Photo/FILE Central Organisation for Trade Unions secretary general Francis Atwoli.
By CLAY MUGANDA
Posted Monday, December 26 2011 at 17:24
Posted Monday, December 26 2011 at 17:24
The good thing about writing, or, to be specific, about writing this column, is not being taken seriously, unless of course you write outrageous stuff, which in itself is not a bad thing.
Sure, if it bleeds, it leads, but sometimes even that is not taken seriously. But when you just imagine that it is going to bleed, and you write about that, you end up being taken very seriously.
For instance, pick any name from the list of male politicians and just write that Mr So-and-So is in his third trimester, then add that MPs are about to pass a Bill about MP-aternity Leave, a combination of both maternity and paternity leave for male MPs who have buns in their own ovens.
That might be outrageous, but the good thing about it is that you will be taken seriously.
Now, in all my folly, in May this year, I wrote that nationwide strikes are not likely to happen because the Kenyan society is so laid back, so subdued, so weak, that it will take anything that is thrust down its throat and pay for it through its nose.
The piece was kind of asking, nay, informing Francis Atwoli, the Cotu boss, to lay off calling for nationwide strikes because when he does that, he will be on his own.
Probably my language was not “good”, or maybe it was so soft by his standards for I wrote that the workers’ worker has shouted himself hoarse over workers’ (minimum) wages and rights and almost everything else for so long that it is difficult to tell whether he still hears his own voice — or even listens to himself — any more.
When you are not a political analyst or a consultant for social or anti-social media, you do not expect to be listened to but to be laughed at, and the latter is what happened, courtesy of one Barasa Adams, personal assistant to the Cotu secretary general.
In a long rejoinder titled ‘Claycourt’s writer Clay Muganda is absolutely wrong about Atwoli and Kenyans’, he oozed oodles of confidence — and no punctuation — by starting off in this way:
“The old adage did aver that pessimists may be right in the long run, but the optimists have a better time during the trip and equally I was bemused by one Clay Muganda’s Claycourt thoughts in today’s copy of the Daily Nation’s verbal attacks and hallucinations at the Central Organisation of Trade Unions’ COTU (K) Secretary General Bro. Francis Atwoli over Atwoli’s stand on the high cost of living that has since driven most Kenyans to seek alternative means of survival.”
Not a welfare society
Even though I did not dispute what and who Cotu and Atwoli are, he figured I needed to know more about them: “I wish to inform the writer that Cotu (K) is not and has never been a welfare or co-operative society but since its inception in 1965, it has remained and forever will be a pressure group operating under a Constitutional and membership mandate with Atwoli as its spokesperson by virtue of his duly and democratically elected position of the organisation’s Secretary General.”
And he was not done with me yet. “With all due respect to the writer Clay Muganda, it is uncouth, unethical and equally disreputable for him to brand Atwoli with all manner of breeds of adjectives referring to him as vociferous and raucous while exhibiting unexceptional ignorance on the role of Cotu (K) as a pressure group.”
If you thought that was all, the good personal assistant had some more to inform me about: “Kenyans and workers are all alive to the monolithic role Atwoli and the entire team of workers’ leaders played in the attainment of the current new labour laws and the subsequent agitation on the implementation of these laws at a time when no single individual found any reason to review our previous archaic labour laws that had condemned and confined the working men and women into a radius of pain and suffering.”
Not feeling that I had probably got the point, and maybe added a few punctuation marks of my own in his missive, he went on to “Labour Matters now! As the cost of living sours and Kenyans continue to be pushed to the wall, Cotu (K) has remained steadfast and it was the first organisation to raise an alarm over the skyrocketing cost of fuel. Atwoli was so passionate about the matter, sought and met the Ministry of Energy top officials lead by the Minister and Permanent secretary eventually culminating into compelling the Energy Regulatory Commission, ERC to come up with fuel price control measures.” Phew!
Of course with the soaring cost of living, a lot of food is sour, considering that there are families who literally have to scavenge for leftovers in garbage dumps and it is probably with that in mind, that I was being told of Atwoli the economist: “Come Labour Day, Atwoli stood his ground in demanding a 60 per cent Minimum Wage increase and 10 per cent General Wage increase based on run-away inflation that was way above 100 per cent!
“These are figures Atwoli arrived at based on both intensive and extensive research undertaken by the Economics and Research Department at Cotu (K) that is heavily funded to undertake and feed the Secretary General with weekly economic undertones and situations across all sectors in the country, in the region as well as global economic trends.”
Innumerable achievements
At some point in the long note, there was a climb-down: “However, based on the resultant economic paper presented to the government, workers only managed a paltry 12.5 per cent Minimum Wage increase and although the highest in a decade, Atwoli has publicly denounced the increment and written formally to His excellency the President for the government to review upwards the increment or face industrial action.”
There was also a show of braggadocio: “We can go on and (on) on the list of what Cotu (K) under the able leadership of my Brother Atwoli has done!”
After almost every paragraph, there were questions like Muganda, what do you partake of this? Were there futile exercises as alleged by the writer? Was this still noise to Kenyans? Were these efforts by Atwoli vociferous and raucous?
Ideally, I cannot answer those questions, and following the success of his latest call for nationwide strikes, I take this opportunity to apologise to “Atwoli and the entire team of workers’ leaders.”
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