Let’s be clear: the Rigathi Gachagua now pretending to support Gen Z is not the same man who held the position of Deputy President with brute force and arrogance.
If Gen Z had risen up during his time in power, they would not be receiving nods of approval or sugar-coated statements. No — Gachagua would have labeled them criminals, idlers, and “sponsored chaos agents,” just as he did with Azimio protesters in 2023.
This is a man who took pride in waking up at 4:00 a.m. to report to his office by 5:00 a.m. — not to serve Kenyans, but to organize police operations against unarmed citizens demanding change. Teargas, arrests, rubber bullets, and live ammunition were the response tools under his watch.
If the current protests had happened while Gachagua was still seated comfortably in the corridors of power, he would be the first to order their brutal suppression.
Every podium he got, every microphone he held, he used to attack those who dared to question the government. He called protesters useless, jobless, and ungrateful. In Gachagua’s political dictionary, demanding accountability was a punishable offense.
The sudden change of tone is not because he has changed — it’s because he lost power. It’s because now, like many before him, he wants to use public anger as a ladder back into relevance. But we must remember the version of Gachagua that Kenyans lived under: a cold, calculating enforcer of violence and fear.
Gen Z should not be fooled. If they had stood up while Gachagua was still Deputy President, he would have responded with boots, batons, bullets, and bitterness — not tweets of solidarity.
