From the unemployed students, artists and the digital world of Generation Z who had launched them, yesterday the protests in Kenya were taken over by all others disappointed with the government, the angry, the desperate, the provocateurs (paid or unpaid), with the looters and robbers of professions and all that undergrowth born of years of mismanagement of the youth by Kenyan governments.
In and around Nairobi, from the parliament and government offices, ministries or residences of MPs who had voted 'yes' to the controversial finance bill, the protests moved to working-class neighbourhoods, slums, and less hospitable streets.
At the same time, the most serious incidents, with clashes and shots fired by the police (and the number of deaths yet to be confirmed) took place in Mombasa, where demonstrators (but is it still right to call them that?) set fire to cars, which certainly did not belong to President Ruto or members of his government, and attacked and robbed bars, restaurants and supermarkets owned by fellow citizens and which, if they lost their business, could create more unemployed.
It is not with days like yesterday's that Kenya's problems are solved, although the state's attitude last week did not help to calm an already hot environment.
In the age of the internet, of streaming TV, and of videos shot even surreptitiously with a mobile phone from a balcony, one cannot tell lies or downplay numbers.
At the same time, on the other hand, one cannot claim that the protests were totally peaceful.
The Minister of Home Affairs, Kithure Kindiki, in the evening issued a harsh statement against what he considers 'criminals' who overpowered the anti-finance protests, which the government said should have been resolved by the withdrawal of the law.
"The organisers of today's orgy of violence in parts of Nairobi, Mombasa and many other parts of the country are allegedly planning to repeat the anarchic mayhem and cruel looting on Thursday and Sunday this week," Kindiki said. And it is this sentence that is worrying.
As the curtain has come down on the fourth day of anti-government protests in Kenya, the situation of social instability still does not seem to have been resolved, and the historic and worrying date of 7 July, the anniversary of the 'Saba Saba' protests (7-7 in Swahili), which recall the street agitations against what was called 'the regime' of then President Moi, approaches. Protests that led to an important constitutional change for the country, that of multi-partyism.
After this demonstration, more than the dialogue and consideration that Gen Z youth deserve, one thinks of the social discomfort that the rift between Ruto and many of those he himself ironically called 'hustlers' during the election campaign, people who live by gimmicks, claiming to be one of them, can create. Protests that have spread across the country and benefit no one.