Teachers' unions need a political wing

The teachers’ two-week strike might come to naught now that President Uhuru Kenyatta has made it look like a baby’s tantrum.

Teachers in Kenya today are a bitter lot, and the only way to get even with a government that is insensitive to their plight is to threaten to vote it out in 2017.

I said ‘threaten’ because Kenya’s political landscape is totally different from teachers’ unions. When the time for elections comes, teachers are not left out and, like all Kenyan voters, retreat to tribal enclaves to vote in “our man”.

If teachers’ unions would form a political movement, I want to believe it would be one of the strongest political wings in the republic. This movement would likely be devoid of tribalism because teachers are drawn from all communities in the republic and thus will represent the will of many across the country.

Teachers hold the future of the nation, literally, because they shape the country’s youth. If teachers become affiliated to a single political ideology, they would give the ‘mainstream’ politicians a run for their money