Raila must smell the coffee and move fast to rekindle waning Odinga magic

For six decades, the Odinga mystic has captured the imagination of the Luo of Kenya like a people under a spell.

If indeed they are a dynasty as some have often suggested, the Odinga Dynasty goes back to the pre-independence era. In the 1930s, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga emerged from the lakeside as a towering political figure, capturing the centre stage of the nationalist movement that led to Kenya’s independence in 1963.

Bearing a rebellious self-confidence and a straight-talking trait, with a biting shrill voice and free-flowing English idiom, Jaramogi was a thorn in the flesh of petty colonial supremacists.

The initial recipients of his harsh barbs were his teachers at Alliance and Maseno schools, where he challenged openly some of their racist prejudices. It was a trait he would perfect as a high school teacher in Maseno and later take them to the national rostrum as an activist for equal rights among the races and in the subsequent search for independence.

Fall from grace

But even after independence, Jaramogi would not rest. He wanted to see actualisation of what Kenyans fought for. He was especially keen on the return of the stolen lands to the Kikuyu people and their cousins in the greater Mt Kenya region. Surprisingly, this commitment made him to be parodied as “the enemy of the Kikuyu” and as a bitter man, seeking to wrestle power from the House of Mumbi.

State sponsored propaganda in the 1960s and in the ‘70s painted Jaramogi as a dangerous man to be kept at bay. Yet, these traits endeared him greatly to the Luo. Mourning Tom Mboya, who had been the chief architect of his fall from political grace to the grass, Jaramogi burst into an elegiac Luo dirge with the words, “Oh, my son, I cautioned you against these people, you did not listen to me!” It was his defiance and courageous ability to stand up against political correctness that captured his people’s love for him.

Ever since, the story of the Odinga family is partly the Kenyan story and the Kenyan story is partly the Odinga family story. Like the Kenyatta family, the Moi family and the Kibaki family, you cannot fully tell the story of Kenya without talking about them and their influence. Nor can you tell their stories without telling the story of Kenya. The two are intrinsically intertwined.

Yet, do recent trends suggest that the Odinga magic is under threat? Is it entering twilight, or at the best getting comatose? Only a Raila presidency this year could save it, it would seem. To achieve this, Raila must himself listen to the voice of the people.

The defeat of Dr Oburu Odinga in the Bondo parliamentary primaries in Siaya is portentous for a family that has straddled the politics and fate of the Luo of Kenya like the proverbial colossus. Oburu lost dismally to Gideon Ochanda. It is instructive that this was not the first time the people were rejecting Jaramogi’s eldest son. In 2013, he wanted to be Governor of Siaya County. He lost the ODM primaries to William Oduol in a humiliating landslide defeat. Political gerrymandering and the intervention of his charismatic younger brother saw him get nominated to the National Assembly.

Following this year’s defeat, he seemed poised for a soft landing in the East Africa Legislative Assembly (Eala). This was until hue and cry from within and without put paid to his hopes to clutch on the Eala straws.

Yet the electorate did not reject Oburu alone. Gem MP, Jakoyo Midiwo, is for all practical purposes and intents a member of the Odinga family, albeit from a matrilineal perch. His mother and Raila’s late mother Mary Juma were sisters. When the Odingas suffered incarceration and exclusion under the Jomo Kenyatta regime in the 1960s and in the ‘70s, the Midiwos took part of the beating, as did anyone who was remotely associated with them.

They were denied the opportunities to participate in public affairs. Their businesses were denied licences and driven to the brink. The auctioneer’s hammer was always just a short distance away. The Luo people, who knew about all this, identified themselves with their plight.

Democratic appeal

The acme of Luo solidarity with the Odinga’s were the Kisumu riots of October 25, 1969. An irate largely Luo audience could no longer take the unprintable epithets that President Kenyatta was throwing at Jaramogi in his very presence. The crowd menacingly surged forward, appearing intent to overrun the presidential dais and engage the head of state physically. All hell broke loose as the presidential guard fired liberally, snuffing out lives whose number remains a mystery to date. A common sense of grief and grievance against successive political establishments has rallied a significant swathe of the Luo around the Odingas. Their bravado and perceptions of democratic appeal has done the rest. Described by historians as a proud and materially sophisticated people, the Luo have traditionally had folk heroes whose word is veritably unquestionable. Such leaders have embodied the dignity and valour that these people have visibly and loudly cherished, ever since they began arriving in the East African lakeside between the years 1490 and 1600.

The Odingas are, therefore, only the latest on a long list of political and religious leaders, as well as other legendary and mythical personages in the world of the Luo. Whether you talk of the patriarchs who led them in the migrations from the plains of Bar-el-Ghazel in Sudan, such as the historical Dimo and Nyikang’o – and others like Omolo who led the Joka-Omolo, Owiny the leader of the Joka-Owiny, or the leaders of the Jopadhola and Joka-Oketch – it is always the portrait of heroism, among a gallant people who have traditionally loved the good life and revered brave and bigger-than-life leaders.

At its apogee, their mania for greatness finds expression in the panegyrics and praise songs in which they wrap up their leaders. These great men are not to be referred to by name. Hence Raila Odinga is Agwambo, the mercurial one. The historical Oryang’ of the Padhola was “the owner of the soil.” Raila’s father father was Jaramogi, the son of Ramogi, the grand progenitor of the Kenya Luo. Such a leader is easily lifted from the character of an ordinary mortal to something near a demi god. And so we have heard legendary narratives about such mythological figures as Lwanda Magere, the man of Stone, and Gor Mahia the magic making son of Ogalo.

Political baggage

Even in more recent decades, there have been hugely respected elders like Ker Mbuya and Ker Omer. The institution of the Luo Ker, in particular, has called the shots. Yet has the authority of this institution itself been eroded with the rise of alternative centres of power in emerging non-traditional spaces? People like Raila and his father Jaramogi and Tom Mboya have occupied such spaces.

Mboya was, strictly speaking, not Luo as such. It is, however, conventionally accepted that his Abasuba people of the Lake Victoria islands have been subsumed into the Luo and are accepted as such. All the three major leaders from this community have respected the Ker and sought to have him on their side.

Yet if the prestige and authority of the Ker has progressively suffered erosion, is it also possible the Odinga magic is on the wane? Where did the rain begin beating them? Raila’s younger sister Ruth is the deputy governor of Kisumu County.

There is a sense in which the electorate feels she was imposed upon them from Siaya. Indeed, she initially wanted to be the governor but lost to Jack Ranguma, who then took her on board as his running mate, mostly to milk political mileage from the Odinga name.

It would appear that Ruth will this time be Senator Anyang’ Nyong’o’s running mate for Kisumu Governor, with the same symbiosis in mind. The attempt to impose political baggage on the electorate would seem to be the undoing of Raila among his people, besides some creeping sense of political hopelessness and surrender to fate, in the wake of successive defeats in the presidential race.

Party sycophants

If Raila is the reigning king of the Luo, this did not come on a silver platter. He fought hard to get here. First he fended off Mayor Lawrence Akinyi Oile in what were often bloody street battles in the streets of Kisumu in the mid-1990s.

Then, Like Muntu’s Second Son in Joe De Graft’s eponymous play, he had to put the more erudite and aristocratic class of the Luo in its rightful shoes. One by one, they all placed their distinctions and accolades behind them, or at his feet, surrendering to him as the undisputed leader of the Luo.

Perceptions of undemocratic preference for sycophants and imposition of sundry friends and relatives in leadership positions, however, would appear to be Raila’s undoing among his people. In their traditional style, they have begun defying him.

He needs to smell the coffee, as the Americans say. The electorate shot down his choices. Other popular candidates decamped to run on other parties or as independents.

As he goes to Luo Nyanza to ask for votes over the next few weeks, Raila will need to guard against campaigning for party sycophants and unpopular ODM candidates. If he does not, he must prepare to reckon with voter apathy that could spell the end of his presidential dreams and with it the last of the Odinga charm, at least for a generation.

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