PRESIDENT MWAI KIBAKI’S KENYATTA DAY SPEECH WAS
POLITICALLY HOLLOW
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“A government under pressure like that of Narc does not create jobs by borrowing money from abroad
with impossible conditions or publishing several “strategy papers” designed by
technocrats sitting in high rise office buildings”.
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By Okoth Osewe
Kenyatta day is a public holiday in
Kenya which falls on 20th October and which is dedicated to
remembering the release from detention of Kenya’s first President the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta
from colonial detention. During this year’s Kenyatta
day celebrations, one would have expected that the new President, Mwai Kibaki, would give a summary of
Instead, President Kibaki rambled endlessly about
superficial issues that are of no consequence to the revolutionary situation
that exists in our country today and which requires the input of an organized revolutionary
Movement or party armed with a revolutionary program for change and
transformation.
More than four decades after President Kenyatta
was released from Colonial detention to pave the way for millions of colonized
Kenyans to be able to sing the National anthem and to raise the national flag
in what became known as independence (Uhuru), the
country remains sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the haves and
the have nots, the hungry and the Tumbo
kubwas. The gap between the rich and the poor
continues to widen while poverty among Wananchi continues
to deepen. In fact, class differentiation within the Kenyan society has now
assumed extreme proportions.
The deformed Capitalist system of government that Kenya
adopted after the end of the colonial revolution has given rise to one of the
most deplorable forms of deprivation and human suffering, a sad situation that
is still difficult for millions of suffering Kenyans to understand especially
in the total absence of a clear revolutionary analysis of a decayed system of
government in which the rich are living in paradise while the poor are
languishing in what has become hell on earth.
KSDA’s concern is that 40 years after the country’s first
President was released from detention to lead an “independent” Kenya, a
President who was elected 10 months ago on a platform of political change could
still have the audacity of traveling all the way to the United States to beg
for US $200 million as a way of solving the country’s economic crisis. More
pathetic are sporadic press reports about Cabinet ministers being “upbeat” that
IMF will soon release aid to
Endless
speeches rich in rhetoric and poor in practical solutions will not put food on
the table
From our view, the constant expectation of handouts from
the IMF and World Bank is a strong sign that the begging tendency that was
evident during the Moi dictatorship is also deeply
embedded within the Narc fabric. When President
Kibaki was asked by Mr. Martin Murgor (a reporter of
the East African Standard) at a Press
conference at the White House why he had gone to beg in the
PRESIDENT KIBAKI: “…Now, if you are seeking for help, you
cannot adequately say publicly whether it is adequate or whether it is not”. (Laughter.) “So, really, if you are asking for help, you
really don’t ask, you don’t say how much. And so, really the question isn’t,
should not be asked of me”.
Kibaki’s answer was so substandard that his listeners could
not help bursting into laughter.
From the surface, it appears glorious that in his Kenyatta day speech, the President talked about the
unveiling of the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation,
the writing off of 10 billion Shillings in loans owed by farmers to promote
agriculture, the revival of the National Cereals and Produce Board in the
grains market, the increase in price of a bag of maize to boost farmer’s
morale, the revival of Kenya Co-operative Creameries, Kenya Farmers
Association, and re-activating of lending by the Agricultural Finance
Corporation as a way of empowering farmers.
Further, it looks very impressive that the President also
emphasized the re-introduction of agricultural extension services, the adoption
of a national extension policy and the establishment of a Task Force to look
into the modalities of re-introducing the Guaranteed Minimum Return Program to
promote agriculture. Needless to say, the President also lamented the loss of
lives as a result of the HIV/Aids infection in the country and called upon
Kenyans to remain united as Narc government tries to
change
But for millions of suffering Kenyans awaiting to see how
their lives will change after electing a new government, endless speeches rich
in rhetoric and poor in practical solutions will not put food on the table,
provide shelter in the slums, alleviate poverty or put millions of unemployed
youth to work in a country where 500,000 citizens pour into the job market
annually. What Kenyans want to see are; action to increase the living standards
of Kenyans, concrete Programs to resettle the landless, the number of Kenyans
who have been put to work during the last 10 months, the number of retrenched
workers who have been reinstated and what the government is doing to reduce
massive dependencies on IMF and World Bank, two imperialist agencies whose long
term agendas are not in the interest of the Kenyan nation. In his speech,
Kibaki ignored the very issues that millions of Kenyans want to see addressed
urgently, issues that the Moi dictatorship also cast
aside until his party was thrown out of power. These issues include the
following.
LANDLESSNESS: Kibaki did not address the major problem of landlessness.
40 years after independence, millions of Kenyans do not have land while a
minority group of millionaires continues to own vast pieces of stolen land or
land acquired dubiously after the colonial revolution. There is enough land in
This is because after the colonial revolution, white land
owners signed contracts with the new neo-colonial government headed by Kenyatta that they would retain ownership of the most
fertile land (officially known as “White Highlands”) where today, they continue
to maintain large ranches and big plantations as millions of Kenyans continue
to be squatters in their own country. The former and the present ruling classes
led by the Kenyatta and the Moi
dictatorships have themselves grabbed vast pieces of land in
In certain regions in our country, even game parks,
national beaches, lakes, mountains and other natural resources are owned by
foreigners who welcome tourists, collect revenue and walk away with huge
profits without paying taxes to the State thereby contributing to the lack of
government revenue to develop the country. This arrangement is called
Neo-colonialism. The profits which foreigners repatriate abroad annually in the
tourist industry alone is more than the money Kibaki went to beg for in the
United States. In fact, since Narc took over power,
there is still no program of identifying the landless in
Kibaki’s speech was hollow because while he propagandized
that Ksh 10 billion farmers owed in loans had been written off, the high cost
of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, cultivation costs, poor grain storage
facilities, lack of equipment and marketing constraints that are making it
impossible for farmers to realize their full potential were all blacked out.
From our view, the revival of the National Cereals and Produce Board which
Kibaki boasted about will be of no big difference because this Board is not
controlled by farmers themselves but by a top heavy capitalist bureaucratic
superstructure which specializes in fleecing farmers and sidelining them in the
running of the Board.
KSDA thinks that the question of land is an item that ought
to be firmly on the agenda for change because it is the confiscation of land from
Kenyans that triggered the armed struggle against British colonialism in the
first place. By brushing aside the question of massive landlessness in our
country, Kibaki simply postponed a problem whose solution is long overdue.
Although landlessness is a very sensitive issue in
MASS UNEMPLOYMENT: There is no better way of convincing the public that the
government is serious in changing the lives of its citizens by creating jobs
especially for the youth. In his Kenyatta day speech,
President Kibaki carefully avoided the question of job creation because he
knows that this is mission impossible for the Narc
government. To create jobs, the government needs to invest in construction,
industry, agriculture and other sectors. To do this, the government needs to
generate money by taking over from foreigners the means of producing wealth in
the country so that profits generated in various key sectors like
telecommunication, tourism, agriculture, construction, industry, transport,
distribution etc can be re-invested in new job creating projects. A government
under pressure like that of Narc does not create jobs
by borrowing money from abroad with impossible conditions or publishing several
“strategy papers” designed by technocrats sitting in high rise office
buildings.
The kind of politics that can lead to the control of wealth
producing institutions by the government for further investment in job creating
sectors requires the ideas of Socialism and revolution, not the politics aimed
at reforming a rotten system of capitalism which Kibaki and Narc
is preaching to Kenyans. KSDA believes that it is time for Kenyans interested in
a solution to the crisis in our country to team up and provide a political
alternative to capitalism at a time when the system has failed to deliver even
some of the most basic human rights to Kenyans.
What Kenyans have been told year in year out is that the
market system is the best while experience on the ground demonstrates clearly
that this system is a recipe for social and economic disaster.
Today, 12 million able-bodied Kenyans are out of work, almost half of the
country’s population. This means that the problem of unemployment is one of the
biggest in the country and one which needs to be confronted with workable
alternatives and not propaganda. Narc told Kenyans
that it will create 500,000 jobs per year but this is impossible on a
capitalist basis. What President Kibaki did was to jump the issue in his Kenyatta day speech.
At the moment, much of Kenya’s wealth generating
institutions are on private hands and as such, money generated from these
institutions go to align private pockets instead of being pumped back into
developing the country. In
Unfortunately, there is no way that the government can take
control of wealth generated in the country for profits to be directed towards
development and creation of jobs unless the capitalist system is abolished. The
opposite of privatizations is nationalizations. Privatizations
becomes the buzz word when capitalism enters into crisis while
nationalizations becomes the in thing when the picture of a Socialist
revolution comes to light. Capitalism has reached the end of the road in
With the kind of speech Kibaki delivered at Kenyatta day, there is need for a new thinking in a
different direction. Capitalism is not the only political system in the world.
After 40 years of experiment with a capitalist system always in crisis at
different levels, it is clear that this outdated system is not the answer to
NEGLECT OF
WORKERS BY THE GOVERNMENT: Just like the
burning issue of land, workers in
By the time Kibaki gave his Kenyatta
day speech last week, the latest was that the Universities Academic Staff Union
(UASU) had informed the government that their members would go on strike on
November 10th if the government did not rescind a plan of forming a
Task Force to review their salaries which have been stagnant for years. Fearing
that they may be short changed by a politically appointed Task Force, UASU is
demanding the formation of a Committee to review their salaries. How does a new
government neglect the very same workers who should be nursing the best brains
in the country’s Universities to an extent that their Union if forced to take
strike action as a way of fighting for their interests? The answer is that just
like the former Moi/KANU dictatorship, the Narc government is not a workers’ government but a rich
man’s government.
A day before Kibaki’s Kenyatta
day speech, the Nakuru Local Government Workers Union
(NLGWU) had entered into its sixth day of strike, demanding that 1,600 workers
who had downed their tools demanding to be paid their salaries that amounted to
Ksh 100 million, be listened to. The workers, who have not been paid since
July, rejected a return to work formula that could have seen the Nakuru Municipal Council pay them Ksh 1.8 million currently
in the Council’s Bank account as part of the settlement. In rejecting the deal,
Branch Chairman James Kuria said that they were
“tired of empty promises”.
The crisis is such that the Council is planning to borrow
Ksh 30 million to try and settle the dispute because the government has no
money. Lack of money to pay workers in
The strike by the Council workers followed a demand by 60
workers of Maseno University who had taken the
government to court because they had not been paid Ksh 41 million as terminal
benefits after being sacked for no apparent reasons. Kibaki’s Kenyatta day speech, which failed to address burning issues
affecting Kenyan workers was yet another warning that just like the former
Dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi,
the new Narc regime does not have the interest of
workers at heart because it is a government of the rich.
NARC’S
SUPERFICIAL FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION:
Kibaki’s speech was laced with militant phrases about the government’s fight
against corruption. The President did not hesitate to exploit revelations about
corruption within the Judiciary to announce that there will be no amnesty for
corrupt Judges recently named in the Ringera report.
In fact, the revelations about corruption and tough conditions for the affected
Judges and magistrates have convinced many Kenyans that the gospel according to
Narc is capable of ending corruption in
What President Kibaki did not tell Kenyans in the war
against corruption is that corruption is part of the capitalist system and that
it is impossible for corruption to be eliminated without the system itself
being changed. The main reasons why Judges have been selling Justice in
Socialists campaign for a minimum living wage for all
workers regardless of whether they are Judges, MPs or Doctors because the
Socialist principle holds that every worker is an important contributor in
society. Within the capitalist framework, workers are divided into distinct
classes with those heading the State bureaucracy regarded as more important
than workers engaged in the production process or the service sectors.
KSDA is campaigning for the take over of the government by
workers because the experience with millionaire leaders like Kibaki and his Narc MPs is that they are more interested in their stomachs
and not the stomachs of the millions of Kenyans who are either starving or on
the verge of starvation..
CRISIS IN NARC
AND THE MOU: Any Kenyan who has been
following events in
Our question is: How can a President who cannot honour a simple MoU be trusted to honour pledges to
the electorate. In avoiding the issue of MoU in his Kenyatta day speech, the signal Kibaki is sending is that
Kenyans can as well be taken for a ride. KSDA thinks that President Kibaki
should have broken his silence over the MoU and
provided some direction in a situation where some of his fiercest dogs have
been baying for the blood of their colleagues within the Coalition.
KENYA’S
DEPENDENCY ON THE US, IMF AND WORLD BANK: KSDA did not expect President Kibaki to say anything about the
government’s economic relationship with the
With the kind of speech Kibaki delivered on Kenyatta day, it would be safe to say that a lot of
political work still nees to be done as the struggle
in our country continues. The role of KSDA is partly to expose the weaknesses
of the current government while at the same time joining other revolutionary forces
inside and outside
Published by Kenya
Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com