How Kalonzo’s ‘playing safe’ obscured his political career

Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka. [File, Standard]

In the words of Harry Gray, an American business manager, “no one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe.” Kalonzo Musyoka is the SI unit of this dictum. When he came to the scene, there was no better educated, focused and promising political gryphon in Ukambani. But let’s now dissect the fall and fall of the lion of Ukambani.

He was panoplied in political grace—an unmerited favour from political transcendence. He became a Member of Parliament at 32 in a by-election when the Kitui North seat fell vacant in 1985, a seat he had failed to clinch in a general election only two years before.