If US tour was to rejuvenate Gachagua politics it did the opposite

If Rigathi Gachagua’s July–August tour of the United States was calculated to prepare him to take over the Opposition command upon his return, then it was not good for purpose.

While he sojourned in America, President Ruto’s impeached deputy fired salvos that sent shockwaves all the way to Nairobi, but to what far-reaching effect? 

The political establishment framed Gachagua as a dangerous person. They dreaded the day he would return. Ruto’s ministers, led by Kipchumba Murkomen of the Interior, said that Gachagua should be arrested immediately he got back to Kenya.

The man veritably placed Ruto and Co on the backfoot. They were squarely against the ropes of the political boxing ring, desperately fending off one verbal blow after the other. There was palpable fear over the return of the dragon and the aftermath.  

Yet, is Gachagua’s return proving to be the post-pilgrimage triumphal re-entry that never happened? His fortunes seem to dim by the day. The abrasive populist seems unable to carry his rhetoric beyond Mt. Kenya, to rattle and inspire the Kenyan nation.

His appearances at events hosted by colleagues in the Opposition are shy. They pale before the vociferous bluster of yesterday. His new political party is lukewarm, and even disoriented in primaries ahead of the November by-elections.

He laments about what he calls external interference and buying off of his candidates.  He has no notable names among his troops. He looks like a commander without a command system.  

His hejira to the US gave the impression that he intended to rock Kenya upon his return. In this he walked on familiar terrain. Jomo Kenyatta, Ken Matiba, Mwai Kibaki, and Raila Odinga, each made grand political returns from overseas, in their own time. The strategy was always to create a great hero political figure. Legendary narratives would be woven around them during their absence. Their return is then eagerly awaited. Eventually, they make a grand entry, with pomp, circumstance and political razmataz. 

They rattle the political order. They are instantly lionized. They assume a messianic character. The nation looks forward to being led to liberty by this grand hero. From now on, they act. The State reacts. They go overboard with political organization and messaging. The State panics in its boots. Yet they loom so large that the State fears the potential consequences of arresting them. They are in a roller-coaster to overthrow the established order. 

In the 1950’s Mzee Kenyatta returned to Kenya after 15 years in Europe to a grand welcome. The people saw in him the leader who would unify the African population and lead a brand new Kenyan nation to independence.

Matiba was the next great hero in this mould. He returned to the country in 1992 after months of treatment in the UK, following health complications he had developed while in detention. The reception was electrifying. Kibaki walked in Matiba’s footsteps, ahead of the 2002 elections, following an overseas mission for treatment after a road accident. 

From 2007, when he took his second shot at the presidency, Raila Odinga perfected the art of choreographed returns. It was after one such return in 2017 that his lieutenants christened him Baba. They would report to him the bad things that had happened while he was away. The style sought to create a political giant figure. Hence, they fawned before him in the manner a faithful child would report to the father sibling transgressions that took place in his absence, “Baba while you were away, a lot of stuff went wrong . . .”

Baba is then expected to take charge. He calls the home back to order. When he sneezes, everyone catches the cold. They know that the big man is back. They toe the straight and narrow line of his presence and authority.

Accordingly, has Gachagua’s return been a whimper? If he expected to be crowned the de facto leader of the United Opposition, then the plan has fallen flat on its face. For a start, there were no grand opposition generals to receive the great Kenyan champion who returned from exile in August. If he expected to use the occasion to raise the rabble and heighten political temperatures in the country this has not been the case. 

Upon his arrival at the port of entry, his colleagues were nowhere to be seen. He expected that he would give the impression of the political commander-in-chief, being received at the airport by Kalonzo Musyoka, Eugene Wamalwa, George Natembeya, Jimmy Wanjigi, Fred Matiang’i, Jeremiah Kioni and other opposition stalwarts.

Yet, they all skipped his arrival drama at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, giving his sombrero arrival a comical look. As his motorcade snaked through Nairobi and parts of his native Mt Kenya region, the great news of the day was not that the Opposition champion had returned, or that he was crowned. No, it was rather that his comrades-in-arms had not turned up to receive him. And his car rooftop searching of the crowd for familiar faces betrayed the nervousness within.

Did Gachagua mislead himself into thinking that he would hoist his flag in the Opposition arena on this day? Do his fortunes seem to fade with his dimmed stars, or is Kenya’s self-professed “truthful man” being strategic, even as nothing of substance comes from his camp?

When he was impeached in October last year, he swiftly styled himself as the new face of Opposition in the country. He would step into the rough shoes that had Odinga walked out of, in preference for the velvety soft carpets of State House, where he hobnobs with President Ruto, sampling rich cocktails of State nectar and ambrosia. 

Has Gachagua found Odinga’s shoes too big and heavy? Why, while Odinga in his heyday straddled the Kenyan nation like the proverbial colossus, Gachagua is caged in his Mt. Kenya region. From these safe political havens, he will materialize in some local church on Sunday, to recycle the same narrative of “Kasongo must go.”

He will then ventilate local Mt Kenya grievances, pour invective upon Ruto and smile at the end of “a job well done.” There is nothing new, nothing visionary, and nothing revolutionary. The Gen-Zs say better the things he tries to say. 

Make no mistake, Raila Odinga’s giant shoes are heavy. Anyone who would attempt to walk in them would certainly find it a humongous and heavy order. It is not without reason. The son of Jaramogi has a legendary history that makes it difficult for abrupt defectors to pretend to be him.

Certainly, Gachagua cannot be Raila Odinga. Raila arrived in the 21st Century with a rich personal political history that the man from Wamunyoro Village can only dream of.

Away from his family credentials, he had a rich narrative of political dissent, demonstrations, encounters with teargas and live bullets, detention and exile. He was a plain-spoken votary for democracy, ready to pay the price, whatever it may be.

Gachagua, on the other hand, speaks of a Mau-Mau family background, without any clear indication of what role he may have played, if any. 

What is rather clear is that Gachagua has legacy queries. Where Raila championed the popular cause in the struggle to expand the political space in the 1980s and in the ‘90s, Gachagua played in the reactionary political league. He was already a university graduate when in 1991, a contingent of University of Nairobi students from Nyeri visited President Moi in State House, Nairobi.

They had come to express solidarity with a beleaguered Moi, in the headwinds of Opposition pressure for restoration of multiparty democracy. Riggy G, as he would later get to be known, had been chair of Nyeri District University Students Association, and although it was now two years since 1988, when he got his degree in Literature and Political Science, he joined the students who went to see President Moi. 

Gachagua took advantage of the visit to ask the President to give jobs in his government to some of the graduates from Nyeri and the Mountain at large. They would be better placed to help him if he did this, Gachagua said.

A few weeks later, he became a District Officer. While Raila and Co fought for democracy, Gachagua was the reactionary counterrevolutionary. He would go on to play it safe on the right political side. That was until he came to his waterloo last year.

For even his rebellion against Uhuru in 2022 flowed with the current of the day. Then, in 2024, he was suddenly born again. He was not the new voice of democracy. Yet, unlike other proselytes who have undergone Damascene conversion, he has never told the nation where he was when the light from above descended upon him. For him to become the new Raila Odinga is, accordingly, a tall order. 

Rigathi Gachagua is caught squarely between an empty street and oversized political shoes. He arrived from America, styling himself as the new sheriff in town. He stepped out of the airplane clad in a blue denim jeans suit, with a godfather fedora on his head, to boot. He probably had his sheriff guns somewhere, too. Yet, he is turning out to be a sheriff who stumbles in shoes that are too heavy to walk in. He has no deputies, no structures.  As by-election rock his Democratic Citizens Party (DCP) extant organizational challenges are thrown into the open. 

Worse still, Mt Kenya’s truthful man has credibility issues on his new landscape in the Opposition. His biggest asset is his dilemma. That the Mountain is listening to him is not in doubt. Yet that comes with inertia.

Wamunyoro is trapped in political paralysis that has made it impossible for him to get out of the Mountain. Even as he has declared his presidential ambition, there remains a crying need for him to recruit faithful allies outside the Mt. Kenya region.

Next, he needs to come clean on his previous xenophobic obsession with the Mountain, and to craft a fresh national message. But all this must also come with a Damascene confession and repentance for his xenophobic history.

If he fails to do these things, then Gachagua should not be surprised to discover that he has become a noisy sheriff with no posse; a shouting pretender who unsteadily sways about the place in wobbly political shoes. 

But, could all this be also wrong? Could Gachagua probably be more of an astute political strategist who has elected to save his mojo and his Kenyan national outlook for some other day?

The possibility of a tactical retreat cannot be completely ruled out. Running around the country without a clear political strategy and message could completely erode anyone’s credibility.

A temporary head-below-water strategy provides leg room for thinking things through, strategizing and coming back with blazing political guns. Gachagua could just do this, and return to rock the nation closer to 2027. 

In this case, it would probably seem that he is being strategic. It would be reasonable, then, for him to play the shy card, and to continue to operate in the backlines of his Opposition colleagues. Then he will probably return with a national message and a forceful team that wears the face of Kenya. He will speak for Kenya, rather than merchandize for Mt Kenya. 

If he is being strategic, he will nonetheless want to remember the dictums that power abhors vacuums, and time and tide wait for no man. He would pray that new heroes to challenge State mandarins are not born and moulded while he dodders in Mt. Kenya.

Politics move fast. If within the next few months Wamunyoro does not inspire the landscape outside the Mountain, he might discover even his grip on the Mountain slipping through his fingers. He needs, especially, to take note that Uhuru Kenyatta is slowly coming back.

Kioni of the Jubilee Party is openly defying him and calling him a mole in the Opposition space. Whichever way you look at it, Wamunyoro is in a bad place. He has failed to become Raila Odinga. His obsession with the Mountain, and his lack of legacy work against such a possibility. 

It is not enviable being Geoffrey Rigathi Gachagua. You are a sheriff surrounded by strangers. You appear at your colleagues’ events not as the marshal, but as a guest. You are a lone gunslinger. You lack the commander’s badge. You are a drifter in other people’s saloons, not the owner of the town square. The deputies are missing, the town is unconvinced. You need to go back to the drawing board.