MINIMUM PROGRAMME OF THE SDP
INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
Six years into the 21st century and 43 years after independence, Kenyans are still grappling to achieve social and national liberation and thus assert their collective right to self-determination. We are still fighting to entrench political democracy and establish an economy centred on all our people’s needs and geared towards sustainable development. We are still struggling for social and national liberation and to move from a poor and underdeveloped nation to a developing one.
It is upon this background that the SDP has risen to the historic challenge of spearheading the fight for a New Kenya:
A NEW KENYA with a new democratic constitution that empowers Kenyans to control and participate in and at all levels of government;
A NEW KENYA that recognizes its responsibilities of Pan-Africanism, i.e., including working towards the establishment of East African Federation and the United States of Africa;
A NEW KENYA that adheres to the ideals and principle of Non-Aligned Countries and that stands up against imperialism and all forms of colonial domination and all manifestations of neo-liberal globalisation;
A NEW KENYA that carries out agrarian, economic, social, cultural and political reforms geared towards bringing the masses to the foreground of our national development process;
A NEW KENYA that redresses the decades old litany of historical injustices, including political assassinations, land grabbing and looting of state resources;
A NEW KENYA that works for the equality of women and men for the benefit of all;
A NEW KENYA that cherishes and works for a secure future for the young generation;
A NEW KENYA that elevates the working people, the poor and marginalised people of this country to take control of state power and to use such power to transform our nation;
In short, a NEW KENYA that makes a radical, decisive break with the capitalist path
The Social Democratic Party of Kenya rededicates itself to this historic challenge and patriotic responsibility of providing a vehicle for the democratic transformation of
To do this, the SDP presents the following MINIMUM PROGRAMME to the people of
The vision for the SDP is a socialist society governed through a democratic socialist state while our mission is to create, develop and entrench socialism in
Why do we in the SDP opt for socialism? In order to answer this question we have to point out that capitalism has failed in
1. Capitalism in all its political forms - colonial, neo-colonial, or global - has failed to serve the majority of Kenyans and has benefited only a tiny fraction of the population. Colonial capitalism benefited primarily the white setter and Asian businessmen; neo-colonial capitalism has admitted the rich Kenyan African while global capitalism has further admitted/allowed some professionals into the exclusive club of the rich. The majority of Kenyans standards of living have improved little despite the seemingly major political changes.
2. Capitalism is inherently unequal, exploitative and oppressive; capitalism in
3. Capitalism is inherently and expensively wasteful; for instance, it wastes the energies of millions of young Kenyans by not availing jobs. Capitalism requires and demands large pools of unemployed to keep wages and salaries down so that high profits may be obtained.
4. Capitalism inherently breeds extreme inequalities not only between persons and gender, but between regions and communities, it is the root cause of the ethnic animosities virulent in our politics.
5. Perhaps, worst of all, capitalism reveals the great possibilities for improving the material and social wellbeing of people, but immediately closes them to the majority on account of its high inequalities in the distribution of income.
The Social Democratic Alternative for
Social democracy is a stage in the transformation of society through which the highly productive/innovative aspects of capitalism are put to the benefit of the whole society by ameliorating, in a democratic manner, the socio-economic consequences and inhuman conditions created by capitalism. Social democracy is the partial antidote of the unacceptable social conditions of the poor arising from capitalism. Social Democracy was adopted by practically all Western countries as their response to the great Depression of the 1930s and which oversaw the tremendous economic growth and improvement of the conditions of the poor in the West during the period after the 2nd World War. Social democracy is differentiated from African Socialism which has been a cover for capitalism in
1. Social Democracy is the alternative to capitalism at this stage of our development. Caught in a similar situation, post II World War Europe adopted Social Democracy for its own development;
2. Social Democracy will retain all the progressive aspects of capitalism and put them into the service of the people, especially the majority, and not in search of super profits;
3. Social Democracy will encourage savings among Kenyans, the state and the public sector to finance the large socio-economic development agenda ahead of us;
4. Social Democracy will provide and guarantee, progressively, basic needs to the individual and the family such as, security to person, shelter, food, water, health, education and employment;
5. Social Democracy will provide social security for all Kenyans;
6. Social Democracy will reinstate sovereignty over our country, people and resources rather than surrendering it to neo-liberal globalisation as is the case today;
7. Social Democracy will foster partnership with the Kenyan people in the ownership and provision of services by the commanding heights of the economy, such as money/banks/financial institutions, transport and communications infrastructure, major natural water towers and water works, power generation, etc.
8. Social Democracy will engage the most suitable technologies available in the provision of services and implementation of development and maintenance of projects. We need not invent the wheel; we need only adopt it and make it work for our purposes.
9. Social Democracy will conserve, protect and develop our natural environment as a national asset for the present and future generations of Kenyans.
10. Social Democracy will deliver a political constitution based on the sovereignty of the people, separation of powers, checks and balances, devolution of governments with popular participation of the people at all levels of government.
11. Social Democracy will develop a national milieu of peace and inter-community based our heritage to a rich and diverse culture and shall promote development of local languages, including Kiswahili as our national language and English as an important international language;
12. Social Democracy will adopt a gender and class approach to development in all spheres of life.
13. Social Democracy will adopt policies and actions that empower the youth of this country through political representation and participation in the country’s economic life.
14. Social Democracy will foster international friendship and solidarity with all countries and peoples struggling for social and national liberation.
15. Social Democracy will protect, conserve and develop the environment as basis for sustainable development.
1. RESTORATION OF OUR NATIONAL
The ideals the Kenyan people had been fighting for, particularly since the 15-Century, were blatantly betrayed by the successive regimes that took over from British colonialism.
For colonialism meant appropriation by settlers of our best land, natural and human resources for the benefit of the white settlers and the British colonial power. To our people, colonialism meant forced labour, pass laws, colour bar, restricted movement, denial of basic freedoms and democratic rights, arbitrary arrests, imprisonment and detention, torture and humiliation. It also meant backwardness and poverty, poor and inhuman living and working conditions, poor medical care, housing and other social services. During colonialism there was low-level and limited schooling for the majority of the indigenous African people. There was also mass illiteracy and ignorance, foreign domination and imposition of a foreign language and culture and total impoverishment of our people. It meant cultural domination and subordination of African people to other racial groups.
However, after independence, the governments that took over hardly addressed the problems our people fought against. Those whose lands were forcibly taken away by the settlers are still landless. In fact, the problem of land has exacerbated with the majority of Kenyans hardly owning enough land to subsist on. More and more are becoming landless and squatters while foreigners and the greedy people who control state and economic power own and grab thousands and thousands of acres of land, a lot of it under-utilised or unused. Squatting is a way of life for the majority of indigenous Kenyans from the Coast to many parts in the Rift Valley. It is also the basic cause for the sprawling urban slums.
Slave-like labour conditions still exists in foreign and locally owned plantations that pay starvation wages to poorly organised labour. Similarly, in industries and commercial enterprises, the conditions of Kenyan workers have worsened. Foreign and locally owned companies continue to exploit and expose workers to inhuman working conditions with meagre slave-like wages. Colonial labour laws have been retained and enacted to ensure that the national workers organisations are nothing but a pacifier and demobiliser of the workers, while independent workers movements are suppressed and refused recognition. The economy of our country is highly influenced by the plans and management of foreigners through the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, with the adoption of neo-liberal social and economic policies that include privatisation of state enterprises.
Our courts and lawyers slavishly adhere to foreign laws in selective cases when it suits them. The majority of people cannot afford lawyers’ fees. The police still perpetuate the same colonial brutality against the Kenyan people; they arbitrarily arrest, detain, intimidate, harass, torture, and murder with impunity. The Kenyan prisons continue to be overcrowded and maintain their colonial character despite some minimal reforms.
Our soldiers have no democratic military ideology and culture. They thus consciously or unconsciously regard the Kenyan people as their enemies. The sovereignty of our nation has been mortgaged by those in power. Foreign nations have been granted military bases and facilities, without the consent of the people, to protect their interests in
In summary, foreign domination and control of our motherland is almost as bad as it was before 1963. The difference is that the group of local collaborators has expanded and uses state power to buttress its collaborations.
To restore the national independence and sovereignty for which many Kenyan patriots shed their precious blood and continue to struggle for, the SDP shall do the following:
(a) Dismantle the undemocratic and repressive neo-colonial state machinery, including the so called Public Administration, inherited wholesale from the colonial state; create a new pro-people police force, armed forces, prison system, judicial system, new democratic and pro-people laws and civil service, so that they may serve the people as opposed to individuals, tribal bigots, parochial and foreign interests.
(b) Restructure the current provincial and local government administration system, which is based on tribal and parochial interests to give room for more participation in governance and decision-making by the people at grass-root level.
(c) Work consciously towards evolving a national economy, culture, and spirit of patriotism, democracy and humane morality.
(d) Do away with all foreign military bases and installations.
(e) Review and re-negotiate all unequal treaties and agreements with other nations.
(f) Repeal colonial anti-people laws and evolve a legal system that is democratic, based on indigenous systems of justice and that reflects the Kenyan moral aspirations.
(g) Ensure that all Kenyans participate in conserving, utilising and benefiting from the resources of the country, live like human beings and enjoy the fruits of their labour.
(h) Define and defend the national integrity and sovereignty of
2. COMMITMENT TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF BROAD NATIONAL AND POPULAR DEMOCRACY
Democracy can only be meaningful when the entire Kenyan population is involved in the planning and management of production and distribution - including consumption; have unhindered say in how the country is governed; have real freedoms to associate, including the freedom to form political and non-political organisations, and to assemble and demonstrate without bureaucratic licences; hold opinions and express them in words, deeds and writing; choose leaders and recall them through free and fair elections; profess religious faith and beliefs of their choice; have their human rights justly protected under the law and disputes decided in democratic courts; and participate voluntarily in the defence of their motherland and in all day to day affairs of the nation.
To work towards establishing this kind of democracy the SDP commits itself to the following:
(a) Creating and consolidating democratic political structures namely, true peoples’ assembly or parliament, constituted by freely, regularly and democratically elected representatives. Other representative organs shall be at sub-locational, locational, divisional and district levels. The latter will deal, at each level, with local and national affairs, including control and management of the local resources, defence, justice - subject to superior national laws and recourse to and supervision of a democratically reformed judiciary.
(b) Promote and safeguard the emancipation of women and gender equality.
(c) Promote and safeguard the interests of the masses of workers, peasants, children, youth, people with disabilities, the aged and students, professionals, artists, those engaged in the informal sector, indigenous entrepreneurs, clergy, and the civil society in general.
(d) Support the struggle for the realisation of a new popular national constitution, based on the Bomas Constitution that was born out of thoroughly debated popular consensus.
(e) Revive the economy and strive to ensure that every Kenyan has access to the means of production or, when employed, to a just and living wage.
(f) Ensure that all elected leaders and people with national responsibilities are at all times answerable and accountable to the electorate and the people in general.
(g) Ensure the establishment of constitutionally protected social welfare systems commensurate with our resources and levels of production.
3. TO FORGE AN UNSHAKABLE UNITY OF ALL KENYAN NATIONALITIES AND RACES
To ensure and consolidate the unity of our people, the SDP shall strive to do the following:
(a) Dismantle the undemocratic and repressive neo-colonial state machinery, including the so called Public Administration, inherited wholesale from the colonial state; create a new pro-people police force, armed forces, prison system, judicial system, new democratic and pro-people laws and civil service, so that they may serve the people as opposed to individuals, tribal bigots, parochial and foreign interests.
(b) Restructure the current provincial and local government administration system, which is based on tribal and parochial interests to give room for more participation in governance and decision-making by the masses at grass-root levels.
(c) Abolish the system and laws instituted by the colonialists and their neo-colonial heirs that divide, oppress and exploit Kenyan people along racial, ethnic, religious or any other lines.
(d) Rectify all errors committed by the previous regimes in their pursuit and conspiracy to hang onto power, including:
(i) National discrimination.
(ii) Neglect and marginalisation of some Kenyan areas and communities.
(iii) Administrative boundaries drawn along ethnic lines.
(iv) Distortion of the history of our nation.
(e) Use political education to enhance national unity by combating petty nationalism and ethnic chauvinism and inculcate into the minds of Kenyans the sense of national identity.
(f) Actively promote Kiswahili as both a national and official language.
(g) Respect and promote the cultures and languages of all our nationalities as part of our rich national cultural heritage and diversity.
(h) Combat poverty and underdevelopment while ensuring that all opportunities are open to all Kenyans irrespective of their national, racial, religious, ideological or class background.
(i) Encourage a balanced rewriting of our history to reflect our rich ethnic and cultural diversity while, at the same time, conserving its national outlook.
4. BUILDINING AN INDEPENDENT, INTEGRATED AND SELF-SUSTAINING NATIONAL ECONOMY
The fundamental remedy to all this is the building of a sustainable national economy that is independent, integrated and weighted in favour of self-reliance.
To work towards this goal, the SDP shall strive to shift from the present unbalanced arrangement where we mainly export primary commodities and import processed and manufactured goods:
(a) Build and consolidate an industrial base in order to increase the capacity for heavy industrialisation while laying the basis for a heavy steel industry, which will promote light industry and agriculture.
(b) Invest in the building and development of infrastructure: road networks, railway systems, sea and lake ports, airports, urban and rural electrification, water supplies and modern communication and telecommunication systems.
(c) Protect, conserve utilise and process marine resources, including fish, in our seas, rivers and lakes for domestic and export markets.
(d) Explore for and exploit oil, gas and other mineral resources, and expand the production of salt, and fluorspar.
a) Diversify agriculture away from traditional export crops like tea, coffee and pyrethrum and put emphasis on food crops.
b) Construct essential land, water and air transport and communication systems to develop the nation’s trade both internally and within the region.
c) Closely monitor all insurance companies and banks so as to co-ordinate banking services, regulate economic activities and accelerate economic development.
d) Combat and eliminate contraband trade.
e) Regulate the exchange and pricing of various domestic products in such a way as to stimulate production and distribution of the most basic and essential commodities.
f) Formulate and implement an equitable and rational taxation policy to finance production, social services, administration and defence of the country.
g) Prohibit usury and gambling except public approved and controlled national lotteries and raffles.
h) Extend credit at low interest to peasants, small business enterprises and the popular economic sector (so called informal sector) in order to eliminate the attendant exploitation of the masses.
i) Establish trade relations with all countries that respect
j) Enter into joint ventures with foreign investors where it is in the national interest and in such cases, to pay particular attention to the control of management.
k) Scrap colonial marketing boards and restructure workers, peasants and people-based and controlled marketing co-operatives to handle their functions.
l) Encourage scientific and technological research to realise our agricultural, commercial and industrial potentialities.
m) Bring the tourist and hotel industry firmly under national control and make it serve our people without lowering their dignity.
n) Democratise economic management and production by enhancing worker participation in the policy formulation and decision-making in the production process.
5. INTIATING AND IMPLEMENTING A PROGRESSIVE LAND REFORM
When our patriots fought against British colonialism, their demands were summarised by two words: land and freedom.
Without interfering with individuals’ right to own legally and justly acquired property, this is an area where public goods demands that justice be done and seen to be done. Land, like water, the sun, air, and the environment, is a common heritage of all people and every Kenyan has a right to benefit from it.
The SDP shall, therefore, strive to implement land reform as follows:
(a) Abolish colonial and neo-colonial land relations and carry out a progressive and equitable redistribution of land.
(b) Carry out comprehensive land and agrarian reform on the principle that land belongs to those who till it. This includes resettling the landless rural and urban poor.
(c) Put all the agricultural and commercial land to the services of the Kenyan people.
(d) Consolidate and establish state farms for large agricultural production and scientific research.
(e) Encourage the establishment of large co-operative farms by creating conditions for co-operation and mutual assistance so as to develop modern and advanced systems of agriculture and animal husbandry capable of increasing the income and improving the lot of the peasantry in the rural areas and reducing the rural-urban gap.
(f) Work with the peasants to encourage them to adopt modern agricultural techniques and sustainable agriculture.
(g) Ensure that agricultural co-operatives are of the members and run by the members and for the members.
(h) Involve the peasants in the price-making process for their produce and ensure prompt payment of their dues.
(i) Provide nomadic and semi-nomadic peasants with veterinary services, livestock breeding experts, agricultural advisors, financial assistance and markets in order to enable them to lead settled or more stable lives, adopt modern techniques of agriculture and animal husbandry and improve their livelihood.
(j) Encourage agricultural policies that will ensure national food sufficiency and security, and sustainable development especially in the rural areas.
(k) Make large pastures, forests, mines, dams, and game parks state property or communal property with progressive and sustainable environmental policies.
(l) Provide for the peaceful and amicable settlement of land disputes and inequality among individuals, clans and villages in such a way as to harmonise the interests of the aggrieved with that of the national economic and political interest.
(m) Make all urban land public property while protecting private ownership rights over legitimate structures constructed thereon.
(n) Nationalise and appropriate with or without compensation and put to good use all the derelict, unutilised or under-utilised land.
(o) Promote peasant and farmer associations that will mobilise, politicise, organise and arm the peasants with clear political consciousness so that they can fully participate in the anti-tyranny, anti-oppression, anti-exploitation and anti-corruption and anti-imperialist struggle, defend their democratic gains and manage their own affairs and that of the nation.
6. ESTABLISH A NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CHARTER AND INSTITUTIONS
Since the attainment of flag independence, Kenyan people have had to contend with the systematic and deliberate onslaught on fundamental rights of individuals and groups and the repudiation of civil liberties. Kenyans’ right to life and right to personal liberty; right to protection from slavery and forced labour; right to protection from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment; right to protection from deprivation of property; right to protection against arbitrary searches or entry; right to fair and public trial by an impartial court; right to freedom of conscience and religion; right to freedom of expression; right to freedom of assembly and association (including to form or join a political party or organisation); right to protection from discrimination on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, race, religion, ideology or class; and many other fundamental rights and liberties, have been and continue to be trampled underfoot. This is despite some limited written guarantees in the present national constitution.
Street shooting by police; illegal confinements; torture of suspects and prisoners; banning of students’, workers’ and professional unions and religious sects; arbitrary expulsion of students; lack of academic freedom in institutions of higher learning; persecution of patriotic and progressive lecturers and teachers; discrimination and abuse against women in employment, hotel accommodation, payment of housing and other allowances, etc.; demolition of peoples’ dwellings without alternative housing provided; and the denial of many Kenyans of the right to work, among other abuses, are hallmarks of the successive regimes that have ruled Kenya since 1963.
The SDP shall strive to reverse this by drawing and implementing as part of our laws, a national charter that will ensure, by creating necessary conditions for the exercise of human rights including:
a) The right of all Kenyans to benefit from the natural and collective resources of our country.
b) The right to work and proper working conditions, leisure and study. This includes removing colonial and capitalist labour laws and replacing them with those that strengthen trade unions and workers rights.
c) Building welfare system in
d) Inviolability of the person.
e) Freedom of residence and humane living conditions.
f) Secrecy of correspondence and inviolability of privacy.
g) The right of association, including the right of workers, peasants, students, artists, professionals and civil society in general to form, run and control their own independent mass organisations.
h) The right to a healthy and peaceful life.
i) The right to education.
j) The right to freedom of movement and immigration (a passport is a right not a privilege).
k) The right to free expression.
l) The right to conscience, religion and to profess them.
m)The right to a clean environment.
n) The right to establish a press and to publicise information.
7. ELIMINATION OF CORRUPTION AND MISUSE OF POWER
Corruption and misuse of power have become institutionalised in
To make sure that the current trend of corruption and misuse of power is eliminated, the SDP shall strive to:
a) Ensure that the neo-colonial, socio-economic structures that have given rise to corruption and misuse of power, are systematically annihilated.
b) Establish the office of the Ombudsman with enhanced power to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption and misuse of power.
c) Increase the independence and powers of the parliamentary committees, including Public Accounting Committee and Public Investment Committee.
d) Enhance freedom of press, expression and other liberties.
e) Ensure that public tenders shall be awarded on merit and in accordance with regulations set down - publicity will be used to ensure transparency.
f) Ensure that trade and other licences shall be awarded according to laid down procedures.
g) Through political education, establish an exemplary leadership, free from corruption, which shall abide by a justifiable leadership code.
h) Politicise, mobilise and empower the people to fight corruption and abuse of power.
i) Encourage the public to form citizens’ watch committees to complement state bodies in maintaining responsible leadership.
j) Encourage the growth of a robust civil society.
8. DEVELOPING A PROGRESSIVE NATIONAL CULTURE
Culturally, our people are exploited and dominated by values that are alien to us. Culture is the sum total of a people’s way of life. It is about people’s struggle against nature for subsistence, survival and development, as well as struggles and accommodation with other human beings. It includes eating habits, dressing habits, housing trends and designs, art, education, science and technology, how people spend their leisure time, language, ethics, morality, religion, politics, traditions and customs. It is, in short, the expression of our civilisation.
Realising the significance of culture the SDP shall strive to:
(a) Conserve and cherish our rich and progressive cultural heritage while doing away with the reactionary aspects of it.
(b) Obliterate decadent culture and disgraceful habits that colonialism had spread and continues to spread in order to subjugate and exploit the Kenyan peoples.
(c) Build a strong cultural base by democratising and diversifying the national economy along the lines pointed out earlier.
(d) Promote Kiswahili as our national and official language, as identified previously, while also encouraging the growth and development of the languages of other Kenyan nationalities.
(e) Give material and moral support to our artists and cultural workers in craftsmanship, literature, theatre, drama, poetry, music, cloth making, fashion and design, architecture, film, sport and entertainment.
(f) Develop and guarantee freedom of art, theatre and all cultural activities of our diverse nationalities.
(g) Pursue a tourist policy that does not abuse or demean the dignity and cultural cohesion of our people.
(h) Discourage cheap and decadent aspects of foreign influences through books, films, magazines, videos, etc., and educate our youth and adults to appreciate and be proud of their motherland and its people.
(i) Develop sporting activities and facilities; forge cultural and sporting links between Kenyans and other peoples globally, as a means of promoting international solidarity and friendship.
(j) Provide libraries and promote the culture of reading, research and the love of books and knowledge throughout the country.
(k) Promote and develop national museums, archives and art galleries throughout the country.
(l) Through political education, promote a progressive and democratic culture among our people and fearlessly combat the culture of silence and fear and all retrogressive and backward cultures.
9. DEVELOPING A PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION SYSTEM
In the field of education too, the colonial education, which violently destroyed traditional non-academic education, had as its main objective, the control of the African mind and values so as to mould obedient servants of the colonial system. White collar education, which produced clerks, court interpreters and Bible interpreters, was institutionalised by the colonial Beecher Commission. After colonialism, various education commissions have all reinforced the policy of education that reinforce foreign domination.
Thus, really functional education has been inaccessible to the children of the majority of Kenyans. In
The SDP views education as a right and not a privilege and the state is obligated to provide it to all citizens. It is also a condition and embodiment of development and culture. We shall, therefore, endeavour to create conditions to ensure that we:
(a) Provide for public-funded universal and compulsory primary and secondary education as a first stage, with high quality, affordable and subsidised college and university education, with the ultimate objective of making education free at all levels.
(b) Redistribute resources and dismantle segregated educational systems which classify schools into high-cost, low-cost, national, provincial, district, harambee, private, etc., thereby giving some groups unfair advantages over others in terms of facilities, staff and student quality and increasing class inequality.
(c) Abolish the 85% admission rule that restricts students to their locality. This type of education denies our youth the opportunity to interact with students from other parts of the country and militates against national unity.
(d) Strive to wipe out illiteracy in order to free the Kenyan people from the darkness of ignorance and superstition by waging a nation-wide revolutionary anti-illiteracy campaign.
(e) Integrate education with the economy and production and put it to the service of the Kenyan people.
(f) Formulate a relevant educational policy that will change the Kenyan educational system into a cultural implement and resource, which integrates school life with relevant aspects of practical, economic and political realities of our people. This will be attained by the active participation of the teachers, parents, students and the society in formulating and implementing the education policy and system.
(g) Develop and sustain institutions of higher education and training in various fields of science, arts, technology, agriculture, etc.
(h) Strive to make available books, magazines, newspapers, radios, video, library services, and computers and use the media, schools and other avenues to promote the latest scientific and technological advances and progressive ideas to our people.
(i) Engage in educational, cultural and technological exchanges with other countries on the basis of mutual benefit and equality and to promote international solidarity and friendship.
(j) Democratise education by guaranteeing academic freedom and by involving the students, teachers, lecturers, parents and society in formulating educational polices and disseminating knowledge.
(k) Opening avenues for research and useful scientific and technological innovation of our economy.
(l) Creating working and material conditions that will ensure the dignity and prestige of the teaching profession.
10. DEVELOPING A PROGRESSIVE HEALTH PROGRAMME FOR ALL
Our people suffer from many preventable diseases. Many people attribute this to an inadequacy of doctors and paramedical staff, a shortage of drugs, and to the tropical climate. While this is partly true, still the root causes of the health problem lie in the social conditions and relations arising from the brutal political and economic arrangements in our society. Our people develop many diseases because they are under-fed or lack various food substances. Many diseases are due to a polluted environment, poor sanitation, and lack of clean drinking water, inadequate shelter and clothing, overwork, stress, violence and ignorance.
In order to correct this, the SDP shall strive, by mobilising resources and citizens, to accomplish the following:
(a) Shift the emphasis from the curative to preventive health care.
(b) Raise the people’s living standards so that they may afford proper food, housing, leisure and a clean environment.
(c) Provide clean habitation, clean water, proper sewerage, drainage, sanitation, and electrical power.
(d) Provide free health education services countrywide.
(e) Establish peoples’ health committees and promote the use of health brigades to wipe out chronic epidemics like cholera, meningitis, malaria and other diseases arising from unhealthy living conditions.
(f) Render medical services genuinely free and available to all Kenyans, with the rich having to pay for such services in the interim period.
(g) Establish a national pharmaceutical complex for the research, production and distribution of drugs and medical equipment, as well as to scientifically develop indigenous medicines.
(h) Promote comprehensive maternal-child health, including safe contraception, and provide adolescent health-care for young girls.
(i) Carry out regular and free mass medical examinations.
(j) Promote and popularise among the people sports and physical culture.
(k) Punish and re-educate medical and paramedical staff who develop inhuman, corrupt and anti-people attitudes.
(l) Mount a community campaign to prevent the spread of HIV and educate society to care for people with Aids.
(m) Democratise the society to ensure the exercise of civil liberties and human rights. This will help to remove stress, fear and violence that too are health hazards in
11. PROGRAMME FOR DECENT HOUSING FOR ALL
A decent dwelling is a necessity and fundamental right of every human being. Over the years, we have had a perverted conceptions of “development”, where a few rich individuals, foreigners and/or their local agents, put up magnificent tall houses in the city centre and other major towns, but the pavements of such sky-scrapers turn out to be the bedrooms of many Kenyans. The ruling cliques, under the command and supervision and protection of the corrupt regimes, continue to use national resources and the labour of working people to live a luxurious and extravagant life in both rural and urban areas. On the other hand the workers and the poor languish in slums and hovels. The majority of peasants also live in small, unhygienic shelters, while what accrues from the country’s economy whose basis is national resources and working people’s labour is used to sustain the culture of consumerism for the few.
The SDP, in creating a peoples’ democratic state, shall strive to:
(a) Initiate a nation-wide housing programme to provide affordable and decent housing for the Kenyan people.
(b) Create construction brigades in towns and rural areas under peoples’ committees. This serves two purposes: construction of affordable and decent houses for the Kenyan people, and also provision of employment.
(c) Make houses available on the principle of effective occupancy.
(d) Provide land and cheap building materials most of which are abundant in the country.
(e) Make urban land public property.
(f) Regulate rent and protect tenants from unscrupulous landlords, i.e., encourage tenants to form autonomous tenant’s committees to defend their rights.
(g) Provide good roads and electricity to all homes, and clean drinking water to all neighbourhoods in urban and rural areas.
(h) Create national housing insurance schemes and give material assistance to those wishing to build homes to live in.
(i) Ensure that all workers are housed decently or given adequate house allowances in lieu by their employers.
(j) Ensure the creation of adequate recreational facilities and amenities around housing estates.
(k) Ensure the eradication of slums and inhuman dwellings.
(l) Strictly ensure that the construction of any houses or housing estates in cities or towns adhere to laid down plans and regulation by local authorities.
12. PROTECTION AND CONSERVATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT
There exists an environmental problem in our country, which is a great threat to our future. The successive regimes that have governed our country have hardly addressed the problem. All they have done is pay lip service to the environmental problems, while through their greedy and unpatriotic policies, they exacerbate the very problem. As a result, we are unable to live in harmony with nature, our air, water, soil, flora and fauna. Our ecological system is selfishly and rapidly being disturbed and destroyed.
To protect and conserve our environment, the SDP shall mobilise the people to do the following:
(a) Appreciate and realise practically, in words and deeds, that protection of sustainable environment is the most important task of the time, it is about our very survival as a nation and as life on earth.
(b) Make and enforce laws geared at protecting the environment; ratify and creatively implement progressive international policies and agreements on protection of the environment.
(c) Make and implement afforestation programmes that will ensure the restoration of our forests, through scientific research aimed at the restoration and conservation of indigenous trees and plants and the introduction of exotic trees in a sustainable way, etc.
(d) Educate, encourage through various incentives and oblige all Kenyans to value trees, plants and protect forests and the environment in general.
(e) Carry out urban and rural electrification programmes that will ensure that all families in
(f) Jealously protect and conserve our wildlife heritage. Carry out scientific research on wildlife aimed at increasing and controlling the quality and quantity of the wildlife.
(g) Fight against desertification and soil erosion by changing the colonial land tenure system, planting trees, building gabions, dams, terraces and employing other appropriate scientific methods of soil conservation.
(h) Ensure that industries conform to national and international environmental codes and regulations.
(i) Outlaw and invalidate all/any contracts and agreements that have been signed to allow the dumping of nuclear and toxic waste in our country.
(j) Provide clean and healthy environments for habitation and working.
(k) Ensure that cities, towns and other areas are planned in such a way as to eradicate slums and provide for facilities like parks, sports fields and other recreational facilities.
(l) Control the use of chemicals, pesticides and herbicides that are harmful to health and that disturb the ecological balance.
(m) Ensure proper conservation and utilisation of water resources.
(n) Control industrial and motor air pollution by instituting strict environmental control legislation and policy.
(o) Put the people at the centre of environmental conservation by involving and empowering communities to manage and benefit from the natural resources in their localities.
13. POLICY OF REGIONAL CO-OPERATION AND NEW PROGRESSIVE PAN-AFRICANISM
We have reason to search for closer co-operation in
The East African Community, provide a good example of regional co-operation and prove how the destination of the people of these countries are intertwined. The only obstacles to the realisation of the East African Federation is the foreign interests that our leaders are serving and personal pride, greed and narrow nationalism among the elitist ruling classes in these countries.
Being committed to the realisation of East African Federation, United States of Africa and the ideals of revolutionary Pan-Africanism, the SDP will strive to:
(a) Work for fast tracking of East African Federation and the United States of Africa.
(b) Actively promote Kiswahili as a common language of East and Central Africans states.
(c) Allow free movement of the people of East Africa into and out of
(d) Encourage inter-African trade, educational and cultural exchanges.Support progressive struggles and the end of conflicts in East Africa and
14. AN INDEPENDENT AND CONSISTENT FOREIGN POLICY
The foreign policy of any nation is always a reflection of her domestic policies. A country whose economy, culture, education and institutions of state are dominated by foreign powers cannot have independence in her foreign policy. A country ruled by a reactionary and backward leadership, which thrives on exploitation and repression of her people, cannot take a stand against exploitative, repressive and hegemonic foreign countries.
To reverse this shameful and reactionary foreign policy, the SDP will endeavour to:
(a) End foreign domination and control of
(b) Relate with nations and states of the world on the principle of peaceful co-existence, the right to all nations to self-determination and national sovereignty, mutual advantage and sanctity of human life.
(c) Work for regional, continental and world peace and progress.
(d) Dismantle all foreign military bases and installations on our soil and work for the creation of the Horn of Africa and the
(e) Consistently work for the realisation East African Federation and the United States of Africa.
(f) Play a militant and progressive role in African Union, the Non-Aligned Movement and the United Nations.
(g) Develop closer political, economic, diplomatic, commercial and cultural ties with countries that pursue progressive policies and are willing to relate with us as equals.
(h) Isolate and condemn all states, however powerful, that adopt and institutionalise repression, human rights violations, imperialist policies, terrorism, war mongering, invasion, racism and all forms of discrimination as weapons of diplomatic, national and international relations.
15. DEFENDING THE PEOPLE AND THEIR DEMOCRATIC GAINS
Creation of a democratic state means democratising the state. Arms and organs of state and Government such as the legislature, the executive and judiciary, must themselves be transformed. Democratisation must deal with the economy, culture, education, health, land ownership, housing, etc. It means enabling Kenyan people to be in charge of all their affairs.
Naturally, there will be elements in our country and from beyond our frontiers who have benefited from the old order that has denied our people these birthrights since the 15th Century, but more so since 1895. They will want to use all methods, including sabotage and violence, to regain or retain their privileges and unfair advantages. The people will defeat their machinations by organised struggle and vigilance.
We have already stated in this manifesto that our people, working through the democratic grassroots structures, will be the determining force in the economy, politics, justice, diplomacy and culture. This independence and the democratic gains must be defended. The defence of our democratic national gains will be the duty of every Kenyan. The SDP shall therefore strive to ensure the following:
(a) Transform the state to be a popular peoples’ state by the people with the people and for the people.
(b) Create popular defence units within popular committees to ensure vigilance and defence against restoration of foreign control and aggression from the enemies of our country.
(c) Develop a national defence force with humane military doctrines so that the spirit of patriotism and love of Kenyan people may always be upheld.
(d) Politicise, mobilise and arm the people for the defence of their motherland and their democratic gains.
(e) Ensure that soldiers are involved in productive activities and nation building.
(f) Develop a friendly, efficient and effective peoples’ police force.
(g) Develop a progressive and advanced military academy whose curriculum must include political and human rights education.
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