The teachers’ two-week strike might come to naught now that the President has made it look like a small issue. When he says the teachers’ demands are unsustainable, he means that his government is not going to honour what the courts awarded and teachers might as well go to class and stop the strike.
Today, teachers 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 them out in 2017.
I said “threaten” because Kenya’s political landscape is totally different from teachers’ unions. During elections, teachers, like all Kenyan voters, retreat to tribal enclaves and 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 country.
This movement would likely be devoid of tribalism because teachers are drawn from all communities in and thus will represent the will of many.
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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 because they will hold sway as far as youth votes are concerned.
Teachers will have an upper hand influencing the political views of the young people before they leave school. Every year thousands of students clear high school, become eligible voters soon after and I dare say that majority would support their teachers’ political views if given a chance.
If teachers had a political movement, the political class today would listen to and not rubbish their demands as unsustainable.
One of the grounds upon which teachers have based their demand is that they are exceptional professionals. The Kenya National Union of Teachers has argued that no teacher has been cited in the numerous multi-million-shilling scandals ravaging this country.
