Business as usual did not prevent the violence that sprung up at the end of December 2007. Perhaps what the University of Nairobi student leadership require is some teaching on what non-violent demonstration entails, either from civil society or their own faculty. Such a course ought to teach how to prevent violent demonstrations carried in the name of "University Students", because it is they that are ultimately responsible for that name.

It is stupidity to tell them not to demonstrate, in my opinion. They've already crossed that bridge many times over the years; it is their modus operandi. Actually, precisely because they are wont to protest every so often, we ought to have invested in steering their need for protest in a more positive direction. This time around they said they wanted to do it peacefully, and they received permission to do so. Did we help them achieve this? I would argue that giving them the opportunity and space to do so was only half the task.  

My argument follows a simple premise, that in virtue of the fact that they are at University, and at one of the more academically respectable universities in the country at that, they are: people driven by reason - perhaps even the more intelligent among us;  and they have already worked hard to be where they are and, as such, they are committed to their education, to learning, to the social and economic development of themselves, their families and their communities, to the preservation and fulfillment of the desired "bright future"  - in sum, university students are not hooligans.  

If they are it is we who have allowed or made them so, by being poor examples, frustrating their ambitions or not being proactive enough about steering their energies. My best years of university were those spent learning to care, learning the mind of wrong, and methods others had chosen to effect ‘rightness' in various fields. I've woken up and smelled Nairobi after my graduation and have regrettably gotten caught up in making my little life work.  

We, as folk out of university or who never attended, are rarely qualified to increase or pass judgement upon university kids' capacity for good citizenship. We ourselves don't know how; we have forgotten; we are not interested. We do our things, go to our places, murmur quietly about our mobile provider, our government, how hard it is to find an honest policeman as we sit sipping lattes and black forest cake, or tea and chapatti depending on the pocket: these are subjects for our social conversation, not social, political or entrepreneurial action. If our ‘youths' are our future leaders, the least we can do is encourage them to engage with our socio-political and economic issues, and not stick their heads in their law, medicine, media, technology or commerce books. Sure they will come out as qualified lawyers, journalists, doctors, IT gurus, businessmen, politicians etc, but who shall lead them? If they have no guiding moral or ethical principles - no leadership capacity (I could say the same for people who remain ‘churchgoers') - what good are they to us? This country shall ever be a hollow shell, a country of worker bees. Apathy in the end, is too costly. 

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