Speech by Comrade Booker Omole, General Secretary of the Communist Party Marxist (CPMK)
March 8, 2025
Comrades, sisters, and revolutionary fighters,
Today, we do not gather to celebrate; we gather to condemn. We condemn the theft of women’s labour. We condemn a system that exploits, romanticises, and weaponises unpaid domestic work to sustain oppression. Let us speak plainly: unpaid labour is not love. It is theft.
The Silent Engine of Profit
In Kenya’s semi-capitalist, semi-feudal society, women’s labour is the invisible foundation of this rotten system. Capitalists extract surplus value in factories and farms, but women bear the cost of social reproduction; cooking, cleaning, childcare, care for the sick and elderly; all without pay. This unpaid labour keeps wages criminally low. If women stopped working for free tomorrow, capitalism would grind to a halt.
But in rural Siaya, feudal norms deepen this exploitation. Landlords and patriarchs hoard resources, trapping women in cycles of unpaid farm work and domestic servitude. They call it “tradition.” No! This is exploitation. Capitalism and feudalism profit from your silence.
Love as a Weapon of Oppression
The ruling class calls unpaid labour a woman’s “duty,” a “sacrifice of love.” They spread this lie through churches, media, and schools. Why? To keep women docile, to keep their work unrecognised, uncompensated, and unending.
When a woman in Kisumu spends twelve hours fetching water, cooking, and tending to children, is that “love”? When a girl in Migori drops out of school to raise siblings, is that “family values”? No! These are crimes against humanity, disguised as culture.
Capitalism and Patriarchy: Partners in Crime
Patriarchy serves capitalism. It trains men to dominate households, while capitalists dominate economies. The devaluation of “women’s work” keeps women dependent; paid less in factories, denied land ownership, forced into marriage for survival. Yet their unpaid labour trains the next generation of workers, sustains current labourers, and enriches the ruling class.
Even when women enter the wage economy, patriarchy ensures they return home to a second shift. A tea picker in Kericho earns starvation wages, then works for free at home. This is no accident; it is by design.
Smash the Chains!
Reform is a dead end. Only socialist transformation can end this exploitation.
Recognise: Unpaid domestic labour is real work. Count it in the economy. Fight for wages for housework.
Redistribute: Men must share the burden. The state must provide communal kitchens, childcare, and healthcare.
Socialise: Nationalise resources under workers’ control. Make reproductive labour a collective responsibility, not a life sentence for women.
This is not a “women’s issue.” It is a class issue. Women’s liberation is inseparable from the destruction of capitalism.
A Call to Arms
Sisters, today we honour the women of Mathare slums, the women of the Mau Mau rebellion, the women in every village who resist. We do not fight for a seat at the oppressor’s table; we fight to overturn the table and build a new world.
To the men here: silence is complicity. Join this struggle or be swept into the dustbin of history.
The Communist Party Marxist declares: Until every woman is free, none of us are free. Let us march, not with empty slogans, but with revolutionary fire. From Siaya to Nairobi, the time for liberation is now!
Power to the People!
Women’s Liberation or Socialist Revolution!
Umoja! Ushirikiano! Mapinduzi!
Unity! Solidarity! Revolution!