East Africa: Students, Workers Fight vs. Racism and Sexism

EAST AFRICA — Due to capitalism, the majority of students here regularly miss lunch or dinner, receive poor quality of food and healthcare, substandard accommodations, and limited access to electricity and water. Likewise, the capitalist curriculum fails the new generations’ aspirations and potential. This is naked capitalism. However, from April through October 2014, students at a Teachers’ College have been fighting back against racist theft and utter disregard of students. We have also been fighting back against the sexist denial of education to girls in a rural town.
In June, 2014, these student-teachers left for their three-week practicum without the daily allowance that pays for accommodations and meals that is their due. The 876 student-teachers managed to survive for 21 days, living in hardship, especially during the evening hours after they returned from school. When they returned to the Teachers’ College, the cruel principal told them to prepare for the college closure without giving them their allowances retroactively or providing any explanation for the administration’s theft. This kind of criminality by the bosses in schools, colleges, and universities has been a common and legal practice.
Student Strike
A PLP contingent acted as a catalyst for action, first by sharing their views with fellow students, and student governments. These meetings resulted in a united strike where students rallied with posters that read, “We want our Money”  and “Shukana: A Figurehead” (attacking the specific role of certain administrators). They also staged a hunger strike. They not only won their demand but they spread the struggle to other colleges that also have a history of criminal administrators. Students refused to accept these racist attacks on education, where the bosses expect to get away with theft from Black students.
As students were preparing to go back to school after holiday, they were met with another attack. In the final days before college opened on July 11, a minister announced an increase of college fees of 400,000 shillings ($218) — a 200 percent increase! (The average family of seven lives on $1 per day.) This is like giving a two-year-old baby a 20-kilogram bag of maize to carry. This is an impossible task, as majority of the students come from the working class. It is true that education is supposed to benefit workers’ lives and the whole community. Under capitalism, schools are a way for the bosses to make profit off workers, and teach pro-capitalist ideas to those students who can afford school. Students responded by demanding a meeting with the administration, and they conducted strikes on several campuses. The administration ended up accepting student demands to remove the increase in fees!
Next, on October 14, the students discovered that the Secretary, Vice President, and Dean of Students had stolen and spent the $670,000 Condolence Fund that is created from a 500-shilling-per-month donation from each student. The purpose of the fund is to help students who need to go home during the semester for funerals or other family crises. The theft was discovered when three students requested support to attend funerals of their relatives. The administration has no shame! Students demanded that the money be returned. This led to a serious fight between the students against the government and the college administration.
The PLP comrades from the Teacher’s College will continue to build unity between workers and students among colleges here and worldwide to fight against capitalism’s criminal education system. In the coming months, we need to find ways to deepen the political consciousness of the masses of students, so we can sustain and intensify the struggle.
The capitalist government oppresses the working class daily by taxing its people heavily while refusing to provide the services promised. Now the living conditions for the workers are as bad as they were during colonialism. We call for unity of every tribe, sex, age group, schooled and unschooled, rural and urban workers alike to bring down the bosses and pave the way for working-class rule. Our voice is the voice of the exploited and oppressed class of the world that will one day destroy capitalism. Our organizing today is digging graves for the bosses’ burial tomorrow.

ORGANIZE AGAINST SEXISM

PLP members in a rural secondary school here in East Africa are struggling with parents against the practice of taking their girls out of school to marry them off for the bride price, which is paid to the bride’s parents by the groom’s family. This major problem has its roots in poverty, sexism, and class society. Many of the young girls who are supposed to be in school are forced by their parents to stop studying and get married. In 2013, this contributed to 40 percent of the students here leaving school because of their parents’ decision.  These traditional values keep the working class thwarted by illiteracy.  
PLP teachers and friends organized meetings with parents about the importance of education for girls. With a bride price, the girls were a commodity to be bought and sold. Under capitalism, everyone’s value is turned into commodity. We must fight capitalism because it is the source of all exploitation in the society. Although some parents are still reluctant, most of the parents and the masses in the district became aware of how education is crucial. After five months, the number of students dropping out of school in this district was reduced.
Child brides are an outcome of a system based on capital. When workers’ livelihood is based on money, families are forced to sell their daughters, as property, as an income to allow the family to live another day. The working class needs more than a world that values girls and boys as equal. We need to abolish the source of inequality: the wage system. In that sense, the emancipation of women is intrinsically tied to the emancipation of the working class.
When these girls are sent to school instead of sold as domestic slaves, what is the purpose of their education? With communist teachers, students can also receive a political education. They can begin to understand why they are poor when they live in a country rich in resources, and why there are poor and rich countries in the world. These girls can grow to become fierce women fighters against capitalism. Teachers, students, and parents can work towards a vision of a communist society where human life is priceless, where women and men are equal.