On July 7, 1990, African youth, workers and some politicians of Kenya rose up to challenge the regime of Daniel arap Moi with the demand for a multi-party democracy. Since that year, the masses in Kenya annually commemorate July 7 as Saba Saba Day to remind themselves of the need to continue fighting for democratic rights.
This year on the Saba Saba Day, the police responded to the demonstrators with brute force, resulting in the death of several people. The youth in Kenya refused to let the momentum built from last year’s mass mobilizations die out. By July 16, when this article was submitted, it was reported in other media that at least 16 protesters had died, with more than 400 wounded.
The protesting youth are now demanding that the incumbent president William Ruto leave office. This is the same Ruto who was purported by the bourgeois media and imperialism as the viable alternative as an outlier in the struggle between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga back in 2022.
Ruto was supposed to break the chain of betrayal by neocolonial politicians who claim to represent the people, when they in fact represent themselves. To the dismay of many, Ruto has proved himself to be no different.
In order for us to properly understand the betrayal by Ruto and those who came before him, we must reflect on the Kenyan Model, introduced by the British during the early periods of European colonialism in East Africa. The more accurate categorization of the Kenyan Model is neocolonialism, a term advanced by Kwame Nkrumah later in the 1960s, which saw the British selection of Jomo Kenyatta in order to neutralize and obliterate the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau).
Through the policy of neocolonialism, politicians in Kenya built constituencies within ethnic lines, effectively dividing African workers to pave their way to parliament and contest for the highest office of the country. In the struggle to advance the interests of the neocolonial compradors, fierce struggles erupted, culminating into the 2007-2008 bloodbath that saw about 1,500 die.
When William Ruto became president in 2022, many people felt that he was a breath of fresh air after decades of what they considered dynastic presidencies. The people felt that Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga—children of former elite politicians—were out of touch with the struggles of the “ordinary man and woman” of Kenya.
During British colonial rule in Kenya, Africans were routinely rounded up for being suspected Mau Mau members—the only force waging fierce resistance against colonial rule. PHOTO:
PUBLIC DOMAIN
They dubbed Ruto the “hustler” who made his way up from poverty through selling chickens like the working class does to survive. The assumption was that if Ruto knows poverty first-hand, then he will automatically respond to the needs and interests of the poor.
It was only African Internationalists who were able to see beyond the hype and desperation to break away from the so-called dynastic rule. We cautioned the “revolutionaries” in Kenya that transformation will take much more than replacing a dynastic petty bourgeois president with a hustler petty bourgeois politician.
William Ruto came to power as a petty bourgeois businessman, not the poor boy who sells chickens to survive. The masses needed to know what he stands for in order for us to give him our confidence. His policies, class interests and political track record should’ve informed us of the kind of presidency he would deliver to us.
Three years down the line, the people in Kenya are learning that being a “hustler” is actually not a positive character in politics. Hustlers are opportunists who stop at nothing to make a profit—even if it means selling their brother, or in this instance, their country.
The evidence of this is in how ever since Ruto got into office, the African masses in Kenya have witnessed billions of dollars continue to be swifted away from our homeland to the West via the parasitic multinational corporations and loans that the masses are forced to pay back–despite there being no evidence of any meaningful transformation in the lives of our people.
The revelation is that the Kenyan State continues to serve imperialist interests at the expense of the African masses in Kenya and abroad. It is no wonder that Kenyan officers have been deployed to police the people in Haiti under Washington’s instruction. The presence of Kenyan police in Haiti doesn’t help the African people there, and nor does it serve us in Kenya.
The recent protests in and around Nairobi are being mobilized with the demand for democracy. In the past, people assumed that being able to vote was sufficient to give a State a pass as being democratic.
However, the struggle of our young people in Kenya is proving that Africans are waking up to the African Internationalist understanding that in a colonial bourgeois society, democracy is only a form of the State. Just because we are able to vote doesn’t mean we are free from oppression and exploitation.
In the African People’s Socialist Party, we have long resolved that self-determination is the highest expression of democracy. This is what our people in Kenya, and across the world need—self-determination. We need to see to the liberation of our people, continent and productive forces in order to build a society that benefits us instead of the African petty bourgeois marionettes and their imperialist handlers. The African workers must have power in our own hands as African workers.
