In an astonishing display of misplaced priorities, Francis Atwoli, the long serving leader of the Central Organization of Trade Unions(COTU) since 2001, and The Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers Union (KPAWU) since 1994, recently invited the media – not to address the pressing issues that Kenyan workers face, but to discuss the colour purple. Yes, purple  – the ‘colour of the Kenyan workers’, as Atwoli now claims. Of all the issues that plague workers today, it was the colour of Martha Karua’s newly-rebranded People’s Liberation Party (PLP) that captured his urgent attention.

This is not the first time Atwoli has fought over colours while ignoring the real issues affecting workers or their everyday struggles. In 2016, COTU threatened legal action against the-then Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua when the Maendeleo Chap Chap Party adopted purple as its party colour. It seems Atwoli is more invested in protecting this particular shade of fabric than the dignity of the workers he claims to represent. For him, the most critical issue facing Kenyan workers is ownership of the colour purple.

Atwoli’s leadership, more than anything else, exemplifies the nature of the labour aristocracy. These are bureaucrats who live lavishly off the sweat of the workers. This aristocracy is interested in preserving its own privilege rather than addressing the dire challenges faced by workers.

For decades now, Atwoli has been the ‘voice’ of the Kenyan worker, but has remained conspicuously silent during critical moments of struggle. He kept mum when the government introduced oppressive tax measures, draining the pockets of ordinary workers. And when the children of these same workers took to the streets in protest—armed only with placards, flags, and water bottles, they were met with brute force and many of them lost their lives to police violence. Again, Atwoli’s silence echoed even louder!

Even as workers and their loved ones continue to suffer and die because of the inefficiency of the newly rebranded Social Health Authority (SHA) which is nothing short of a national disgrace, Atwoli has failed to make his voice heard on the matter. He has remained a passive spectator of the misery that workers undergo.

As government-sanctioned demolitions ravaged riparian lands in Nairobi in May 2024, displacing countless working-class families while the wealthy remained untouched, Atwoli’s silence was deafening. Promises made to workers during the campaign period to stop these demolitions remained just that – promises. They still are nothing but empty words.

The struggle for affordable housing, which should be a fundamental right for every Kenyan, has been reduced to a profit-making project for a few connected individuals and corporations. While workers are forced to contribute to the building of these houses through mechanisms like the housing levy, most of them will never see the inside of these houses as they are priced beyond the ability of the average Kenyan. The billionaire Atwoli, the supposed voice of these workers, sits silent and comfortable in his lavish home as the government, through its ‘affordable housing’ programme, perpetuates the cycle of exploitation.

But perhaps the greatest testament to Atwoli’s loyalty is his support for successive oppressive political establishments. In return for his unprincipled support, he has been allowed to remain comfortable at the helm of the labour movement in Kenya and beyond.

The ‘Luhya elder’ Atwoli talks of Luhya unity while holding the position of Secretary General of the Central Organisation of Trade Unions – a national position through which he supposedly represents every Kenyan worker. In doing so, he advances the same ethnic politics that Kenya’s political elite have historically advanced to divide and manipulate voters. Instead of uniting Kenyan workers across ethnic lines in the struggle for a dignified living, the ‘elder’ chooses to reinforce ethnic divisions that have cost so many poor Kenyans their livelihoods and lives.

In a media interview, he is quoted urging workers to remain highly principled, even at the cost of dying poor. His statement is a flagrant disrespect to workers considering the fact that he has enriched himself through his unprincipled support for successive regimes – in the process containing the militancy of workers, and steering them away from the streets and into submission.

Stalwarts of the Kenyan labour movement are rolling in their graves

Throughout Kenya’s history, true working-class heroes are those that have stood in defiance of oppressive political regimes. The first recorded strike in Kenya in 1900 set the stage for militant workers organizing led by patriots who understood that dignity for workers would not be won through the symbolic gestures of labour aristocrats but through a direct and uncompromising struggle led by workers themselves.

Leaders like Makhan Singh understood that workers’ solidarity had to transcend colonial divisions of race and ethnicity. His vision, however, made him a threat to structures of unjust power resulting in an eleven-year imprisonment by the colonial government and him being side lined by the post-colonial Kenyan government, finally dying in relative poverty in 1973.

In 1947, Chege Kibachia led over 15,000 workers in a General Strike, an action so disruptive that it paralyzed the port city of Mombasa. The strike was met with violent repression — hundreds were arrested and several workers shot down in cold blood. Yet, this was a defining moment that revealed both the necessity and the cost of resistance. In 1947, Kibachia was arrested for his activism, and by 1952, with the rise of the Mau Mau rebellion, he was detained as part of the colonial crackdown on political and labour leaders.

Figures like Bildad Kaggia and Pio Gama Pinto further exemplified the role of trade unions in the broader struggle for independence. Kaggia, a former King’s African Rifles soldier during World War I turned radical trade unionist, was a key figure in organising and mobilizing Kenyan workers and peasants against colonial exploitation. He understood that the fight for better wages and working conditions was inseparable from the struggle for political power. He helped organize some of the most important labour actions of the 1950s, linking the economic demands of workers with the broader nationalist movement. By the late 1960’s, Kaggia had been politically side-lined because of his refusal to compromise on his principles. He thereafter lived a modest life and died a poor man on 7th March, 2005.

Pio Gama Pinto, a staunch anti-colonial activist and trade unionist, used his skills as a journalist and organizer to build solidarity between workers and the independence movement. He played a crucial role in publishing underground materials that educated workers on their rights and exposed the injustices of colonial rule. Pinto understood that the struggle was not just about political independence but also about economic liberation. His assassination on 24^th February 1965 was a stark reminder that those who truly fought for workers’ rights and economic justice remained enemies of the political establishment.

It is clear that trade unions were at the forefront of the fight for Kenya’s independence, acting as crucial centres of resistance against the colonial administration. Strikes, boycotts, and worker-led protests disrupted the colonial economy and demonstrated that without the labouring masses, the economy could not function. The trade union movement was deeply intertwined with nationalist politics, with many of its leaders playing key roles in both labour struggles and the push for self-governance. The unity and militancy of workers set the stage for Kenya’s eventual flag-independence.

 Ignore Atwoli’s comments on the colour purple, they are a distraction.

The contrast between these uncompromising trade unionists and today’s bureaucrats and careerists like Atwoli is stark. Whereas Atwoli trades on the backs of workers for his own self-preservation and self-enrichment, Kenya’s true labour leaders risked not only economic subjugation, state violence and long jail terms, but also their dear lives as they fought for the rights of workers. They were great organizers who saw the trade union movement as a vehicle for radical social transformation.

The struggle for workers’ rights in Kenya is not about colours or other meaningless sideshows. It is about who controls political power and whose interests this power serves. Martha Karua may rebrand her party with the colour purple and adopt a revolutionary-sounding name to ride the current political wave, and Atwoli may continue claiming ownership of the colour while flaunting his gold chains and Purple designer shirts, but the workers know the true colour of their struggle – red. Red represents the blood of those who have toiled in hardship only to die in poverty, it represents the blood of those who have lost their lives fighting against inhumane labour conditions, and additionally represents those who continue the struggle for a new dawn for Kenyan workers.

Meanwhile, it is no coincidence that Mutua’s Maendeleo Chap Chap Party, which was once at the centre of COTU’s colour wars, now sits comfortably in bed with the very administration that Atwoli defends. Just as Atwoli’s obsession and outrage over colour purple serves as a distraction, so too are the politicians who opportunistically claim to stand with workers, only to betray them and form new political alignments for self-preservation.

Kenyan workers must continue to march on with their eyes set on their true emancipation. They must not be led by those who co-opt their struggles for their narcissistic pursuit, but by those who will struggle to dignify their lives. Workers, after all, are the ones who create all the wealth. Their labour builds the nation, and they deserve to live dignified lives.

Kinuthia Ndung’u is a social justice activist.