Post by mapambano on Jan 2, 2006 3:21:14 GMT 3
Mapambano Kenya
www.kenyasocialist.org
January 1st 2006
WITHOUT SOCIALISM, KENYANS ARE SUFFERING
Kenyans have ended the year with another pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist government led by Dictator Mwai Kibai in power. During 2005, the Ouko Committee which was investigating the former Minister’s murder and which was led by Mr. Gor Sungu ended it’s work but never presented its findings to Parliament or to the public because of government interference. The Goldenberg Commission of Inquiry also failed to submit its findings after guzzling millions of tax payer’s money.
Millions of Kenyans are faced with starvation yet Ksh 300 billion of public funds looted and stashed away in foreign bank accounts during Moi’s 24 year rule have not been recovered. Well known looters in the Kibaki regime are holding Cabinet positions. The capitalist ruling class has a tendency of conspiring and protecting themselves instead of sending one another to prison for crimes committed in Office. This is why Kibaki continues to consult Moi in times of crisis instead of taking him to court for political, economic and human rights crimes against the Kenyan people.
As is the case with every capitalist regime that has been in power in Kenya since flag independence in 1963, corruption continued unabated in 2005, workers continued to suffer under the pressure of starvation wages, millions of unemployed youth continued to remain hopeless while millions of young people dropped out of school, college, university and other bogus educational institutions to join the swelling army of unemployed in Kenya. Police continued to shoot to death innocent civilians in the streets while riot police killed at least 8 innocent Kenyans during the referendum.
In 2005, prices of consumer commodities continued to rise, exploitation of workers and the poor by greedy capitalists continued while the country’s natural resources also continued to be on the hands of Multinational Companies and other imperialist agents whose responsibility is to repatriate wealth from Kenya to Imperialist countries.
Throughout 2005, privatization of State enterprises as a result of imperialist pressure led to retrenchment of thousands of workers and suffering of thousands of families whose bread winners were suddenly rendered unemployed. Kenya Railways goes down as a key state enterprise that was sold in a deal in which the word “privatization” was replaced with the word “concessioning” to “humanize” privatizations. This is the real face of capitalism and in 2006, Kenyans should expect more suffering from the system as the government takes more orders from Imperialism.
The year 2005 also saw thousands of workers taking independent strike actions many of which were defeated due to lack of political support. In the case of Nurses who also went on strike, the government responded by sacking them en masse. The tactic of scaring striking workers with the sack is part and parcel of ruling class survival tactics in times of worker instigated crisis and this situation will not change in 2006.
During 2005, not a single political party supported demands for any group of workers who went on strike. The situation will not change in 2006 because workers do not have their own Party that can support their demands especially on the issue of a minimum living wage for all workers or better working conditions. The position of KESDEMO is not just to support striking workers resisting the system but also to call for a nationwide strike at an appropriate time as a way of bringing down the government so that a Socialist state can be installed in Kenya.
The banking industry (extortionists) continued to be firmly on the hands of foreign exploiters with the consequence that millions of Kenyans (especially workers who have been forced by conditions to use these banks) have continued to suffer super-exploitation through high interest rates, high ATM charges, high withdrawal and deposit charges and other exploitative fees. This daylight robbery of Kenyan workers, pensioners and other depositors by more than 37 foreign owned banks has continued under the supervision of the very Narc government that was elected to change Kenya. Kenya has more banks than the whole of Scandinavia yet it is not an industrialized country. Why?
Although the exploitation by foreign banks provoked public outcry and exposures in the media in 2005, the matter ended there because there is no political Party in Kenya today that can raise the issue of Nationalization of exploitative banks across the country as a solution to the problem. This is the alternative KESDEMO is offering and this is why the rich owners of capital and the ruling class fear Socialist Movements or Parties sprouting in Kenya to awaken the masses.
The collapse of the: Health care system, the education system, the transport system and other key public sectors continued to make Kenya a “non-working nation” regardless of Kibaki’s rumblings about building “a working Nation”. Since the wealth of Kenya is either looted by the ruling class or repatriated abroad through imperialist agents, there has been no money to address the social and economic crisis facing the country and this is how the situation will remain in 2006 if capitalism is not overthrown in our country.
As the year 2005 came to an end, it was official that at least 39 Kenyans had starved to death, 2.5 million were facing starvation especially in North Eastern Province while hundreds of livestock were on the way to being wiped out due to lack of rains. Since the government has been wasting money in bogus “government projects” the Ksh 8 billion needed to address the famine has not been forth-coming.
President Kibaki and his anti-corruption Chief, Aron Ringera both earn a total of Ksh 4 million per month or Ksh 48 million per year, a tiny example of the massive wastage of tax payer’s money which could be put to better use if Kenya had a Socialist government. The President’s salary would be the first to be cut from Ksh 2 million to under Ksh 100,000 then you can imagine what will happen to MPs salaries and other looters, the amount of tax payer’s money that will be saved and diverted to purchase drugs in hospitals, build roads and invest in other social services. This is what Socialism is all about and the message is very simple.
The year 2005 ended with the defeat of the government at the referendum on a new Constitution, a major defeat that also amounted to a vote of no confidence in the Kibaki dictatorship. Although the government should have resigned, the problem with the capitalist ruling class is that they never relinquish power voluntarily even if the situation dictates that they go.
Despite the pathetic nature of the situation in Kenya, KESDEMO does not see anything dramatic happening in 2006 that will transform the lives of suffering Kenyans to the better. This is because the solution to the political and economic crisis in Kenya occasioned by the rot and decay of the capitalist system of government requires a democratic Socialist revolution which is unlikely to happen in 2006 because there is still no revolutionary Party or Movement on the ground that can effectively lead the struggle against capitalism.
The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) led the struggle against the Wako-Kibaki mongrel Constitution and succeeded. However, ODM is basically a capitalist outfit whose “leading lights” like Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Musalia Mudavadi et al owe their allegiance to Capitalism. Leaders of the ODM are all rich and wealthy politicians who are not expected to oppose or challenge the system because they are all part of this system.
Since KESDEMO believes that the capitalist system is the problem in Kenya, any Movement or Party that cannot challenge it is not in a position to solve the political and economic crisis in Kenya. This is why KESDEMO continues to struggle for socialism in Kenya, a struggle that will definitely intensify in 2006 because our country must be free from man to man exploitation. The rich will never liberate Kenya.
The Narc government has already failed to deliver even on its most basic election promises. The Kibaki government is on its way out of power but unfortunately, there is no real political alternative that is fundamentally different from Narc. Political forces like KESDEMO, Kenya Democracy Project, Kenya Socialist Community in London etc that are capable of challenging capitalism and putting forward a revolutionary Program that can challenge the thieving ruling class have not yet surfaced openly in Kenya.
From the point of view of KESDEMO, and just as the Movement has repeated several times, a revolutionary “Workers Party” or Movement armed with a clear Socialist program is needed in Kenya to advance the struggle from the “ethnic level” to the “class/ideological level”. From the perspective of KESDEMO, there are only two tribes in Kenya – the Rich and the Poor. The status of capitalism not facing any opposition in Kenya will continue to give rise to one capitalist government after another, be it under National Alliance Party (NAK), Narc, ODM etc. In the process, it is the masses of the people that will continue to suffer.
The radical bourgeoisie especially those who have been congregating around ODM have played a significant role in Kenya’s democratic struggle. However, these capitalist outfits have their own limitations especially when it comes to attacking or challenging the real enemy of the people of Kenya – capitalism. KESDEMO has no illusions that ODM, NAK, Narc or any right wing Alliance that will emerge in the run up to next elections is the solution to the crisis in Kenya. From an ideological stand point, ODM is the same as Narc, NAK and other right wing bandwagons without ideologies and which base themselves on tribalism. The agenda of these formations is to seize power in order to maintain the status quo.
We are aware that there are a handful of naïve and brainwashed Kenyans who still believe that Socialism cannot work in our country “because it collapsed in the former Soviet Union”. Our answer is that capitalism has been tried in Kenya for more than 40 years and what we are seeing is death from starvation, millions threatened with starvation, growing poverty among the population, mass unemployment especially among the youth, unmitigated corruption, tribalism in government, landlessness, retrenchment of poor workers, death out of treatable diseases like malaria and tens of other vices of capitalism that continue to devastate our country. There is more than enough proof that capitalism is not working and our appeal to serious Kenyans interested in changing the situation is that they examine and study the ideas of revolutionary socialism instead of consuming right wing anti-socialist propaganda.
Socialists have already seized power in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia, countries where workers and other oppressed layers have refused to buy the anti-socialist propaganda weaved through the capitalist media and other propaganda institutions. Within a very short period of time after seizing power, the government of President Hugo Chavez has seized control of the country’s oil wealth and the people of Venezuela (who have suffered exploitation for decades under greedy wealth grabbers) have began to benefit from the country’s oil wealth. In Kenya, revenues from tea, coffee, flowers, tourism etc are not being pumped back into social services to improve the lives of citizens but are being siphoned by local and international capitalists.
Since the days of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and now Mwai Kibaki, the bourgeoisie have failed to solve the question of landlessness in Kenya because they are the biggest land grabbers in the country. The Kibaki dictatorship had to sit on the Ndungu Land Report because it named the big sharks (including Kibaki) as key land grabbers. To date, the report remains locked in a safe with occasional leaks in the media.
The solution to landlessness in Kenya lies in nationalization of all grabbed land and re-distributing it to the landless – simple! Nationalization of land is a key Socialist measure in which the major losers are land grabbers and major winners are the millions of landless people. This is the sole reason why land grabbers in Kenya like Kibaki and the ruling class are against Socialist ideas being put forward by KESDEMO and other well known Kenyan Socialists like Onyango Oloo.
KESDEMO will continue to struggle for socialism in Kenya and to work towards the toppling of the capitalist system in our country because we are convinced that the system is the major problem. During 2006, the war between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots will, most likely, intensify and KESDEMO will be there on the side of Workers, peasants, students, the unemployed and all the oppressed people of Kenya. The struggle continues…
Martin Ngatia ngatia_martin@hotmail.com
Okoth Osewe: osewe@hotmail.com
KESDEMO Central Committee
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
KENYA SCANDINAVIA DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT (KESDEMO)
Kenya People's Democratic Movement (KEPEDEMO-Mapinduzi) Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA), Kenya Social Forum in Norway (KSF - Norway), Muungano Ya Akina Mama Scandinavia, Organization of Kenyans in Denmark (OKD) and Association of Kenyan Students in Finland (AKSIF). ALLIES supporting statement: Kenya Socialist Community in London and Kenya Democracy Project (KDP) – Scandinavia. Statement also available at: www.kenyasocialist.org
www.kenyasocialist.org
January 1st 2006
WITHOUT SOCIALISM, KENYANS ARE SUFFERING
Kenyans have ended the year with another pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist government led by Dictator Mwai Kibai in power. During 2005, the Ouko Committee which was investigating the former Minister’s murder and which was led by Mr. Gor Sungu ended it’s work but never presented its findings to Parliament or to the public because of government interference. The Goldenberg Commission of Inquiry also failed to submit its findings after guzzling millions of tax payer’s money.
Millions of Kenyans are faced with starvation yet Ksh 300 billion of public funds looted and stashed away in foreign bank accounts during Moi’s 24 year rule have not been recovered. Well known looters in the Kibaki regime are holding Cabinet positions. The capitalist ruling class has a tendency of conspiring and protecting themselves instead of sending one another to prison for crimes committed in Office. This is why Kibaki continues to consult Moi in times of crisis instead of taking him to court for political, economic and human rights crimes against the Kenyan people.
As is the case with every capitalist regime that has been in power in Kenya since flag independence in 1963, corruption continued unabated in 2005, workers continued to suffer under the pressure of starvation wages, millions of unemployed youth continued to remain hopeless while millions of young people dropped out of school, college, university and other bogus educational institutions to join the swelling army of unemployed in Kenya. Police continued to shoot to death innocent civilians in the streets while riot police killed at least 8 innocent Kenyans during the referendum.
In 2005, prices of consumer commodities continued to rise, exploitation of workers and the poor by greedy capitalists continued while the country’s natural resources also continued to be on the hands of Multinational Companies and other imperialist agents whose responsibility is to repatriate wealth from Kenya to Imperialist countries.
Throughout 2005, privatization of State enterprises as a result of imperialist pressure led to retrenchment of thousands of workers and suffering of thousands of families whose bread winners were suddenly rendered unemployed. Kenya Railways goes down as a key state enterprise that was sold in a deal in which the word “privatization” was replaced with the word “concessioning” to “humanize” privatizations. This is the real face of capitalism and in 2006, Kenyans should expect more suffering from the system as the government takes more orders from Imperialism.
The year 2005 also saw thousands of workers taking independent strike actions many of which were defeated due to lack of political support. In the case of Nurses who also went on strike, the government responded by sacking them en masse. The tactic of scaring striking workers with the sack is part and parcel of ruling class survival tactics in times of worker instigated crisis and this situation will not change in 2006.
During 2005, not a single political party supported demands for any group of workers who went on strike. The situation will not change in 2006 because workers do not have their own Party that can support their demands especially on the issue of a minimum living wage for all workers or better working conditions. The position of KESDEMO is not just to support striking workers resisting the system but also to call for a nationwide strike at an appropriate time as a way of bringing down the government so that a Socialist state can be installed in Kenya.
The banking industry (extortionists) continued to be firmly on the hands of foreign exploiters with the consequence that millions of Kenyans (especially workers who have been forced by conditions to use these banks) have continued to suffer super-exploitation through high interest rates, high ATM charges, high withdrawal and deposit charges and other exploitative fees. This daylight robbery of Kenyan workers, pensioners and other depositors by more than 37 foreign owned banks has continued under the supervision of the very Narc government that was elected to change Kenya. Kenya has more banks than the whole of Scandinavia yet it is not an industrialized country. Why?
Although the exploitation by foreign banks provoked public outcry and exposures in the media in 2005, the matter ended there because there is no political Party in Kenya today that can raise the issue of Nationalization of exploitative banks across the country as a solution to the problem. This is the alternative KESDEMO is offering and this is why the rich owners of capital and the ruling class fear Socialist Movements or Parties sprouting in Kenya to awaken the masses.
The collapse of the: Health care system, the education system, the transport system and other key public sectors continued to make Kenya a “non-working nation” regardless of Kibaki’s rumblings about building “a working Nation”. Since the wealth of Kenya is either looted by the ruling class or repatriated abroad through imperialist agents, there has been no money to address the social and economic crisis facing the country and this is how the situation will remain in 2006 if capitalism is not overthrown in our country.
As the year 2005 came to an end, it was official that at least 39 Kenyans had starved to death, 2.5 million were facing starvation especially in North Eastern Province while hundreds of livestock were on the way to being wiped out due to lack of rains. Since the government has been wasting money in bogus “government projects” the Ksh 8 billion needed to address the famine has not been forth-coming.
President Kibaki and his anti-corruption Chief, Aron Ringera both earn a total of Ksh 4 million per month or Ksh 48 million per year, a tiny example of the massive wastage of tax payer’s money which could be put to better use if Kenya had a Socialist government. The President’s salary would be the first to be cut from Ksh 2 million to under Ksh 100,000 then you can imagine what will happen to MPs salaries and other looters, the amount of tax payer’s money that will be saved and diverted to purchase drugs in hospitals, build roads and invest in other social services. This is what Socialism is all about and the message is very simple.
The year 2005 ended with the defeat of the government at the referendum on a new Constitution, a major defeat that also amounted to a vote of no confidence in the Kibaki dictatorship. Although the government should have resigned, the problem with the capitalist ruling class is that they never relinquish power voluntarily even if the situation dictates that they go.
Despite the pathetic nature of the situation in Kenya, KESDEMO does not see anything dramatic happening in 2006 that will transform the lives of suffering Kenyans to the better. This is because the solution to the political and economic crisis in Kenya occasioned by the rot and decay of the capitalist system of government requires a democratic Socialist revolution which is unlikely to happen in 2006 because there is still no revolutionary Party or Movement on the ground that can effectively lead the struggle against capitalism.
The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) led the struggle against the Wako-Kibaki mongrel Constitution and succeeded. However, ODM is basically a capitalist outfit whose “leading lights” like Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka, Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Musalia Mudavadi et al owe their allegiance to Capitalism. Leaders of the ODM are all rich and wealthy politicians who are not expected to oppose or challenge the system because they are all part of this system.
Since KESDEMO believes that the capitalist system is the problem in Kenya, any Movement or Party that cannot challenge it is not in a position to solve the political and economic crisis in Kenya. This is why KESDEMO continues to struggle for socialism in Kenya, a struggle that will definitely intensify in 2006 because our country must be free from man to man exploitation. The rich will never liberate Kenya.
The Narc government has already failed to deliver even on its most basic election promises. The Kibaki government is on its way out of power but unfortunately, there is no real political alternative that is fundamentally different from Narc. Political forces like KESDEMO, Kenya Democracy Project, Kenya Socialist Community in London etc that are capable of challenging capitalism and putting forward a revolutionary Program that can challenge the thieving ruling class have not yet surfaced openly in Kenya.
From the point of view of KESDEMO, and just as the Movement has repeated several times, a revolutionary “Workers Party” or Movement armed with a clear Socialist program is needed in Kenya to advance the struggle from the “ethnic level” to the “class/ideological level”. From the perspective of KESDEMO, there are only two tribes in Kenya – the Rich and the Poor. The status of capitalism not facing any opposition in Kenya will continue to give rise to one capitalist government after another, be it under National Alliance Party (NAK), Narc, ODM etc. In the process, it is the masses of the people that will continue to suffer.
The radical bourgeoisie especially those who have been congregating around ODM have played a significant role in Kenya’s democratic struggle. However, these capitalist outfits have their own limitations especially when it comes to attacking or challenging the real enemy of the people of Kenya – capitalism. KESDEMO has no illusions that ODM, NAK, Narc or any right wing Alliance that will emerge in the run up to next elections is the solution to the crisis in Kenya. From an ideological stand point, ODM is the same as Narc, NAK and other right wing bandwagons without ideologies and which base themselves on tribalism. The agenda of these formations is to seize power in order to maintain the status quo.
We are aware that there are a handful of naïve and brainwashed Kenyans who still believe that Socialism cannot work in our country “because it collapsed in the former Soviet Union”. Our answer is that capitalism has been tried in Kenya for more than 40 years and what we are seeing is death from starvation, millions threatened with starvation, growing poverty among the population, mass unemployment especially among the youth, unmitigated corruption, tribalism in government, landlessness, retrenchment of poor workers, death out of treatable diseases like malaria and tens of other vices of capitalism that continue to devastate our country. There is more than enough proof that capitalism is not working and our appeal to serious Kenyans interested in changing the situation is that they examine and study the ideas of revolutionary socialism instead of consuming right wing anti-socialist propaganda.
Socialists have already seized power in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia, countries where workers and other oppressed layers have refused to buy the anti-socialist propaganda weaved through the capitalist media and other propaganda institutions. Within a very short period of time after seizing power, the government of President Hugo Chavez has seized control of the country’s oil wealth and the people of Venezuela (who have suffered exploitation for decades under greedy wealth grabbers) have began to benefit from the country’s oil wealth. In Kenya, revenues from tea, coffee, flowers, tourism etc are not being pumped back into social services to improve the lives of citizens but are being siphoned by local and international capitalists.
Since the days of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel arap Moi and now Mwai Kibaki, the bourgeoisie have failed to solve the question of landlessness in Kenya because they are the biggest land grabbers in the country. The Kibaki dictatorship had to sit on the Ndungu Land Report because it named the big sharks (including Kibaki) as key land grabbers. To date, the report remains locked in a safe with occasional leaks in the media.
The solution to landlessness in Kenya lies in nationalization of all grabbed land and re-distributing it to the landless – simple! Nationalization of land is a key Socialist measure in which the major losers are land grabbers and major winners are the millions of landless people. This is the sole reason why land grabbers in Kenya like Kibaki and the ruling class are against Socialist ideas being put forward by KESDEMO and other well known Kenyan Socialists like Onyango Oloo.
KESDEMO will continue to struggle for socialism in Kenya and to work towards the toppling of the capitalist system in our country because we are convinced that the system is the major problem. During 2006, the war between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots will, most likely, intensify and KESDEMO will be there on the side of Workers, peasants, students, the unemployed and all the oppressed people of Kenya. The struggle continues…
Martin Ngatia ngatia_martin@hotmail.com
Okoth Osewe: osewe@hotmail.com
KESDEMO Central Committee
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
KENYA SCANDINAVIA DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT (KESDEMO)
Kenya People's Democratic Movement (KEPEDEMO-Mapinduzi) Kenya Socialist Democratic Alliance (KSDA), Kenya Social Forum in Norway (KSF - Norway), Muungano Ya Akina Mama Scandinavia, Organization of Kenyans in Denmark (OKD) and Association of Kenyan Students in Finland (AKSIF). ALLIES supporting statement: Kenya Socialist Community in London and Kenya Democracy Project (KDP) – Scandinavia. Statement also available at: www.kenyasocialist.org