KENYA SOCIALIST DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE (KSDA)

12th October 2004

 

 

A CASE FOR “MAPAMBANO” NEWSLETEER

 

Introduction

We are a group of Kenyans who are convinced that there is need for a new publication which can focus on the political, economic and social struggle in Kenya from a different ideological perspective. At the moment, the mainstream print media is dominated by the Daily Nation, The Standard and Kenya Times, three major publications which, although very informative in news and analysis, are publications that project a one-sided ideological point of view. Predictably, the alternative “gutter press” that has mushroomed in Kenya has specialized in sensation and trivia, a profile that renders them incapable of contributing qualitatively to the on-going struggle against Neo-colonialism, Capitalist exploitation and constant Imperialist intervention in our politics, economy and culture.

 

The electronic media like the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) and the Kenya Television Network (KTN) are owned by the ruling class and therefore churns out ruling class propaganda while a good proportion of other electronic media  has fallen on private hands following the “liberalization of the air waves”. Although the Nation TV and Citizen TV (which are both on private hands) have local programs, a good chunk of their broadcast is a representation of European and American culture which urban youth consume round the clock with devastating psychological consequences. The end result is that European and American cultural imperialism is constantly under promotion on private TV stations and at the expense of local culture and the revolutionary struggle. In certain instances, foreign films transmitted through these stations have resulted in serious cultural shocks and collisions leaving parents in a state of confusion with their children especially on issues that touch on African morality. 

 

Radio stations transmitting in various ethnic languages are infested with broadcasters well schooled in ethnic chauvinism. Although these stations have a positive side in the sense that they promote local languages and culture, they are at the same time used to deepen ethnic differences through a program line-up throbbing with ethnic based politics and solidarity appeals which, in the end, serve tribal chieftains heading ethnic contraptions called political parties. For example, through these stations, millions of Luo and Kikuyu ethnic groups are routinely programmed to think in specific directions depending on the different stages of crisis between the Luo and Kikuyu ruling classeses embroiled in a vicious power struggle that has been threatening Narc government since it seized power.

 

A case in point could include millions of Kikuyus languishing in poverty being told by their ethnic commentators “not to let power slip from their hands” while millions of  poor Luos are set against their Kikuyu counterparts through constant historical narrations detailing how the Kikuyus have betrayed the Luos on the question of power sharing since the days of “independence”. What happens then is that ethnic consciousness gets a boost while opportunities for introducing or increasing class consciousness gets a black out, much to the detriment of the political struggle.

 

Although Kenya needs a revolution as a solution to the capitalist crisis orchestrated by a rotten ruling class, there is no media to address the nature, needs and dimensions of this revolution. This weakness has tended to undermine new initiatives by Kenyan revolutionaries seeking to get their message across. The Internet, which is itself revolutionary in terms of Information Technology, is still limited as a tool for communication when it comes to Kenya because of the wide digital divide. The Internet is a preserve of the ruling class, upper middle class and well-to-do sections of the working class and students. Thousands of Internet cafes that have sprouted in Kenya suffer from slow phone-dependent Internet connections making them expensive when it comes to developing an effective surfing habit that could deliver the tones of information in the net to millions of Kenyans. Internet Service Providers are mainly foreign companies and slow Internet connections are good for business because they multiply profits by increasing the time needed to access a web site to download information.

 

In the absence of an alternative media with an alternative viewpoint, the capitalist media is having a field day, feeding the population with boring pro-capitalist news and analysis that is contributing little in terms of political education and preparation of workers and the youth to effectively play their role in the revolutionary struggle. Bourgeoisie public opinion constructed by the cream of bourgeoisie journalists that control Editorial Boards easily gets “nationalized” while competing or parallel opinions are dumped in the waste bin especially if they do not conform to the paper’s ideological line.

 

Those benefiting most from the media are media barons and the so called political class. Pro-capitalist media owners are minting money out of people’s thirst for news while politicians use the media to build their names in preparation for the next elections, propagate intrigue between themselves to cover up their political bankruptcies and to create personality cults which helps them to peddle influence among sycophants and other parasites who hang around them.

 

Workers are constantly on strike in Kenya but there is no media to render a clear class analysis of the worker’s struggle in a way that can awaken their huge revolutionary potential. Views of the ruling class declaring Worker’s strikes illegal are promoted in the media and at the expense of analysis based on how workers can fight back the rich by organizing themselves politically to challenge the ruling class and their imperialist masters.

 

In other words, there is no alternative ideological point of view in the media when it comes to politics, economy, culture and other aspects of life in our devastated country. What we have is a one-sided, biased and pro-rich press which cannot be relied upon to spread the tides of revolution needed to transform Kenya. Every news item is reported within the framework of the capitalist ideology which is based on the exploitation of the poor and in a way that does not threaten the status quo. The lack of an alternative perspective has contributed to the uncritical acceptance (by consumers) of a capitalist world view of political, social and economic developments in our country. On the other hand, the alternative view (especially from the Left) has been undergoing an organized suppression by the State thereby denying consumers of news and analysis the advantage of looking at what lies on the other side of the coin.  

 

Right-wing media brain washing

The consequence of a pro-capitalist pro-rich media in Kenya is that a common and well understood vice like corruption is associated with rotten individual thieves running the government and not the system which has its own in-built structures that encourage and facilitate corruption in the first place. The fight against corruption is pegged on individual heads of bogus “Anti corruption Committees and Commissions” and not on replacing the system which supports corruption. Fighting corruption under capitalism is a farce as demonstrated by the failure of the corrupt Kibaki regime to prosecute a single thief from the former and current government.

 

In the rich man’s media in Kenya, land grabbing is portrayed as a problem of nincompoop and senseless land thieves and not as a problem created by “the system of private ownership” of land which encourages land grabbing, land buying and land selling leaving millions of people landless in their own country. In fact, many Kenyans have been made to believe that there is no permanent solution to the land crisis in Kenya. There should be an alternative media because the revolutionary and other progressive camps are putting forward the alternative of nationalization of all land in Kenya (with or without compensation depending on the case) as the basis of land re-distribution. 

 

In the rich man’s media, the high rate of crime across Kenya is constantly associated with gangs of drug taking-machine gun wielding irresponsible youth instead of pinning the blame where it belongs - high level of unemployment created by a deep “crisis within the system”, a crisis which the ruling class is unable to solve. The government is unable to invest in construction and industry (the best known way of creating jobs) because wealth which could be used to do so is on the hands of foreign companies and other imperialist agents controlling the Kenyan economy. A new media is needed on the ground, not to spread sensation using “human interest stories” but to educate our people politically in preparation for the overthrow of the rich man’s system of government that Narc represents.

 

Under the system, the media is itself  “in business” and the rich share-holders of media houses are more concerned with how more money can be minted and not how the media can be used to promote and propagate revolutionary ideas aimed at toppling the system. This role is not accidental. It is the arrangement under capitalism and it reproduces itself in every country where the capitalist ruling class is in power. Although massive news and analysis is rendered on what is happening around the country, the newspapers are of no help to the revolutionary struggle needed to transform the lives of poor Kenyans. Deep expositions of endless scandals arising out of the capitalist decay may appear radical. But putting an end to these scandals also requires putting an end to the capitalist system under which these scandals thrive. The process of doing so is what the rich man’s media is not telling Kenyans looking for genuine change and this is why Mapambano needs to be introduced.

 

Workers are more interested in how their salaries can go up to increase their living standards and not how a piece of paper called a Memorandum of Understanding has not been honoured by a section of the ruling class so that another section of the ruling class can also share the loot. In our view, what workers need to know now is how they can set up a political party to fight for their interests not the ethnic leaders they need to support in the next elections to perpetuate a cycle of betrayals and disappointments. Workers need to know that they are the revolutionary class which has been converted into objects of exploitation by the rich because of their lack of political organization.

 

In the rich man’s media dominant in our country, mainstream Political parties like Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Ford-Kenya, Democratic Party (DP), Ford People etc are portrayed as “different” because of their different ethnic bases. Without challenge, these parties are left to vie for power with the sole aim of taking over the dilapidated capitalist state machine which has not just failed Kenya since the “flag independence” in 1963 but which is also responsible for the inability of the Narc regime to deliver. Instead of underlining the weaknesses of seizing power on a disintegrating capitalist platform, the media shies away from the real analysis and begins to promote the view that both politicians and political parties in Kenya are the same. Ethnic politics is portrayed as a problem created by politicians and not as a survival tool without which the fragile structures built by the bankrupted politicians would collapse. 

 

Since there is no alternative view, the masses are correctly led to believe that Narc is the same as KANU. However, the axis of capitalism around which the similarity between Narc and KANU rotates is blacked out because the option would be to pursue alternative ideas opposed to capitalism. There is no alternative ideological model of government in the Kenyan political market place and the capitalist media likes it that way. A political force on say a Marxist platform, is likely to emerge with an alternative Left wing press that may not just challenge the long standing assumptions built by the right wing press but which may also threaten the economic interests of media barons by exposing the limitations of the capitalist press in a situation where capitalism itself needs to be overthrown.

 

KANU is constantly being referred to by the capitalist media as “the opposition” when the truth is that the politics of KANU is such that it is not in a position to oppose anything in the current government whose methods and policies have proven to be the same as those of KANU. In fact, top KANU politicians who are supposed to lead the opposition are themselves rotten land and wealth grabbers who run the risk of being sent to prison if they try to brush the government on the wrong side. There is no opposition in Kenya regardless of what the media is saying. The name “opposition” exists only on paper as Kenyans await for the vacuum to be filled. Isn’t there need for an alternative view that can challenge the status quo and provide a different thinking to victims of right wing brain-washing which has made them to believe that whatever is reported in the capitalist press is the only way events in society ought to be seen and interpreted?

 

University student’s struggle and the media

In its tutelage, the capitalist press insists that it has to be “neutral” in its handling of news items. But in real life, this press is constantly on the side of the rich while journalists schooled in bourgeoisie institutions and armed with bourgeoisie tools of analysis have themselves crowded the propaganda frontlines in favor of the ruling class. In the current arrangement, the exploited millions in Kenya, workers, students, peasants and the youth have no media on their side, an arrangement which works to the advantage of the rich. This is what we are seeking to change.

 

For example, a legitimate struggle by University students protesting against an increment of University fees is called a “riot” and reported in a way that portrays the students as “violent stone throwing crooks”, a bias that relegates the high fees the students were protesting against to the periphery. Pictures of uniformed police brutalizing “rioting students” with batons are splashed in the media without a corresponding analysis to the effect that police brutality against students is also tied to the student’s defiance against established government authority that controls the University.

 

Under capitalism, Police force is an instrument of the State and the first line of defense in any conflict between the ruling class and the ruled. If the police fails or gets overpowered in struggle, the paramilitary GSU (General Service Unit) is the next weapon to be unleashed with the standing army being the last line of defense of the ruling class if its interests came under real threat. In the case of University students, the tactic which has been working in a crisis situation involves sending in police to break up the student’s struggle as consultations are made to send the students home to diffuse the crisis for the University to be reopened another day. This tactic  was used by Moi for 24 years and is the same tactic being used by President Kibaki.  A media which exposes the role of the State apparatus being used by the ruling class to cling on to power is necessary for a clear understanding as to why these structures should be taken over by the masses to be converted into weapons of emancipation from capitalist class rule.

 

Anybody who can buy a car in Kenya (a country where people are starving to death) is classified as a “rich person”. Although misplaced, the stoning of cars by aggrieved students is an echo of “class struggle” between the “rich” car owners and the “poor” students whose low political organization prevents them from directing the violence against symbols of the Capitalist State and where the authority of the ruling class can be challenged more effectively. An organized attempt to match to State house or Parliament by protesting students could make a bigger political statement than smashing cars in the streets. But, there is no media which can advise students to match to state house to make their point instead of stoning cars because within bourgeoisie media ethics, that would amount to “irresponsible journalism”. Don’t worry that the ruling class have their own rules that would pronounce such a match “a threat to state security!”

 

University education used to be free in Kenya and students used to get allowances called “boom”. But as the crisis of capitalism deepened in the late 80s and 90s and the government swallowed bitter IMF/World Bank pills and strong cost sharing tablets, fees and “student loans” were introduced through the back door and the cost of University education was transferred to poor parents some of whom have been retrenched. 

 

The solution to the crisis at Universities does not hinge on sending police to intervene whenever University students fight for their rights but in the State taking control of wealth producing institutions (currently on private/foreign hands) and utilizing this wealth to provide free University education and student’s allowances. This serious measure of changing the economic system of government by overturning property relations to give the government an advantage on the distribution of wealth requires a revolution which the capitalist media is not in a position to promote under any circumstance. For this reason, a revolutionary media will have to be built and this is the idea behind planting the seeds Mapambano.

 

Worker’s struggle and the media

When it comes to media presentation, Kenyan workers are faced with the same problem as students in struggle. In the current arrangement, elaborate Editorials are constantly written to encourage striking workers “to seek dialogue” with their bosses because strike actions “are not the solution” to industrial disputes. In a strike situation, Doctors or Nurses are told by bourgeoisie analysts in the press that innocent people will die if they do not return to work without these suffering professionals being told how they will cope with rising inflation precipitated by the rich who allow their wealthy contacts in business to increase prices of consumer commodities at will when salaries are stagnant. The crisis of capitalism has led to loss of price controls by the government and with the promotion of liberalism, there is little, if not, no possibility that one day, prices will go down unless the exploitative economic system of capitalism is overthrown. Changing the economic system from Capitalism to Socialism will not happen without a revolution.  We are saying that another view is not just possible in Kenya but has become a revolutionary necessity.

 

Instead of advising workers in struggle to look into possibilities of organizing themselves around a political party to vie for power as a class to give the rotten ruling class a run for their money, the media has a tendency of promoting the concept of  “constructive engagements”. In a strike outbreak, Union leaders are routinely advised to draw a “return to work formula” as the “only way forward”. Although Workers’ parties (at different stages of degeneration) exist across the world with others having seized power, the idea of a “Workers’ Party” is out of bounds in the rich man’s media in Kenya. This is not strange because to advocate for a Workers’ Party in Kenya also means a campaign for the overthrow of the government of the rich, a process that will require a revolution. This is a difficult process which neither the capitalist politicians nor their friends in the media are ready to promote.

 

Sometimes, the fat cats in the government get a bashing from their buddies in the media especially when a situation of struggle turns awkward. A government planning retrenchment of 21,000 civil servants because of pressure from IMF/World Bank may get critical comments in the capitalist media. But this is normally for window dressing. In the end, the workers are normally retrenched before their story dies out in the media. When the retrenched workers regroup and organize a demonstration to draw attention to their plight, they are normally likely to get media coverage before they are dumped again. The position of the capitalist media is that it is not their responsibility to organize the workers but to report on what they are doing. The view from the revolutionary camp is that while reporting on what the workers are doing, the revolutionary press has to move a step further by trying to convince the workers about the need to organize politically as a way of fighting the forces of retrenchment more effectively. Taking the example of retrenched workers in struggle, the revolutionary press could try to expose the limitations of certain methods in the situation while encouraging the leadership to adopt tactics along the road of revolution.

 

When a strike action by workers is defeated, the defeat is normally not associated with the lack of political organization of the workers but with “a new round of talks” which has been entered into between Union bureaucracy and government top brass. These rounds of talks are sometimes promoted as “major breakthroughs” even if it is clear that the “breakthroughs” represent betrayals of workers by wealthy and compromised Union bureaucracies doing business under the table with company bosses or the State to pacify workers. Union leaders normally enter into negotiations with bosses and reach serious (sometimes negative) decisions without consultation with striking workers.

 

In extreme cases that may require face saving after a major betrayal, striking workers may be encouraged by the media or compromised Union leaders to take their case to the industrial court. But at these courts, the ruling class has installed its own Judges to dispense justice in favor of their wealthy bosses in the government. A struggle by workers that spills over into the streets is dubbed an act of “hooliganism”, without the media telling workers where they will get the next meal if salaries have not been paid for three months. In other words, the Kenyan media is simply not on the side of the working class thus the need for a new publication like Mapambano.

 

Exposing ruling class-media conspiracy

In Kenya, sale of public enterprises under the privatization program are called “foreign investments” which, nevertheless, are encouraged by the media as a way of “helping the economy to recover”. In the process, the exploitation and repatriation of profits from human and natural resources of Kenya takes a back seat. When IMF or World Bank announces that it is releasing aid to Kenya, it is likely to be praised in the Capitalist media as “good progress” which will “boost the economy”. An alternative media which takes sides would actually oppose IMF/World Bank programs and call for their abolition altogether on grounds that Kenya has enough wealth to run the country without foreign aid.

 

When IMF or any top officials from imperialist financial institutions visit Kenya to discuss aid disbursement, they are normally profiled in the media as important people who could help “jump start” the economy or “alleviate poverty”. When these officials strike deals with State bureaucrats to sell Kenya to multinational companies, these deals are normally reported as “progress” which could lead to the country’s “economic recovery”. When crumbs of aid start filtering as the government begins to privatize state companies, the media is likely to praise “the good relations” between the government and “the donor community”. False hopes are then built in the minds of naïve Kenyans that the country’s economy will now begin to recover because “major donors” have accepted to help our poor government, a recovery that never happens. Isn’t there a need for a media that can expose the conspiracy between the ruling class, the media, IMF and World Bank? This will be one of the tasks of Mapambano.

 

Between 1998 and 2000, Ksh 1.2 trillion was repatriated from Kenya by foreign exploiters (read investors), money that can run Kenya for many years. As this theft of resources continues, the underpinning clause in the media is that “Kenya is a poor country” which needs economic aid from “the Paris club” which normally meets in Rome or some European capital. This image of poverty promoted by the media is normally strengthened by pictures of starving people across the country as imperialist agencies (doing business in the charity industry) are called in to “help avert a major humanitarian disaster”. From there, Imperialism could pick up the string by splashing white journalists on western TV screens commentating negatively behind emaciated children on the arms of desperate mothers in North Eastern province. By then, corrupt politicians who have stolen tax payer’s money as people starve may have began calling on the government “to do something” about the starvation.

 

Appeals and elaborate advertisements could then be made in the media for “help” as “famine accounts” are opened in various imperialist banks like The Standard or Barclays bank. The starvation itself is not blamed on a system that is no longer working but on lack of rains which did not fall on time because God had closed the taps of heaven. With propaganda in the media, Kenyans are made to believe that the starvation is a “normal” occurrence which has more to do with the weather and little to do with politics. The President then declares famine a “National disaster” as the media goes to work to project the starving as unfortunate human beings who need massive philanthropy. In a strange case, Mr. Githae, an Assistant Minister in charge of Justice, even advised starving Kenyans to be innovative by eating rats or frogs to cope with the situation. Githae got massive publicity in the media (completes with cartoons) which ridiculed him for his off the mark approach while at the same time promoting him as a controversial politician.

 

Political squabbles and the media

Kenyans have constantly been bombarded with analysis that the fight between LDP and NAK is actually a war between Luos and Kikuyus. The intensity of this bombardment has actually moved millions of ordinary Luos and Kikuyus to believe that the two communities are actually at war because Kikuyus are in power while the Luos have been kept out of power following the failure by Kibaki to honour a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

 

From a different perspective, those at war are actually the Kikuyu and Luo ruling classes after a fall-out on the basis of a secret MoU that was signed in the absence of the millions of Luos and Kikuyus now being used in what is a struggle for positions in the government.

 

In Kisumu, a city dominated by Luos, gangs of lumpen youth burnt down houses and business premises belonging to members of Kikuyu ethnic group during this year’s Saba saba anniversary as they matched the Kikuyus on their way out of the city arguing that Kikuyus have cheated Luos for a very long time. An alternative media reporting from a leftist stand-point would not buy the ethnic based analysis of the MoU problem but would move further to expose the ruling class conspiracy that uses strong ethnic solidarities across the country to slow down, undermine or divide the struggle against the real enemy – the capitalist state and its representatives.

 

Even if the MoU is honoured tomorrow, those who will benefit are the Luo top brass in LDP and other close parasites surrounding the LDP leaders. The role of the media in the situation has been to use the MoU stalemate to sharpen the differences between LDP and President Kibaki’s faction for purposes of selling newspapers. Portraying the MoU as a useless piece of paper that has nothing to do with changing the poor conditions of Kenyans is not in the interest of the media and here lies the silent conspiracy. Poor Luos and Kikuyus languishing in the squalid slums of Mathare or Kibera in Nairobi will not settle in apartment buildings in other parts of the city even if the MoU is honoured tomorrow. As a class of exploited Kenyans used as hay for political propaganda, a change in their conditions requires a revolution.

 

Mapambano: A tool for political education

A study of realities on the ground revealed that there are endless possibilities of opening distribution Networks in Kenya for a revolutionary publication like the proposed Mapambano newsletter. In the past, revolutionary publications have existed in Kenya. But these publications have also fizzled out with time depending on circumstances that influenced both their publication and content. We have in mind publications like Pambana, Mpatanashi, Mzalendo and many others. The name of the proposed publication is Mapambano, a name linked to the word “struggle” and which, from our point of view, will be a continuation of the traditions of Pambana which shook the foundations of Moi’s regime in Kenya thereby provoking a period of arrests, detentions, political assassinations, murders, human rights violations and exile of progressive forces at that time.

 

With Mapambano, we do not expect a repeat of what happened during the Moi dictatorship, time when alternative media was banned. Mapambano will be a legal publication duly registered in Kenya or abroad. Our calculation is that the level of “Press freedom” in Kenya at the moment is such that a publication whose content is dominated by revolutionary politics may attract the attention of the ruling class but not in a way that may provoke the kind of political thuggery, violations and persecutions that were witnessed during the Moi dictatorship. However, if Mapambano begins to become a factor in the political scene, we cannot rule out possibilities of attacks at various levels because the ruling class is known to become reckless when its interests are at stake.

 

An alternative media of the Mapambano type will not just call for a revolution as a solution to the crisis in Kenya but will also delve into what it takes to organize a revolution, describe the revolutionary process, how it should be waged, what should be expected in the cause of the revolution and what will happen once the revolutionary forces capture State power. In other words, it will be used for political education. This kind of political education is “mission impossible” for the mainstream right wing media.

 

In view of plans to launch Mapambano, we wish to appeal to progressive Kenyans across the world who would like to get involved in the project to get in touch for further discussions. Although it will have an obvious Left-wing bent especially in perspective, Mapambano will be broad based and will accommodate contributions which are deemed progressive even if the writers are not professed revolutionaries or “militant Left wing fanatics”. The scope of Mapambano’s reportage is expected to cover events happening among Kenyans both in Kenya and abroad. We are appealing to those interested to get in touch with the “Mapambano Working group” for a discussion because the revolutionary press is part and parcel of the revolutionary process. In the case of Kenya, it needs to be built sooner rather than later.

 

Okoth Osewe

Coordinator

Mapambano Working group

++46736533068

osewe@chello.se

osewe@hotmail.com

 

Published by Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA)
email: harakatips@hotmail.com

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