Raila Odinga: 'Son of the Bull' who baffled all, charted own path

His Nigerian biographer styled him as an enigma in Kenya’s politics. An apocryphal narrative from family sources recalls the day that an incensed Raila Odinga abandoned his three siblings in a car on Ngong Road, Nairobi, in the 1970s. He had only recently returned from training in East Germany and had taken up a job at the University of Nairobi.

His elder brother, Oburu Oginga, was then an elected councillor in Kisumu Municipal Council. Their two sisters, Beryl and Akinyi Wenwa Odinga, were in high school. The family matriarch, Mama Mary Odinga, was striving with the role of both father and mother, their father Jaramogi Ajuma Oginga Odinga, doing time in detention without trial, apparently conveniently forgotten by the Jomo Kenyatta government.  

The two brothers had taken their sisters out to enjoy an evening of music, dance and biting at the then famous Hallians Club along Tom Mboya Street. When the time to go home came, it was Raila who took the steering wheel of his mother’s old Austin to drive the family back home in Karen. Oburu did not know how to drive and so it naturally fell upon his more enterprising brother to be the family chauffeur.

Along the way, Oburu began complaining about his junior brother’s driving skills. Cut to the quick, Raila abruptly stopped the car and stormed out, telling his elder brother to drive on, if he thought that he, Raila, was a poor driver. To their dismay, the three siblings saw their brother board a public bus, leaving them stranded with a car none of them could efficiently maneuver back home. 

The story goes that a shaky Oburu managed to steer the vehicle all the way to Karen from Ngong Hills Hotel, mostly engaging only the first and second gears of the car. Upon arriving home, the three found their brother enjoying a glass of his favourite Scotch on the rocks and rocking his head to the musical wonders of Steve Wonder. He threw them a casual look and carried on with his activities, sipping from his glass, throwing peanuts in the mouth and selecting the next album, as if nothing had happened. Not a word was mentioned of the earlier happenings of the evening.

That was the essential Raila Amolo Odinga, the second born son to Kenya’s first Vice President, the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. A hugely precocious child, even in the early years, Raila demonstrated edgy wit that made him the de facto leader of the Odinga children, often harrying the genial older boy. He easily sidestepped him and took over the role of captain of the Odinga siblings.

It was a role he carried to the national arena and to its politics. Everywhere he went, he sought to be the overall leader and he often gets his way.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, who lived in the period 535 BC to 475 BC, famously said that our fate is tied up in a double knot with our character. “Ethos anthropos daimon,” he said; “Character is a man’s destiny.” The totality of the things that define our behaviour will ultimately define not just who we are, but also our fate. The mores, values and personality traits that define us in certain situations and the choices that we make will inform who we are and determine where we end up.

Raila Odinga was no exception, certainly by the path he chose and travelled to the very end. Where would it land him, ultimately, in the Kenyan minefield that is the country’s political agora? He finished the journey in a strange corner, ensconced in the inner sanctums of the William Ruto government, the unofficial de facto Prime Minister, to the chagrin of many who admired his political track record before his dalliance with Ruto.  

Raila was gifted with rare restlessness. With that also same a witty head and a domineering comportment. He did not suffer slow characters lightly and he told it as he saw it. These attributes became both a boon and a burden in his political metamorphosis.

Having been brought up in a political family, he cut his teeth quite early in politics. Born on January 7, 1945, he was already an intelligent young adult of 18, when his father, Jaramogi, threw a celebratory bash for both the incoming and exiting political notables at the ornate family residence in Nairobi’s Kibera in the later days of June 1963.

Daniel Branch notes in the book Kenya Between Hope and Despair, 1963 – 2011 that Jaramogi was a forceful personality who fully justified his nickname of “The Bull.” The luminaries at his 1963 festivity included none other than the country’s brand new Prime Minister, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.

In August 2010, the younger Odinga would host a similar celebration at his Nairobi residence, this time to mark the dawn of a brand new Constitution, the Constitution of Kenya 2010. As his father had done in 1963, an Odinga shared the glory of the moment with a Kenyatta – Uhuru Kenyatta. While, as in 1963 Odinga was voluble and ebullient, Kenyatta kept his remarks brief and cryptic. Dave Opiyo, as read by Branch in the Daily Nation of August 17, 2010 recalls Uhuru as having only said, “ I don’t care what you do or say today, nothing will make me angry.” 

The Son of the Bull was a true chip off the old block. The restlessness spirit was typical. Jaramogi was reputed to have had a penchant for banging the table at President Kenyatta at Cabinet meetings, at a time when the young nation and its first government were groping for direction.

President Moi would later recall how they would hold their breath in anticipation as the elder Kenyatta listened patiently to his raging deputy. In the end, the two men fell out. Phase One was in March – April 1966, when a Tom Mboya-led coup saw Jaramogi and the radicals in Kanu troop out of the party to form the Kenya People’s Union (KPU). With the exception of Luo Nyanza, KPU candidates did disastrously in the Little General Election of June 1966.

The election followed yet another coup against Jaramogi, when Mboya successfully led a Motion changing the law, making an MP who left his party to go back to the electorate to seek a fresh mandate from the people. The final falling out came during the opening of the New Nyanza Hospital in October, 1969. A rare public exchange of expletives between Jaramogi and Kenyatta ended up in a rumpus in which lives were lost. KPU was banned at once. Kenyatta detained Jaramogi.

It was during this detention stint that the younger Odinga returned from Germany and huffily deserted his siblings on the high road in the night. And so, like father, like son.

And yet not quite so all the way. A characteristic that was not shared was Jaramogi’s ability to consider others as better placed for the task at hand than he was. It is well documented that at the dawn of independence, the departing British wanted to hand power over to Jaramogi, when Kenyatta was still in detention. But Jaramogi declined. He coined the mantra of “No independence without Kenyatta.” Kenyatta was Kenya’s leader and he was the person to take the country to independence. Not even when Kenyatta’s fellow Kikuyu tribesmen advised him to take power and free Jomo from detention after that would Jaramogi listen to them. Kenyatta was “Kenya’s second God,” Jaramogi averred, adding, “If I was a woman, I would marry him.”

And so power bypassed the Odinga house and went to the Kenyatta house. Over the years, the Odingas have strived in vain to bring back what they let go in the 1960s. They have formed one alliance after the other and metamorphosed from this political platform and from this friend to the other, but to no good end. In the process, the younger Odinga has betrayed tragic inability to make lasting friends. Political friends are instruments. They can be employed and be dispensed with when the purpose for which they were fashioned no longer obtains. His chameleonic political maneuvers led his biographer, Babafemi Badejo, to call him the enigma of Kenya’s politics.

And truly, Odinga was a paradox. His political moves by far surpass the complex combinations of the famous Akamba mwomboko dance. He will leave friend and foe alike breathless with his midair acrobatic swings. You will be thinking that he was going in some direction only to be shocked by a midair about face.

Michael Wamalwa, Mwai Kibaki’s first vice president in 2002, understood this trait rather well. He famously said that there were three Raila Odingas in one package. There was Raila, Amolo and Odinga. When negotiating anything with one, it was imperative to know which one of the three you were talking to. Raila may promise you something. But you had to be sure that both Amolo and Odinga agreed. If you did not have the other two covering your tracks, you were likely to find yourself crying in a smoky washroom – alone and disconsolate. 

Wamalwa had himself learnt this the hard way. When Jaramogi passed on in February, 1994, Wamalwa was one of his two deputy party chairmen in the Ford Kenya Party that broke off from the original Ford Party to leave Kenneth Matiba and Martin Shikuku holding the other plank, named Ford Asili. The younger Odinga thought that he was the right person to step in his departed father’s shoes. If his elder brother Oburu replaced their father in a by-election as the MP for Bondo, Raila wanted to become the party leader. He could not surmount the combined forces against him however, comprising as they did of Wamalwa, Paul Muite, James Orengo, Anyang' Nyong’o, John Kapten, Mukhisa Kituyi, Gitobu Imanyara and a host of other then youthful politicians who went under the generic moniker of Young Turks. The election of Jaramogi’s successor in the party gave Wamalwa a resounding victory over Raila, leading to instant fracas at the Thika Municipal Stadium, where the late Archbishop Manases Kuria of the Anglican Church of Kenya was the returning officer. Kenyans recall photographs of some shaken notables hiding under tables as havoc reigned at the stadium. 

Yet Raila metamorphosed swiftly and went on to redefine himself in the unfolding political environment. While some thought that he had been licked, they had seen nothing yet. For he resigned from Ford Kenya and from his seat as the MP for Lang'ata. He took over the then little known National Development Party and declared himself the Party Leader. He went on to win the Lang'ata by-election.

Thus began the rise and rise of the Son of the Bull. In the process, he fought many battles, crushed many heads underfoot and got many former foes to literally kneel before him. His third task, after owning a political party and winning the Langata seat, was to fight for the soul of the Luo people. 

Traditionally, the Luo are a warrior community that loves strong willed leaders, almost to the point of worshipping them. The people who led their migrations from Southern Sudan into the Great Lakes Region of Eastern Africa were themselves folk heroes of great acclaim. The various migrating groups were named after each of these heroes. There were the Joka Omolo, Joka Oketch, Joka Owiny, and Joka Ojok. There were also the Japadhola, among others.

Away from these patriarchs there were other folk heroes like Lwanda Magere, whose story reads like an African version of the Samson and Delilah narrative, and Gor Mahia son of Ogalo – both father and son being reputed to have been rare medicine men. People like Raila Odinga and his late father walk easily in the footsteps of these legendary figures. Long after this generation is gone, the Luo people will probably be talking of Raila Odinga in the same light as they have talked of Lwanda Magere and Gor Mahia. They will tell stories of how like Mahia, he was a man of Mahia, which is to say a man of wonders. 

After the demise of Jaramogi, the Luo people wanted another folk hero to replace him. The battle was fought in a variety of theatres. There were the erudite arenas with the likes of Orengo and Prof Nyong’o. This class basked in the glory of letters, urbane polish and manners. But their high learning and genteel nature did not impress the abrasive and bucolic Luo. Speaking good English, couturier, gastronomy and sundry are important attributes in the modern Luo cosmology. However, they do not a leader make.

The Luo are more readily mesmerised by a person who, at the end of an address, is ready to lead them into combat, and not by vacuous speeches and resolutions of majorities. In that regard, Raila easily vanquished the university types.

In the 1997 elections, Nyong’o lost the Kisumu Rural parliamentary seat to a Raila acolyte, the late Job Omino, when he (Nyong’o) contested for the seat on a Social Democratic Party ticket. His party – which had also fielded Charity Ngilu as a presidential candidate – however won enough seats to salvage him as Nominated MP. In the subsequent election in 2002, Nyong’o was wise enough to smell the coffee. He crossed over to Raila’s new party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

But I run ahead of myself. Suffice it to note that Orengo was still stubborn. Not only did he run for the Ugenya seat on a National Social Congress ticket, he also tried to become President and lost in both efforts. In subsequent times, he would surrender to Raila and become  his most loyal disciple and confidant. 

But Raila also fought bloody street battles in Kisumu town and elsewhere in Luo Nyanza, before he could stamp his authority as the undisputed Luo leader. It is recalled how every Friday, his Bagdad Boys would do battle with Mayor Akinyi Oyile’s own bad boys. Eventually, it was Odinga who took control of Kisumu and the soul of the Luo people. Oyile not only lost Kisumu and his people’s soul, he died shortly afterwards. Odinga became the king and has remained so. He probably will rule the lives of these people to the very end of our times. It was behind this supremacy that Odinga has defined himself as a willy political craftsman. Underrate him at your own peril. Many a politician has discovered this painfully. 

After the 1997 elections, the losing presidential candidates – Kibaki, Wamalwa,  Ngilu, Raila and Wangare Mathai came together to form what they called the Opposition Alliance. At first they wanted to contest Moi’s legitimacy. However, Moi and the court system defeated them and they agreed to work together as a strong united Opposition. What the rest did not know was that even as they negotiated and signed pacts with him, Odinga was secretly talking to President Moi about working with him in government. It did not take long before Kenya began hearing about “cooperation” between Kanu and NDP. A disdainful Alego Usonga MP, Peter Oloo Aringo, who had recently defected from Kanu as his own surrender to Raila could not believe his ears. “Cooperation mar chiethi!” he quipped, saying something that had best be left in the original language.

Yet not too long afterwards, NDP was in a formal compact with the Kanu Government. Aringo was the very first person to gleefully take his seat on the front benches in the National Assembly. He had been talked to and he had to toe the line.

That was one thing Raila had perfected. For all his avowed democratic credentials, the Luo must toe the line or forever stay in the political cold. He was exceptionally impatient when addressing this particular community, and especially so in mother tongue. He did so with the superior authority of a flock owner. Those who did not agree with him were best off holding their peace.

The best attitude was demonstrated by two legislators from South Nyanza. Talking about the Odinga-Kenyatta handshake of March 9, 2018, on the doorsteps of Harambee House, the then Homa Bay County Woman Rep said, “We laud this handshake and cooperation with the Government for three reasons; number one, because Baba is always right. Number two, because Baba is never wrong. And number three, because if you are in doubt refer to number one and number two."

Now this kind of babble does not make for a flattering support base for any democrat. Where is the rigour of logic? Where is style and substance? It is pure sycophancy and this is how you are expected to behave when you are from the big man’s tribe.

The NASA Minority Whip at the time, Junet Mohamed, made matters worse by taking this absurdity to the floor of the National Assembly. 

“When Baba says we jump, we jump. When he says run, we run. When he says migrate, we migrate. We don’t question.” 

Raila had problems trying to impose the same kind of following within NASA affiliate parties. Recognising that they come from a different formation and they have their own leaders and party organs, some of the officials from the other parties have found it difficult to religiously follow Raila, the way he was accustomed to being followed in ODM. He was said to be particularly unhappy with former Senators Bonni Khalwale, then in Ford Kenya, and Johnston Muthama, then in Wiper Democratic Movement. Also a thorn in his were officials of the then Musalia Mudavadi-led ANC Party.