Has Winnie Odinga capitulated and fallen at the first hurdle?

I suppose, in the end, standing up for principles turns out to be pretty hard work, and hard work itself probably comes as a bit of a shock when work of any kind is something you have previously only rarely encountered.

I suppose, also, that the pursuit of integrity and justice – while it seemed a brilliant idea at first and was happily embraced during those early days of emotional fervour amid pledges concerning ‘Baba’s legacy’ – proved decidedly unattractive when the harsh reality of the pain of struggle, of commitment, of not automatically being treated as a Very Important Person, and of generally seeing a very hard road ahead kicked in. Surely, it’s better to take the easy way out?   

And so, with her bid to be sling-shotted into a prime seat in Dr Oburu Oginga’s ODM hierarachy, Winnie Odinga appears to have capitulated and fallen at the first hurdle. I wonder how proud her father would be now?

The kind of nepotism that characterises the limp, ragged and disintegrating ODM, which is currently not the party Raila built, is the absolute antithesis of what ‘Baba’ would have wanted. Not to mention what Grandpa Jaramogi would have wanted.

Ford-Kenya under Jaramogi’s leadership ensured that its office-bearers represented all different parts of the country.

And when Raila established his Pentagon in 2007, it was made up of people representing the nation as a whole – William Ruto for Rift Valley, Musalia Mudavadi for Western Kenya, Charity Ngilu for Ukambani, Najib Balala for the Coast and northern regions, Joe Nyagah for Central and allied. Raila was careful to ensure that his party and its officers always had a multi-ethnic balance.

There are female role models in abundance too, outstanding women who over the decades faced down the harsh opposition they encountered, and who continued to stand up bravely for what they considered right and just.

These ‘shujaa’ include, in no particular order, the likes of Muthoni Nyanjiru, who died leading the protest after the arrest of political activist Harry Thuku in 1922.

They include Muthoni Kirima, the only woman to attain the rank of field marshal in the Mau Mau uprising.

They include Wangari Maathai, environmentalist, academic, and pro-democracy activist, founder of the Green Belt Movement and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

They include Monica Wamwere, mother of Koigi, who, supported by Maathai, mobilised elderly mothers of detainees and camped at Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park to stage a 1992 protest against detention without trial. When police tried to disperse them, the women stripped naked and the police officers turned tail and fled.

That protest by those women turned out to be a compelling episode in turning the tide in 1992, when internal and external pressure forced the government to repeal Section 2(a) of the Constitution and stage multi-party elections for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century.

Other heroic women include Wambui Otieno, who swore an oath of allegiance to Mau Mau at 15 and left school and home to join the Mau Mau legion. She was arrested and detained and suffered the usual brutalisation. After her release, she first worked with Tom Mboya and then spent her life in the opposition.

They include Grace Onyango, who defied cultural bias in the 1960s to become the first female mayor (Kisumu), the first female MP post-Independence, the first woman to sit in the Speaker’s chair as Deputy Speaker.

They include Phoebe Asiyo, the first woman to become a Luo elder after dedicating her life to the advancement of women and girls in education, rights and equality. 

They include all the women ­– such as, randomly, Nyiva Mwendwa, Agnes Ndetei, Martha Karua, Charity Ngilu, Esther Passaris, Millie Odhiambo, Sophie Abdi Noor, Tabitha Karanja, Susan Kihika, Margaret Kenyatta, Beth Mugo, even Auntie Ruth Odinga, and many others – who have had the courage to enter an unbelievably hostile environment and to defy societal norms, to venture into the unknown and to withstand insults, threats, violent abuse, rape and sexual harassment in order to seek public endorsement of their candidacy.

Whether you agree with their politics or not, they are all women of courage. On the other hand, it takes no courage whatsoever to pusillanimously engage in nepotism.

Raila was the finest role model of them all. He faced down torture, imprisonment, death threats, exile, malignant propaganda, betrayal and electoral fraud, and he still came up smiling and sticking to his principles.

He never, ever, asked for, or expected to be catapulted into, any position, simply because of his name or who his father was. He worked and struggled all the way for everything he achieved.

More than that, he strove to meld Kenyans into something that had a national face, not a blatantly tribal outlook.

He would never, ever, have countenanced what the decomposing ODM represented by Oburu – who has ‘inherited’ a party but has no concept of its ethos nor any idea what to do with it – now finds appropriate: not just three Luos but, with Ruth sworn in as ODM deputy organising secretary only four months ago, potentially three Odinga family members in the leading hierarchy.

This is not ‘Baba’s legacy’. This is Baba’s legacy degraded and defiled. It is a betrayal of everything ODM stood for.

Nothing comes of nothing. They will reap what they sow. And unfortunately, so will the rest of the country, because the actions of these ‘Baba heirs’ will make it all the harder for any players of a different stripe to make headway.

And with decades of incremental achievement towards an ethnically united and more prosperous future thus obliterated at a stroke, Kenya’s misery will continue. Deep, deep shame on them all.