Kenya Socialist Web Site
December 2002
ushered in a new chapter for
The Labour Movement has continued to reel under poor leadership
and despondence. There is total disenchantment polarized by the status quo,
which has been swayed into believing that listening and being obedient to a
puppet regime like that of Narc will one day liberate
workers from economic bondage.
The Government is the largest employer and it is foolhardy to believe that any present or future capitalist regime will one day help workers end their exploitation and human suffering. This will never happen.
The Government of
Kenya is fundamentally Capitalist in orientation while Trade Union leaders are
themselves perpetrators of psychological violence against the proletariat
– or the waged people they purport to represent.
The bourgeois
(materialist ruling class) has and will never have anything to do with
liberating the working class. Their main agenda is to milk them to the last
drop.
The Government has,
time and again, supported multinational companies with zeal and with least
concern to the damage these International sharks do to the working class.
Apart from poor
working and living conditions in the transport industry and sisal estates, it
is well known that in the Export Processing Zones, our sisters are routinely
sexually harassed in exchange for employment and management positions.
In the Coffee
plantations, our sisters and mothers are raped sporadically but because they
are like those in former Nazi camps where an entire family could be working for
one boss, they fear coming out in the open.
All these happen
despite the fact that
It hurts very much to note
that Tax Collectors, Long Distance Truck Drivers, Aviation Workers and Workers
in EPZs are denied their right to belong to and be
represented by Trade Unions. Truly this is a flagrant violation of the
International Labour Standards.
It is disheartening to
note that, on assuming power, the gangsters who took over power did not waste
time to impoverish the working class by awarding themselves a hefty pay rise
that pushed their pay into the half a million Kenya Shilling mark for an
ordinary Member of Parliament.
To add vitriol to
injury, the ruling class has done nothing to support any development agenda. Instead
they continued to bicker in public and propagate ethnic ideologies.
The working class has
been exposed to police brutality and what awaits them is the use of force any
time they decide to express their mind or anger. They are intimidated,
victimized and dismissed as a lesson to others so that industries can follow
the strategy of capitalists of breaking the worker’s struggle. There is
no force of arms that has withstood the human force.
Capitalists have guns
and barrels, warships and attack planes.
What we have as workers, is the will to struggle, ability to topple the
ruling class and the ability to create a just and democratic society along the
principles of a Worker’s democracy. Revolution, liberation and
determination to defend our collective interests is the only redemption left
for the cause of the Proletariat and their sympathizers.
It should be our
unstoppable ambition to create a fighting Trade Union movement that we, as
workers, can depend on even if it means taking over COTU (Central Organization
of Trade Unions) to be used to bring down the thieving ruling class.
Our long term
perspective should be that we, as workers, should move to the forefront to
seize power in order to put in place a Worker’s government that is
responsive to the needs of the working people, not the few and corrupt elite.
It hurts to note that,
at each and every election, workers have been supporting notorious opportunists
who forget them once they get in government.
As long as workers do
not organize to seize power, the situation will not change now or the future. Workers
are the backbone of this country’s economy. They must therefore become the backbone
of this country’s leadership. Workers must organize themselves
independently and form a Workers Political Party (Chama
Cha Wafanya Kazi) to
represent workers in Parliament.
We need to see
ourselves as a class and not as different tribes.
Wishing you a pleasant
and tranquil Labor Day. I beg to remind you: They can kill me today but they
will never kill all of us today or
tomorrow.
Andrew Mwangura
Programs Co-ordinator
Seafarers Assistance Program
Mombasa-Kenya
Published by Kenya Socialist Democratic
Alliance (KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com