The Linda Mwananchi Gen Z official who blends music, culture and politics

By  Wanja Mbuthia

Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

• The 28-year-old Linda Mwananchi youth leader uses music, culture and civic education to connect politics with everyday Kenyan life.
• From school drama and poetry to cultural storytelling, Fredah Onduso has built a public voice rooted in performance and politics.

Fredah Onduso sings to make sense of the world. She does this in the way a teacher or preacher may use a familiar chorus to crack open a difficult idea. In a two-hour interview at Nation Centre, Nation, she broke into song more than 10 times. A line from a Congolese rhumba to explain political betrayal, a few bars of a Kisii folk tune to illustrate how women carry stories that reflect communities and norms, a snatch of Miriam Makeba to talk about exile and courage.

“If I come to you and tell you, you know you are ugly, or that you're a woman of negotiable affection (prostitute), there will be resistance. But if I use a song, I will draw you in, you will listen to me, I will disarm you and at the end of the day, you will pick the lesson,” she says.

At 28, Onduso has built a public identity on that idea; that a song, or a performance, can carry an argument further than a speech ever could. And she is now testing whether the same instinct can carry her into formal politics.

As secretary-general of the Linda Mwananchi National Youth League, she has become one of the most visible young figures in a movement that positions itself for generational change in Kenyan politics. Some have taken to calling her the "female Sifuna," a nod to Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, because of her confidence, her public speaking ability, and her willingness to take on uncomfortable subjects.

She was born and raised in Kisii County, the firstborn and only daughter of two teachers: a father who taught mathematics and a mother who taught English literature with, as Fredah points out, awe-inspiring precision.

“I grew up in a home that was warmer to expression, to self-expression, and to literature. I grew up surrounded by a lot of love,” she says, and credits her mother with putting grown-up novels in her hands years before her classmates got to them. “I have read almost all set books, even the ones that were not being studied in my year, because my mother introduced me to them when I was still in primary school.”

But her earliest recollection of what she calls "personhood" comes from further back. A time when she was sick as a small child, and her grandmother took her to a missionary dispensary called Zara Kaniti in Meru. Here they found a white woman, Sister Ellen, who “spoke through her nose” and had a cold box – a fridge – that produced juice and biscuits with cream in the middle. “I remember thinking, when I grow up, this is what I will be eating every day. And I will be speaking like her,” she laughs.

At Omobera Adventist Primary School and later at Maryhill Girls in Thika, Fredah threw herself into drama, poetry and debate. She was also a prefect who effortlessly ran parades. She picked up dozens of certificates for her performance, at least 36, by her own count; and a reputation as one of the more formidable young performers of her cohort.

She credits a teacher called Fred with introducing her to poetry, and she still remembers the poem she performed in 2010, Ngojero, which was about the Constitution. She was in Standard Seven. She later joined Rongo University, where she studied International Relations and Diplomacy.

When she first arrived, she suffered a blow to her ego; coming from Maryhill, a school she loved, to a university she felt was beneath her, sent her into a state of denial for months. She pulled herself out of it with a private vow: “If I make do, no one is going to beat me at it. I'll be so freaking good no one out there is going to think I'm from Rongo.”

And good she became. In her third year, with just two weeks before student elections, a classmate persuaded her to run for a seat in the School of Arts and Social Sciences. She had no money and no campaign structure. But she camped at the main campus for three days and spoke to anyone who would listen. On election day, she won by one of the widest margins on record.

She graduated in December 2020 into an economy with little room for young people, and spent the next stretch doing what she calls hustling – freelance writing, public speaking coaching, a stint on the communications team of two losing campaigns in the 2022 election. It was out of that scramble that she found her footing in culture rather than politics, hosting a show built around the songs and oral histories of the Abagusii people at a venue called Humphreys.

Culture and heritage 

“The point of it all is to document the tangible and intangible culture and heritage of our people,” she says. “So that if you come to sleep at Humphreys, you are seeing the story of the Abagusii people there.”

She also built an online persona as Fredah's Verdict, a digital show and content platform that explores civic education, politics, and cultural topics. She analyses music and art; from poetry to rumba to Kisii folk songs, and draws out the social lessons. “I do it so that I can do something that goes beyond my life. Something that can outlive me.”

She has created the actress-character Kwamboka, a Gusii married woman with a troublesome mother-in-law navigating marriage and showing the quiet economics of being a Kenyan wife. Fredah appeared in the 2024 Kenyan film A Family Portrait, playing Miriam, and she released a song in Kisii about unemployment and hope. She started a project called One Song, One Tribe, One Nation, meant to spur Kenya's unity into one big community. She learned and performed songs in Kamba, Meru, Kikuyu, and Luhya, before it stalled over logistics.

Most recently, Fredah has veered into national politics, aligning with the Linda Mwananchi movement. Her entry reads, by her own account, less like a calculated political move and more like something that happened to her. She met a senior figure in the outfit while working as an emcee, without at first realising who he was, and called him up later after spotting him at a rally. Rather than asking for a role, she says she built her own base first.

“I started talking to the youth in my area, basically offering civic education because I know quite a bit about governance,” she says.

She organised a meeting, invited the movement's principals, and put together a small event with traditional dancers and representatives from disability groups. “They were impressed,” she quips.

It was only after leaders in the movement noticed her efforts that she was voted in, through what she describes as an internal delegate process, as secretary-general of the movement's National Youth League. She describes the job mostly as communication. “My role is to be the spokesperson of the movement, to steer their agenda,” she says, taking dense policy and constitutional argument and turning it into something a young person in Kisii or Kibera can use.

In August 2026, she attracted national attention after speaking about violence witnessed during a Linda Mwananchi tour of Homa Bay. She described the incident as “beyond goonism” and questioned the responsibility that comes with holding public office. Her knowledge of the Constitution and the passion she eludes while speaking about it has also earned her some attention.

At home, the attention has brought pride alongside quiet worry. Her mother calls after every interview to tell her she is proud of her. “Sometimes she'll call me and joke that she still can't believe that I am her daughter,” she laughs.

Her father is always reminding her that he is proud of her and urging her to keep going. She is candid about the darker side of visibility. She has been profiled, called names, and faced the kind of sexualised gossip that follows women in public life. “Male chauvinism is still much at the centre of Kenyan politics, in both divides,” she says. “You have to be cordial with disrespect.”

She worries about being targeted, a fear her family shares. And she worries about something subtler: that the version of her that emerged in this political moment might one day be co-opted or diminished. “I am afraid that in the moment of normalcy, when the dust settles, I could get bored and become redundant, and get absorbed into the normal politics,” she says. “That I could lose the patriotic spark.”

What keeps her going, she says, is that she was born with fire in her belly. Her passion, she insists, lies with women and children, and whatever she does is always at the centre of it: politics, art, music, or cultural branding. She is hopeful of working for the United Nations one day and talks about women like Martha Karua and Miriam Makeba, who used their voices when it cost them something.

For now, she keeps doing what she has always done. She sings cultural and political songs, she speaks, and she sits with the Constitution and finds the parts that matter. She also tells stories that remind people that politics is not a distant game played by distant men. It is the air they breathe, the ground they stand on, and the future they are owed.