Capitalist Crisis Intensifies Across Africa
Saturday, March 11, 2017 at 9:04AM
Challenge_DesafĂ­o

EAST AFRICA, March 8—In Kenya, a doctor’s strike resulted from the government’s failure to implement a deal signed in 2013 which called for a 300 percent salary increase, a lower patient doctor ratio (which is currently 1 doctor to 16,000 people) and improved medical equipment.
The doctors formed a social media hashtag (#lipa kama tenda), which means the state should pay them as much as they pay people who have government tenders (contracts).
These conditions have negatively impacted life for working people in Kenya.  These same conditions led to doctors leaving the country to work in Malawi, Ethiopia, and Zambia. That and striking were the only ways to fight back against the government’s greed and strangle-hold on the doctors’ salaries.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in East Africa supports the strike as the main weapon that could dismantle the political machinery and create the potential for revolution. PLP is asking for workers throughout the world to support the strike in solidarity, as similar conditions exist everywhere.  While the strike is purely “reformist,” PLP is also calling to change the whole system to one that is ruled by the working class, communism.
Unemployment in East Africa 
Over the last few years, the Tanzanian government has employed fewer professionals in the service sector causing the ratio between teachers and students, doctors and patients to worsen. While the government has been complaining about the shortage of science and math teachers, within the same period, the colleges and universities have graduated many teachers and doctors but the government has failed to hire them. 
In other fields, like Human Resource Management, Sociology, Law, and IT, graduates also have not been hired since 2007. The government leaders hire their relatives, some of whom are unqualified, as well as the relatives of former government officials. The root of the problem is capitalism, causing mass unemployment and all these horrible services for workers and their families. Our call is for the worldwide working class to fight back against capitalism through waging a PLP led revolution. 
Mushrooming Fascism Across Africa
Since the early 1960s, some rulers have refused to step down. For example, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Yuweri Kagat Museveni of Uganda, Joseph Kabila of Congo, and Pierre Nkurusinza of Burundi, whose term was supposed to end according to the constitution, are a few famous examples.
Gambian president Yahya Jammeh outright rejected the election results of the victory of Adam Barrow, who represented seven opposition parties.
Magafuli, the fifth and newest president in Tanzania, is from the same party that’s been ruling since independence in 1961—the CCM, or Chama Cha Mazindupi, meaning “Party of the Revolution.” The new government is ruling with a “zero tolerance” policy and is ignoring the constitution. He and his subordinates, the regional and district commissioners, and those in charge of the criminal justice system, rule with total impunity.
Magafuli does not observe or exercise the “rule of law” he claims to uphold.  All decisions are now made by the executive branch of government, disempowering the legislative and judicial branches that are supposed to keep the executive in check. The police and intelligence and service (TISS) are increasingly used to silence all opposition by deporting, jailing, and assassinating anyone who openly opposes the government. 
On December 27, 2016, Alfan Lihuni, ITV journalist, was arrested because of a report he published about a food and water crisis in Meruland. Lema, a Member of Parliament from the northern region of Arusha, is in prison for the second month for interfering with the court proceedings of the Arusha Regional Commissioner, Mrisho Gambo.  This was done as a way to silence all opposition in Arusha, which is home to an important regional city, also named Arusha. 
In eastern Tanzania, seven people were found dead around the Wami River, with their bodies found with wounds caused by sharp objects. After the national election of 2015, the dead body of Alphonce Mawazo, Regional Chairman of the opposition Chadema Party, was found around the bushes near the main road.  It’s widely believed that these murders intentionally caused by government officials.  Police and gangs are known in the area for executing such attacks in an effort to terrorize people.
PLP in East Africa calls on working people to join in solidarity to fight back against fascism and fight for communism!  It is the only solution for restoring human integrity, dignity, equality and a happy life in East Africa and worldwide.

Article originally appeared on The Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party (http://www.plparchive.org/).
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