Until Everyone Is Free

We need to think beyond just graft and theft. For all of the wastage and graft of MPs, for example, Parliament still only makes up less than 1% of Kenya's national budget. We need to think beyond individual vice—concepts like greed and corruption and dishonesty—and think towards larger structures, particularly production. Agricultural production, industrial production, infrastructure...

We were lucky to have Gussai Hamror Sheikheldin join us for the last teach-in. Towards the end of that discussion, Gussai looked at what's happening now in Kenya from a pan-African lens and helped us see what parallels were to be drawn between Kenya's experience and those of many other countries in Africa and elsewhere in the global south. We didn't have much time to go into the details of that in the last teach-in, which really focused on Sudan's revolutionary story, but Gussai was kind enough to come back for a solo feature, to talk about debt, taxation, developmental states—from a pan-African perspective.

Gussai H. Sheikheldin is a researcher and consultant whose work seeks to illuminate synergies between techno-science and institutions, to advance policies and solutions in sustainable design for socioeconomic systems and development governance. Based in East Africa and Sudan, most of his projects focus on African topics, from a pan-African perspective.

Staggering visions of unity from Kenya’s historic #RejectFinanceBill protests demonstrated a solidarity that many thought was impossible. However, now that the clear threat of a single bill has diffused, many feel we are in unprecedented, uncharted waters. Nothing could be further from the truth. In 2012-13, our Sudanese comrades realised that street demonstrations were the manifestation of people power, but only through mass organising could that power actually be wielded. From neighborhood resistance committees to informal unions, Sudanese have drawn upon African revolutionary traditions of popular democracy to innovate powerful forms of grassroots organisation—tactics we hope can expand the political imagination of those who have been invigorated and radicalised by the protests here in Kenya but ask, “What’s next?”

On 31 August 2024, we invited Rabab Elnaiem, Husam Mahjoub, and Gussai H. Sheikheldin to share insights from Sudan's grassroots organising.

Rabab Elnaiem is a Sudanese activist, labor organizer, and former spokesperson for the Sudanese Workers Alliance for the Restoration of Trade Unions (SWARTU) currently based in the United States. She is a co-founder of the Ta Marbuta podcast, a feminist, anti-capitalist podcast.

Husam Mahjoub is co-founder of Sudan Bukra, an independent nonprofit Sudanese TV channel launched in 2019 as a media voice for the revolution. Husam is a communications engineer, journalist, and host of a show in Sudan Bukra that critically examines Sudanese politics through interviews with various political actors, including many resistance committee members, trade union leaders/members, and progressive writers and activists.

Gussai H. Sheikheldin is a researcher and consultant whose work seeks to illuminate synergies between techno-science and institutions, to advance policies and solutions in sustainable design for socioeconomic systems and development governance. Based in East Africa and Sudan, most of his projects focus on African topics, from a pan-African perspective.

Other useful links:

https://hammerandhope.org/article/sudan-revolution

https://newpol.org/issue_post/a-revolutionary-way-of-doing-politics-is-taking-shape-in-sudan/

https://menasolidaritynetwork.com/2021/11/04/powering-the-uprising-sudans-resistance-committees/

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/interviews/magdi-el-gizouli/

https://roape.net/2024/01/10/exposing-the-murderers-the-uae-and-saudi-arabia-in-the-war-in-sudan/

Unmaking as Emancipation

Who really is a Luddite? Contrary to popular usage of the term, Luddites are not anti-technology; they are anti-exploitation.

In E4, we discussed the constant tug-of-war between labor and capital that pushes history forward. Capital, on its side, innovates to strive for more accumulation and profits, primarily by developing new technology to reduce labor costs. This is the situation skilled artisans in 18th century Europe found themselves in; after being forced into the wage economy by capitalism, the system continued reducing its use for them as it innovated technologies to reduce labor costs. The skilled artisans resisted, striking down the machines taking their livelihoods away. Labor organizing at the time was illegal, so workers had few legal means of protest.

Here in Kenya, we find a similar parallel in the unfolding of colonialism. Under it, our elders were forced into the wage economy through laws such as the Crown Land Ordinance that forced them out of the land they relied on to make a living and the imposition of monetary taxes that they had to work to pay for. In Kericho, for example, 90,000 acres were stolen from the Kipsigis and Talai and leased to tea-farming multinationals. Those who the land had been stolen from found themselves forced to work for their thieves.

Upon independence, the new neocolonial overseer class allowed the British multinationals farming tea on the land to continue working there, often at lower than market-rate land lease fees. The Kipsigis and Talai continued to work on the land that had been stolen from them as well; they had no access to the factors of production that they could use to remove themselves from this system. Then, as it happened to the artisans of the 1800s, their labor (& consequently livelihoods were continuously made redundant as these tea companies introduced machines to cut labor costs.

In E4, we discussed how states and corporations have laid out bureaucracies to rein in unions and drag out conciliatory procedures. The tea-pickers, through their union, Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union, after fighting for a whole 10 years in court with the mechanizing multinationals, lost their case in 2021. So, what did they do in the absence of their ability to undermine capital? They found another way to undo their oppression; by destroying the machines responsible for their lost livelihoods. Framing our discussion around these 2 points in history (the 18th-century Luddite movement and the 21st-century tea-pickers resistance) and making reference to the various ways amorphous groups of workers are fighting back against capital as discussed in E4, we put forth all this work as the work of unmaking. What are the different ways we unmake the oppressive structures governing our lives? Tune in for an exciting discussion.

What is imperialism, and how is the Kenyan state complicit in enabling it? Why, since Independence, has the Kenyan state been a willing imperialist stooge — in terms of military action, global finance, economic partners, trade deals, and more? Why do our rulers value the acceptance of the West more than that of their own people? What lessons can we learn from Palestinians, Sudanese, and others who have resisted imperialism at home?

On 11 July, our team and Qwani/Bunge la Mayut hosted a teach-in on Imperialism. It was called Beyond the Bill: Imperialism, Globalism, and the People's Resistance. Our panelists were Wacera Thande, Maureen Kasuku, and Booker Omole.

Keep learning, keep sharing, keep looking out for one another, and keep fighting. We are just beginning, and it has been beautiful.

Having established what happened to unions in Kenya and the role of capitalism in their weakening and eventual co-optation, we move on to imagining what unions can look like in today's conditions.

To begin, we highlight a concept rooted in historical recurrence, initially highlighted by Marx and Engels: dialectical materialism. At its core, dialectical materialism is about the constant tug-of-war between labor and capital. We situate the history of labor union activism in Kenya within this tug; careful not to regurgitate the oft-repeated myth that history simply repeats itself.

It is indeed true that there are recurrent themes within history but even as these themes repeat themselves, they usually unfold each time differently because both capital and labor are ever-evolving—moving unidirectionally and never backward as they try to outdo each other.

With this knowledge in mind, how then can we re-imagine unions in today's working conditions? What do unions look like outside of the factory floors they were built on? And, what forms of solidarity are being built by workers in spaces that do not allow for formal union organization? We try to answer these questions drawing from examples across the world and at home—from Starbucks Workers United, which is teaching us how to organize in the precarious employment conditions of the hospitality industry, to the Dhobi women of Mathare, who are coming together outside of formal unions in quasi-cooperatives to help each other meet needs not fulfilled by the state or their employers.

By doing this, we hope to "demystify" the history of the labor movement as it has unfolded in the country—to remind the working class that they exist within a long lineage of resistance by those who pulled the tug against capital here and worldwide. And in knowing that the fights of today are part of a long tradition of a battle between labor and capital and that we, workers, have turned the tides before by banding together, we hope listeners come out with a sense of revolutionary optimism that we can change our material conditions.

Having established what happened to unions in Kenya and the role of capitalism in their weakening and eventual co-optation, we move on to imagining what unions can look like in today's conditions.

To begin, we highlight a concept rooted in historical recurrence, initially highlighted by Marx and Engels: dialectical materialism. At its core, dialectical materialism is about the constant tug-of-war between labor and capital. We situate the history of labor union activism in Kenya within this tug; careful not to regurgitate the oft-repeated myth that history simply repeats itself.

It is indeed true that there are recurrent themes within history but even as these themes repeat themselves, they usually unfold each time differently because both capital and labor are ever-evolving—moving unidirectionally and never backward as they try to outdo each other.

With this in mind, how then can we re-imagine unions in today's working conditions? What do unions look like outside of the factory floors they were built on? And, what forms of solidarity are being built by workers in spaces that do not allow for formal union organization? We try to answer these questions drawing from examples across the world and at home—from Starbucks Workers United, which is teaching us how to organize in the precarious employment conditions of the hospitality industry, to the Dhobi women of Mathare, who are coming together outside of formal unions in quasi-cooperatives to help each other meet needs not fulfilled by the state or their employers.

By doing this, we hope to "demystify" the history of the labor movement as it has unfolded in the country—to remind the working class that they exist within a long lineage of resistance by those who pulled the tug against capital here and worldwide. And in knowing that the fights of today are part of a long tradition of a battle between labor and capital and that we, workers, have turned the tides before by banding together, we hope listeners come out with a sense of revolutionary optimism that we can change our material conditions.

In this episode, we discuss capitalism as a monster—specifically a vampire—that feeds off the surplus value of the working class’s labour. This is not a particularly new idea; Karl Marx, who remains to be one of the most influential thinkers of capitalism wrote in Capital Volume 1 that “Capital is dead labour, which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” Just as the vampire’s thirst for blood is insatiable, so is capital’s craving for more unpaid work.

We explore the ways this unfolds in Kenya, a country with a deep-seated capitalist ethos, where “hustler culture” reigns supreme. What is hustling, if not finding ways to exploit those beneath you? Is it really possible to pull yourself by the bootstraps? Interestingly, when this phrase first appeared in the 1800s, it was used to mean the act of doing something completely ludicrous and impossible. So then, how did we come to think of this as normal? Capital, like the vampire it is, both sucks life out of us and turns us into vampires ourselves. We get infected with its epistemologies and aspire to become good at the blood-sucking ourselves.

And like Dracula, who managed to fool those around him because they did not know he was a vampire, we are unable to fight capitalism because we don’t see it for what it is; a blood-draining, soul-crushing enterprise that leaves us unwell. Recognizing this vampire for what it is, what should we do? What is the antidote for capitalism in the way garlic is the antidote for vampires? Join us as we discuss this and more in this episode.

Learning about the ways of the Aztec today, we all pretty much agree that their ideas around human sacrifices are barbaric. That they have no place in our “modern” civilizations today.

But is this really the case?

In this episode, we explore the ways in which capitalism’s ways of knowing and doing (its epistemologies) perpetuate the same ideas of human sacrifice today. We start with the more direct examples of workers literally dying for profit—the construction workers who die building homes they cannot afford to live, and the many factory workers who die manufacturing products we can use (deaths we have just come to accept as inevitable or as “accidents”). Then, we move to the indirect examples of people lacking food and shelter because these basic needs have come to be understood as commodities those with capital need to make profit from, and not as just things people need to live. In this, we see how capitalism changes what we know to be true; that houses provide shelter (instead we think of houses as investments we are supposed to make profit from), that forests have ecological value (instead we think of more profitable ways to use of this land, whether by turning it into farms to clearing it to put buildings up on it) etc.

We stress how this not normal, exploring how many (non-western) communities in the world recognized the need for lettings things exists as… things. Like the Kikuyu people who despite having a clan-based/individual land ownership system let people farm, and even build on land they didn’t own to ensure everyone’s needs in the community were met. The Wendat who found the French society having many needy beggars against the backdrop of a glamourous nobility class barbaric.

Lastly, we highlight how people have always recognized the absurdity of this idea of the primacy of profit and meeting market needs over their own, like the Maragua women who rejected the idea of growing coffee to make the country foreign currency to pay off its debts while being unable to feed their own families. We hope that by bringing this knowledge to the forefront of people’s minds, especially a time when (in Kenya) we are again seeing market needs supersede the collective population needs most visibly with draft laws (Livestock Bill 2023, Animal Production Professionals and Technicians Bill 2023 etc.) undermining people’s ability to feed themselves tabled in parliament with the intention of forcing them to be dependent on capitalist agribusiness chains (resulting in more profit for them), we are all reminded that none of this is okay. That maybe, just maybe, we need an economic model built to fulfill our needs, instead of a cruel, barbaric system meant to make profits for a select few. And that we have models all throughout history to draw inspiration from as we take on this work!

We begin in Mombasa where, in 1947, workers staged a general strike. Over 10,000 people gathered in a field they called Kiwanja cha Maskini and demanded dignified living and working conditions from the colonial administration.

Today, the Mombasa port is being contested for privatisation. Dockworkers seem to have no power over their fate, no voice or choice beyond entreating politicians to act on their behalf. What happened? What happened to the militant, powerful unions of the pre-independence era? How did we get to today, where the image of "workers unions" in Kenya conjures images like that of COTU, where union leaders seem to be a part of the capitalist elite they were meant to oppose?

The wait is over! Season 2 is just around the corner. Our first episode drops this Friday. Subscribe on YouTube or find us anywhere you get podcasts.