Art as activism: The music and murals of Kenya’s youth protests

Rael Ombuor

The faces of slain protesters are painted on an alley wall in the Kenyan capital. Nearby, a community theater troupe acts out a random roadside arrest.

Over the past year, thousands of young Kenyans have marched in cities across the nation, protesting high taxes, corruption and police brutality. More than 100 protesters have been killed by security forces, according to rights groups, but they have not retreated.

And their movement has inspired a new generation of Kenyan artists, who have championed the cause through music and murals, graffiti and spoken word. Running through their work is a consistent theme: Young people remain determined to change the status quo.

“Music throughout history has influenced social and political revolution,” said Njuki Githethwa, a Kenyan activist and scholar. What’s happening now, he said, “is an awakening, a new thing coming into shape, and artists are centrally located.”

The musician

The so-called “Gen Z protests” began on June 25 of last year, when demonstrators furious over tax hikes and the rising cost of living stormed Parliament in Nairobi. In the chaos, the building caught fire.

The day produced one of the movement’s most memorable songs, “June 25th,” by popular Kenyan musician Henry Ohanga, better known as Octopizzo, who was there among the crowds.

The music video, which has more than 750,000 views on YouTube, “was organic,” Ohanga said - combining footage from the protests with the voices of demonstrators and politicians dismissing them as “criminals” and foreign puppets.

“To see young people coming out to make a difference and to be heard after trying so many avenues … was so powerful,” Ohanga said. “It was so special, I could not put it in my words.”

On the song’s YouTube page, he describes it as “a time capsule” and “a document of grief, resistance, and survival.”

The traveling theater

On a recent afternoon in eastern Nairobi, police officers were roughing up a motorbike taxi driver who had refused to give change to a passenger. A crowd started to gather; women and children looked out from their balconies.

Police pinned the driver on the ground and threatened him with arrest. Then came a woman in a suit, who seemed to be a public prosecutor and informed him of his constitutional rights and his legal options. It seemed real enough here in Dandora, a poor neighborhood where crime is high and run-ins with police are common, but it was all scripted beforehand by the Social Justice Center Traveling Theatre.

The 30-member troupe practices “invisible theater,” performing impromptu skits in crowded alleys and markets in the capital’s most neglected neighborhoods. They focus on police killings, abductions and arbitrary arrests, hoping to educate people about their rights.

“It was needed here,” said Antony Otieno, 25, the creative director, describing “people bundled in cars with the neighbors watching, never to be seen again.” In the group’s “street storms,” he said, actors try to demonstrate “what to do when that happens.”

At the height of the protests, members of the traveling theater said they performed at least one street storm each day. Sometimes the response has surprised them.

Last year, during a skit portraying a police officer arresting a group of boys for a minor infraction, a senior police officer was in the crowd, Otieno said, and “he asked us for a meeting.”

The artist

On June 25, the anniversary of the protest movement, Ndereva Mutua gathered his brushes.

On the wall of a local social justice center, he painted a burning Parliament and a protester lying in a pool of blood, surrounded by gun-wielding security forces. Across town, in uptown Nairobi, he had painted a woman hugging a Kenyan flag alongside the words “Unity Peace and Love.”

Mutua, 26, grew up in Mathare, a part of eastern Nairobi where daily life is often marred by criminal violence and police abuse. Now Mutua tells the stories of his neighborhood through murals and graffiti. Since 2016, he has covered more than 100 walls in Mathare and the surrounding areas. The art, he says, is a form of activism.

In 2023, during protests over a disputed presidential election, his brother was shot and killed by police. Mutua stopped painting for months.

“It was the first time I was experiencing a personal loss,” he said, “and I felt helpless.” When the protests erupted last year, he said, it inspired him to return to his craft.

The job of artists, he believes, is to represent “the voiceless so that they are not forgotten.”

The spoken-word performer

Willie Oeba, 31, boarded a bus on a chilly morning in downtown Nairobi. Ten minutes in, he stood up in the middle of the aisle. “You’re all good?” he asked, fist-bumping one of the confused passengers.

“I don’t want an offering, so don’t fear,” he said, assuring his audience that he wasn’t a preacher looking for a handout, a common sight on buses here.

“You might have seen me somewhere,” he continued, referring to his tens of thousands of followers on social media.

The crowd seemed to relax. Then Oeba began to rap in Swahili.

“Life is short, and I am not talking about a trouser/ The bank account of a citizen is as empty as the mind of a politician/ The president is talented in the art of contempt of court/ The law is very clear; his conscience is not.”

The passengers erupted in cheers after the last stanza, and Oeba hopped off the bus, en route to his next performance.

In 2017, Oeba said, a police officer pointed a gun at his head, mistaking him for a gang member. He decided then that he “was going to do something about the targeting of youths.” And spoken word would be his weapon of choice.

“It is very overwhelming when I write these pieces, because I am talking about real people, not statistics,” said Oeba, who has collaborated with numerous artists and taken his act across the country - and across the world.

When a friend was killed during protests last June, Oeba said, he was overcome with grief and frustration. But it inspired him to write more, and to perform for crowds wherever he found them - online, on buses, in the streets.

In a June piece entitled “Mr. President,” Oeba launched a scathing attack on Kenyan leader William Ruto. “You abduct youth for putting you in AI-generated coffins/ Yet you are putting them in real coffins,” he rapped, referring to digital activists who rights groups say have been disappeared.

More than 70 people have been abducted by security forces since last year, and at least 26 are still missing, according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, a state investigative body. Police have denied involvement, and Ruto has said that all those taken have been returned to their families.

After the piece came out, Oeba said he received threats on social media and menacing calls to his home. “The truth hurts before it heals,” he said, “so I have to speak truth to power or else they will kill us all.”