Kenya Teachers’ Strike: Struggle Has No Borders

Students and teachers in Kenya are squarely facing the crises of global capitalism and U.S. imperialism. In September, at the same time as the teachers’ strike in Seattle, public educators across Kenya waged a five-week strike against the national Teachers Service Commission (TSC). The strike was launched by the two national teachers’ unions in response to the government’s failure to follow through on promised pay increases of 50 to 60 percent, as ordered by Kenya’s Supreme Court. According to the Nairobi-based Daily Nation, schools were “paralyzed” in most of the country as striking teachers “stormed” schools where teachers had scabbed (9/8/15). University students supported the strike, and the striking public school teachers built solidarity with non-unionized private school teachers.
Kenya’s capitalist bosses are simultaneously flirting with two imperialist powers, the U.S. and rising China, with workers and students caught in between. Weeks before the teachers’ strikes, in an attempt to ward off Kenya’s growing alliance with Chinese imperialism, President Barack Obama signed $1 billion in trade, oil pipeline and technology deals in Nairobi. As the New York Times noted (7/24/15), trade with China has blossomed to $222 billion, three times the country’s business with the U.S. Meanwhile, China and Kenya are jointly funding a new East Africa railway network to connect Kenya with Chinese interests in South Sudan, Uganda and elsewhere.
As the Daily Nation noted, however: “Billions of shillings in terms of teachers’ salaries, students’ school fees, et cetera... were put on hold...You cannot build a new railway line worth more than Sh300 billion [Kenyan shillings, equivalent to about $3 billion U.S.] and fail to raise a comparatively paltry Sh16 billion to pay teachers” (10/11/15).
Teachers in both the U.S. and Kenya have a world to win if they can succeed in uniting their common struggle against capitalism with workers throughout the world. The education struggle knows no borders, and neither does the international revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party! As we fight for education for our youth, our task ahead is to sharpen the militancy of our struggle here and keep connecting our struggle to our class sisters and brothers around the world. We fight for a communist world, where all workers can fulfill their maximum potential after money and borders are smashed.
CHALLENGE readers should share this article with other teachers and students, raise this struggle in their parent-teacher associations and unions, and join PLP to build a movement to fight back!