Whenever workers in Kenya take industrial action to demand higher wages, better working conditions, better remuneration or job security, the narrative is usually the same. A strike outbreak is usually followed by negotiations between Workers’ representatives and the government; a deal entailing a “return to work formula” is usually reached; some promises are usually made by the government for the implementation of the deal; the government usually reneges on the promise forcing the affected workers to take a new strike action in a never ending cycle.
The case of the 25,000 Kenyan nurses who have been on strike for more than a week follows the above narrative with one big deviation – that this time around, the striking workers have all been sacked by the Minister for Health, Prof Anyang Nyongo. In doing so, Professor Nyongo has not only violated the Constitution with impunity but has also trampled on the rights of the workers to go on strike. Just like all other strike actions by workers in Kenya which have been defeated in the past, the Nurses’ strike had three major weakness that guaranteed its failure before the strike was even called.
Lack of political support
Although the strike precipitated a huge crisis in the health sector, its first weakness was that it had no political support. None of the political parties in Kenya (including PNU and ODM) supported the workers because it is not in the interest of right-wing or opportunistic parties to support striking workers.
In the absence of political support, the strike action could not be discussed in Parliament as a matter of urgency. The reason for lack of political support is that none of the political parties in Kenya represents Workers’ interests. These parties either represent individuals concerns or inter-ethnic interests of members of the ruling classes at the top of these parties.
Without political support, industrial actions of workers will continue to be defeated and it is for this reason that the Kenya Red Alliance (KRA) believes that workers in Kenya need their own Party. KRA welcomes all the sacked workers and all workers in Kenya to join the Alliance and help materialize political support in the struggle for Workers’ rights in Kenya.
Lack of solidarity
The second weakness of the strike was lack of solidarity from other workers due to lack of “working class politics” in Kenya’s political marketplace. Without a formation like KRA, which could unite Kenyan workers to face the enemy (the capitalist State and its representatives), coordinating solidarity in support of any group of striking workers is difficult.
Kenyan workers are at a stage where although other workers across the country could sympathize with their striking colleagues in other sectors, sympathetic workers may not be able to stage “sympathy strikes” in solidarity with their colleagues because of fear, lack of proper organization and poor coordination.
The Unions, which could coordinate such actions, are themselves weak or led by leaders who are politically bankrupt, corrupt, opportunistic or self-centered. If other workers in other sectors could also lay down their tools to demand the reinstatement of the sacked nurses, the government would be forced to listen because of the impossibility of sacking millions of workers at the same time.
Working class politics is about workers seizing power but due to lack of direction and ideas, workers in Kenya have, and will continue to suffer at the hands of the capitalist ruling class running the government on behalf of thieves and robbers looting public resources for personal enrichment.
KRA is available and could coordinate solidarity strikes by workers across the country but only if workers understands its politics and join the Movement. In the meantime, the corrupt regime running the government of Kenya will continue to use threats of mass sackings to contain the “strike menace” that threatens to bring government services to a standstill.
International connections
The third weakness of the strike is what led to the actual sacking of the striking Nurses. This is lack of International connections to workers. Any Workers’ Movement or Party that seeks to drive working class politics in a given environment has to be connected to fighting Workers’ organizations, Trade Unions, Movements or Political parties around the world. Why?
The threat of mass sackings by the bosses is always alive. Any worker in any sector has financial obligations which have to be met every month and the boss knows this. Under exploitation, poor working conditions or starvation wages, very few workers will resort to strike actions if they know that they could be sacked.
If workers are linked to a local organization, movement or party with connections to similar Workers’ organizations internationally, it can become possible for the local organization or party to send an international appeal for fund raising to address the plight of sacked workers so that they can continue with their struggle while at the same time fulfilling their economic obligations. In the absence of such connections, sacked workers after an industrial action will always be on their own. This is usually a big advantage to governments or bosses exploiting workers in any sector.
An International appeal may not just be for funds. It could also be in the form of pressure on the government to address the plight of workers and to warn against draconian actions such as mass sackings.
The KRA position
KRA condemns the Kenyan government for the drastic action of sacking the striking workers. The Alliance believes that by sacking the workers, Professor Anyang Nyongo acted illegally because the Constitution does not give the Minister the power to unilaterally sack workers exercising their right to go on strike as stipulated in the Constitution.
The sacking of the 25,000 nurses is evidence that the Kenyan government does not care about the welfare of workers across the country. This illegal action should serve as a signal to workers in other sectors that they should begin to organize much more consciously because they are facing a common enemy which is now taking new steps to eradicate possibilities of industrial actions in the future. The sacking of the nurses may appear to be a bold step by the government but, in reality, it is a testing of the waters to establish how workers would react to such draconian and illegal measures.
KRA’s message to the striking workers is that they should not go down on their knees to beg the government to reinstate them but they should fight any scabs being hired by the government to help break the strike. The nurses should set up strike Committees across the country to coordinate the struggle for their reinstatement.
These committees, in conjunction with the Nurses’ Union, should lobby other Workers’ organizations in Kenya to show solidarity with the sacked nurses by staging sympathy strikes to demand for the reinstatement on the sacked nurses.
Today, it is nurses who have been sacked and tomorrow, it will be workers in another sector. The solution to threats by employers to sack striking workers is “coordinated actions” by workers, locally and globally. There is no other solution and the sooner workers in Kenya understand this basic fact, the faster they will move towards uniting to face both the government and exploitative bosses who do not care about Workers’ rights and freedoms.
KRA demands that: all the 25,000 striking workers be reinstated; all conditions presented by the Workers’ representatives should be met; the Minister for Health, Professor Anyang Nyongo, should step down for violating the New Kenyan Constitution by sacking the nurses unilaterally; the Ministry of Health should stop hiring scabs to break the strike because the strike is legitimate; all workers in Kenya should unite to fight a common enemy – the capitalist state and its representatives like Professor Anyang Nyongo who is acting with impunity and in total disregard of the interest of the striking nurses.
Okoth Osewe
Secretary General
Kenya Red Alliance (KRA)
About the Author
The Kenya no leader wants to talk about
By STANLEY GAZEMBA
Friday, February 24 2012
Kenya’s biggest problem is the reluctance of its post-independence leadership to address redistribution.
This is the recurring theme in Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963-2011, Daniel Branch’s incisive look at the history of the country often referred to as the linchpin of the East African economy.
Our political leadership has alternately resorted to intrigue, assassination and mass violence to avoid dealing with the problem.
Any pretence to a united Kenyan state has been, at best, vague; it is basically a collapsible facade. Behind it are hidden the suppressed inequities that must be confronted.
Branch, an associate professor of African history at the University of Warwick, performs a surgical analysis of events shaping the politics of Kenya.
At Independence, we witness the vicious realignment around what Michela Wrong calls the “feeding trough” by those who came to be known as the “Kiambu mafia,” to the exclusion of the Mau Mau freedom fighters.
The federal Independence constitution is hastily amended to place power firmly in Jomo Kenyatta’s hands.
Colonialism gives way to a black autocracy. Kenyatta exits the stage and in comes Daniel arap Moi and the dance continues, the opposition choke-held.
Then Mwai Kibaki fells the fig tree with a razor and there is a collective sigh of relief. But alas, nothing really changed!
Now, what Branch, a British national, tells us isn’t really news. We have lived with these things and we know the finer details.
So, why didn’t we do it ourselves?
Prior to the coming of the envisaged county governments, Nairobi is still the heartthrob of the country.
The archives are here, the records are here, and those that were squirreled out of the country at Independence are now inaccessible.
Most of the surviving people who lived through the historical events are within reach.
The nerve-centre of the region’s publishing is here.
So, why should a mzungu come all the way from Europe to research and write this book, which will probably never be read by the majority of Kenyans?
Publishing is a source of prestige in the scholarly world. An authoritative book like this rolling off the presses of the University of Nairobi would definitely help to improve the dismal ranking of the university.
Which is enough reason for the university to fund the research. Or is it the old question of a neutered autonomy impeding free thought and expression? Does the state still hold the big stick?
Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Wangari Maathai were hounded out of their teaching jobs at the university when they fell out with Moi. Ditto Raila Odinga.
But now we are told that democratic space has been opened up.
So, where is the vibrancy? Where are our own Bethwell Ogot and William Ochieng?
You cannot write about Kenyan politics today without addressing ethnicity, perhaps the country’s touchiest issue.
Branch has the advantage of being a non-participant, which perhaps gives him a clearer view.
Ethnicity
“Ethnicity was a logical response to an experience of the modern world in which resources are scarce — a symptom rather than a cause of Kenya’s ills,” he writes.
And because of Kenya’s refusal to address redistribution, he concludes, “It is not surprising, therefore, that the poor and marginalised turn to ethnicity to protect what little they have and to try to gain more land or jobs or whatever it is they need to survive. The politics of recognition have trumped redistribution.”
This “outsider” privilege allows Branch to make precise analyses of people’s characters.
Writing about Jaramogi Odinga ahead of the decisive 1992 elections, he aptly captures the moment of the late doyen’s parting with his pro-masses Marxist past that had defined his troubled political career.
“The investors would like to deal with people who are honest and sincere in handling the affairs of the country. They would like to get returns from their investments in our country.” Odinga had mellowed in his old age.
Kibaki comes across as a far more complex — if wily — operator.
The fact that he backed the large-scale farmers in the 1999 “coffee war” and yet still got re-elected to parliament by the same Nyeri peasant farmers he had fought speaks volumes about his political style.
It is interesting to see Moi’s hand in the creation of Mungiki, a modern-day terror gang.
According to Branch, Mungiki could have been a tool used by Moi against the Kikuyu elite, at the time heading the opposition.
It would keep them from ascending to power after he left office; in itself a continuation of Moi’s use of violence in the volatile 1990s to sustain his grip on power.
The many new angles that Branch introduces in our Orwellian politics convince me that the job can best be done by an outsider.
It would be difficult for a Kenyan scholar not to be swayed by political, tribal or class biases.
My name is Kenya and I need Re-Building. I have millions of acres of arable land and billions of cubic liters of water, but I cannot feed myself. So I spend $1 billion to import rice and another $2 billion to import other commodities for comsumption. I produce rice, but don’t eat it. I have 30 million head of cattle but no milk. I have the capacity to feed all my dependants but I import most food instead. I am hungry, please help and re-build me. I drive the latest car in the world but have no roads, live in the most modern and fashinable mansions, I boast of trendy entertainment spots and interesting tourist attractions but do not even manufacture a bicycle’s tire. I lose family and friend’s everyday on my roads for which funds have been allocated to build and rehabilitate, hospitals and medicines; but the fund has been looted but those I have placed responsibilty in. Help me please!
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THE RAILA ODINGA SECRETARIAT
Monday, March 12, 2012
Press Release on the Coming General Election
1. The next General Election in Kenya will be a referendum on the rule of law – the chance to choose between the rule of law and impunity, between reform and reversal of the gains of the past two decades, between anarchy and order.
2. Kenyans participated in a democratic election on 27 December 2007. The election was subsequently compromised.
3. Some forces with a selfish agenda of their own, which included settling scores that had nothing to do with the elections, took advantage of the ensuing protest against this disenfranchisement of the Kenyan electorate. This was a repeat of similar events in 1991-92 and in 1997. In 2008, more than 1,300 Kenyans were killed, hundreds of thousands were forcefully renditioned and thousands suffered all manner of indignity, classified in the international system as crimes against humanity.
4. The victims were Kenyan citizens. They were not occupying forces from some foreign country, whose killing and eviction might have been cause for heroism and celebration. The matter was then supposed to pass quietly away, as in 1992 and 1997, and to wait for another election and another wave of crimes against innocent citizens.
5. The Grand Coalition Government was established to restore the country to normalcy and shepherd institutional reforms. Everyone said, “Never again.” But not everyone has been co-operative. The beneficiaries of the 2008 injustice have shown they will stop at nothing to frustrate reform and justice.
6. It is this spirit of impunity that frustrated efforts to establish a local tribunal to deal with post-election violence. Parliament was mobilised to defeat the Constitutional amendment that sought to do this, with the main perpetrators cunningly creating the false impression that they sought real justice, and could only achieve it through the ICC. The reality is that they did not wish the matter to be addressed at all – locally or otherwise.
7. The same people shouting then, “Don’t be vague, let us go to The Hague,” are the ones now demonising the ICC. They seek to kill two birds with one stone – dragging the Prime Minister and other innocent parties into their self-inflicted woes, and at the same time making political capital out of the ICC matter.
8. The ICC has unfortunately now become an election issue. But since it IS an election issue, let it now be known that the coming elections will also be a referendum on impunity. The time has come when every one of us must stand up to be counted. Either you are for the rule of law, or you are for impunity. It can’t be both. A choice must be made.
9. The cases before the ICC did not arise out of thin air. They are the outcome of circumstances where Kenyans were killed, forcefully evicted and otherwise dehumanised. They are also the outcome of a systematic and lawful investigation, which the Republic of Kenya is lawfully party to. At the end of that investigation and subsequent court hearings, charges have been raised against those the ICC considers should be called upon to answer for the lowest moment in Kenya’s national history.
10. A lawful process having thus been followed, the Kenyan citizens before the ICC should respect the rule of law. They should seek to defend themselves in the impending trial. If they are innocent, as they have frequently professed at charged public rallies, the court will no doubt acquit them. No public petulance on their part can substitute for the court process. Nor can forged documents and the besmirching of innocent persons’ reputations assist them.
11. It is clear that the present posturing against the ICC, complete with the weaving in of the PM’s name and that of the British Government, is a dress rehearsal for non-cooperation with the ICC. It is clear that the foundation is being laid for the accused to refuse to attend trials of the cases against them.
12. In the past, election-time atrocities have gone unaddressed. People are therefore angry that, this time, things are different. They cannot understand why it should not be business as usual. To try to change that, they are feverishly mobilising people to stand on the side of impunity. They have put impunity on the election agenda. It appears they would like to see Kenya burn again.
13. It is up to each Kenyan, therefore, to search his or her soul and decide where they stand. The choice is between the law and impunity.
14. Finally, the lie is being sold that the Prime Minister is a beneficiary of post-election violence. In fact he was the greatest loser. In the interests of peace, he accepted being denied his rightful position as the elected President of Kenya.
15. The real beneficiaries of post-election violence are only too evident. They include those currently in the process of returning property acquired in areas where post-election violence victims were known to have been dispossessed of their land. Now these beneficiaries are rushing to return the land, in order to evade court processes. What greater admission of guilt could there be?
Signed
The Raila Odinga Secretariat
12 march 2012
Can the GEMA dominated security machinery in this country really salute or even allow a Raila presidency? I highly doubt it. All the senoir security dockets are occupied by the same community. From NSIS- Gichangi, Military- Karangi, GSU- Mbugua, CID- Ndegwa, Police- Iteere and not forgetting the whole ministry is under Saitoti plus Kimemia and Muthaura who call the shots and are known to be the real powers behind the throne. All these people hate Raila the person with a passion since they will never ever “trust” him. I doubt they can allow him to rise to the top only then for him to “finish” them. We are still one hell of a banana republic for the will of the people to be allowed to prevail. Looks like Moi, one of the richest people in the world and also a very influential anti-raila proponent who is sponsoring Mudavadi’s rebellion was right after all. Kenya ina wenyewe!