Sossion, give teachers a break 

If there is one person who deserves admiration for his resilience, it should be Mr Wilson Sossion, the man who has been running the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) for seven years now and wants to continue doing so for another stint.

But contrary to how these things go, he seems to be confused about the direction his ministrations have taken the erstwhile giant union, which used to give past governments the shivers whenever its senior officials spoke. Today, nobody seems to care very much what he says and he doesn’t even notice it!

The matter of Mr Sossion, his stewardship of the teachers’ union and his relationship with their employer, the Teachers Service Commission, has cooled off for quite a while, although the unionist has been keeping us abreast of his grievances through opinion pieces published in the newspapers sporadically. The reason why Knut is back in the news is that it is in the process of holding elections for national office-bearers, having almost concluded branch elections countrywide. 

The date for the union’s Annual Delegates Conference, when the elections will be held, remains unknown but according to Mr Sossion, the government’s recalcitrance on the matter has been a major stumbling block. He truthfully says the union has deliberately been starved of funds with the aim of killing it altogether, but with a little help from friends abroad, the elections will happen all the same.

From an organisation with more than 187,000 members contributing Sh144 million a month, the union has been whittled down to 23,000 poor souls who cannot raise even a fraction of the dues. Is it any wonder that its long-serving treasurer, Mr John Matiang’i, recently abandoned ship probably because he had no funds to manage? The reason for this whole fiasco should be laid at the feet of Mr Sossion, whose modus operandi seems to be heedless combativeness.

Nobody really knows the source of bad blood between Mr Sossion and the TSC chief executive, Dr Nancy Macharia, but the haemorrhage in the Knut membership is a direct cause of this acrimony.

For example, in January 2018, Mr Sossion threatened a countrywide strike and in apparent retaliation, the TSC deregistered him as a teacher following his nomination as an MP and later blacklisted him from teaching. These actions were inadequate to dislodge Mr Sossion, but other measures led to the union suffering the sharp slump in numbers.

Isn’t it time Mr Sossion gave the vital teachers’ union a break? After seven years as secretary-general, why would he want to hang on to the union’s leadership when it is clear his tactics long became toxic and counter-productive? After all, it is not as though he needs the job; he is a very well-paid MP and a millionaire in his own right. Does he truly believe his re-election will make a difference in Knut’s fortunes?

Teachers are professionals charged with looking after the education of millions of Kenyan children under especially difficult circumstances, and they deserve a robust union to fight for their welfare. It is a pity that the only time Kenyans really think about them is when they threaten to go on strike over pay and other grievances, because many parents dread being saddled with children at home when they should be at school.

Very few people in these times of Corona and a potentially volatile presidential succession next year really care about trade unions and their troubles. The only thing people want to know is who among the politicians will defeat the other when the presidential elections happen.

They are also preoccupied with trying to figure out how they will survive in these trying times of high prices, stagnant wages and waning hopes. So Mr Sossion and his overweening ambitions cannot really be a priority. By now, he should be grooming someone to take over from him, not fighting his rivals.

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When will this nonsense about the late Philip Ochieng being involved with the publication of the so-called ‘Kanu Briefs’ end? These briefs were extremely cruel pieces of trash authored by operatives of a political party that was fearful of losing the 1997 multi-party elections, and Mr Ochieng had absolutely nothing to do with them.

By the time they started appearing, he had long been sacked from the Kenya Times, and the pages in question taken over by a clique of non-journalists for the purpose of waging smear campaigns against Kanu’s perceived enemies.

That this balderdash keeps being repeated by complete ignoramuses at a time when his family is in mourning is completely unreasonable, for it only serves to tarnish the name of one of the greatest journalists who has ever practised in Kenya – and other parts of the world. Can the members of whatever remains of Kanu, or whoever was involved, please clear the air!

The Ochieng I knew would not have allowed such drivel in any of the pages he edited, which is probably one of the reasons he had to exit the scene when he did.

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]