Black tax: Why Kenyans are blocking parents, relatives over monetary demands

Across Kenyan social media, a single theme keeps resurfacing; people are tired of carrying everyone else's bills.

It started with a video nobody asked for.

Vindee, a fast-rising Kenyan streamer based in Germany with over 100,000 subscribers across YouTube and TikTok, watched his family drama spill onto the internet when his mother filmed herself in tears.

Standing on a paved walkway, visibly shaken, she spoke about a crisis at home. A relative, Lorin, had fallen seriously ill, she said, and she had reached out to her son for help, expecting around KSh 15,000 to cover the costs.

Her voice cracked as she described feeling let down at the exact moment she needed support most.

The clip spread fast. And with it came a familiar, uncomfortable question: how much do grown children actually owe their parents, especially once they've moved abroad?

Vindee's story isn't an isolated one.

Just months earlier, influencer Gloria Ntazola, known for her kanjo video and her skin-lightening cream line, made a decision that stunned her followers.

She logged onto Instagram Stories and announced she was cutting off her entire family. Mother, father, siblings, all of them, blocked.

Ntazola said the constant demands had left her financially drained and mentally exhausted, and that she was choosing her peace over their expectations.

She revealed she'd been supporting her relatives since she was just 17. According to her, the calls never came to check on her wellbeing.

"I'm blocking all my family members," she wrote.

She didn't hold back on how she felt about it either, accusing her relatives of only valuing her for her money, and predicting that even her savings wouldn't be safe from them if she died.

If Ntazola's post simmered, Elsa Majimbo's went up in flames.

The comedian, who rose to global fame during the pandemic, posted a now-deleted TikTok rant that had Kenyans arguing for days.

She described the practice of sending money home as something she'd grown to resent, pointing to one relative in particular who had leaned on her father for financial support for years, and was now turning to her instead.

"You've been asking my dad for money since before I was born," she said.

The clip vanished from TikTok not long after, but not before screenshots and reactions had already spread far beyond her own following.

What Vindee, Ntazola and Majimbo are all circling is something many African families quietly understand but rarely say out loud, black tax.

It's the unwritten expectation that once you make it, even a little, you owe something back. School fees once paid by struggling parents. Sacrifices made so a child could get an education. A community that pooled resources to push one person through university.

When that person finally earns a salary, the family often expects the ladder to be lowered back down.

There's a philosophy behind it too, ubuntu, the idea that the individual's success belongs, in part, to the community that raised them.

For some, that's a source of pride. For others, it's starting to feel like a trap.

Nowhere does this tension show up louder than among Kenyans living overseas.

Once relatives learn a family member has relocated abroad, the expectations tend to rise sharply, regardless of what that person actually earns or how far their income stretches in a new currency.

Online, the frustration has spilled into the open. Some diaspora Kenyans say they've had enough, and have openly admitted to blocking parents and relatives just to get some breathing room.

It's a quiet rebellion playing out one Instagram Story, one deleted TikTok, one tearful video at a time.