Rex Masai was 24 years old. He had a job waiting for him in the United Kingdom. His mother, Giliam Munyao, buried her firstborn son instead.
That was June 2024. Now, nearly a year later, the Kenyan government has put a number on Rex’s life.
A significant amount of money, the government says, will go to the families of the dozens of youths killed in the protests that turned violent last June. Munyao calls it a big joke. The government has not set up a structured way to negotiate with the families.
There is no mechanism. There is an announcement, and then silence.
Munyao told reporters the government’s approach has been contemptuous of human life. She used that word: contemptuous. Rex was the first casualty.
That fact alone carries weight. The first young man shot dead. The first family thrust into a public nightmare that has not ended.
His mother now has two younger children to raise. Her life, as she puts it, was shattered by Rex’s death.
She looks at the compensation offer and asks a plain question: what can she invest in to bring up Rex’s two siblings? The money offered is not enough to answer that question. No amount, she said, can be worth human life.
This is the stakes piece of the story. It is not about a disagreement over a figure.
It is about what happens to a family when the state treats a death as a line item. The government’s posture, as Munyao describes it, is simple: take the money and shut up. That is not negotiation.
That is a dismissal. Dozens of other families watch this. They watch the first family be told their son’s life is worth a certain sum.
They watch the government drag its feet. They watch a year pass with no structured process.
If the government will not build a mechanism for the first family, what will it do for the rest? The protests of June 2024 were not small. They involved dozens of deaths.
Dozens of injuries. Dozens of families now waiting.
The anniversary is days away. The frustration is not new, but it is sharpening. Munyao spoke out because the anniversary forces the question: what has been done?
Her answer: too little, too late. She is not alone in that judgment. The families of the other victims have also accused the government of insensitivity.
They have all been left to pick up the pieces on their own. The government’s announcement of compensation was supposed to be a step forward.
Instead, it has become a fresh source of anger. A token. A consolation prize for a dead child.
Rex Masai had a future. A job.
A plane ticket. A plan. His mother buried that plan.
Now she is supposed to accept a payment and move on. She cannot. The government has not engaged with her.
There is no table to sit at. There is no one to talk to.
There is just an offer that feels like an insult. The anniversary will pass. The families will still be here.
The government will still have no structured mechanism. The money will still sit in some budget line, announced but not accepted, not trusted, not enough.
Munyao will still be raising two children without her firstborn. That is the concrete reality. That is what is at stake: not a policy, but a mother’s ability to rebuild a life the state helped break.
