Police officers argue with a protestor during a demonstration against Kenya's proposed finance bill 2024/2025 in Nairobi, Kenya, June 25, 2024. PHOTO/REUTERS
Question: The Kenyans have been louder than usual on social media and on the streets. What’s going on with the noisy neighbours?
Answer: They are protesting against the Finance Bill 2024 which their Members of Parliament have passed, and which is now awaiting the president's signature to become law.
Q: What’s wrong with signing a mere Bill? If the rich man signs the Bill, it means you have finished eating and drinking and you can go home, sindiyo?
A: Sigh! It is not a bill from a bar or a restaurant, you idiot. The Finance Bill shows which new taxes are going to be levied, and at what rate, in order to finance the National Budget. It has to be passed before the start of the new Financial Year, which begins on July 1.
Q: Ah, so it has something to do with taxes?
A: Correct. The government of Kenya wants to raise $2.7 billion in additional taxes in the 2024/25 Financial Year.
Q: That’s almost the size of some small economies! How does it plan to raise so much additional money?
A: The plan is to introduce new taxes on day-to-day items like bread, vegetable oil, and sugar. Motor vehicle owners are to pay 2.5 percent of the value of their cars annually. In addition, it plans to increase taxes on financial transactions and introduce an “eco levy” on many manufactured items including sanitary towels and diapers.
Q: Even diapers? Katondest! Is that why many Kenyans think the whole thing is full of dung?
A: Kenyans, like many people across the world after the Covid-19 pandemic, are struggling to make ends meet. They think their government should tax them less, not more.
Q: So for them they want the government to go where to get money?
A: Many Kenyans are unhappy about where the money already collected is being spent. They want the government to cut on wasteful expenditure like foreign trips, renovations, per diems and corruption instead of imposing new taxes.
Q: For us our government is always borrowing and saying it is expecting some ka money and will pay back when it comes. Why doesn’t the Kenyan government do the same?
A: The Kenyan government is the genesis of the genesis of borrowing; the source of the source of the River Nile of debt; the original, no spare parts; the question and the answer…
Q: You think this is a joking subject?
A: Sorry, sorry. Okay, you see, Kenya has already borrowed from most of her friends. Her public debt is 68 percent of GDP, which is higher than the 55 percent that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank say is a point at which you need to start worrying seriously. They have already borrowed from the Chinese, from the Americans, from the Europeans, basically no one is willing to listen to their storos anymore.
Q: Isn’t that IMF like the money lender who will lend you when even your own mother has jam?
A: It is, and that’s where Kenya went when things were tight but to get their money the IMF imposed some strict conditions to ensure that it gets its money back. Since it couldn’t ask Kenya for a land title, it asked the government to increase domestic revenues in order to reduce its debt and qualify for cheaper loans.
Q: Why can’t the government explain this clearly to Kenyans?
A: Bannange they have tried, but they feel like oba gava is taking them for granted? You see, President Ruto was elected in 2022 on a promise to make life easier for omuntu wawansi. Then last year the Finance Bill introduced a new housing tax and raised the top personal income tax rate, which brought protests and lawsuits.
Q: Oh? So they feel like cometh the month of June, cometh the man with new taxes?
A: Exactly! They have even nicknamed President Ruto ‘Zakayo’ after the tax collector in the Bible.
Q: You didn’t strike me as a Bible-reading person!
A: The problem with you Ugandans is that you left what you ought to have done undone, and did what you ought not to have done, and therefore there is no truth in you!
Q: Wacha mdomo! Anyway, what has Kenya’s Besigye said about this all?
A: So you are showing off your Kiswahili? Join the army already! Anyway, I guess you mean Raila Odinga, the veteran opposition politician. See, these protests have been mostly organised by young people – the so-called Gen Zees – who have told their parents and older people like Raila to first be chilling while they show on government for free.
Q: Interesting! So what will happen next?
A: President Ruto on Tuesday night accused criminal elements of infiltrating the protests which became violent during the day and culminated in the storming of Parliament and the killing of many demonstrators. He has deployed the army to help maintain law and order. He can sign the Bill into law and ride out the protests, or make concessions and return the Bill to Parliament to make more amendments and reduce the tax burden.
Q: It sounds like President Ruto is damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t?
A: For an idiot you have good English, but yeah; you are standing in the answer.
Q: You are just gerasse! Anyway, does Uganda also have Gen Zs?
A: Hoozambe ni Nyoko?
