[kictanet] [labor issues] why Kenya should urgently BAN unpaid

Thu Apr 4 11:23:46 EAT 2019

Jimmy

Let me be clear and remove my 'cleverness' :-)

My deep conviction is this:-

We are bucking the wrong tree. Let's go back to the basics. Let's redefine
what an internship/apprenticeship means. Firstly, let's accept that the
internship concept has been so bastardized that it has lost meaning. I
would like at this point to replace internship with apprenticeship.
Apprenticeship used to mean:-

*A person who is learning a trade from a skilled employer, having agreed to
work for a fixed period at low wages.*

Let us have candid conversations around changing mindsets  - both from a
corporate perspective and an internee/apprentice perspective.

Regards

*Ali Hussein*

*Principal*

*AHK & Associates*

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim
<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>

13th Floor , Delta Towers, Oracle Wing,

Chiromo Road, Westlands,

Nairobi, Kenya.

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely
mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the
organizations that I work with.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 5:06 PM Jimmy Gitonga via kictanet <
kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

> I think Ali is being “clever” like the proverbial hare.
>
> Honestly, we need to stop looking at everything the West, including their
> vile practices, as gospel truth. Taking on interns, with the sole intention
> of getting unpaid labour, even if it is the "sneaker network" that gets you
> coffee is despicable. The intern, no matter how enterprising, will be used
> and dumped.
>
> *"Why would a rational employer - whose goal is to maximise margins
> (within a very difficult / hostile business environment) - be interested in
> paying an experienced ex-intern, when they can simply get a fresh unpaid
> intern for free, train them within hours or a couple of days, even as other
> unpaids hold the temporary slack? This where we are headed - if not there
> already. The youth are "working" but they are still technically unemployed
> because they are not earning a living."*
>
>
> If getting “ahead" means bowing down to the "scacity mentality” idol and
> the stepping on people is one’s business success mantra, may that business
> perish and it’s “rational” employer perish.
>
> Please note, we are not talking about the graduate who feels entitled to
> get paid internship, no. Those kinds of people will always be weeded out by
> the system. Their attitude alone is their undoing. We are talking about the
> ones with little to no social advantage of networks of family or friends
> who can supoort unpaid internship.
>
> This is where our Africans, “Utu ni watu”, “Ubuntu” and “I am because we
> are” comes in.
>
> Best Regards,
> *Jimmy Gitonga*
>
> *Web Software Design and Development *
> *LinkedIn: Jimmy Gitonga | Twitter: @Afrowave*
> ______________________________________
>
> *Web*: afroshok.com
>
>
> On 3 Apr 2019, at 3:15 PM, kictanet-request at lists.kictanet.or.ke wrote:
>
> Many thanks for your thoughts Ali.?
> Indeed, words in most languages can have multiple, totally unrelated,
> meanings (e.g. "saw" the noun/hardware, "saw" the verb/cutting, and "saw"
> the past tense of "see"... or in Swahili "paka" the cat vs "paka" as in to
> paint) so in this case the appropriate focus would be on the
> vocation-oriented definition of "intern" (though I can see material for
> contextual innuendo in the two meanings hehe).
>
>
> Some well known intellectuals on twitter are getting stuck on written
> definitions and relying on logical fallacies which is not intellectually
> sincere. Are definitions cast in stone? Can they have a shelf-life? Don't
> they change with time??
>
>
> Fact: Definitions only document meaning as it evolves over time; they are
> not the source of meaning. The general rule of thumb is that Informality
> precedes formality.
> Thankfully the etymology (origin of a word and the historical development
> of its meaning) of "intern" shows that the meaning and usage, in
> professional context, has indeed been evolving.
>
> According to an online source (link below), the term is believed to have
> been documented as a noun circa 1879 for the teaching and medical
> professions, and then extended to other profesions around 1963. It was
> formally recognize as a verb circa 1933 within the medical field.
> Prior to that, and going back as far as medieval times (in western
> cultures), people learned through apprenticeships and although you did not
> get "paid" in the narrow sense of the term, your boss provided you with
> free *accommodation* and *food*. Such contextual nuances around the
> apprenticeship system are (conveniently) ignored by advocates of unpaid
> internships.
>
>
> In African culture (link below), apprenticeship was a very POSITIVE
> community experience. People had EMPATHY for one another and collective
> gains were favored over individual gains. Not caring whether someone had
> food or a safe place to sleep was unheard of. Lets face it, cold blooded,
> greed motivated exploitation of the youth within a community is an alien
> concept in most (if not all) of pre-colonial Africa.?
>
>
> In traditional China and (I believe) India the apprentice is technically
> "adopted" and the relationship is parent - child, but in vocational
> context. There is mutual love, concern and caring even if the apprentice is
> treated harshly. It never crosses over to predation.
>
>
> We are Africans. Unless we want to give up our core identity, the quest
> for meaning in everything we do (and the policies we support) has to be
> done within the context of our Africanness. Even as we adopt poitive
> aspects of foreign cultures in a cosmopolitan world, we can strive to
> retain the best aspects of our indigenous cultures. For example if the
> industrialized world had emulated positive African philosophies like simple
> contented living in harmony with nature, we would not have existential
> problems like climate change, WMDs, world wars, economic inequality and so
> on.?
>
>
> Imported meanings are not rules cast in stone. We can, if we want to,
> define our own modern, African, definition of the word "intern" in a way
> that that protects our youth from abuse and exploitation.?
>
>
> The youth are our children and our future. Let us not raise a generation
> of bitter, angry and resentful people. It's not a smart thing to do.
> Thanks & have a great day!
>
>
> Patrick.
> Patrick A. M. Maina[Cross Domain Innovator | Independent Public Policy
> Analyst - Indigenous Innovations]
> Links:
> 1. Etymology of the word "intern":https://www.etymonline.com/word/intern
>
> 2. Traditional apprenticeship in
> Africahttps://www.academia.edu/11682853/Revisiting_the_role_of_traditional_apprenticeship_in_traditional_Africa_vocational_pedagogy
>
> 3. Weird history of
> internshiphttps://www.businessinsider.com/the-weird-history-of-how-internships-came-to-be-2016-
>
>
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