Anguka Nayo and the Collapse of the Neocolonial State in Kenya

On July 9, 2024, a Tuesday, at 6:25 am, Kenya’s minister for Sports, one Ababu Namwamba, posted on his X account a picture of himself flanked by at least eight other people, including the comedian Dr. Ofweneke, all of them wearing happy grins and captured in a crouch as if falling. It was a dance, and this was confirmed by the caption: “Anguka Nayo! #WhozNext#”.

Ababu Namwamba was at the time battling pressure from Kenyans on X, particularly from former Rugby player turned chef Dennis Ombachi, to release the list of the people who would be travelling to Paris for the 2024 Olympics on the taxpayer’s dime. Patriotic Kenyans on X were concerned that Ababu would populate his entourage with joyriders who would add no value and enjoy per diems and a free trip at our expense, we who are already stretched tight by the government’s callous taxes.

This citizen activism is part of the zeitgeist that has engulfed this country since the anti-Finance-Bill protests began on June 18. The protests have over the weeks morphed and expanded their scope after the President dropped the controversial finance bill. The Kenyan youth, bolstered by the gains they have made, are now demanding a mile, not the inch they initially wanted.

When Domani Munga sang “kuna siku youth wataungana”, he must have been engaging the prophetic sight of his third eye, for the day is here, no longer nigh but here.

The youth are speaking and acting in leaderless unison to the utter confusion of the beleaguered  political class that is regrouping to counter the Gen Z and Millennials who have become for all politicians a grave existential threat.

One among the many demands made by the protestors was the immediate firing of the entire incompetent cabinet. Tired of the vomit spat constantly upon them by public officials who should be servants, the emergent revolutionaries were keen to force an end to the culture of hubris married with ineptitude that has been the hallmark of the Kenya Kwanza administration.

Six days before Ababu Namwamba danced to it, the video for the song Anguka Nayo was published on YouTube. It was the sixth song video published on the account belonging to the Arbantone group Wadagliz. None of their songs had hit more than 100K views. The song they released before Anguka Nayo at the writing of this article has 6.4K views, and the song with the second highest views is at 84K. Anguka Nayo is a party song, with nothing much happening under the hood. It’s the typical arbantone or gengetone song, with clubbing being its entire subject and purpose. “Anguka nayo” is a Kiswahili phrase that means “fall with it”.

The song inspired the Anguka Nayo dance challenge which Ababu Namwamba and his eight companions so vigorously enacted for the photographer. Kenyans on social media quickly began to use the phrase “anguka nayo” to express their intense desire to behold the collapse of the Kenya Kwanza government. Out of sheer obliviousness to this emerging social meaning of the phrase, or perhaps in arrogance, Ababu Namwamba posted that photo and that phrase on July 9. Two days later, the happy go lucky Ababu and all his colleagues in the cabinet, save for the unconstitutional prime cabinet secretary, were dismissed by the embattled President William Ruto.

Consequently, the popularity of the song shot up almost instantly, as Kenyans who had not yet joined the “anguka nayo” bandwagon caught on that melody that aptly captured their desire to witness the collapse of an incompetent government. The firing of the entire cabinet, and the promise to do more of the same to the principal secretaries and the advisors at State House, filled patriotic and anarchic Kenyans alike with the glee that melts depression. Anguka Nayo immediately became the viral sensation it was supposed to be, and at this writing has garnered an astounding 2.2 million views 15 days since it was published. It even went international, with Hollywood celebrities expressing support for the country and the ongoing protests by, in their mzungu accents, saying “anguka nayo”.

The last time a song captured the political zeitgeist so perfectly was in the run-up to the 2022 election when Hatupangwingwi was all the rage. The irony in this is that William Ruto, who was then a deputy president and gunning for the top seat, taught us that we Kenyans have our own agency, for “hatupangwingwi” means “we are ungovernable” or more accurate to my thesis: “WE ARE SOVEREIGN”. It is precisely because we are sovereign that we have rejected his government, precisely because hatupangwingwi that we cannot stomach the arrogance, incompetence and cruelty of his regime with shut mouths. Hatupangwingwi.

“We are not our parents,” shouts a generation that has for the longest time been the butt of jokes from older generations for its stubbornness. Gen Z hawapangwingwi, this is known. The transition from Hatupangwingwi to Anguka Nayo is only natural. Because we are sovereign, as stipulated by article one of the Constitution, we shall exercise our direct power, and that may mean commanding our representative in the Executive, President Ruto, to either fire his incompetent cabinet or anguka nayo, fall with it.

The framers of the Constitution may have dreamed of a day such as this when they wrote:

“All sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya and SHALL be exercised only in accordance with this Constitution. The people MAY exercise their sovereign power either directly or through their democratically elected representatives.”

These two sentences have become talismans for the movement, transformed into memes, infographics, posters, t-shirts, and so forth.

A generation that was considered an apathetic, non-voting and therefore politically useless bloc has awoken with a surprisingly unquenchable fire, like a dragon that slept for a thousand years until a foolish passerby awoke it. Gen Z might still be politically asleep were it not for the President’s appalling commitment to serve the predatory West at the expense of his own citizens who unfondly call him Zakayo due to his overwhelming lust to tax incomes already dwindling in an economy struggling under his callous economic policies. Ruto is the foolish passerby who awoke this generation. For his rookie mistake, Parliament was stormed, State House became a target, historic protests have broken out across the country and shaken the entire political class, some MPs’ homes were attacked by their angry constituents, and now Ruto is forced to make a series of concessions to young people who he obviously underestimated, thinking that his decades of success in Machiavellian politics would give him the upper edge.

Unfortunately for the billionaire hustler who allegedly sold chickens before becoming an MP propelled him to fame and wealth, it turns out that a leaderless group comprising millions inexplicably moving in unison and committed to the hashtag #RutoMustGo, is in fact more formidable than a head of state controlling Parliament, the cabinet, the police, the military and all state institutions. In a few weeks of protests, this flag-waving, formerly politically apathetic assortment of Gen Z and Millennials has achieved gains that their forebears in resistance can only look upon in admiring amazement.

Since the protests began, many have taken to reciting this quote by Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks decades happen.” It is like the sudden blooming of the Kalahari when the rains fall. Looking at the barren desert when it was dry, no one would have imagined it contained within itself the ingredients for beauty. No one knew Gen Z had it in them to stage such a strong revolution until it happened. When they were dancing to Arbantone hits like Tiktoker and Gotha Tena, no one knew Anguka Nayo was on the way.

Like Unbwogable in 2002 and Hatupangwingwi in 2022, Anguka Nayo captures a political moment. What all three political moments have in common is paradigm shift: respectively, the collapse of Nyayo state, the collapse of the dynasties, and now the collapse of the colonial state set up in 1920 that has been sustained through neocolonial remote control till date.

In 1963, the people of Kenya became free from their colonisers, but their government remained colonised through loans, the Commonwealth, the presence of British troops on the ground, unequal bilateral agreements, among other shackles of neocolonialism. While Kenyans were free from their colonisers, they were not free from the colonial laws of successive illiberal regimes until 2010 when the Constitution sealed their liberation. Kenyans are free but their government is not. The government is a slave to foreign interests, the US in particular and the Bretton Woods institutions like the IMF that have become tools of American foreign policy. The rejection of the Finance Bill, 2024 was the first battle cry by a liberated people proclaiming war on the foreign interests that continue to shackle the state at the expense of its citizens.

Anguka Nayo is a revolution
We will liberate our people
We will liberate our government
Or die trying.