“Beware the Ides of March.” Those were the words uttered by a fortune teller to the Roman emperor Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. The Romans did not number the days of the month from the first to the last but instead used three fixed points in the month: the Nones, the Ides, and the Kalends. In Shakespeare's play, a fortune teller warns a triumphant Julius Caesar to “beware the Ides of March.” This warning was ignored by the arrogant Emperor, and right at that time the soothsayer had warned, Caesar was famously assassinated. Watching Tuesday’s protests in Kampala, Uganda, the soothsayer's warning, “beware the Ides of March” came to mind. Hundreds of young people, frustrated with what they saw as the corruption and arrogance of the ruling elite, decided to march to Parliament and make their voices heard. Did these young people have good reason to be frustrated? According to them, yes. They saw the wastage, the poor government services, the bad roads, and the poorly equipped medical centers and became enraged. They also saw their leaders driving around in huge vehicles, wearing clothes worth tens of thousands of dollars, building palatial mansions in their villages, and stealing iron sheets meant for poor people, all seemingly without censure from law enforcement. In Kenya, the scenes are getting uglier by the day. Over the last 30 days, I’ve seen young people die, get tear-gassed, arrested, and beaten. President Ruto has changed his cabinet, fired his police chiefs, and beseeched the young people to calm down, to no avail. The worst part is that all of this could have been avoided if there had been an honest dialogue between the leaders and the led. In Africa, we like to talk about the potential of the continent’s demography. Today, the vast majority of the African population is either young or of working age. In fact, in the next few decades, Africa might be the continent with the only growing middle class. However, all of this is still “potential.” It’s not enough to sit back and think that this young population will drag us out of the poverty we are currently in. They might have all the potential and creative energy in the world, but unless they are educated, guided, listened to, supported, and trusted, they will become more and more frustrated with the lack of progress in their lives and will eventually turn against those they deem the cause of their misfortune Watching the level of civic engagement that Rwanda’s first-time voters showcased, I got the sense that these young people felt fully engaged with where the country was and where it was going. I believe that they felt a sense of shared ownership of the country between themselves and the political leadership. This sense of shared destiny between the leadership and the led is the rocket fuel that drives the Rwandan economy forward. The author is a socio-political commentator
