We’re thrilled to republish the foreword by Wanjira Wanjiru, whose voice you may also know from our Resisting the Rule of Repression podcast episode. She writes movingly about how ordinary people—from Nairobi to Latin America—are standing up against economic injustice, demanding dignity, and showing that systemic change isn’t just necessary, it’s already in motion.
2025 has been a year of resistance: the people versus the powerful. Life has become unbearably difficult for ordinary citizens and now - from Nairobi to Bangladesh, Italy to Peru - workers of the world are downing their tools and demanding better, rejecting a global economic order that treats their suffering as necessary for profit.
Growing up in Mathare, one of Nairobi’s biggest slums, I know first-hand the violence of poverty, the preventable loss of lives lived hand to mouth, the indignity of hungry babies one cannot feed, rent one cannot pay, healthcare and education one cannot afford. Poverty is not a natural condition. It is engineered, maintained and ingrained by systems and governments that decide who thrives and who struggles. These are not accidents of fate, but political choices.
For instance, in Kenya we once had free primary education – now we do in name only, with a multitude of ways in which parents must actually pay. This retreat from education, health and social protection is not incompetence, it is deliberate austerity imposed on the poor while the wealthy continue to extract with impunity. Ordinary people are heavily taxed despite an already unbearable cost of living. Meanwhile, corporations receive exemptions and political elites shield their wealth. This became fertile ground for the Reject the Finance Bill protests of 2024 and 2025. We marched with fire in our bellies and radical hope in our voices. Hope that the future must be better. We are not asking for anything grandiose, we simply want to live in dignity. The state responded with violence and many lost their lives. We have seen this brutality repeated in Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Peru, and Tanzania. All are reminders of what can happen when the elite feel threatened.
As the liberation leader Amílcar Cabral reminded us, people do not fight for abstract ideas. They fight to change their material conditions, to secure their children’s future, to live better and in peace. Yet today that future feels uncertain. Young people are delaying families because they cannot sustain themselves. Climate change and ecological collapse remind us daily that even the earth is pleading for an end to exploitation.
Still, I hold a deep belief that there is enough for everybody, enough land, enough water, enough joy, enough love, if we put solidarity, unity and humanity at the core of our politics. There is no scarcity, only hoarding and systems designed to keep abundance in the hands of a few.
The Gen Z protests have revealed the interconnectedness of all our struggles, from the economic protests of Nairobi to post-election protests in Maputo, from the barrios of Latin America to the townships of South Africa, I learned this as a grassroots activist at the Mathare Social Justice Centre. People’s struggles are always struggles for dignity and social justice. These must be the priorities of any government that claims to serve its people. A democracy that cannot feed, house, or protect its people is democracy in name only.
We cannot wish poverty away, it must be systemically eradicated, just as it has been systemically entrenched. This requires courage to confront capitalism, colonial legacies and the political elite. This change is not only necessary, it is inevitable. That world is calling us now, and we must answer.
END.
Author: Wanjira Wanjiru, Kenyan grassroots activist who co-founded the Mathare Social Justice Centre and won the Mawina Kouyate Daughters of Africa Award for activism