Can the Odinga dynasty rise again after Raila?

Students and teachers of literature will remember Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) the great English writer who gave the world such unforgettable novels as The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, and Jude the Obscure, among others. Hardy was the Victorian realist whose philosophy denied him the Nobel Prize for Literature, despite being nominated 25 times.

In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy gives us a late Victorian-era family with allusions to Kenya’s Odinga family, at this time of celebrating Raila Odinga’s legacy and contesting his political inheritance. The big question is this, will the Odingas rise again after Raila? Like his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Raila bestrode Kenya’s political landscape like a colossus. Petty men and women walked under his huge legs. “Here was an Odinga,” we may say with William Shakespeare, “Whence comes such another?”

Hardy gave us a fallen aristocratic family whose glory could now only be found in marble and gold vaults. “I’ve-got-a-gr’t-family-vault-at-Kingsbere-and-knighted-forefathers-in-lead-coffins-there!” John Durbeyfield brags, upon hearing of his family’s glorious past. Their greatness resides not in the present, but in a dim and forgotten past. Durbeyfield asks the bearer of the message, “What’s to be done?”

Tragically, the only thing that can be done is to go to Kingsbere, look at the marble and gold tombs. There, they can reflect on how the mighty are so fallen. Today friends and some not-so-friendly join the Odingas in Kang’o Ka Jaramogi to look at Raila Odinga’s brand-new mausoleum. As they look at the imposing resting place, they will reflect upon Kenya’s fallen liberational hero and the many fights he fought. But also lingering is the question, “And so what next?” Where do the Odingas go from here?

On a point of caution, there is a remarkable distinction between the Odingas and the d’Urbervilles. For the d’Urbervilles inherited the memory of lost power. The Odingas are inheriting a contested political space. Their inheritance is still in progress. Power hasn’t quite quit them yet. But, it is also a delicate, perhaps even fragile place they are in. The other big question, however, is whether history can be inherited. Can anyone inherit Raila Odinga’s history, or must the new generations of the family find their own greatness? Can a new Raila, or Jaramogi emerge?

Scions of great lineages are cautioned to find their own space in public arenas. You may be a lineal descendant of a royal family. Yet, do you need to fight, to define your own space and occupy it? Indeed, Raila did not exactly inherit his greatness from his father, Jaramogi. If Jaramogi’s greatness had been something to be passed on, then the baton should have gone to Oburu Oginga, Raila’s senior in the order of birth rights. But after the Bull passed on, in February 1994, it became clear that his shoes must be contested for, both in the family and outside.

Oburu was a walk-over. He was not even in politics. Raila organized for him to be elected in Bondo, to replace his late father. From now on, he would live in Raila’s political shadow. Raila’s first fight was, therefore, against Wamalwa Kijana, for the Ford Kenya supremacy.

As director of elections in the party, he was a subaltern to people like Wamalwa and Paul Muite, who were joint deputy national party chairmen (chairperson was the highest party political office those days). Other key members, like Gitobu Imanyara, Mukhisa Kituyi, George Kaptain, James Orengo, and Anyang’ Nyong’o, leaned towards Wamalwa.

In the 1996 chaotic, but largely free and fair elections in Thika, Raila lost to Wamalwa. He quit Ford Kenya, resigned from Parliament and took over the little known National Development Party (NDP). He won the subsequent by-election in Langata, to become NDP’s first and only MP at the time.

That is how political space is fought for and taken. Moreover, Raila then went on to contest in the presidential race in 1997, and became number three, behind President Moi and Mwai Kibaki. He was making his own history, rather than inheriting political gifts from his father. And in this election, he returned with significant numbers of MPs, from Nyanza and Western Provinces.

What remained was conquering the soul of the Luo nation and moving on to define himself as a major political voice and force in Kenya. To do this, Raila fought street battles in Kisumu against Mayor Lawrence Akinyi Oile. The fights were regrettably violent and bloody. Oile was powerful, ruthless, monied and backed by the State. His gangsters, called the Baghdad Boys, were bad boys. They stoned Raila’s vehicles, blockaded roads and locked Raila out of Kisumu.

At the climax of the contest, the boys surrounded a Kisumu hotel where Raila was holding a meeting in 1997. They marooned him there for hours. In the end, other area boys from the slums of Kisumu mobilized organically. They routed the Baghdad Boys in a final street fight. Raila became the unofficial king of the Luo nation. His word became the byword, from Kisumu to Homa Bay, and from Migori to Siaya. And from that foothold, he spread his wings across the rest of the country, gaining prominence that not even Jaramogi had.

Besides, Raila became famous for articulating public frustrations at the national level, and for regularly carrying agitation into the streets of Nairobi, despite excessive State violence against the protestors. His name became synonymous with ventilation of public grief. Little wonder that they gave him the sobriquet of “the people’s president,” even when he lost one presidential election after the other; usually in questionable environments.

Now this is the person whose legacy is up for contestation. There is power in a name, and certainly the Odinga name is weighty, thanks to Raila and his father before him. The name occupies eminent space in Kenya’s founding political history, represented by his father. But Raila added to it through opposition politics, reform struggles, electoral contests and imposing personal presences. Yes, he inherited the name and the political mode from Jaramogi. But that was not exactly it.

Raila bestrode his elder brother, Oburu, to grab the political mantle. He was able to build his own political memories and loyalties. They are not the kinds of things that someone takes over, just because he is from that lineage. If they were, Oburu would have taken over from Jaramogi. Accordingly, it is rather clear that the “inheritance” is not genealogical. It derives from immanent personal drive. This is the big lesson for those who want to inherit the Raila mantle, both from the family and from without.

President Ruto has recently inaugurated the Raila mausoleum, rather with apparent dolphin wave dreams for himself. He would hope to ride on the political waves of the Odinga name in Luo Nyanza in next year’s presidential election. Yet the Raila family has unfinished business within the Jaramogi clan, and in Luoland too. Who takes over from Raila on these landscapes?

In a political sleight of hand, Ruto moved swiftly to install Oburu as Raila’s successor, a clear political blunder. In the Lake Victoria Basin, an elder brother can never inherit leadership from a younger brother. Even in matters of matrimony, where widows are inherited, an elder brother never inherits his younger brother’s widow. It is total taboo, and the same with leadership.

If, for whatever reason, leadership slipped through the elder brother’s legs as it left the father, the older boy must chastise himself with regrets on lost opportunities. By installing Oburu through his proxies in ODM, President Ruto made a cultural faux pas. It is a safe blunder that the family and the Luo community are still wrestling with. Meanwhile, it has divided the Odinga family on the way forward.

Ruto expects that through the Raila mausoleum  and other mementos and favours, he could get the Odinga family to mobilize the Luo behind him. But even before they could get behind him, they must first get behind one of them. One of them must be restored into the unifying family position that Raila occupied. Then s/he must carry that eminence to the Luo nation. The bad news is that monuments do not restore families to their former positions.

A mausoleum may preserve a political figure’s physical memory. It becomes a destination that people travel to, to remember the person. Successive generations will come here to witness, bow, pray – or even worship. Yet, it cannot manufacture a successor. It has no political imagination, courage, or ability to change society. It cannot carry into the future the values that were associated with the person sleeping there.

This is the lair in which political dynasties are trapped. Yes, the members possess a biological connection with the demised great hero.  Yet, will the public be persuaded by ancestry alone? The mausoleum may preserve the political history and the family name. But it cannot preserve the political tradition. Already, the Raila family blows hot and cold. It lacks the fire that defined Raila. Occasionally, someone steps forward, to attempt to protest against perceived State sins against Kenyans. But they retreat into their holes just as quickly.

Raila Odinga Junior may make populist gestures in Kilgoris, having a tete-a-tete with the poor residents, as he makes his way to a rich man’s invite-only event, at President Ruto’s residence. He looks good, but without the grand significance that Raila used to take with him everywhere he went. Or, Winnie may call for political ceasefires and peaceful celebration of her father’s first death anniversary. Yet, do these dual efforts invoke thoughts of cold porridge?

Where are the suckers and tubbers from the old Odinga banana stem? The Odingas still raise their smoke, in Bondo, Kisumu and Nairobi. They are unlike the d’Urbervilles who no longer smoke.  They have not disappeared into historical records and could, accordingly, restore themselves. The competing efforts that have informed the celebration of Raila’s first death anniversary speak to the wider relevance of their legacy as a family. But the question it raises is about who then has the legitimacy to claim Raila’s political inheritance.

The family has a legitimate right to his personal memory, first as the familial patriarch, and second as the person who positioned their name positively in the public eye. But Raila’s supporters have a right to claim his political legacy, too. They stayed with him in the political struggles. This includes both those in ODM and those who have defected from the Orange Party. They were with him in the trenches.

They nursed great hopes with him, and shared great expectations with him, too. Family and followers alike have legitimate competing claims to the Raila legacy. The big question remains who among them could carry this legacy into a meaningful future that Raila would recognize. None of these claims can cancel out the others. But, is there an Odinga on the political landscape to steer the national political ship that Raila left behind?

Fidel was the natural politician in the family. In a quiet and unassuming way, he was preparing to take the plunge. Unfortunately, the hand of death struck. It snuffed out that dream. Rosemary was next to emerge from the shadows. Again fate struck, threatening her health and well-being generally. Winnie has done well, even if with some level of self-effacing reticence. With the benefit of hindsight, her nomination to the East African Legislative Assembly was a masterstroke.

Winnie has been honing her political skills; steadily learning the strands in the murky and treacherous theatre in which her late father was a master acrobat. While her brother, Raila Odinga Junior, has dashed ahead of her, to throw his hat in the ring of next year’s race in Kibra Constituency, Winnie cannot afford to take a holiday during this race. While her detractors will not have a shortage of negatives about her, she would appear to be her father’s natural heir in the political space.

Winnie was with her father when he died in India, this day last year. She would later recall him “passing away in my arms.” She told Kenyans that they had spent significant time together when he collapsed after a walk, and died. She brought her father’s remains back home. Symbolically, that is very significant. The daughter that the father trusted is the person to watch in the ongoing monumental succession game.

Of course, some would say that Oburu has already succeeded Raila. He cannot, and he has not. Oburu is President Ruto’s stop gap marionette, who has been unable to step up to the plate. He generates no excitement at all, and appears to have no gameplan at all, beyond the thought that his party should not field a presidential candidate, in deference to President Ruto. The party ODM is slowly crumbling in his hands. The Raila succession, accordingly, ceases to be about who inherits ODM, but more about who plays the role he played in national politics. 

Yet to expect a Raila political mirror image is unrealistic.  As Raila’s possible familial successor, Winnie will have to try to fit in her father’s giant shoes without trying to be him. She will want to identify with the causes he fought for, without appearing to be a playacting copycat. She must be her own woman. And she has no shortage of role models, as an up-and-coming woman politician. Indira Gandhi of India, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Megawati Surkarnoputri of Indonesia, and Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (formerly Burma) stand out. Others are Park Geun-hye of South Korea, and Chandrika Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka, despite Park’s inglorious exit.

All these women emerged from the shadows of their fathers, to define their own presence on their countries’ political landscapes. As a matter of fact, Indira belonged to two political families; She was married in the Feroze Gandhi family (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi), and was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. Nothing stops Winnie Odinga from walking in the footsteps of these great women.

Yet it is not a walk in the park. First, Winnie will have to carefully pick her launching pad. The Nairobi Senate looks good, if Edwin Sifuna goes all the way to the presidential wire. If she chooses the Nairobi Senate seat, she will launch herself before a metropolitan constituency like her late father. She will also engage with a hugely youthful urban electorate that can easily understand her political language.

But Winnie Odinga has the daunting political affiliation choice. It is a no-brainer that ODM in Nairobi, under the present broad-based affair, is dead meat. This is one of the biggest ironies in the political history of Kenya. ODM has never had to justify itself in Nairobi. But with the broad-based marriage with UDA, its goose is cooked. So, will Winnie bite the bullet and cross over to Linda Mwananchi and the political opposition?

She does not seem to have much choice, if she will become the next big thing in the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga dynasty. She must shrug off her uncle Oburu and his sons and move on. She must shrug off Junior, too. Her cousins and Junior can fight for what is going to be left of ODM. Yet, any fight for ODM is now like fighting over torn underwear at the marketplace. Winnie doesn’t want that. But she must persuade her auntie, Ruth Odinga, to go with her.