Unions call for end to IMF talks
Harry Sloan in Nairobi
TRADE UNION leaders in Kenya have called on their government to break off any further talks with the IMF and World Bank over the resumption of aid payments.
Their statement came at the start of a 2-day seminar on Structural Adjustment Programmes which began in Nairobi on April 9, attended by over 60 unions and representatives of the IMF, World Bank, Kenyan employers and the government.
Francis Atwoli, General Secretary of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions dismissed the talks– which have dragged on for over 10 years – as a waste of time, and a diversion from policies to raise additional resources within Kenya itself. "Our finance ministers have been to and from Washington and nothing has been forthcoming," he said.
Kenya has received just $44m from a $250m aid scheme which was agreed in 2000, but suspended soon afterwards after the Kenyan government failed to act as required by the IMF to rein in corruption. An IMF team was due to arrive in Kenya later in April to review progress, but Finance Minister Chris Obure was less than hopeful it would produce any swift result.
Other unions present at the seminar included the embattled Kenyan National Union of Teachers, which is threatening strike action from the end of April unless the government pays a substantial increase agreed in a 4-phase deal back in 1997.
Kenya’s public sector workers have been feeling the brunt of government austerity measures as they grapple with a projected budget deficit this year. Nurses working in community and primary care services had also threatened strike action over pay and allowances, only to delay under pressure from government ministers pleading that the coffers are empty – and threatening to sack strikers. Rail workers recently marched on the Nation newspaper offices outside Nairobi, demanding payment of large sums in back wages.
Air traffic controllers who went further and staged strike actions and protests have faced mass sackings, arrests and police brutality – with retired staff brought back to scab on the dispute and keep services running.
The government has even managed to antagonise judges, running up pay arrears of £1.5m.
Underlying these tensions is the financial plight of a government which faces a £320m budget deficit, but is more than ever reluctant to increase taxes in what is a pre-election period.
President Moi, the country’s second President since independence in 1963, is in the final year of his second term, and must make way for a new President by early in 2003. However last-minute talks about constitutional reforms and new drafts of anti-corruption legislation are now not enough to divert the anger of increasing sections of workers who are struggling to make ends meet.
Moi will hand over a country with foreign debts of $6.2 billion and a rapidly growing but increasingly impoverished population. Latest government figures show 56% of Kenya’s 30 million people living below the official poverty line of just $1 (78 Kenyan shillings) a day – up from 52% in 2000.
Estimates of unemployment are as high as 70%. 80% of the labour force is employed in agriculture, many of them in small-scale subsistence plots: GNP per head averaged just $330 per year in 1998, with a total GDP of just $45.6 billion in 2000.
The small section of the labour force in formal employment produces a small tax base, and government revenues of just $2.9 billion a year. A large chunk of this is allocated to a void entitled "the office of the President", while the infrastructure of the country – roads, railways, electric power, telecommunications, etc are in dire need of investment.
Health services and education are in general only available to those able to pay substantial charges, though the government has been praised by the World Bank for spending 40% of its revenue on education.
Supplies of clean running water are available only for a minority, while bottled water sells in supermarkets at a price higher than petrol. Sanitation is therefore also a problem, especially in the slums around Nairobi and other shanty towns, with newspapers discussing the problem of "flying toilets" – polythene bags filled with shit – thrown into the air by slum residents, to get rid of it – at someone else’s expense.
Additional health hazards include infectious diseases, including a new rise in malaria, typhoid and polio, as well as HIV/AIDS. Immunisation campaigns depend upon aid programmes from external donors, who appear satisfied to have reached around 70% of the population, though this clearly leaves some of the most vulnerable 30% without even this basic level of protection.
The World Health Organisation has calculated that a basic provision of primary health care (GPs, nurses, immunisation and local clinics) can be sustained in developing countries for $8 per person per year: that alone would be the equivalent of nearly 10% of Kenya’s total tax revenue.
The interruption of the aid programme has run alongside a series of calamities including a prolonged drought in 2000, an epidemic spread of HIV/AIDS, and more recently a 30% reduction in foreign tourists visiting the country’s national parks since the September 11 events. Kenya imports all its oil – and world prices are being forced up by the US war drive against Iraq.
The country desperately needs radical change, but faces a continuity of increasingly conservative rule by one of Africa’s tamest "nationalist" parties.
Moi will step aside for a new president, but will retain a controlling position as chair of the ruling New KANU (Kenyan African National Union) party, which recently consolidated its electoral position by a merger with the one-time opposition National Development Party (NDP).
All of the leading contenders to take over Moi’s Presidential duties are his political creatures, not least Uhuru Kenyatta, son of the iconic leader of the independence struggle, whom Moi has shrewdly promoted to one of four vice presidents of the new party, and appointed as minister for Local Government.
Not that there is any glimmer of radicalism left in a party that emerged from the victorious Mau Mau liberation struggle. KANU’s uninterrupted control of the government over almost 40 years has created opportunities for many of its leading lights – including Kenyatta – to build up lucrative business interests which consolidate them as the conservative political establishment within Kenya, and tie them in strongly with the interests of multinationals and big banks on a global level. 40 years of patronage and favours have also created a web of influence corruption and privilege which the ruling party is keen to retain, no matter what the cost may be in IMF loans or aid.
Even among the opposition parties there is little on offer to address the needs of the poorest and most desperate sections of the population.
Just as KANU has retained power through a deft process of welding together alliances guaranteeing support in the key tribal areas, the opposition has guaranteed failure by its fragmentation into a series of splinter groups reflecting different local and tribal interests, including no less than three parties sharing the title Forum for the Restoration of Democracy.
However the run-up to these elections may see something new, with the launch of a new National Alliance for Change, linking three opposition parties around a reformist programme promising a rather confusing combination of tax cuts and job creation, increased spending on schools and health care, cheaper electricity, a crackdown on corruption, and help for Kenya’s struggling farmers.
The Alliance argues for measures to bring more workers into formal employment, thus increasing the tax base and creating scope for additional government spending.
According to Alliance leader Joe Donde their plans include the establishment of car-assembly and bicycle manufacture in Kenya to reduce the costs of imports.
Donde argues that by reducing costs of electricity, more Kenyans will be persuaded to use it, thus increasing revenues. Plans also include borrowing on the money markets to finance a new programme of low-cost housing.
Asked how the Alliance would relate to the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF and World Bank), Donde appeared even more radical:
"We will have to forget them for some time as I think they have no interest in the development of African countries. Even at the conference I attended in Cape Town, it became quite clear that countries which have embraced Bretton Woods, have had their economies collapse.
"Historically all the countries that refused to deal with Bretton Woods including China, have succeeded. Wherever you have seen these two institutions, they have increasingly served the interests of the capitalist West.
"If I were in charge of making decisions as to that, we would recognise their presence, but we would not deal with them that way. Let us manage our country first as we are capable of managing our finances and then think about them later."
This brave talk is reminiscent of the "leftism" of Lib Dem leaders in this country, safe in the knowledge that they will not be required to put their promises into action. The National Alliance itself has not yet even managed to agree a single candidate to challenge KANU, without which it cannot hope to make an impact.
But in the absence even of echoes of the aspirations for ‘African Socialism’ which used to be touted in the 1970s by Kenyan politicians such as Tom Mboya, Donde does appear to be the only political leader of any substantial opposition party prepared even to pretend to challenge the dominance of the global financial institutions.
However with nine months or more to go before the election, and the government increasingly alienating public sector and other workers, it is possible that the Alliance could strike a chord with a section of the electorate – who are being offered little more than a flying toilet, and the promise of more of the same, by the ruling party.