What if the reason nothing seems to change, even when we protest, is because the very language we use has already narrowed what we’re allowed to imagine?

In this episode of Sera na Sauti, we speak with Kenyan feminist writer and scholar Mumbi Kanyogo about the hollowing out of Kenyan politics and how the vocabulary of “good governance,” accountability, and reform has quietly replaced more radical demands for justice, solidarity, and economic transformation.

Mumbi traces the architecture of depoliticisation: from the colonial banning of political parties in 1953, to Sessional Paper No. 10, to the NGO-isation of resistance following structural adjustment. Across each of these moments, she argues, there was a steady erosion of ideology and its replacement with frameworks of reform, accountability, and technical improvement. This shift has not only narrowed what movements demand but often made even radical organising sound like a policy memo.

The conversation moves through Kenya’s post-independence history, the IMF and World Bank’s role in shaping African governance discourse, and how donor-funded civil society helped institutionalise managerial thinking within activist spaces. We speak about how protest demands are often pre-interpreted through frameworks that make systemic injustice sound like an implementation failure.

Mumbi also reflects on the June 2024 protests, how risk was distributed unevenly across class lines, with low-income youth bearing the brunt of police violence while more privileged protesters could exit the moment with little consequence. She speaks to the limits of symbolic care, the temptation to romanticise protest, and the urgent need to pair solidarity with strategy.

Drawing from political theorist Joy James, she reflects on how movements often rely on low-income earners to carry out unending acts of care, protection, and logistical support, what James refers to as the captive maternal function. Without collective strategy, even this politicised care can become a substitute for confronting power, rather than a tool to disrupt it.

📌 Key themes from the conversation:

✅ How the language of “good governance” replaced radical political demands, and how it shapes what movements today are allowed to ask for✅ The deliberate depoliticisation of Kenyan public life, from colonial bans to donor influence, and how ideology was systematically erased✅ Structural adjustment, blame-shifting, and how global institutions avoided responsibility by turning failure into an issue of local leadership✅ The unequal risks of protest, how police repression targets the precarious, and what true solidarity might look like in that context✅ The NGO-isation of resistance, and what was lost when mass movements gave way to technocratic solutions✅ The politicisation of care, and how acts of mutual aid, without strategy, can end up reinforcing the very systems they aim to resist✅ Joy James’ concept of the captive maternal, and how movements rely on low-income earners to absorb risk and sustain struggle through care, without addressing the systems that exploit them✅ The paradox of strategy, why movements fear it, how that fear can lead to co-optation, and why strategic thinking must return to the centre of resistance

This is not just a conversation about protest. It is about the frameworks we’ve inherited and how they shape what we fight for, how we show up, and what becomes thinkable. It is about reclaiming language, reintroducing ideology, and refusing to settle for better management of broken systems. It is about what comes after the slogans and whether we are ready to ask for, and risk, something more.

📚Reading Materials:

* How “good governance” came to dominate our discourses and demands by Mumbi Kanyogo

* Without strategy, solidarity is an illusion by Mumbi Kanyogo

* A note on time – there is no tomorrow, no 2027, only today by Mumbi Kanyogo

* The Captive Maternal: Anti-Fascists in Search of the Beloved by Joy James

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