Threats of teachers pay imbroglio out of order!

By Ababu Namwamba

NAIROBI, KENYA: Among my favorite childhood stories was the tale of the North Wind and the Sun. The two were  locked in a raging dispute on which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Setting off the contest, the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up.

Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. The North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger. Avianus draws the simple moral that “they cannot win who start with threats,” while La Fontaine concludes that “gentleness does more than violence”. There is evidence that this reasoning has had explicit influence on modern day diplomacy, in South Korea’s Sunshine Policy, for instance. Watching the unfolding teachers pay imbroglio, and listening to the rouble-rousing exchanges between government and the teachers unions, my mind could not help but wander down memory lane to this contest of might.

On Tuesday, Labour Secretary Kazungu Kambi brazenly declared as “obsolete” Legal Notice No. 534 of 1997, the very eye of this typhoon, and declared the strike “illegal”. His Education counterpart, Jacob Kaimenyi, weighed in with the bizarre assertion that the allowances teachers are agitating for had already been implemented from 2003, and on Friday announced that government will withold teachers salaries if they continue with the strike.

Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) has responded with a firm NYET! The union is emphatic that the 1997 deal is “alive”, having been properly gazetted by then Education Minister, Joseph Kamotho. Dismissing Kambi’s declaration as “absolute mischief” and Kaimenyi’s threat as a “joke and hopeless”, Knut has reiterated that the Teachers Service Commission Act allows agreements between government and teachers to be enforced after gazettement. The teachers union flatly rejected a TSC invitation for talks on Wednesday, insisting that the employer must first table something as a basis for talks.

This latest standoff is the 7th by teachers over the 1997 deal, awarded on Moi Day sixteen years ago, October 10, 1997. To force President Moi’s hand, teachers had staged unprecedented protests for twelve days. Superbly marshalled by then indefatigable Secretary-General Ambrose Adongo and Chairman John Katumanga (both deceased). And the timing could not have been worse for Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, as a crucial election loomed, with opposition forces massing across all fronts. Outfoxed and outflanked, a hemmed-in Moi buckled, the precise tipping point being the death of a teacher in Kisumu hit by a vehicle during the protest.

This was the background to the deal that has come to be known as Legal Notice Number 534 of 1997. The deal was to be implemented over 5 years, but only the basic pay was raised, and when the Narc government took power in 2002, it sneaked in the contentious Legal Notice No. 16 of 2003 whose effect was to vitiate the 1997 deal. This set the stage for a new wave of protests, as the Kibaki regime dug in with fresh intransigence.

Last year saw another seismic wave, with 24-day protests led by the late David Okuta Osiany and reigning chairman Wilson Sossion. That strike culminated in a fresh deal that saw the coalition government fork out Sh13.5 billion for increased salaries as well as hardship and commuter allowances, but with the caveat that payment of the remaining allowances under LN 534/1997 would be subjected to parliamentary interpretation vis-a-vis LN 16/2003. Parliament unanimously ruled in favour of teachers, and asked government to degazette LN 16 /2003 and honour LN 534/1997.

It is against this historical backdrop that I find the Jubilee government absolutely out of order for purpoting to so casually trash the 1997 deal. Every new government inherits state obligations of its predecessors, and while it has the mandate to review, it is utmost bad faith to nonchalantly bastardise such obligations. But the teachers union must similarly be seen to be less obtuse and more objective as it pursues the deal that stands to punch a Sh47 billion hole in the exchequer. This standoff demands sober, reasoned engagement. Not vain posturing.