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Economic inequality- The class war
Related to country: Kenya

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Economic inequality: The looming class war.

By Bernard Muhia

The French riots of 2007, which were a horrific representation of a class war, are probably where Kenya is headed. According to Dr. Sobbie Mulindi, who studied and lived in France for 15 years and is now a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, this country is on the brink of a class conflict that will surpass the post-election violence. “The next conflict is going to be between those who have and those who have not”. Says Dr Mulindi.

Kenya is ranked among the countries with the widest chasm between the rich and the poor. On top of that, Kenyans are among the highest taxed populations on the continent and, as a result of the post-election violence, Kenya now has the second highest cost of living on the continent after Zimbabwe. It has become expensive to be proud of being Kenyan.

A class war is a friction between various groups or clusters in the class structure. There are three main classes; the upper (rich) class, the middle class (non-manual labourers), and the working class (manual labourers). A fourth class of the unemployed has developed over the decades, the underclass. Most of the youths in Kenya fall in this class which apparently has the majority compared to the first three classes. This is the class of the ‘have nots’!

With the youth constituting 60% of the country’s population, it is a cause for alarm that majority of them are in the underclass in the backdrop of the high cost of living. At some point, something’s got to give and when it does, it’s going to be ugly. This group feels left out and is a disgruntled lot. The creation of the Ministry of Youth was a great leap in the right direction and substantive ground has been covered since, but that barely scratches the surface. “We have come up with so many sound policies regarding the youth and their welfare, but the problem has always been funding, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating them”. Says Dr. Mulindi. In fact, we have such excellent policy documents that they are edited and used by other countries while Kenyans continue to wallow in poverty and disease. Kenyans do not listen to professionals, nor do they use their research. We should move away from relying on politicians, who have vested interests, for direction.

Dr. Mulindi who is also the national consultant on the UN-HABITAT backed National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign says that the lack of employment and the feeling of despair is what push the youth to join militias which tend to provide a sense of direction and belonging. In his song ‘mama’, the late American rapper Tupac Shakur expresses his choice to join street gangs as not wise but says “even though they sold drugs, they showed a young brother love”.

One sign of the looming class war that most stakeholders did not notice was that most of last year’s (2007) political campaign rallies were held on working days, but were massively attended. This shows that there are so many youths who are idle and unemployed, and they pose a serious threat to the internal security of any country. Dr. Mulindi asserts that “we will never have peace in this country unless we address the problems of the underclass”.

Then came the disputed elections and the result of that post-polls violence was the internally displaced people. The violence is the most serious thing that has happened to Kenya’s population as a whole, since independence. The worry from different quarters is that the IDP’s will not forgive the perpetuators, that their frustrations at being flung into the underclass so suddenly might push them to the battlefront of the class war. There have been reports that militias are having a field day recruiting youths in camps of the displaced.

We have a serious problem of unemployment and the ramification of this, among the youth. As the security forces try to deal with the symptoms by brutally arresting youths and filling up our prisons, what they are essentially doing is creating hardcore criminals. Rather, addressing the root causes of the problem is a far more viable approach.

Dr Mulindi, who has extensively been involved in issues concerning the youth and is the chairperson of AFC Leopards, says that sports when used as an entry point can help fight drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, and teenage pregnancies. Football for example is a labour intensive sport and has the potential of employing over 2 Million youths directly, countrywide.

There couldn’t have been a better gift for the youth than the merging of the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Kenya is in the world headlines every week thanks to athletics, so the new ministry should view developing athletics vigorously countrywide as a good recommendation. We can have town marathons in almost every town in the country and invite local and international sponsors. There is already a vote of confidence in Kenyan sports following the airing of the Kenya Premier League on a paid TV network.

I may not have all the answers to this quandary and so I propose further research into economic inequality and the looming class war, so that we can better understand it and hopefully help our youth break out of the cycle.

Story by Bernard Muhia. The writer is a member of the Kenya Correspondents Association and Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designers. He can be reached on bernardmuhia2000@gmail.com

May 7, 2008 | 7:47 AM Comments  0 comments

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