Kenyan
elections serve to maintain status quo:
Moi’s KANU Legacy massively rejected
by Nzela Kinshasa
The December 27, 2002 elections
in Kenya, won by Mwai Kibaki, the leader of the National Alliance Rainbow
Coalition (NARC) ended the 24 years of tyrannical and corrupt rule of
Arap Moi’s Kenyan African National Union (KANU).
Despite Moi’s monopoly
access to the State media and other means of communication, intimidation
and brutalization of his opponent’s supporters, the December election
results showed the profound rejection of the KANU rule, by our people
in Kenya.
KANU’s presidential candidate,
Uhuru Kenyatta, who is also the son of Jomo Kenyatta, the first neo-colonial
ruler of Kenya, polled 1.7 million votes (31percent) against over 3.5
million votes (64 percent) for the NARC candidate, Mwai Kibaki.
NARC leadership is made of
"former members of KANU." Mwai Kibaki was a vice president under
Moi’s regime for ten years, before defecting to the opposition. On
October 14, the Rainbow Alliance (a faction in KANU, led by the party
Secretary General Raila Odinga, Vice President Saitoti and Chairman Kalonzo
Musoka), after talks with opposition political parties, resigned from
KANU and took over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), an existing minor
party.
LDP then joined the opposition
alliance, the National Alliance (Party) of Kenya (NAK), which is comprised
of about 13 political parties and two pressure groups. The two formed
a strong opposition, a super alliance, with a view to fielding one presidential
candidate against President Moi’s choice, Uhuru Kenyatta. This super
alliance came to be known as the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition.
It is clear that NARC was created
to secure the future of one sector of the African petty bourgeoisie, who
could no longer see a future inside KANU or under KANU’s rule. A
series of U.S. and European-sponsored polls predicting victory for the
opposition fuelled the defection of some of KANU’s leaders to the
opposition. Then Moi’s decision to impose Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor
offered an excuse to some of KANU’s leaders to join the opposition
in order to extend or rescue their political careers.
Kibaki’s new government
pledges loyalty to the white imperialist ruler’s programs of domination
of Kenya.
Kibaki is no different from
Moi. They both represent the same genocidal program that keeps Kenya under
the grip of white imperialism, through the IMF, World Bank, multinational
corporations and other economic parasitic institutions that loot our land.
In fact, Raila Odinga, a leading
member of NARC and Kibaki’s government, stated clearly that the NARC
government would continue the privatization of State enterprises. Kibaki
himself said that his government was interested in working with the IMF
and the World Bank. He appealed to the two imperialist institutions to
resume aid to Kenya.
The socio-economic conditions
of the people will continue to worsen. Arap Moi, the outgoing tyrant,
said in August 2000 that "the conditions imposed by the IMF and World
Bank for their new aid programme to Kenya are too harsh." Kibaki’s
regime can only mean more hell for the masses of Africans in Kenya.
According to the same Kenyan
government statistics, published in 2000, an estimated 13.4 million Kenyans,
just over half of the population, lived below the total poverty line in
1997. This means that half of the population is unable to consume as required.
In relation to health, annual
spending per capita declined from U.S. $9.82 in 1980/81 to about U.S.
$6.2 in 1996. The ratio of doctors to patients dropped from one for every
5,600 people in 1994 to one for every 6,800 people in 1996. Today the
State cannot provide 50 percent of the total recurrent health expenditure.
Forty percent of the rural population has no access to health services.
Fifty percent of the pupils drop out in standard seven because they cannot
pay school fees.
Struggle for democracy is
a struggle of the African working class revolutionary party to take power
away from the traitorous African petty bourgeoisie
We do not want to hear excuses from anyone. The petty bourgeoisie knows
what they are doing. NARC and KANU are two sides of the same coin. They
represent the African petty bourgeois class, whose existence depends on
their ability to secure foreign imperialist interests in Africa.
Elections are held to decide
what faction will control the neo-colonial State machine, which is used
to protect and cover up all the economic and political crimes committed
against African revolutionaries, patriots and the masses of impoverished
Africans.
KANU, under Moi and Kenyatta
before him, used political violence in the form of assassinations and
the imprisonment of its opponents as a primary form of settling their
differences. Imperialist media have used this December election as a concrete
example of democracy in Kenya.
The African People’s Socialist
Party (APSP) believes that self-determination is the highest form of democracy.
This implies that Kenya be free from direct and indirect white imperialist
control. A struggle for democracy is a struggle for the rise to power
by the African working class in alliance with the peasantry. It is a struggle
where all African patriots achieve unity under the leadership of the African
working class.
Today, the masses are disorganized,
demoralized or locked in tribal politics that are used by all factions
of the petty bourgeoisie to obtain votes purely based on ethnic affiliation.
The struggle for democracy
is the struggle to rebuild the independent anti-colonial movement and
complete our Mau Mau revolutionary struggle from the `60s. It is a struggle
to take power away from the African petty bourgeoisie and put it in the
hands of the African working class. It is a struggle to transform Kenya
into a conscious front of the international African revolution. It is
a struggle to end indirect white rule in Kenya.
We are calling on all Kenyan
revolutionaries and patriots to join the building of the African Socialist
International, the party of the African working class that will fight
in Kenya for land reform that will give the land to the peasants and put
the workers in power.
Inthaka and Wiyathi!
(Land and Freedom!)
A Mau Mau slogan, in the Kikuyu
language, used during the 1950s and `60s in the struggle against British
imperialism in Kenya.
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