduating from universities and they don't have jobs, they don't have opportunities to work. If you look at the gen zs, many of them are in the gig economy. So they do work online like call centers used to be our thing when I was around that age a couple of years back, but

I wonder if someone who is born and raised in Kenya, I imagine you have people that you know who have potentially been participating. I mean, what have the scenes this week been like for you to watch? And even the messages that we're hearing from the young people.

I think I have to say it's been very interesting because many of the protests were organized on social media, so on Twitter, Instagram, all these platforms social media. I've not seen that before because many of them were organized by and led by the opposition politicians. They time around young people, we actually making videos and telling the older political folk that look, don't show up, thank you for

They were in running.

Battles the whole day with security forces, singing, chanting, dancing, talking to the security forces. We've seen people get shot, people have died from brutal police force cracking down on these young people, many of who are not armed, and they just they're on another level. I saw a clip on social media and one of the protesters was hit by tear gas or it was affected by tear gas, and they walked up to the and also obviously and it's so paramilitary and ask excuse.

Me, what are you doing? Why are you hitting me?

Like they want to sit there, have a conversation, Let's talk about what you're doing. So that's something that's never been seen before, because in the past, I remember my parents' generation would see security forces and immediately run for their lives. This generation, they want to have a conversation and ask you and question the security forces why are you doing Some of them I saw some clips of some of them saying we're doing this for you.

When we come back, we'll look at how Ruto reacted and what happens next. Welcome back. So we just heard Bella describing the scenes on Tuesday, but what happened Wednesday was almost just as dramatic as what we saw from the previous day. Let's just start with the messaging that we heard from the President Bella. Take us to Tuesday evening then, because the President then went on TV to address the public. What was his messaging at that point.

So what it did is he labeled the Tuesday protests as treason ERUs and said they were carried out by criminals. And then he deployed the military in attempts to stop the nationwide anti government protests on Tuesday. And this has been questioned by the Los Society of king which is an association made up of professionals in the legal space, went to the High Court saying that look, the military

Which made the next part of the story Bella that much more interesting questionable. I don't really know how to describe it. We saw a complete about face from the President. What did he say?

So, he said he's withdrawing the tax bill, the finance bill, So he withdrew support for the finance bill. That had contentious tax proposals and then he called on lawmakers to scrap it. How do you reflected on the continuing conversation around the content of the Finance Bill twenty twenty four and listening truly to the people of Trainer who have said loudly that they will nothing to do with this

What was the reaction when he made these comments on Wednesday? Is it enough do you think to calm the situation down? Or are the young people or are there still more protests that are expected so.

The young people are not buying it. There are protests today in parts of the country and they're calling for him to step down. They're also sharing notes on social media. They had Twitter spaces yesterday with about one hundred thousand listeners and they want him to step down because they don't agree with whatever he proposed on Tuesday.

What does this all mean for the President Bella because this is he's only a few years into his term, right and he's really being dealt quite a blow that he probably couldn't have anticipated. And now it's really ballooned to a place where everyone is paying attention to what his next move is and what is going to happen with the economy moving forward.

It remains to be seen because there's never been such kind of opposition, especially from the young voters, from the young generation. These are people who grew up watching their parents go through the promulgation of the new constitution. These are people who grew up watching elections, presidential elections being contested, some of them won, and then now they want to have a different kind of political conversation, which changes the

Can you do that? Okay?

And then next he's withdrawn a bill. Okay, what does that mean? So we're finding out every day like everything new is just coming up. But the gen zs they're not impressed, they're not backing down. They're still out on the streets demonstrating.

Does Rutel survive this politically? You know, does he get through this? Is it too early to tell what do you think?

It remains to be seen. Look, he's on his first term, he's done two years out of five years in his first term. The gen zs are already preparing to register as voters. Remember the last election they did not participate, daid Away and God their argument was what has changed?

What is new?

But this time they're talking about you will see us in twenty twenty seven, which is when he writes for his second term. So it will be interesting to see how twenty twenty seven will pan out. Because these are people who are over eighteen, which means they are adults, which means they can now vote. So that changes a whole dynamic.

And thanks so much to Bella Ganga for all of our reporting. You can keep up to date with all of the teams coverage from across the region on Bloomberg News. As we've been discussing, the scenes this week have all the makings of a twenty first century protest, but they also clearly represent a shift for the president's own political future.