Party Cadres, members and supporters,
According to the government statistics, Kenya has over 15 million
unemployed people out of a population of about 44 million. These are people who
are of working age, and out of school. The fact that this is government
statistics means that the situation is probably worse.
This means that Kenya has one of the highest unemployment rates on the
continent. This means that we actually have an unemployment crisis which is
worsening by the day.
Each year, half a million students graduate from high school, with most
pursuing courses that will prepare them for the “job market.” This is besides the over two hundred
thousand pupils who miss places in high schools, and therefore acquire some
vocational training, or go straight into the “job market.”
Everyone graduates from high school and post high school institutions with
high hopes, with many hosting graduation parties to mark their achievements.
They then immediately embark to looking for employment, from job searching
websites, newspaper vacancy advertisements, and job searching mobile phone platforms.
In the beginning, you selectively apply for all the jobs that you are
qualified for, and wait for the response.
Six months later, you learn not to expect even acknowledgment of receipt of
your application, and if you are lucky, you may be invited for an interview or
two.
You continue applying for jobs, and you now apply in all the available
places, dropping your CVs with your city relatives, your local Member of
Parliament and every other person that you consider well placed, and the wait
continues.
One year later, some frustration begins to creep in. Those in the rural
areas keep themselves busy by doing farm work, while those in the city idle in
the jobless corners, or idle in the house watching movies and series all day.
It is of course worse for those who live in the slums without access to
electricity – not to mention radio or television.
This frustration extends to your parents, given that they have invested a
lot in your education yet you are not finding any work opportunities. You are
tortured by living with the pain they feel for you. You also know that they make
all sorts efforts to get you a job but all in vein.
For those living with relatives in towns, tensions that threaten blood or
friend relations begin to rise, and arguments, mostly on trivial issues become
a common occurrence. Soon, there is a mutual feeling that you can’t both live
under the same roof, but ni lazima
utii, since it is much more difficult to search for a job from the
villages of Mukurwe-ini.
In the process, you begin applying for jobs that you are either
underqualified for, overqualified for or not qualified for at all. For example,
you have a diploma in Electrical Engineering, but you apply for a Veterinary
assistant job. Or you have a degree in Mathematics, but you apply to be a
watchman at a sugarcane farm. You basically apply for anything that comes your
way.
Occasionally, you get those one-week jobs that keep you going.
The frustrations keep on rising, and unfortunately, some sink into
alcoholism, depression and even some become suicidal.
Those who can acquire some capital start up some business venture, but as
research done by Comrade Mwandawiro Mghanga[1] shows, these
micro-small enterprises cannot even meet subsistence needs but have a very high
mortality rate, which means that you will probably find yourself back to square
one, sooner or later.
Those whose families can afford are taken back to school to further their
studies. That is why we have so many Kenyans going back to study MBA degrees,
not because they want to study it, but because they want to become more
‘Marketable.’
Others, in spite of the horror stories that we always hear, take the risk
and apply for jobs in some of the Middle Eastern countries (and we cannot
really blame them). Yet horror stories about Kenyan job seekers, particularly
young women being subjected to slavery in the Middle East Countries such as
South Arabia, are reported very often with the full knowledge of the Kenyan
Government!
You remain dependent at an age when you should be having dependents. That
is why many young people are still living with their parents, and the idea of
becoming parents scares them.
Woe unto you if you ever get to suffer from those chronic illnesses.
Woe unto you if the person that you are depending upon is sacked, dies, or
they just get tired of supporting you.
Woe unto you if you ever lost the few things that you own through burglary.
Woe unto you if you ever get wrongly arrested and you need that bail or
bond…………
Of course, there are some exceptions, there are those who know people in
the right places and get easily employed.
There are also those who are very lucky, and they apply for jobs and get
them. There are others who are also lucky and they start businesses which
succeed.
But we must refuse, to allow the future of the huge majority of Kenyans to
be dependent on who you know, or luck. Lives cannot be pegged on luck!
The state and the government of Kenya have the responsibility of ensuring
employment for all. The government must ensure that every woman and man is
living independently, decently and with dignity. Formal employment should be
the default option, while self-employment should be by choice, not by forced
circumstance.
In every electioneering period, leaders from the various rich people
parties in Kenya run around with the promise of employment being on top of
their agenda.
They think that the solution to unemployment is simplistic short term projects
like Kazi kwa Vijana and the Youth Fund, where they go ahead and
sink billions of Kenya shillings, and they then highlight one or two success
stories, just like Casinos and gamblers in general tell people,,,, not telling
them of the huge majority of those who lost their money in the gambling.
How does a whole government pride itself in reducing its people to paupers
and scavengers?
Incidentally, there are people who have been beaten by the system so much,
that they have resigned to the situation or have forgotten that they are actually
unemployed:
-If you are having an unpredictable job, of which you are not sure of
whether it will be there the following day, then you are unemployed.
-If you are a hawker in the streets, and you are always running away from
the authorities, you are unemployed.
-If you operate a small business that is unable to provide you with three
good meals a day, decent clothes, housing, medical services and other basic
needs, you are surely unemployed.
-If your response when you are asked what you do in life is “Nina-hustle tu,” then you are
unemployed (……….or maybe a thief)
Comrade Feroze Manji told me the other day that what we refer to as
informal sector in Kenya, is referred to as unemployment in Europe.
The unemployment question is fundamentally an ideological question.
Unemployment is as a direct result of Capitalism, we must understand this.
That is why all the current rich peoples’ parties in this country have no
idea on how to solve this problem. They have neither the will nor the ability
to do so. Their ideological bankruptcy leads them to develop fire fighting “solutions”
like Youth fund which only benefit the Banks that handle this money, and not
the 15 Youths per group who are awarded ksh50, 000.
The coalition in government and the coalition in opposition both embrace
neoliberalism as the driving idea for economic growth. They are all capitalists
who embrace trickle-down economics that embody the idea that the rich should
get richer, so that some few shillings may trickle down to the poor. The
reality is that nothing really trickles down, the rich get richer, while the
poor suffer more.
Immediately after the last elections, President Uhuru Kenyatta, in a
predictable neoliberal fashion said that “...It is not the role of the government to create employment. The role of
the government is to create conducive environment so that the private sector
may create employment for the masses!” and this is precisely where the
problem lies!
The position of SDP is that it is the government that should ensure the
well-being of the people, and that includes ensuring that the citizens are in
gainful employment. The argument that the government has no business engaging
in business or economy, and therefore creating employment, is an argument of
neoliberalism that is being implemented by the class of businesspersons based
on primitive accumulation and bureaucratic capitalism controlling political and
state power in Kenya today. We reject it. Otherwise what is the use of the
government for the majority of us?
Based on neoliberal ideology, the government (both the Executive and
Legislature) thinks that the private sector is the Alpha and Omega of
development….it is not!
There are three major weaknesses of private capital in this regard:
·
It is the biggest beneficiary to high unemployment
rates. The SDP manifesto, paraphrasing Karl Marx, states that capitalism
thrives in places where unemployment rates are high, so as to keep salaries
low,,,,,and also to keep the workers ‘disciplined.’ Unless there are militant
trade unions, it becomes very difficult for workers to demand for better pay or
better conditions, since for every one employee, there are hundreds others who
are unemployed and qualified for the same job.
·
Even if, in a hypothetical situation, private capital
was on a suicidal mission, and it wanted to employ everyone, it still doesn’t
have the capacity/enough resources to establish enough industries and jobs
opportunities to deal with the unemployment question.
·
Private capital is not loyal. For instance, if today,
Rwanda was to ban all trade union activities and promise slave labour for
international investors, then Kenyan capitalists would demand for similar
conditions locally, failure to which it would quickly relocate to Rwanda, hence
worsening the situation locally. It is important to note here that whereas
private capital respects no boundaries, states always ensure that workers are
stopped by those boundaries.
It is this ideological bankruptcy that led most African leaders, with their
developmental states, to accept IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programmes
(SAPs) which destroyed the few industries that some countries on the continent had
immediately after the end of classical colonialism.
For example, immediately after independence, many industries were
established in Kenya that were geared towards the development and employment
needs of the country. There were textile industries in Nairobi, Thika, Nanyuki,
Kisumu and Eldoret that not only produced clothes for local needs and for
export using cotton produced by Kenyan farmers but also produced thousands of
jobs both directly and indirectly. There were also numerous import substitution
industries in Mombasa, Nairobi and other Kenyan towns that created jobs,
expanded the towns and triggered related economic activities that created more
jobs. Besides providing employment in the civil service, the government also
established numerous parastatals related to agriculture, trade, tourism, etc.
that provide many jobs to Kenyans. Extension services in education, health,
agriculture, industrial training, literacy, forestry, water, etc. also provided
employment for Kenyans. Cooperative societies related to coffee, tea, cotton,
pyrethrum, milk, horticulture and meat production and marketing created
thousands of jobs for Kenyans in the rural and urban areas. During this time
that lasted up to the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the
problem of unemployment as we know it today was not there. Many Kenyans,
including young persons, had a predictable immediate and present life.
All this was destroyed by neoliberalism that imposed the structural adjustment
programs (SAPs) through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. This
was done with the connivance of the successive Kenyan governments led by
corrupt, greedy and unpatriotic elites that are in government for the main
purpose of stealing and protecting the stolen loot for themselves and their
families.
SAPs demanded that the government abdicate its role of intervening in the
economy on behalf of all citizens by not participating directly in ownership,
production and distribution. This led to the privatisation of state parastatals
that destroyed thousands of existing jobs. Privatisation which is tantamount to
the robbery of the property of all Kenyans is still continuing under the
present government. Tens of thousands of Kenyans have lost their jobs through
retrenchments in the civil service that includes the destruction of extension
services. Through economic liberalisation, the local industry that was
developing has also been destroyed together with the jobs it contained, leading
to the present economic situation of import dependency described by comrade
Mwandawiro Mghanga as mtumbaism. The present ruling elite that is only
concerned about using its position to enhance its business and money-minting
interests continues to destroy cooperative societies and movements in the country
and thus also increasing unemployment.
Through this state of affairs the government has ran away from its
responsibility, by claiming that people go to school so that they can become
employers, and not employees.
Ever since we were kids, we were told to study hard so that we could get
good jobs …then after 16 years of working hard in school, the fellow comes and
tells you to employ yourself! Anybody who says that to you is a conman who
should be in jail! S/he should not be a highly paid employee of government!
If we, for arguments sake, accept this change of reasoning, and somehow we
all employ ourselves, who would teach in the schools? Who would treat in the
hospitals? Wouldn’t all nurses and doctors have their own separate and unworkable
clinics where they are self-employed? You’d have to separately pay at least 10
people so as to have a specialised medical operation for instance! Or you’d
have to take your kid to seven different teachers so as to get wholesome
learning!
Whenever this government is challenged, it always responds not by offering
solutions, but by returning the challenge back to you, is as if they didn’t
know what they were doing when they were asking for votes.
We all know that SDP will one day form a Socialist government, which will
establish a Socialist State, and eventually, the Socialist state would be
replaced by communism.
As I said before, unemployment is essentially a problem created by
capitalism, and a problem that sustains capitalism.
Unfortunately, when this ‘reserve army’ of unemployed workers reaches high
numbers, social order is destroyed. Crimes rates reach an all-time high,
violence in marriages increase, the number of homeless people increases and all
these other ills that we are all familiar about happen. Conditions for the
replacement of this capitalist system are thus created, and only an organised
vanguard Socialist Party, can lead the masses to the alternative: Socialism.
Under capitalism (which
is the current way that the economy in Kenya and across the world is run), the role of
production is the maximisation of profit. Under Socialism, production is
planned to meet the needs of the masses and the country.
Under Capitalism, technology replaces workers (and that is why many workers
are opposed to technology, since
the bosses use new technology to reduce employment and make work more boring.)
Under Socialism, technology means more family/education/recreation time for
workers.
An SDP government would, in the medium term, build the economy with a very
strong State sector, and also through some cooperative and some private sector.
The state would make serious production investments in agriculture, heavy
industry and light industry, with a priority of meeting the needs of the
masses.
For example, clothes are a basic need. Most of the clothes that we wear are
either second hand clothes from Europe, or brand new clothes from Europe and
Asia. This means that it is the European and the Asian farmers and industrial
workers that benefit from the clothes that we wear.
If all Kenyans wore clothes that were made in Kenya, the cotton farmers
would benefit, the researchers in cotton development would find work, the
scientists in fertilizer manufacturing would find work, transporters of
harvested cotton, yarn, cloth and clothes would find work, many workers would
be employed in the ginning, spinning, weaving, and cloth making industries as
they used to. The seller at Mr. Price
and Gikomba would still be in
employment, selling the final product. Engineers would be involved in
manufacture of the machinery and building of these industries. Mechanics would
be employed in maintenance. All these industries would employ accountants and
many other supporting workers. These workers will need to eat, meaning that
more farmers will be engaged in food production, and cooks will be employed in
preparing the food. The workers who indulge over the weekends will have money
to spend, meaning that they will drink more hence initiating more industry. The
bankers too will benefit…etc etc
This is just one example of how dressing the people (in just cotton, not
even wool & silk) would ignite the economy.
Another example is the state ensuring proper housing of the workers. The
economic expansion that would be created by this is unimaginable. Right from
the cement and stone quarries, to the iron mines and glass industry, to the
construction workers, to the transporters and so on and so forth, including the
administration and maintenance of the houses.
Under an SDP government, the dismantling of the neo-colonial nature of the
state would begin, by ensuring total independence of the country in all aspects
from security to trade. Before flowers are exported to Europe, Kenya must be
self-sufficient in food. Why should we be importing all military clothes,
vehicles and weapons, 50 years after independence? We must know that outsiders
will never develop our continent for us! This means we have to develop and
implement policies of nurturing and protecting local agriculture, industry,
trade and culture.
Neo-liberalism would be rolled back immediately, by nationalising and
deliberately socialising what was earlier privatised or earned from the gains
of privatisation. This would translate to more job opportunities to the Kenyan
masses.
With scientific economic planning for agricultural and industrial
production with an intention of meeting local needs in a massively
underdevelopment country like ours means that we would have to import extra
labour to get to the level of development that a Socialist State envisions.
Only a Socialist led government can ultimately solve the unemployment
problem in this country. This will happen when the Socialist Party captures
state power. Until then,
we need to campaign to ensure that the government creates more decent, secure
and well paid jobs. We need to campaign
with the trade unions to stop retrenchment. In the private sector, we need to
demand that the government takes over companies that are reducing
employment. We need to demand that the
government creates more jobs, for teachers, nurses, textile workers etc.
If the mass
of people were provide with their basic needs, then unemployment would be
reduced as production would be for need and not for the profit of the few.
In the meantime, we ask all Kenyans, employed or unemployed, in college or
graduated, educated or not, to visit the SDP website (www.sdpkenya.org)and the
SDP Facebook page, and sign the petition to the Government, demanding for a
detailed plan of how they are planning to solve the unemployment question. We
also ask all Kenyan of goodwill to join SDP, and support the Party as it
mobilises everyone else in this campaign, and in the struggle for Socialism.
Viva SDP Viva!
Benedict
WACHIRA
Secretary
General
Social Democratic Party of Kenya
01 February 2015
[1] Read Mghanga, Mwandawiro, “Baseline Research on
Trade in Kenya” (Southern and East African Trade Information and Negotiation
Institute (SEATINI KENYA), Nairobi, 2009. (39 pages)
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