Kenya’s food campaign a political time bomb

Capitalism is in dire crisis. ‘Trumponomics’ — the unimaginative, incoherent and dangerous economic strategy of Donald Trump — is accentuating the crisis.

In the absence of a viable alternative, Karl Marx, the 19th century German philosopher, is firmly back in the political marketplace.

His Communist Manifesto — the second best-selling book (after the bible) — is revisited, particularly his controversial prediction that the fall of capitalism, which produces “its own grave diggers,” and the victory of the working class are inevitable.

In the heartland of capitalism in the West, Marx is back in vogue.

“In Britain, Marx matters”, wrote the Economist this week (May 14-19, 2017: 28).

POLITICAL CONTESTATION

In Kenya, class is poised to trump ethnicity as the new axis of political contestation.

Here, the battle for the soul of the working class pits two ideological blocs: The ‘productionists’/‘developmentalists’ in Jubilee, brandishing their development record against the ‘distributionists’ (the heirs of Marx’s socialist idea) mainly in the opposition clamouring for equal distribution of the national cake.

Saliently, the capitalist crisis has spawned chronic food shortages and prices.

Down the centuries, food riots have been part of the larger social movements that propelled such upheavals as the French and Russian revolutions.

CAPITALIST MARKETS

In the twenty-first century, the crisis of capitalist market has unfolded in three tidal waves of food riots in 2007-2008, 2010-2011 and 2016-2017.

Stoking these riots is a mix of shortages, high prices and unequal distribution of food — as a result of harvest failures, poor food storage, transport problems, food speculation, hoarding, poisoning of food or attacks by pests — and climate change, youth bulge, resource scarcity and urbanisation.

In Africa’s volatile democracies, food unrests constitute a “perfect storm”.

The protracted drought in 2016-2017 has made the Sahel and Horn of Africa regions vulnerable to possible outbreak of protests and riots.

OBTAINING BREAD

Far from being always about obtaining bread to meet the immediate caloric needs of protesters, food riots have often occurred within the larger canvas of intra-elite power struggles.

In the run-up to the August 8, 2017 General Election, Kenya teeters on the brink of a food unrests, signified by the food (Unga) campaign.

In the Jubilee’s corridors of power, pundits see Nasa’s ‘food campaign’ as “Venezuelan script.”

In late April 2017, hundreds of workers poured into the streets of Caracas demanding food and breaking into stores in a riot that left 12 people dead as Venezuela’s food crisis turned into a perfect political storm.

The country’s centre-right opposition took a confrontational strategy, blaming President Nicolas Maduro, heir of the leftist Bolivarian Revolution that the late Hugo Chavez launched in 1999, for severe shortages of food, medicine, and basic goods.

FUELLING PROTESTS

But Maduro has accused the opposition of fuelling the protests as part of a US-backed coup plot.

In Jubilee circles, the food campaign spawned conspiracy theories. In the April-May interlude, social media was awash with claims the food shortages and price hikes were part of a three-step food campaign strategy to make the ruling Jubilee unpopular.

Step one is said to have involved the engagement of cartels of businessmen who bought all the maize in the strategic grain reserves to create an artificial food shortage.

Step two involved a robust media-led campaign in social media under the hash-tag, #ungaRevolution, to ignite a month-long food riots.

In step three organisers of the campaign would have launched a public appeal for support (a #Kenyansforkenya campaign) to secure maize for starving Kenyans.

SECURE MAIZE

The hoarded maize would then be released into the market at Sh99 per two-kilogramme packet. Had this succeeded, Jubilee’s goose would most likely have been cooked!

Be that as it may, the Government moved briskly to tame the surge of the food campaign with targeted fiscal measures aimed at detonating the time bomb.

First, during his Labour Day address President Uhuru Kenyatta increased the minimum wages by 18 per cent to cushion workers against high food prices.

Though popular, the Government realised that food prices had to come down or risk the country burning.

Therefore, the Government got the National Assembly to approve its proposal of a supplementary budget to buy food, enabling it to procure and subsidised maize flour, bringing down the prices of Kenya’s main staple food from a Sh144 retail price to Sh90 for a two-kilogramme packet.

FOOD CAMPAIGN

Since then, Jubilee’s social media activists have gone on the offensive, demanding “the cartels” release the maize they were hoarding.

But the food campaign was a trident weapons designed to box the ruling party into a political corner and to shoot down all the gains it has made in the last four years.

To be sure, Nasa’s food campaign is a three-planks counter-strategy.

The first plank is anti-corruption, the heart and soul of the ODM/Nasa 2017 election strategy.

In this regard, Nasa accused the Government of using the food shortage crisis to disguise its corruption, claiming food costs are artificial, costs of foods hiked to benefit business cartel linked to Jubilee.

GRAIN MARKET
While it is common knowledge the grain market in the high seas has become highly efficient and globalised, questions are raised about Jubilee’s ability to order and ship maize from Mexico to the port of Mombasa in less than a week.

The second plank is an affront on Jubilee’s development record, its main re-election pillar.

In this regard, the opposition has blamed the food prices to failed agriculture policies, citing the Galana-Kulana irrigation scheme.

Related to this, Jubilee’s signature projects such as the Standard Gauge Railway are parodied as a wasteful and unnecessary burden to Kenya’s poor and the future generations.

HISTORIC PROJECT

Hatukuli Chuma (we cannot eat metal) goes one opposition slogan targeting SGR ahead of the launch of the historic project in early June.

The third is an ‘Us-versus-Them’ plank, harkening back to ODM’s 2007 wedge politics that that sought to exploit social cleavages and grievances in to win power.

Examples are the “41-agaisnt one” (anti-Kikuyu) plank in 2007 and the 40 against two (anti-Kikuyu/Kalenjin) in 2017.

Every cloud has a silver lining. The new “poor-versus-rich” class dimension driving the food campaign and the “Sonko (youth/generational) phenomenon” are poised to shift the axis of electoral competition from ethnicity to class.

Prof Kagwanja is the Chief Executive of Africa Policy Institute