It is often understood that students constitute a very important section of the population in any country, and Kenya is no exception. As a country, many of the progressive leaps forward we have made as regards the increase of our democratic space have indeed occurred as a result of heavy participation of university students in demanding for change.
It is impossible to divorce the state of student politics, struggles or affairs with the general situation of the country. Indeed, being part of the general population, students are not immune to the influences of the struggles of the people of the country in general, with their struggles only constituting a section of these general struggles, and serving as an image of the general progress of the country. A curtailment of the voices of students within their university campuses by their administrations would, for example, show the actual situation throughout the country; that there is indeed a shrinking of democratic space and a curtailment of freedom.
On the other hand, it is equally important to recognize the enormous potential of students struggles to influence and shape nationwide struggles. The mobilization and organization of students against the continual increment of fees can, for example, easily influence a nationwide struggle for the increment of the minimum wage and the reduction of commodity prices in general, with particular attention being paid to basic commodities. Clearly, a dialectical relationship exists between the struggles of students and the political struggle in the country generally. Students do not, after all, exist in a vacuum, and are only the products of the environment they exist in.
In Kenya today, a look into the state of student politics would give one some interesting deductions. The active participation of students in the general affairs in the country throughout the decades, including but not limited to the push for a multiparty system, the end of the Moi-KANU hegemony and the increment of democratic space have demonstrated the organizing and mobilizing capabilities of students. However, this situation has, expectedly, not amused the neo-colonial state apparatus, whose interest has been to quell protest and rebellion as much as possible. To carry through this interest, therefore, the state apparatus has been trying to pacify students organizing and neutralize its potential as much as possible. A look into the state of student politics in Kenya today would highlight the result of a continuous struggle by the state to control and pacify students and student organizations as well as a struggle by the students to resist this attempt.
In what ways has the state tried to pacify students and dismantle their organizing capabilities?
Foremost, through the University Amendment Act (2016), the government has put into legislation an entire change in the leadership structure and electoral process across public and private universities throughout the country. In a move aimed at curtailing the direct participation of students in electing their student leadership, the government introduced an electoral process based on the electoral college system through which student leaders are selected by representatives of the various faculties, schools and colleges within the university. This move, in addition to divorcing students from directly choosing their leaders, has the effect of removing accountability of the leadership from the students. The result is the presence of a student leadership body that does not draw its legitimacy from the general student population and, therefore, not really in service of the students. This cunning manoeuvre has further enabled the university administrations to handpick their preferred student representatives who are thereby more interested in pleasing their respective administrations than serving the students.
Student leadership is required to be a horizontal relationship between the students and their directly elected representatives. The lack of this direct participation therefore has the effect of creating a vertical relationship between the former and the latter. It is, in a very realistic sense, the highest curtailment of democracy. It is a mutilation of the basic principles of freedom and liberty, and must be understood as such.
Secondly, the past few years have seen wave upon wave of student suspensions and expulsions by the administrations of the public universities across the country. As expected, most of these actions taken against students occur in retaliation against political activities that these students engage in. As a result, many student leaders have ended up being severely frustrated in carrying out their political activities within university campuses, with many being cut off from the students they represent. The end goal in this cunning manoeuvre by the university administrations, often acting on behalf of the government, is to simply water down student organizing by demoralizing their actions and arm twist them into submission. It is clear, in this regard, that the university administrations, and the government in general, are extremely uncomfortable with a strong student union, and would therefore do anything possible to demobilize students.
Further, a recent tactic used by the university administrations to curtail student organizing has been to interfere with the electoral process in selecting student leaderships. Oftentimes, progressive students have found themselves locked out of the electoral process as a result of all manner of excuses ranging from incomplete school fees to failed units. This has also seen students at a certain stage of their courses get locked out of participating in student elections.
Another form of interference has been the instalment of ‘preferred’ candidates by the university administrations to participate in and ‘win’ the student elections. In a recent instance, in 2016, the Dean of Students at the University of Nairobi in fact conducted a swearing in ceremony of the installed SONU Chairman inside his office against the wishes of the majority of the students. This, and subsequent student leadership elections, have seen the administration at the University of Nairobi install puppet student representatives in a bid to exercise control over the students. The same mode of operation has been applied throughout the private and public universities in the country, all geared towards demobilizing the students.
How have the students reacted to this onslaught, though? How have they struggled to keep intact their organizations and their organizing capacities?
One must recognize the terrible situation against which students in Kenya have to organize. One must empathise with student organizers in their struggle to maintain the momentum gathered by student organizations and keep the integrity of student movements intact. Against the backdrop of suspensions and expulsions on a massive scale, students and student leaders have been trying to legally challenge these decisions, most of which are usually carried out without any legal basis and without following the due process of the law. To this extent, some students have been successful in challenging the university administrations, although the threat of these arbitrary decisions being carried out again still lingers.
In a bid to maintaining the organic nature of student organizing and organizations, students have been constantly trying to legally challenge the recently enacted University Amendment Act (2016). Quite clearly, the successful repealing of this Act would symbolize a strategic victory for student organizing and would put all sovereign power in university campuses back to the students themselves. Moreover, this would give the students another chance to properly guard against any onslaught on their organizations by the government or university administrations.
To be empathetic to the struggle of students would mean to be in solidarity with their struggles. In particular, students require solidarity in challenging the University Amendment Act (2016) and in legally challenging the unlawful suspensions and expulsions carried out against them by their administrations. By extension, students require solidarity to amplify their voices on a national scale. Necessarily, this calls for a harmonization of the struggles of students with the struggles of all other groups of people within the Kenyan population struggling for a decent existence. The struggles of students have to be seen as being an extension of the struggles of workers through their unions for better working conditions and for the right to organize. The struggles of students for a decent learning environment within their university campuses have to be viewed as interconnected with the struggles of university lecturers and other university workers for a conducive working environment. These struggles, further, cannot be viewed in isolation vis a vis the struggles of doctors, nurses, teachers, artisans, the unemployed and other sections of the population championing for a decent livelihood and a better country.
What, therefore, should be the way forward as regards students organizing in the country? What are the strategic priorities? How do we move on from here?
Having had an important look into the state of students organizing by reviewing its challenges, reactions and importance in the greater national struggle, it becomes imperative to see how to chart a way forward.
Importantly, it is vital to understand that the challenges faced by students and student organizations as well as their onslaught by the government and university administrations have weighed heavily on the students, and scars still remain. Hangovers of state interference in student politics still remain, and must be dealt with decisively if students are to assert their power going forward. This must also be done in order for students to further guard against any such onslaught going forward.
A way in which the obvious imprint of state interference is manifested in recent times is the conduct of student politics in a manner mimicking national bourgeois politics. Students in universities across the country have experienced electoral malpractices perpetrated by certain students, for example, involving the use of insanely huge amounts of money to campaign, voter intimidation, bribery and the use of violence. Whereas this can be understood as being the logical image of what happens in national politics, it must be resisted, strongly condemned and avoided if students are to distinguish themselves as a genuinely progressive force in national struggles and if students are to bring back the militancy that has characterised students movements in past decades. Most importantly, this move would assert comradeship in student organizing and enforce a horizontal relationship between students and student leaderships.
Having touched on the necessity of solidarity between the struggles of students with the struggles of layers of workers and other sections of the population, it becomes extremely important for students, through their organizations, to move speedily and create alliances with these groups. Students have to actively seek to establish solidarity with university lecturers and other staff, for instance, within their university campuses; jointly organizing and participating in strikes, demonstrations, mass actions and the drafting of petitions and generally being on the same page in struggling for a decent learning environment within the university. Such an alliance would definitely put the university administrations on their toes and would work towards getting the university back into the hands of those it was meant to serve. By extension, it is a principal task for students, through their student organizations, to actively seek audience with unions of teachers, doctors, nurses, farmers, artisans, community organizations, unemployed youth and other groups in a bid to create a long lasting alliance of solidarity and the harmonization of national struggles.
Through this, it would be possible to have a nationwide platform of people-based issues whose pursuit would work towards a better country for all. Above all, the building of this working class solidarity would be a step towards the attainment of a system in which the working class have their interests put above the interests of profiteers, speculators and hoarders; a political and economic system for the people, by the people and of the people.
In addition to this, and in order to have a lasting buffer created to guard against state interference and pacification, student organizing must go hand in hand with ideological grounding. Organized student activities, through the student organizations, must not be blind, spontaneous nor adventuristic, but must be carried out in accordance with the illumination of ideology. Students must understand that in order to successfully organize against the system, and in order to have lasting institutions that would resist pacification or internal corruption, it becomes absolutely necessary to have an understanding of how the system we exist in works as well as the future model we wish to achieve.
Ideological grounding and political pedagogy requires a careful and deliberate way of organizing. Importantly, it requires a disciplined and structured way of learning, carefully coordinated by the student organizations, that is at the same time organic and adaptive to the existing and ever changing conditions of student life. An effective way for students to organize this would be through the setting up of cells made up of small groups of students throughout university campuses. These cells would be meeting regularly to analyse the system and share ideological material while at the same time participating in tasks allocated to it by the larger student body. Cells can join up to form fractions, sections, branches and chapters of student organizations throughout university campuses where students are able and willing to participate in the collective struggle of students. A coordination of these smaller groups by the larger student organization would effectively lead to a core of dedicated students, determined and committed to participate in the struggle of students throughout the country. Naturally, this implies that student organizations would have to model themselves as disciplined units to lead and spearhead student struggles, with the advantageous effect being that henceforth, students would guard against pacification and state interference, and going forward, a purely democratic, comradely and horizontal relationship within student organizations would be created and cemented.
In order to merge student struggles in universities across the country, it is absolutely necessary for students, through their organizations, to come together speedily under a national banner. Whereas it can be said that attempts for this have been made, it would be important to acknowledge that it has not been fully achieved. The effects of not having a nationwide students’ banner are obvious; the isolation of students struggles in different parts of the country and the weakening of student activity arising therefrom. A lack of coordination of student organizing, clearly, deprives students of a nationwide voice in championing their interests. A struggle for better grading systems at USIU, for instance, has to be viewed as a struggle of all university students in all parts of the country. For this to be amplified, the nationwide banner must actively lead the voices of all university students throughout the country and direct them towards a particular struggle at any given moment. If students at the Technical University of Kenya are protesting delayed results, for example, all university students in the country must be mobilised into the protest in solidarity through the nationwide students’ banner.
With the setting up of highly organized and disciplined student organizations within university campuses, and with the coordination of these under a nationwide students’ banner, an organic and extremely efficient student movement would be in existence in the country, and its impact would be felt as regards the general national struggle in Kenya. Its ability to shape and be shaped by the daily struggles for a decent existence by Kenyans would make it an extremely vital element in Kenya’s national struggle, and its organic nature would cement it as a real organization of the people. Most importantly, the movement would last for generations to come, and would itself be an indication of the power that lies with student organizing.
As regards the way forward, therefore, students in Kenya have to be aware of the tasks that face them going forward. They must, importantly, understand their capabilities in shaping the greater nationwide struggle. They must understand their limitations in dealing with the state and their administrations, and how these can be overcome with better organizing. Finally, they must understand their revolutionary role in struggling for a better country.
