Stanley GazembaAluo, Raila Amolo Odinga died at 80 years, having built a legacy as simply one of the most outstanding politicians in Kenya. The fallen enigmatic Raila Odinga has seen it all in the struggle for what came to be known as Kenya’s second liberation, and he had the scars to show for it.
Mr Odinga was among the last of the crop of politicians who engineered the freedom that Kenyans enjoy today, after years of living in the grip of President Daniel Moi’s single-party dictatorship that was enforced by the attendant state terror designed to ensure dissidents toed the line. And he has paid the price, both at a personal level as a guest of the state in dingy waterlogged torture cells, at the family level where the state harassed his young family to no end to the extent of physically ejecting them from their allocated staff housing and throwing them out into the streets, and at an economic level where his businesses were targeted by the state.
He would wrestle the state and maneuver it to his will on several occasions and sit in powerful positions in successive governments. In the end, the Kenyan government has honored its most popular politician with a send-off deserving of a head of state, the only political power Mr Odinga craved in life but never attained.
Read also: Jaramogi’s bursaries to India and abroad supported 5000 Kenyans
The only time I came close to the fallen former Kenyan Prime Minister and opposition chief – famously known among his passionate supporters as Baba, Agwambo, Tinga, Jakom, among many other nicknames, was during the 2002 swearing -in ceremony at the charged Uhuru Park hand-over of power from long-serving dictator Daniel Moi to Kenya’s third president, economist Mwai Kibaki, when the weary Kenyan public was kicking out Moi from State House under a hail of chants, his motorcade escorted out of the euphoric venue under a hail of missiles comprising of clods of the ground’s sticky black loam soil.
I was there to do vox pops for the Associated Press on assignment from their bureau chief, who was keen to know how ordinary Kenyans were feeling on the cusp of the departure of Moi after 27?? years at the helm. At the time the rest of the world ranked Kenyans as the most optimistic people on earth.
It was not a one-on-one interview – where could a rookie journalist on college attachment hope to secure that with a person of the stature of Baba? I was strictly there as a spectator – albeit armed with a AP reporter’s notebook and a pencil.
The enigma
You needed to attend one of his rallies to gauge the depth of his charisma when he stepped on stage. Although not as suave and coherent an orator and public speaker like, say, the late Wamalwa Kijana, Raila made up for it with an immense charm and mastery of the art of swaying a crowd. A good reader of the mood of the crowd, he knew when to break into song and do a jig, and instantly the crowd would be set on fire. He also warmed up the crowd very well with his famous ‘vitendawili’ and football analogies, especially during tense moments.
And that charm came at a price. Overzealous supporters have died or been maimed permanently for Raila both in life and in death. During the recent maandamano demos young demonstrators were felled by police bullets, others had their limbs shattered by the batons of the riot police. The same happened during the Gen Z demos.
At the viewing of his body at Kasarani and Nyayo stadiums, at least seven mourners were shot by the police, scores of others breaking their limbs in the stampedes that occurred when the crowds became uncontrollable.
During their East African tours at the height of their fame, it was a normal occurrence for stampedes to happen at Franco and TPOK Jazz concerts as fans tried to force their way into the stadia where they were playing, often resulting in death and maiming.
Unfortunate and inevitable as they are, stampedes are often a sign that someone has transcended the realms of the ordinary and is playing in the league of the gods.
One person who was following the unfolding chaos on live TV at JKIA after Baba’s body was brought home posted on Facebook that the only person capable of calming a rowdy crowd like that one was Raila himself; if he could mysteriously somehow rise from the dead, mount the roof of a vehicle or a makeshift podium, raise one hand and simply say,” Haaayah. . . Baaaas! Vijana tutulie hapo!”
That they would all go still. Unfortunately, he was in the casket.
Great fires birth ashes
And of course, as often happens in such mammoth gatherings in Nairobi, the town pickpockets and thieves were having a field day emptying people’s pockets of phones and wallets, because not all those people were genuine mourners.
The people who will be interesting to watch going forward are the political orphans this opposition doyen has left behind – those men and women who made a career in politics simply because of Baba’s endorsement. And there are scores of them, starting from the ward level right up to the presidency. The moment he said you were ‘tosha’ at a political rally you were as good as home and dry. It was the reason nominations in his own ODM party were a battleground. The moment a candidate secured that nomination certificate they knew they were practically unbeatable at the upcoming polls.
Siaya governor James Orengo once had a taste of what the power of Baba’s endorsement, especially in his Luo Nyanza backyard, meant. The ‘young turk’, who had built his own reputation resisting President Moi was pushed out of power when he went against Mr Odinga’s grain, and so were other leading politicians like Raphael Tuju and other senior Luo politicians who have faded from public light when they exited the party.
But the one event that clearly displayed the power of Baba’s endorsement was the now-famous “Kibaki tosha” declaration at the massive 2002 Uhuru Park campaign rally. It later emerged that it was completely unscripted, and caught some of the leaders in the loose opposition coalition who were present at the rally completely by surprise. At the time the opposition leaders were holding a series of meetings as they strategized on how to beat Moi at the upcoming polls and, more importantly, who to front. They still hadn’t reached an agreement.
A life of riddles
One of the leaders who left that meeting in a huff was Simeon Nyachae, who was extremely angry because he had expected to be endorsed to race against Moi’s preferred candidate to succeed him, Uhuru Kenyatta, a political novice at the time. Nyachae parted ways with the Baba camp and went on to contest on his own party, coming a distant third.
Raila went on to explain to journalists later why he had sprang that surprise “Kibaki Tosha” card on the other opposition leaders. He told NTV’s Linus Kaikai that there were three reasons for it. For one, much as Nyachae was senior and well experienced in politics, he could not guarantee them the numbers from his Kisii backyard to beat Moi’s candidate, going by the tribal patterns that Kenyan elections had traditionally taken. The other reason was that they had no choice but to split the massive Mt Kenya vote that traditionally voted as a block, and always decided who became president. The only candidate who could do that was Kibaki, otherwise Moi would trump them. The last reason was that they needed to give that massive, charged crowd something to take back home, otherwise it would be difficult to rally them out again as a block, something that Moi, whose tactics were well known to Raila, would move quickly to take advantage of the fissures in the opposition.
There were many other instances where he sprung a masterful political card, like the role he played in weakening and eventually destroying Moi’s ruling party KANU to pave the way for multi-partyism that will form the subject of historical studies in future.
For his generosity on many occasions, he was played dirty. If you talk to his ardent supporters, they will tell you that on at least two of the occasions he ran for the presidency he clearly won, but was denied victory. It would seem like there are powerful people with vested interests in business who would do anything to prevent him from ascending to the helm. His Achilles heel was his communist past and that of his father before him. There were people – specifically from Central Kenya – who were very scared of what would happen to their assets if he ascended to the helm; something he addressed on a number of occasions on the campaign trail, trying unsuccessfully to reassure them that he was also a businessman.
This fear was solidified when, as Roads Minister during the Mwai Kibaki administration, he oversaw the demolition of palatial homes constructed on grabbed road reserves in exclusive Nairobi suburbs to pave the way for the construction of the Nairobi northern and southern bypasses. Most of these multi-million properties were owned by monied and powerful business people from Central Kenya. Not even his supporters believed they would come down. But Tinga, true to his bulldozer nickname, ensured they were flattened and the way cleared for the construction of the roads. Though successful, it single-handedly sealed his fate with the Mountain business people and entrenched their deep-seated fears of the man.
There are many other instances when he demonstrated his grit and fearlessness, but love him or hate him, all are in agreement that he was a master political strategist and tactician, way ahead of his time and his competitors.
Too bad that, like with most great men, he died without preparing a clear successor to take on the baton after him when he exited the stage.
culture and practice
The one grouse my Luhyia kin had with the organizers of his hasty and dramatic send-off was a cultural one: the fact that the village gravediggers were denied the chance to eat his chicken as they prepared his final resting place at the family burial ground at Kang’o ka Jaramogi. That by bringing in a backhoe to dig Baba’s grave the professional village gravediggers were played a dirty one.
Usually, this task goes to ordinary village chang’aa drinkers, who get the rare chance to get even with a wealthy family that ordinarily wouldn’t mind them much the few times they come visiting from the city. As they go about preparing the grave, the family has to ensure they have copious supplies of hooch and weed, which they partake of openly, regardless of whether the family is conservative Christian. (It later emerged that the reason for using the backhoe and drill was that the ground at the burial site was very rocky, although the chaps in the heated discussion didn’t know this at the time).
The other grouse I was discussing among the Luhyia folks I was talking to was the 72 hours allocated to the funeral, according to Baba’s will. Now, these folks were insistent that if you are Luhyia and you die you cease being the property of your immediate family and become the property of the clan and the wider tribe. That it is your clansmen who will decide how you will be accorded a send-off, regardless what you wrote in your will. And it especially applies if you were a prominent personality.
It is the reason why you will wish to be cremated and be quickly overruled in death by the clan elders, who will inform the funeral committee that Luhyias do not cremate their dead but bury them in the earth where their forebears are resting. You have probably heard of those bizarre cases where the same elders flog a corpse that is ‘refusing’ to be taken back home for burial from the city whenever the courtege keeps stalling mid-way? Well, it isn’t exactly fiction.
There are many other attendant burial rituals that are unique to each sub-tribe, but the point my agitated group was making was that the elders in Bondo should have overruled Baba’s wish and stretched the ceremony to at least seven days to allow his numerous followers to mourn him properly and to eat his mahenjera and dance to his isukuti. Reason being, he was not an ordinary person; and they felt that they rightfully owned a piece of him. It is probably this rush that was causing all the tension and chaos around his burial.
And being neighbors with complex cultural ties to the Luo to the extent some Luhyias, especially around the Busia and Mumias regions, bear Luo names and vice versa, they were wondering what was going on in Bondo.
We had to remind the heated among the debaters that this was a Bondo affair, and that it was up to the elders there to decide what to do.
politricks after Babaman
Enough has been said and written about the ‘Baba orphans’ who have been left behind in ODM and those especially from the mountain who built their political career out of painting him as an ogre. We wait to see what will happen to these folks. In the meantime let us bury Baba and wish him safe passage to the land of his forebears in the struggle like his father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Charles Rubia, Kenneth Matiba, Stephen Anyona, Pio Gama Pinto, and many others who fell by the wayside before they sighted Canaan.
It is mildly amusing to note, while at it, that the derogatory Kihii, Mzee wa Vitendawili, Mr Handshake and other epithets that were hurled on the campaign trail by his then fierce political opponents has now mellowed to the respectful Baba now that the reality of his passing has dawned. Death has humbled us and opened our eyes to the monumental role the man played in our politics, and the fact that he won’t be there to lead another maandamano anymore whenever we feel muzzled by the president and his men at the house on the hill.
As we bury him, we await to see who will rise up from the rabblers he mentored in the trenches to fill his big shoes.
Stanley Gazemba
Discover more from Orals East Africa
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
