By CARLOS SAPIR

In late June, mass, youth-led protests erupted throughout Kenya in response to a punishing tax hike that would have attempted to squeeze billions of dollars of revenue annually from basic household goods and necessities. While the protests have already achieved an important victory, forcing President Ruto to withdraw significant portions of the tax hike proposal, protesters are vowing to continue fighting against the government and its legacy of austerity programs.

Protests met with heavy repression

Reminiscent of the 2019 uprising in Chile, the young protesters opposing the tax hike were immediately attacked by violent police forces, which have opened fire on unarmed crowds even on the steps of capitol buildings. At least 39 have been confirmed killed, and hundreds more have been injured or arrested. President Ruto slandered the protesters, calling them “treasonous” and “criminals,” and instructed police forces to “deploy all methods” to disperse them, including the use of live ammunition. This has further enraged Kenyans, who affirm that “it’s more than about the finance bill now.”

The violence that police have unleashed against their fellow Kenyans also raises concerns about the security force that Kenya just sent to Haiti as part of a U.S. and UN-backed intervention. There was already abundant cause for concern following the last UN and U.S. occupation of Haiti, which brought misery, abuse, and a cholera epidemic to the Caribbean country without even beginning to fix the economic crises that have been imposed upon it ever since its heroic slave rebellion that won independence from France. Whether in Port-au-Prince or Nairobi, soldiers and police are being sent to enforce the payment of debt on behalf of imperialism.

The government’s response to the protests has not been the only occasion for state violence in Kenya recently. Since April, East Africa has faced torrential, climate-change driven rain and floods, which have killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands more in Kenya alone (with further destruction in neighboring countries). In response to this catastrophe, the Kenyan government ordered the demolition of shantytown housing structures built near rivers, in total disregard for the wellbeing of the inhabitants, with several killed as the buildings were demolished with inhabitants still inside. The government’s general inability to address the dangers of climate catastrophes and the violent delivery of the measures it has chosen to implement only further fuels people’s outrage at and sense of abandonment by President Ruto’s government, which was originally elected on promises of democracy and economic reform.

Down with debt-trap colonialism!

The major economic crisis that has pushed the Ruto government to impose unpopular tax hikes at gunpoint is fueled in great part by punishing external debt payments. About 60% of Kenya’s annual budget is dedicated to loan repayment, with 20% of the budget going to pay off interest alone. While the current budget crisis follows IMF loans taken on to address the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic spiral of foreign debt began long before then in Kenya. Like many other countries that won independence against European colonial rule, Kenya inherited an underdeveloped, highly dependent economy designed to serve the interests of its former British rulers and not to meet the needs of Kenyans. Taking on debt was inevitable.

While the IMF, imperialist governments, and their apologists may frame the crippling debt (and the further political and economic restrictions that often accompany it) as a question of “responsibility,” it cannot be ignored that the purported original sin of Kenya and every other semicolonial country struggling with debt repayment was to have fought for its independence against colonial rule. Far from being a moral failing on the part of Kenyans, however, it represents a historical injustice that continues to be perpetrated by the institutions of international capitalism (and principally among them, the U.S., British, French, and Chinese governments and banks that have historically held the majority of Kenya’s debt).

But it is obviously insufficient for Kenyans to simply call for the cancellation of this colonial debt; on its own, that would spell economic catastrophe for the still-import-dependent country in navigating a fully-capitalist world economy. The cancellation of debt is a demand that must be echoed and won in the countries whose imperialist ruling classes hold the debt. Only by confronting imperialist capitalism on a global scale will it be possible to free Kenya and all other semi-colonies from their ongoing economic subordination.

Preparing for the fight to come

Protesters have made it clear that they are not satisfied with President Ruto walking back half of the new financial provisions, demanding his resignation and the total scrapping of the proposed economic measures. The thousands who have flooded the streets in protest are poised to continue mobilizing, and even the funerals of protesters killed by police have drawn hundreds of attendees.

Much like other recent mass protest movements in Georgia, Chile, and the U.S., the protests are largely decentralized, youth-led and have drawn broad participation across Kenya’s various ethnic groups. The diversity and youthfulness of the protests are healthy indicators, but winning lasting political change will require the conscious construction of working-class political organizations that can continue to advance the demands of the movement, to form concrete bonds of solidarity with others around the world, and to cast off the chains of colonial debt once and for all.

Photo: Simon Maina / AFP / Getty Images