Coffin politics: Is Ruto's love for departed Raila genuine?

Raila Odinga’s State-sponsored mausoleum was handed over to his family on Tuesday. Has the Kenyan State seemed to love Raila more in death than it did in life?

Despite their political fling and exaggerated public displays of amity during Raila’s final year, the truth is that President William Ruto built his political career on scoffing at Raila. He detested him with a deep-seated animosity, the kind he publicly displays towards Uhuru Kenyatta today.

What precisely is the President trying to accomplish? Mausoleums, like the pyramids of ancient African civilisations, immortalise the memories of our glorious departed. But they also raise questions about the multiple intentions behind mourning the dead. These concerns are psychological and philosophical, as well as anthropological and political. They invite us to examine what drives an individual like President William Ruto to adorn Raila Odinga with expensive ornaments in death when, in life, there was no love lost between the two leaders.

How genuine is the spirit behind these ornaments? Do they speak to a reformed heart that has not confessed its repentance, or is it all satirical and performative political drama? What anthropological underpinnings do Ruto’s decorations of Raila invoke? The answers seem to lie in the uncomfortable relationship between death and the living person’s need to be seen and favoured by those who genuinely loved the deceased.

In a narrative titled “A Mercedes Funeral”, published in the 1976 collection Secret Lives, Ngugi wa Thiong’o explores a peculiar social contradiction between the living and the dead. A person who received little attention in life suddenly becomes the object of dramatic extravagance simply because he is dead. Several politicians, each seeking public attention, offer to buy the deceased a coffin. One fashions his in the likeness of a high-end Mercedes automobile, “because the dead man always dreamt of owning a Merc.” Since his dream was never realised, the politician wants to help him fulfil it in the grave.

Another politician brings a coffin fashioned to resemble a regal five-star hotel in the capital city. The dead man had desired to dine at this hotel, even if only once in his lifetime, but never did. He must now taste, in death, what he never experienced in life by being buried in a coffin resembling the hotel. It is not just about the food in opulent restaurants; it is also about experiencing the love of those who never loved him while he lived. Clearly, this is hypocrisy and an intrusion of material display into the solemnity of death. The benefits accrue to the hypocritical do-gooders.

Ngugi’s politicians campaign through funerary tokenism. The Raila mausoleum fits easily into this mould. State do-gooders may genuinely be mourning Raila, but they also appear to be political quail-trappers in Luo Nyanza. When the dead cannot appreciate a Mercedes or admire a coffin, people should be allowed to question the sincerity behind such extravagant gestures. The glamorous expenditure is clearly meant to impress the living, who can see the coffin, rather than the dead, who cannot. It is funeral politics.

In August next year, the mausoleum in Kang’o Ka Jaramogi may come to seem less about Raila and more about Ruto and Luo voters. The Luo will be expected to count their blessings under President Ruto. If they have forgotten, the tokens will be itemised for them one by one. One of them will be a Mercedes funeral. They will be expected to marvel at “what the Lord has done”.

Raila Odinga will be the occasion, while Ruto and his do-gooders will be the real beneficiaries. Ruto will be the do-gooder-in-chief.

The mausoleum must yield political dividends. In Ngugi’s satire, the social tensions between the dead and their benefactors are not necessarily fraudulent, at least not at first sight. Extravagance in moments of grief often assumes the appearance of genuine affection. And so it must be with Ruto and Raila, two men who often referred to each other, sometimes ironically, as “my brother”.

The words “my brother” often prefaced the harsh words they hurled at each other throughout much of their political relationship, before their brief stint in the broad-based government. On the scales of social expectation, the desire to be seen grieving, and the benefits that accompany it, appears to outweigh genuine grief.

In the Lake Victoria Basin of East Africa, several human impulses drive this kind of ornamental mourning. They include the desire to escape accusations of neglecting the dead, to launder a troubled relationship and to inherit the deceased’s social capital. Others include the performance of status by the do-gooder and, of course, the pressure of social expectations.

Escaping accusations of neglect amounts to little more than an attempt to compensate the dead by giving them the love denied to them in life. You lavish money and ornaments on them and ensure that the world witnesses it all. The tragedy is that the dead cannot experience this belated love. It must therefore be presumed that the ornaments are not intended for them. You are playing to the gallery, in this case, to the gallery of Luo voters.

The theatre reaches another level when two individuals have spent decades undermining each other, as Raila and Ruto did. They competed for influence, traded insults and actively sought to diminish each other’s reputations. Today, Ruto speaks of Raila’s patriotism, which he did not appear to recognise between April 2008 and July 2024. Raila’s autobiography, The Flame of Freedom, contains 72 references indicating that Raila did not trust Ruto, even when they were in the same political camp.

Apart from the 2005 constitutional referendum, the desire to dislodge President Mwai Kibaki from office in 2007 and, in 2024, the need to respond to the Gen Z uprising, Raila and Ruto had little in common. Certainly, there was little to suggest that Ruto would mourn Raila so publicly or build and name lavish monuments in his honour.

When the true story of Kenya is written, Ruto’s badges of wisdom, courage and selfless service pinned to Raila’s lapel may ring hollow. His fanfare surrounding the death of Raila Odinga may be recorded as an instrument of historical revision.

The desire to acquire Raila’s moral and political capital may be the biggest driver of the posthumous affection Raila has received from Ruto. It may explain the seemingly unending trips to Luo Nyanza. And Ruto appears to be doing well. When you listen to the politician, the professor and the ordinary person in the street, they sound alike. They seem to believe that Ruto can step into Raila’s shoes.

Yet Raila’s authority was earned. It was not something that could simply be conferred, not even by the Office of the President. Nor could it be bought in the marketplace. Raila earned his reputation through struggle, sacrifice, detention and exile. His lived experience gave him the moral and political capital that underpinned his reputation.

Those who lack a similar history may find it necessary to associate themselves with people like Raila, especially after they die. Certainly, President Ruto appears to have found a political mascot and a goldmine in the deceased Raila Odinga. Accordingly, Raila must be described as “a personal friend”, “brother”, “mentor” and “a national asset”. Ruto must position himself close to Raila and the entire Odinga family. He must become one of them. As Raila is honoured and admired, some of that honour and admiration must rub off on Ruto.

Is Ruto being cynical? Perhaps not. He may see it as a legitimate responsibility to honour Raila. When Jaramogi Oginga Odinga died in 1994, Kenyans were embarrassed that the government refused to honour him with a State funeral. They would not even allow his coffin to be draped in the national colours. The casket was consequently lowered into its final resting place draped in the Ford Kenya party flag.

James Orengo was deeply offended. He directed angry remarks at President Daniel arap Moi, who was personally present. There is therefore some merit in a sitting president honouring even those with whom he disagreed, or whom he did not appear to love for much of their lives.

Yet, can the ceremony sometimes obscure the true relationship? What happens when the do-gooder appears to be trying too hard to inherit a moral authority he has never earned? The big question raised by Ruto’s dalliance with the Odinga family is whether moral authority can be bought with money and allied favours extended to the bereaved family.

In seeking to buy Raila Odinga’s moral authority, Ruto understands something fundamental: death is a leveller. It exposes the absurdity of inequalities among the living. The rich and the poor alike meet the same end — they die. Yet the bereaved may be reluctant to surrender their prestige, and Ruto understands this all too well. The Odingas may not wish to relinquish the prominence that Jaramogi and Raila brought them. In this reluctance lies their vulnerability to those who seek to acquire Raila’s moral and political authority.

In philosopher Albert Camus’s reflections on mortality, mausoleums can be seen as opportunities to reproduce “illusions of our greatness”. Moreover, in death, a family’s standing may also be reinforced when its members associate with the politically powerful. The deceased accordingly receives a State funeral, and their remains are placed in a vault of gold and marble. The ornate grave becomes an extension of the social order the deceased once occupied. It is almost as if death dissolves the individual only for the deceased to be reconstructed in gold and marble.

At one level, we are honouring the dead. But the absurdist asks whether this is merely futile drama. Is the living do-gooder simply displaying the capacity to command resources, institutions and public attention? Does the monument honour the dead, or advertise the power of those who built it? As the absurdist might ask, “to rot under clay, and to rot under marble, what is the difference?”

This question takes us to the heart of the matter. What difference does it make whether a body decays beneath ordinary soil or under an expensive monument? The fate of the dead body remains fundamentally the same. Marble does not reverse death, nor does it allow the departed to enjoy a distinction unavailable to someone interred in an unmarked grave.

Yet marble can turn a dead person into a god. Not necessarily a god in the theological sense, but a figure wielding immense symbolic and political authority — and even quasi-religious authority. While the body turns to dust in the grave, the memory of the deceased acquires a second life. From Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong to Jomo Kenyatta, communities have found a form of national meaning in the resting places of their heroes.

The resting places of Mao and Lenin are veritable sites of “worship”. They are destinations where people lay wreaths, bow their heads, pray and take photographs. Visitors do not simply walk in; they follow prescribed rituals that give the monuments a sacred feel. The mausoleums have assumed the character of shrines. Mao and Lenin have been transformed from departed mortals into symbols of what are presented as “unquestionable truths”.

Could the Raila monument in Bondo also become an unquestionable truth? History will answer that question. For now, however, there appear to be efforts by the political establishment to make it so. If that happens, Ruto could position himself as the founder of the Raila Odinga religion and its first high priest. He could portray himself as the man who immortalised Raila as “the truth” and, in doing so, become the first political beneficiary of Raila’s legacy in Luo Nyanza, where Raila might be cast as “the way, the truth, and the life”.

What does the monument allow its sponsor to become? Through the Raila mausoleum, Ruto casts himself in the mould of “a generous statesman” and “a guardian of the Raila memory”.

He claims a prominent place in the collective memory. When the true story of our times is eventually written, it may speak of cosmetic burials, monumental hypocrisy and strategic struggles to possess and exploit the deceased. For even if a person’s contemporaries can be bribed to frame a narrative, neither the dead nor the future can be bribed.