Something interesting is going on in Kenya right now. There’s a guy with an earring nominated for the position of Chief Justice. And he is known to support human rights, including gay rights.

Now the conservative lobby is having a massive, messy nervous breakdown over the issue. Weeping bishops everywhere, traditionalists building bunkers in anticipation of the great invasion of The Gays. To hear them tell it, the End of Days are upon us.

So naturally when the issue came up on radio yesterday I had to ask my taximan what he thought of it. He was puzzled at first:

“What was the issue exactly?,” he asked

“Well, Kenya’s potential Chief Justice wears an earring and stuff, church and conservatives don’t want him to hold office.”

“Huh...Doesn’t the guy have rights as an individual?”

“Yeah,” said I. I’m winging it at this point —who knows what personal rights are afforded to Kenyan civil servants.

“And is the guy qualified to do the job?”

“Sure,” said I. “This isn’t the kind of job where they pick candidates from the unemployed bench at the corner store.”

So my taximan gave me the Dar shrug and said, “What’s the problem, again?”

“Well,” I patiently explained, “the guy wears an earring…”

There is something about taxi drivers in Dar — they are natural liberals. Either that, or there is something in the breezy sea air that makes us happy enough to live and let live. Would the same thing happen if a Tanzanian Chief Justice were to adorn himself like that?

Maybe, but then again we don’t get a look into that nomination process. Young Kenya is very exciting — something changed after the last elections —it looks like the country is cashing in on the youth dividend. I realised that if there is one thing that Kenya and Tanzania have in common, it is the generational leap that is currently trying to take place.

The thing about revolutions is that they seem to be cyclical now, and we are on the verge of one again: The old guard must find a way to cede to the new generation in intellectual and cultural terms as well as physical.

It has already started in the North of the Continent — the Arab Spring is just as much a cultural and generational rebellion as it is a political one. It is trying to work its way down; in the next 10 or so years time, it will make changes inevitable for the regimes of many countries. Our leaders are old, now, perhaps too old for us. And their beliefs don’t necessarily reflect those of the generation aspiring to make their own choices now — like the issue of Mr Willy Mutunga.

A number of conversations with the under-40 set seemed to suggest that he wasn’t particularly objectionable to them. I was curious about who wanted him out, wandered through a number of Kenyan blogs. There seems to be a generational divide of opinions going on there.

So maybe we have got some work to do. There is a rather large conversation pending, and it is probably time to get down to it. After all, we Africans pride ourselves on our communal approach to problem-solving, don’t we? Fine then — I dare us to make this tendency work for the disenfranchised majority rather than for the oppressive minority, for once.

I think that we are at the point of renegotiating our traditional respect for authority in the form of Wazee (the elderly). I think we’re maybe a little bit tired of putting up the repressive tendencies that some of them exhibit.

My fellow Tanzanian, you know what I am referring to. That deadweight feeling you get around wazee wetu wa aina flani (certain types of elders) with the way they want to keep the status quo, bringing their 19th Century approach to life to a 21st Century setting? Well, you have that in common with your Kenyan peer. The fact that most of us living in East Africa are decidedly not old does not bode well in terms of our ability to listen to each other. Young blood is hot, we get more excited by protest than conversation. Still, it is worth a try.

It is an awkward kind of revolution, to be sure. At least the previous generation had some tangible causes to rally around— independence movements, the Cold War, nation-building projects.

This new generation was born free, the nations we have inherited are what they are after half a century of cobbling together governments and dismantling them and tweaking them every so often. So what is there left to fight for? Well, the people’s republic is what. Laws that cover all, not some, equity, a chance at life.

The age of the Big Man is drawing to a natural conclusion and all the youth seem to want is countries that work in the interest of the many. Maybe that’s why it is a bit more important that a Chief Justice is a just man than a man with unpierced ears, and to have leaders who remember that they were once young too, and that change is the only constant.