KENYA SOCIALIST DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE (KSDA)    

DRAFT POLITICAL PROGRAMME

1.CAPITALIST PLUNDER, CLASS STRUGGLE AND A SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE IN KENYA
Following the collapse of Stalinism in the former Soviet Union and the toppling of Stalinist bureaucracies in Eastern Europe in the early 90s, the new decade was greeted by a barrage of capitalist media propaganda declaring "socialism is dead- capitalism is triumphant". A new "World order" was pronounced. In recent times, mass unemployment and sky-rocketing prices have accompanied the re- introduction of capitalism in the states of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The economies of most of the Western world are in a crisis while in the so called "Third world", the horrors of wars, poverty, starvation and deprivation have confined millions into lives of misery and untold human suffering. Millions of workers and youth internationally are questioning the "triumph" of a system which is daily destroying their lives by depriving them of jobs and destroying their families.

CAPITALIST PLUNDER
In Kenya, the Euphoria which greeted the repeal of section 2A of the KANU constitution has evaporated. The fragmented bourgeois opposition parties have failed to put forward a political alternative to capitalism in Kenya. As the country lurches from one crisis to another, Imperialism continues to play a dominant role in the exploitation of the 30 million plus Kenyans and the plunder of the country's natural and economic resources. The greed for profit by multi-national companies has sustained the production of sub-standard goods in the country and devastation of the environment. The rich owners of production and distribution facilities are responsible to nobody but themselves.

Since the advent of political pluralism in Kenya in the early 90s, three multi party elections have taken place while 45 political parties have also emerged. Illusions that had been created in the minds of Kenyans during the “second liberation” that political pluralism is the solution to the crisis in Kenya have all evaporated in the face of an ever rising unemployment, spiralling poverty, total collapse of health and education system, disintegration of infrastructure, rising domestic debt  and a host of breakdowns necessitated by the rotten capitalist system. Despite the presence of 45 political parties and the entry of bourgousie opposition in the country’s politics more than a decade ago, there is still no solution to tribalism while no party is putting forward a viable alternative to capitalism which, from our position, is the real problem.

With a Parliamentary majority gained through rigging of the first multi-party elections in 1992, the KANU Dictatorship continued to pass laws for the purpose of protecting the corrupt property owners as a group. Decisions were made, not to improve the lives of the suffering majority in Kenya but to consolidate the wealth of the minority who own the means of production in the country. The gap between the rich and the poor therefore continued to widen.

CLASS STRUGGLE
The irreconcilable antagonism of class interests in Kenya manifests itself in a class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess. It is the labour of the Kenyan workers that creates the profits which makes the capitalist rich.. The Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance holds that as long as the exploiters continue to live on the sweat of the exploited, there will never be freedom, democracy and justice in Kenya. The different interests between the exploited and exploiting classes will continue to sustain the class struggle because this arrangement is inherent in any class system. KSDA takes the position that the antagonism of class interests in Kenya can only be abolished by the emancipation of the working class; by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution and their democratic control by workers. As long as the ownership of the means of production and distribution rests with the minority capitalist class, the antagonism of interests between the rich and the poor, "the haves" and the "have nots" in Kenya will continue to exist. This antagonism forms the basis of future political and social explosions in Kenya.

A SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE
The capitalist class in Kenya will not give up its privileged position voluntarily and will continue to use all state apparatus at its disposal for the administration of the Kenyan society as it exists today and in the interest of the ruling class. The working class in Kenya, through an alliance with peasants, students and the vast army of unemployed must therefore organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of Government. This will enable the huge oppressive machinery of the Capitalist state to be converted from an instrument of oppression into an agent of emancipation and the overthrow of capitalist class rule. Subsequently, this will open the way for the replacement of the capitalist class system of Government by a system of common ownership of the production, distribution and exchange facilities.

Capitalism in Kenya is rotten to the core and must therefore be replaced by a new system of Socialism. KSDA is a revolutionary socialist alliance which seeks to popularise and establish a socialist political alternative in Kenya . The Alliance holds that the working class in Kenya and the world cannot engage in any fundamental transformation of society if it does not have a programme of how to do it. The revolutionary task of KSDA is to assist in leading the struggle against capitalism in Kenya by consciously organising Kenyan workers, students, peasants and other oppressed layers of the population for the conquest of State power. KSDA takes the position that it is through the ideas of workers democracy and genuine socialism that a permanent solution to the cycle of political and economic crisis in Kenya can be realised. The following is the general outline of the basic ideas and political alternaive of KSDA. Our main demands are as follows.

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