April 2025 Circular

Content

1. Monthly Commentaries
2. Current Issue Political Analysis
3. Historical Issue Political Analysis
4. May Organizing Call

1. April Commentaries

Butere Girls

The Ruto regime was at it again. This time the dictator was nervous about children role playing in public. The despotic regime of dictator Ruto was scared about children embracing art and expressing what they see happening in Kenya. So, the teen girls were teargassed and sent home to try their luck in another country, not Ruto’s Kenya. On paper, all manner of art is legal in Kenya, as long as the art does not paint Ruto with the wrong brush. The current president believes that all artistic public depictions of him must be approved by Farouk Kibet. The 2025 Kenya National Drama and Film Festival was turned into a circus of which school can praise the dictator the loudest.

KLM Coast Recruitments

Kongamano La Mapinduzi (KLM) Central Committee is currently on a recruitment drive at the coast region. The coast bears a long history of oppression, domination and occupation by different international powers. The Kenyan coast will never really feel Kenyan, when coastal injustices like land continue to remain unresolved in the consciousness of the coastal people. The Kenyan Coast has taught us that all occupation forces in history, including the current imperialist and neocolonial regime of dictator Ruto, must come to an end at some point. Kongamano La Mapinduzi is at the Kenyan coast to explore how best to show solidarity with the incredible work the radical grassroots collectives there are doing. KLM will be recruiting for new members, cadres and if possible, a revolutionary comrade to join KLM Central Committee.

Siasa Place at 10 Years

Not all NGOs are bad. Some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are progressive. KLM believes that if any organization centers the very people they are supporting, not with new and foreign concepts, but with indigenous knowledge and expertise that can be found among grassroots human rights defenders and community organizers, real, practicable, sustainable and fundamental change can be achieved. From their Open Day events at Uhuru Park in 2016 to the recent people’s assemblies taking place in Nairobi slums, Siasa Place remains a revolutionary breath of fresh air in the NGO industrial complex. KLM as a grassroots socio-political movement was honored to be invited and to take part in the celebrations as they turned 10 years old.

Defenders Coalition

Another revolutionary organization operating in Kenya today, is the Defenders Coalition. For an organization to have the level of respect that the Defenders Coalition has among vulnerable communities including urban slums in the capital city of Nairobi, it must operate beyond lip service and performative gestures. Such an organization must roll up their sleeves, strap their boots and enter the trenches like all other frontline workers. It is such an inspiration to all working in civil society, that an organization can go so far, to defend the most vulnerable, as Defenders Coalition has, long before even KLM came into existence. We are also grateful for all the support they have extended to KLM over the years, including the recent much needed help to one of KLM Central Committee members. Asante.

Ukweli Party  

All Political Movements must have access to a political party. At the moment Kongamano La Mapinduzi is investing in building the Ukweli Party as a viable political vehicle for its political program. As contradictions between Ukweli Party and Kongamano La Mapinduzi continue to be resolved, it is important for all members of KLM and its different cadre to embrace the struggle to build a political party. There is the option of building and creating an entirely new party, or build on what other activists and community organizers have built at Ukweli Party since 2017. Is there a need to reinvent the wheel, when what we have serves the purpose, if worked on by trained revolutionaries?

2. Current Political Analysis

BBC Documentary Exposes the Truth Behind Kenya’s 2024 GenZ Protests

The BBC’s newly released documentary on Kenya’s 2024 protests delivers a powerful, unflinching look at a moment that shook the nation—and it tells the truth that many have tried to bury. Using over 5,000 photos and videos, the documentary meticulously reconstructs the scenes outside Parliament in June 2024, where cowardly security forces unleashed violence on peaceful demonstrators.

Far from the image of criminal chaos painted by Kenya’s political class, the documentary shows the protests for what they truly were: a genuine uprising of the Kenyan youth against bad governance. It humanized the protesters, countering the narrative pushed by President Ruto, who branded them “terrorists” for daring to demand a better life, as they wait for an even better future.

Unlike some local media houses and journalists who portrayed parliamentarians as heroic survivors of a “criminal riot,” the BBC correctly centers the young protesters as the real heroes.

These were students, workers, and citizens who risked everything for democracy and justice, not faceless mobs.

However, the documentary is not without its flaws. It falls into the familiar trap of individualizing what was, in truth, a triumph of collective action. By highlighting a few prominent activists rather than the grassroots movements and collectives that sustained the protests, it risks endangering those individuals through exposure to bribery, intimidation, or worse—assassination. Worse still, without visible, organized collectives, the spirit of mass action that electrified the protests risks fading away as the public narrative shrinks to a handful of isolated figures.

Predictably, the government has banned the documentary, fearing the truths it so powerfully reveals. But this moment demands courage from Kenya’s local media. The BBC has, as the saying goes, slaughtered the whole cow; now, local outlets must at least skin the tail. They must defy the ban, air the documentary, and help preserve the spirit of 2024—a spirit born of collective hope and resistance, not the lies of a fearful regime.

The future belongs to those who dare to tell the truth. It’s time Githeri media stepped up.

3. Historical Political Analysis

False Opposition: How Despots Manufacture Enemies to Cling to Power

Throughout history, desperate regimes facing popular rejection have often turned to a familiar tactic: the creation of false opposition. By doing so, they confuse, divide, and suppress genuine movements for change. As the Ruto regime in Kenya grapples with widespread outrage and a united national rejection, it has embraced this old playbook with alarming precision.

Instead of confronting the legitimate anger of millions of Kenyans, Ruto has chosen to manufacture a false battlefield. His “new” enemies are not fresh faces representing real change but the recycled political old guard—the very architects of Kenya’s historical betrayals. Among these so-called opponents are politicians like Linturi and Matiangi, infamous for selling fake fertilizer to struggling farmers, orchestrating the brutal murder of baby Pendo, and those implicated in the horrors of the River Yala mass killings. These politicians are not symbols of resistance; they are remnants of Kenya’s darkest days.

In doing so, Ruto seeks to achieve two goals. First, he tarnishes the idea of opposition itself, making it seem tainted and untrustworthy. Second, he distracts the public, shifting attention from the real source of their suffering: his own administration’s catastrophic blunders. This cynical strategy has been used by despots from ancient empires to modern autocracies—divide the people, control the narrative, and maintain the illusion of democracy.

Kenya’s painful past since independence has birthed this current dictatorship. A leadership class that looted, killed, and lied their way through decades is now being paraded as “alternative leadership.” It is a bitter insult to the Kenyan people’s intelligence and long fought struggle for freedom.

True change demands a new ethical standard. Like Caesar’s wife, politicians must not only be innocent but must also appear to be beyond reproach. Anyone who allies themselves

with the old political class—the fertilizer fraudsters, the murderers of innocents, the architects of corruption—must be treated as an enemy of the people, no matter their rhetoric.

Today, Kenyans face a clear choice: reject both the dictator and the false opposition he props up, or be dragged back into cycles of deceit and despair. Only by demanding true accountability, true transparency, and true new leadership can the nation break free.

The age of recycling villains must end. The people’s movement must rise above the traps laid before them, remembering that not all who claim to fight for them truly do.

The fight for Kenya’s soul has just begun—and this time, only the truly weupe kama pamba must lead.

4. Political Organizing

June 1st – Kenya will be marking the 2025 Madaraka Day in Homa Bay at Raila Odinga Stadium. We wish to remind all GenZ and all revolutionaries in Homa Bay County that celebrating the butcher of Sugoi, is forgetting what the Kenya Police have done over and over and over to the brave souls of Kondele and Nyalenda slums. All you clap for the butcher of Sugoi, remember the spirit of Baby Pendo will be in that stadium.

June 25th – There MUST be a street protest on June 25th 2025. The peaceful protest conducted countrywide with Genz holding water bottles and flags, will be in honor of all the martyrs killed last year. The protests must also remember the mutilated bodies of GenZ found at Kware dumpsite in Mukuru.

July 12th – Mukuru Community Justice Center is organizing a street protest that will end with the delivery of a demand letter to parliament and to the office of the president of Kenyan seeking justice and accountability for Kware victim families, the divers who volunteered to retrieve the bodies, and Mukuru slum as a community – that was traumatised by the presence of mutilated bodies in their neighbourhood.

When we got independence, the Kenya Land and Freedom Army sworn duties and responsibilities were transferred to the post-independence Kenya military. Today we call this people’s army the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF). The KDF is the new Mau Mau soldiers of today, so to speak. They have sworn to give up their life for the protection and defence of the sovereign people of the republic of Kenya.

How can Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi order the massacre of innocent children, Kenyan children, while carrying bottles of water and the Kenyan flag, as they shout, freedom freedom? Did all the commanders (Army, Airforce, Navy) of the people’s army know about this order – the order to kill unarmed children fighting the same imperialists and neo-colonial agendas in Kenya today, that they were fighting in the forest then? There is not a single Captain in the people’s army who questioned this order? An order given by Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi, the commander in chief, of the people’s army, the sovereign people of the republic of Kenya.

Unless this was not an order from our dear Field Marshal, Comrade Dedan Kimathi. If the killing of peaceful and unarmed children was not a legitimate, lawful and constitutional order to protect and defend the lives of the masses, the sovereign people of the republic of Kenya, what was it then? If this order did not come from the highest command structure of the people’s army, where did it come from? You know an army of the people because it protects and defends the people, and the integrity of the offices that govern them, not an individual occupying any of those offices.

If the history of Comrade Dedan Kimathi as your first Commander-in-Chief, mentioned him giving an order to kill Kenyan children with snipers, we would not be celebrating him today as a hero of the people. What makes you think that taking the orders of an individual, Commander-in-Chief or Field Marshall, to kill unarmed children should be forgiven by GenZ, by the sovereign people of the republic of Kenya? What makes you think that the powers of the office of the president or Commander-in-Chief, is the preserve of their personal fears or political aspirations as individuals? They are constitutional offices that don’t give a damn about the egos of who is in office, whoever it is, must obey and behave in a constitutional manner.

Shame on you, the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and its leadership structure during the GenZ protests.  You cannot claim that you were overwhelmed by civilian soft power coming from the Executive, it is 4 soldiers and two civilians in the Defence Council. How can four battle hardened soldiers, promoted out of merit, bow to any influence outside their constitutional mandate, against the interest of the masses, the interests of GenZ, the sovereign people of the republic of Kenya. So yes, shame on you.

You are soldiers, not anyone’s bitchez, so act like it.

Signed,

KLM Central Committee