Kenyans have gone through a most traumatizing
period over the ten weeks following the excessively flawed December 2007
elections.
There is hope among many Kenyans that the recent signing
of a political deal between the Raila Odinga led Orange Democratic Movement and
President Kibaki's PNU marks the first step towards the realization of the, more
democratic, dispensation that has eluded Kenyans for a long time.
While
the neo-colonial character of our economy and the failure to reconfigure
the colonial state was and remain central to the current crises in Kenya,
it is the failure on the part of the Kibaki leadership and his desire to
reward the loathed indigenous grey-haired capitalists and their
allies that remains the most serious obstacle to fundamental reforms in Kenya.
Colonialism
introduced a lopsided dual economy that thrived on the cheap labour of Africans. It was for this reason that the first strategy introduced by the colonial government was the displacement of Africans off
their land and their being rendered so desperate that they gave themselves over for work as cheap labourers on starving and
slave wages. All this was done through use of force and when guns were
not in use, legal and administrative terror, fear, social and economic
pressures, propaganda and colonial or Bantu education were the weapons of choice. What was consistent, whatever the means, was the subjugation of the will of the people.
But the oppression was not strictly racial, there was
a number of Africans who benefited from the colonial political economy. These became a special class, one that was ultimately absorbed into the class of the privilege from which their fellows found themselves permanently excluded. It is this class that later inherited the post-colonial state with all its attendant trappings of power vested at the
presidency and other executive organs of the state. To their number, in both the colonial and post-independence Kenya were quickly added the numerous private
organs and multinational corporations who have reaped heavily from the
neocolonial social political fabric. Among the beneficiaries include
a clique associated with the corridors of power in Kenya in both government
and the opposition. It is the conservative wing of this class that precipitated
the current political crises to protect its privileges especially land and other strategic interests in the country.
Having been
captured by the trappings of raw power that made them a law unto themselves,
sections of this class vowed to resist any attempts to democratize both
the state and society through ethnic manipulation and the appeal to ethnic
cultural symbols in an effort at evoking emotions for the purpose of easy political mobilization. The result was that Kenya crumbled politically like a house of cards.
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who speaks for her?
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In addition to funding criminal
gangs like Munguki, the group turned to the youth marginalized by the forces
of globalization and neoliberal economic policies otherwise regarded
as the structural adjustment programs for easy prey. Intense violence
displaced the poor peasants and workers in both rural and urban areas
but not a single middle class Kenyan was affected directly. The political
compromise thus reached was a family settlement of a serious political
rift that left the real issues or how they would be addressed a temporary
agenda for the long term.
Both ODM and
PNU are composed of some of the wealthiest section of Kenya's political
establishment. They share values, behaviour, language, traditions and
other forms of class characters and norms. Elements of this group also share a core defining ideology, the most reliable marker of how a person or group of persons like act and react to the entire gamut of problems politics and life throws at them. This ideology essentially numbs them to one core problem facing tha majority of Kenyans.
At the core of democracy and Kenya's struggle for second and now third
liberation is the worker/peasant question. This assumes that democracy
and the crises we are dealing with should be addressed as material rather
than mere emotional outburst of the conservative middle classes and
dependent petty bourgeoisie whose only contribution to the struggle
in Kenya was to have remained indoors at the hour of need. The starting
point of course is to revisit basic issues of how wealth and poverty are generated, sustained and shared over time. Next would be to navigate the co-existence of the rich and the poor, to ensure that there are certain markers beneath which no Kenyan is permitted to dip, to ensure that resources are consumed in such a way as to satisfy the greater number.
Kenyans need to come to terms with the fact that capitalism produces
winners and losers and its harmonious survival depends on how the winners relate
with the less privileged in society. The fact that it was the residents
of Mathare and Kibera slums who put unbearable pressure on the
post-colonial state through violence and threats of more violence suggests
that serious class struggle and forces are at play and should be involved
in any further negotiations about the their future and the country.
Any attempts to undermine them and their efforts of survival are not
only doomed to fail but also misplaced. If the nation's leadership acts
on its own narrow class interests within the context of global capitalism,
the very same forces shall violently rise up against them with even more serious consequences for their property and interests.
The on-going
talks and negotiations between the coalition partners are welcome provided they include
and engage other sections of Kenyans who have directly over the last
forty years or so borne the brunt of the ruthless colonial and post-colonial
capitalism. The address of such weighty matters as property rights, the legitimacy of
wealth, and class relations cannot be adequately tackled when there sits no one at the table to speak for the interests of the workers
and peasants.
Revolutions and social change may occur but there is a danger of logic
of substitutionism so prevalent in Kenya's body politic; that specific political parties 'substitute itself for the working classes'. The current
seductive character of global capitalism will ensure, if the negotiators remain constituted as they currently are, that the increasing misery that results
from the economics of structural adjustment and recolonization is ignored and that the voice of the people is stifled.
It is crucial at this great junction in our path as a nation that those sat at the high tables, crafting compromises and laying plans, bargaining and offering include those who are truly voiceless in this country, those who are truly oppressed by the current system. It is important that the negotiating teams are reconfigured so that as they address the long term sustainability of this country, it is not only the PNU and ODM sympathisers and allies whose interests are catered to in the foundation of a new Kenya. More importantly, the class, people
and individuals who have brought the country to the brink of destruction must not only
be held accountable, but must also be prosecuted. Kenya belongs to all-
those who own the means of production and those who add value to capital
to generate and reproduce wealth.
The author is a visiting lecturer of Political Science at the University Libre de Kigali.
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Still, your argument is very problematic for me, for two reasons. The first is the bare fact that the Kibaki government has in fact worked to improve the lot of the poor people, its characterisation as the party of wealth is therefore unfair and deceptive. Measures like increased farm prices, free schooling, the youth fund, women's fund, the revitalisation of cooperatives and CDF are in no way aids to any but the poorest Kenyans.
I believe it is very important to acknowledge the reality we live in. We cannot afford a Chavistic revolution, as sexy as it would be. It is the very same market that the poor revile that allows the KRA to collect so much and then allow the treasury to offer up as much as it does in social spending. Please look at the CBS site, or the Treasury website to see just how much the government increased social spending. While the government must at all times promote poverty eradication programmes, it must also work to create wealth. The very future of the poor depends on it. Again, programmes like Majimbo or the ODM's intended cash transfers to the poor are only recipes for this country turning into a basket case.