The doctors’ strike now in its third month in Kenya has caused great suffering to the majority poor people who cannot afford medical care in private hospitals. All Kenyans ought to come out and support the doctors. The strike is not merely about the welfare of the healthcare workers. It is about a public health system crumbling under deliberate state neglect and corruption.

According to the Independent Medico-Legal Unit, 53 Kenyans were extra-judicially killed by the police between January and April of 2016. The organisation further reports that 125 Kenyans were summarily executed in 2015, and that another 199 lives were wasted by Kenya Police in 2014.

In South Africa, over $60 million was lost through a well-orchestrated fraud from the mineworkers’ death benefits pool. 46,000 widows and orphans lost their benefits in this fraud revealed in the Panama Papers. Can you I imagine the pain of a widow  going to claim her husband’s death benefits only to find it all gone? Imagine that this widow has four children and no real source of income. We must resist!

Most African countries have failed to transform the much-trumpeted economic growth into economic development for their citizens. Africa’s rising therefore mainly benefits multi-national corporations and local elites.