For the first time, too, anger is directed at the entire political class, rather than just portions of it. There is for the first time a whiff of the atmosphere of the Arab Spring uprisings or the coloured revolutions that spread across former Soviet states 20 years ago.
“There is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent,” wrote the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, a truism that should be blindingly obvious to any self-regarding politician.
That Kenya may have reached a watershed is the result of Mr Ruto’s catastrophic underestimation of his opposition, which consists not of politicians, who have proved easy enough to co-opt, but of the middle class.
In order to pay off the vast debts his government inherited after coming to power in 2022 and in order to pursue a pro-poor agenda, Mr Ruto reckoned he could afford to alienate middle class Kenyans by ruthlessly taxing them.
It seemed a reasonable calculation to make. The middle class never liked Mr Ruto to begin with, viewing him as a populist strongman-in-the-making with a chequered record on human rights and corruption.
With just 17 per cent of Kenyans in salaried employment, the middle class also seemed electorally expendable. Mr Ruto won power by becoming the first presidential candidate to appeal beyond ethnicity to Kenya’s masses.
The president planned to double down on this strategy through expensive low-cost housing and subsidised fertiliser schemes that would be funded by tax rises primarily shouldered by the middle class, who – so it was believed – had too much to lose by taking to the streets.
But as salaried Kenyans saw their monthly pay packets shrink after the 2023 budget and then witnessed another sharp hike being proposed in the 2024 budget, patience snapped.