How Raila Odinga's death has exposed political warriors, parasites

In a televised conversation with fellow public intellectuals last week, we agreed that Raila nurtured both hard-boiled political warriors and hard-hearted bloodsuckers.

Nelson Havi, Dr Kenneth Ombongi, Prof Kivutha Kibwana and I, further agreed that the warriors are set to come up against unbridled verbal assault from ODM elite bloodsuckers.    

In a sense, there is nothing new about political to a dying and bloodsucking in Kenya, and Africa.

The independent African State has these past six decades been a parasitic entity. It has been populated with hyenic freeloaders. Everywhere on the continent, the euphoric razzmatazz at independence has given way to self-serving extractive political mercenaries.

While all governments in world history have depended on taxpayers for survival, the African State is unique. Other governments tax in exchange for service.

In Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa, the state extracts power, privilege and wealth, but it gives back next to nothing. Quite often, it gives back absolutely nothing.  

Battery of toadies

The defining character of the African State is manipulation and coercion of the population.

Its systemic and systematic plunder requires a battery of toadies, who hang on the coattails of the strongman in power.

The demise of Raila reminds us that the toadying class is found both in the government and in the opposition.

Just as in the government, opposition kingpins cultivate political dependents, hero worshippers, and praise singers.

Raila nurtured his own team of these, and he has left them scampering about the place, lost and confused, looking for a new host. Nervously, they stomp the ground, eager to find whom to worship next, for their individual survival in the political arena.  

In Luo Nyanza, the toady factor is happening at two levels. It will probably be the same everywhere else wherever Raila called the shots. The Luo are traditionally a proud hero loving people.

In times beyond, their migrations from the Bahr-El-Ghazal region of Sudan, to the Great Lakes region of East Africa, saw these gallant people operate under the command of great generals, who were warrior-commanders-in-chief. Hence, we read in history of such prongs as the Joka-Ojok, Joka-Omolo,  Joka-Owiny, and others.  

If you struck the leader, the flock scattered. Such are the narratives in the accounts of the legendary Lwanda Magere

Lavish panegyrics were heaped upon the mythical Lwanda. He was Lwanda the solid rock. No weapon, no matter how fashioned, could cut through his skin. No blunt object could batter him. Yet, the fierce fiery rock fell to the enemy after the riddle of his might was discovered. The community fell with him. The praise singers and hero worshippers were scattered. 

Raila has been a latter-day Lwanda Magere. His renown and influence went beyond Luoland. It traversed the Kenyan national landscape, like the colossus that he was.

Accordingly, his demise has left the hangers on wondering who could rise to his kind of command, for them to scrounge off him. Succession within this community speaks, therefore, to survival within the Luo nation and, beyond that, wider relevance on the national landscape that Raila commanded.  

On the Sunday that he was interred, political tension was pulsating. It spoke of panicky individuals, eager to crown a new Luo king. But they were also appealing to President Ruto to hold their hand.

Even as political power abhors vacuums, was it a little too soon to name Oburu Oginga the successor to brother in ODM, and in the Luo political arena? There is a saying among the Luo and Luhya of Kenya’s Lake Basin that you do not inherit your brother’s widow before he has been laid to rest.

Did Oburu inherit Raila’s political widow precipitately?

New hero

Whatever the case, the urgency to catch the attention of the new Luo kingpin was real. With the exception of Governor James Orengo of Siaya, the craving for a new hero was unmistakable.

“Crown Oburu the new sheriff, as quickly as possible” was the message.  After that, Oburu should entrench the community in Ruto’s broad-based government. The quest for continuity was servile.  

Like the leech, the political sponger cannot survive beyond a few days without a host. Hence, Oburu has been identified as the new domestic host.

In this, he replaces his late brother, Raila. After the ODM Central Committee named him acting party leader, ODM delegates from the four counties of Kisumu, Siaya, Homa Bay and Migori unanimously agreed at an assembly, on Friday, that he should be confirmed in that position. It is not just a matter of confidence in Oburu’s leadership.

But there is another pair of Raila Odinga’s giant and heavy shoes that will be difficult for Oburu to carry. That is his national profile and suasion.

Raila, as has been repeatedly observed, was the party. And the party was Raila. He was the moral authority, the ideology, and the clarion call.

He was ODM’s rallying call across the country. Because of the challenge it takes to create another Raila, the toadies are looking at President Ruto as the next easy host.  

The flea cannot survive without a host. Ruto and Oburu have been identified as the next hosts after Raila. Yet, they will also want it that way. This is not your normal biological parasitism. It is mutualism. The host and the parasite benefit from each other, in reciprocal symbiosis.

The Big Man craves to monopolise power through manufactured dependence. He does not empower institutions, or the citizens. Instead, he creates networks of clients, with himself as the grand patron.   

Everything in place, the citizens learn to accept the grandmaster as a demigod of sorts. They are conditioned to rely on his goodwill.

Nobody can challenge him. He becomes the state and the state is him. Hence, in the 18th Century, Louis XIV of France infamously said, “I am the state, and the state is me.”  

In the parasitic state, sycophancy is an invaluable currency. The truth is dangerous. Power flows from the Big Man, rather than from institutions and the law.

Political scroungers find that flattery is profitable. They outdo one another in the effort to impress the Big Man.

They lavish him with praise, such as Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi lavished President Ruto with at Raila’s burial service, last week

For their part, civil servants produce false statistics. They show how the country has become so rich, without the people themselves becoming any richer.  

Who survived

Since sycophancy is a survival skill, those who survived under Raila through this skill are keen to find whom to flatter next.

Mining and Blue Economy CS Hassan Joho, has mastered the art. Three years ago, he was all declamation, telling the world how he could never work with President Ruto.

He painted smelly verbal pictures of the President. He swore that no force on earth would bring him anywhere near the stench. On Sunday, the energy was the same, the decibels a little higher than before.  

Joho told the world how he would never be parted with Ruto. He lauded Raila for moulding him from nothing, through various stages, to a cabinet minister. The former governor of Mombasa County is easily the finest example of how the freeloading State functions. It is about the individual freeloader, and nothing else

Joho spoke of his journey to “greatness” as having been sparked by his “ambition to become a leader.” Not a single word of visionary or missionary import was said. He crowned it with self-worship, marvelling that he was now a minister. On this account, he would “never betray Raila by leaving the Ruto government.” 

Known for raw and plain speech, Joho sent a clear message to ODM Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna. They could expel him from the party. Sifuna belongs to Raila ideological orphans.

Sets of orphans

For, indeed, Raila has left behind two sets of orphans. There are the freeloaders whose currency was sycophancy, and there are his ideological children. The freeloaders have believed in following anything that seems to move towards where their appetites tease them to go. They are the kind of people who will tell Sifuna to eat his scruples.  

Sifuna, Embakasi East MP Babu Owino; his Saboti counterpart Caleb Amisi; and possibly Governor Simba Arati of Kisii; and James Orengo of Siaya; as well as Senator Godfrey Osotsi of Vihiga, are the warriors whom Raila has left behind. There could be others in the shadows, but these are the face of courage. Their voices echo with Raila’ original reformist messaging.

They refuse to be cheerleaders; however rich the reward promises to be. They refuse to see a genius in Ruto. Nor do they see in the Kenyan President a semi-sacred godly figure, to be worshipped by other leaders, and the rest of the people.  

While the warrior team questions the legitimacy of the broad-based government that Ruto extra-constitutionally crafted with Raila, the scroungers close their eyes to the law; in letter and spirit.

They market Ruto to Kenyans as God’s gift to the nation. Survivalists from Migori, to Homa Bay, through Kisumu and Siaya, have dropped their caustic and rabid attitude of 2023 towards Ruto. Where they previously painted him in the colours of the devil incarnate, they now see him as indispensable. His rule is natural, desirable and even necessary, they say. To oppose Ruto is moral betrayal, says Mombasa Governor Adbulswamad Nassir.  

They regard independence of mind as betrayal because, in the ear shattering words of ODM National Chair and Homa Bay Governor Glady’s Wanga, Raila told them that they must support President Ruto. Everything that Raila said while he lived, they say, was right. If he said go to the left, the thing to do was to go left.

But does this spectacle of king-worship mask a deeper problem in Kenya’s political leadership? 

Does it speak to deeper insecurity, on the part of both those who are worshipped and the worshippers?

Social science has taught us that despots crave adoration. They want to be worshipped because they have failed. The fuel that drives their power is not in performance, or law. Nor is it in institutional legitimacy. It hinges, instead, in dependency and emotional blackmail. It seeks to cripple all entities that would check its excesses.  

Kenya’s Parliament collapsed under the broad-based government of President Ruto and Raila. That is how it enacted appalling undemocratic laws that hurriedly received presidential assent before State House pronounced itself on the passing of Raila, moments later.

And State House is all the time trying to capture the Judiciary and the media, the same way Parliament has been taken hostage. Citizen journalism, through social media, is now also under assault after the recently assented to computer and cybercrime laws.  

In the face of all this, ODM is on the weighing scales of conscience versus parasitism.

Intellectual laziness and moral cowardice sit on one side of the scales.

On the other is independence of mind and conscientiousness. Team Warriors is telling the ODM family that it needs to rethink the wider relevance of fawning before President Ruto under the spectacle of the broad-based government.

It is calling for democratization of power, thought and opportunity. It seeks to restore Kenya’s political leadership  to a courageous profile.  

On the other hand, the Team Scroungers is pushing for entrenchment of the cult of dependence, around Oburu Oginga and President Ruto.

Brightest minds

As the dust begins to settle on the Raila Odinga passing, Kenyans are likely to witness intense suffocation of the brightest minds in the political space, under a Ruto-Oburu Oginga dispensation, called a broad-based government. The mediocre appear set to rise to prominence, as the loud-mouthed high priests of political praise and worship. 

Gladys Wanga and John Mbadi, both from Homa Bay, may know something that the rest of the country needs to know. But, whatever the case, they have set the blustery pace. They are leading the way in Kenya’s latest political theology. Kenyans are likely to see politicians from the Lake clothe their President in sacred verbal robes.

Ruto is becoming to them the embodiment of good. To criticise him, as Sifuna has often done, is becoming an act of heresy. ODM after Raila Odinga is set to embark on a missionary journey, to turn Kenyans into disciples of a broad-based government, with a proselytizing holy trinity from Homa Bay, Siaya and Kisumu counties. The pestilential politics of sycophancy seem set to become Kenya’s new liturgy of trusting and obeying everything that comes from the Big Man. Kenya Kwanza’s policies that morphed into guesswork within the first year in office appear set to increasingly stagger towards blinding ambiguity, with ODM as cheerleader-in-chief. 

Dr Barrack Muluka is Strategic Communications Advisor