Raila knew when to yield to pragmatism for the sake of the nation

Following his ascension to the Office of the Prime Minister in April 2008, one of Raila Odinga’s earliest official tours was to my hometown Nandi Hills. 

The country was then reeling from the bloodbath that followed a disputed presidential election: A nation scarred, divided, and tentatively stitched together through a quick-fix grand coalition government meant to restore sanity.

Nandi Hills, a region in the Rift Valley that had overwhelmingly voted for him, erupted into song and ululations when Mr Odinga disembarked from his helicopter. Shadowing him, as I would later come to learn, was the late George Oduor, his chief of security.

Far from a personal encounter, that day marked only the second time I had seen in person the man whose mortality we had, as children, been led to believe was almost inconceivable.

Indeed, ours is a generation that remembers Raila in his fiery Tinga form, not just Baba, the father figure. For us, therefore, the idea that a time would come when we would bear the burden of witnessing Raila’s mortality felt unimaginable.

The deaths of other great and not-so-great nationalists have always seemed distant, ritualistic transitions from life to the hereafter. But Raila’s death has struck differently. It has been deeply personal, evoking love among those who revered him and rekindling resentment among those who inherited long-nurtured communal prejudices against him.

Exactly nine years after that visit to Nandi Hills, I would join and serve the party he built, brick by brick, into one of Africa’s most formidable opposition movements.

Through interactions, history, and anecdotes, I came to view Raila differently as a young voter. In the grander scheme of Kenyan politics, he has always been the measure of the ideal; the standard against which all others are judged.

To put it simply: Raila was always expected to be the bigger person. If Raila slapped someone today and another politician shot the same person, the flak Raila would endure would still be disproportionately heavier. If a president rigged an election and violence erupted, it was Raila who was blamed for not restraining his supporters.

Brick and mortar

And if he later chose to broker peace with his rival, the hate machinery swiftly turned its nozzles on him for endorsing their ballot choices and branded him a betrayer. Yet to Raila, there was always something greater than self: Nation.

While run-of-the-mill politicians imagine that a nation is built of brick and mortar, Raila’s prism was one of higher ideals: That agitation for freedom, justice, the rule of law, equality, and accountability must precede the concrete.

Still, when the pursuit of those ideals threatened to fracture the nation, he understood when it was time to yield to pragmatism. He knew that sometimes, in the long game, living on your knees gives you the chance to someday live on your feet. It was this clarity that often guided his most controversial decisions, including those that confounded even his closest allies.

For instance, as first-time voters, we were gravely devastated on the day of the 2018 Handshake between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila, not understanding that sometimes the battle must be lost to win the war. As novices and moral absolutists, politics was always a black-and-white affair, right or wrong, and it never lived in the grey.

Today, history and anthropology have taught us that as people grow older and watch their offspring and protégés, they tend to gravitate toward stability. This is because they no longer live just for themselves, but for those who come after them.

While the fire in the belly of the young often fuels their quest for ideal change, even if it means setting the nation ablaze in pursuit of it, the older, like Raila, understand that there must still be a nation left standing after elections and their disputes.

This tribute, therefore, seeks to excuse Raila from the vagaries of perfection and place him squarely in the real body politic of the human: Flawed, finite, yet immensely consequential.