Orengo's humiliation at a funeral broke norms that hold societies

There is a rich node between literature and lived realities. The recent humiliation of Siaya Governor James Orengo by youth at a funeral in the county evokes memories of the tragic events in Chinua Achebe’s seminal novel, Things Fall Apart.  

Achebe borrowed both the title of his book and its closing philosophy from WB Yeats’ famous poem, “The Second Coming.” At the start of the book is the familiar citation, which I quote with some license, “Turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” 

Towards the end of Achebe’s story, the elder called Obierika laments the end of living as has been known in the Igbo society of Nigeria, “The White man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won over our brothers, and our clan can no longer act as one. He has put a knife to the things that held us together, and we have fallen apart.” 

One of the things that holds these people together is the institution of the masked egwugwu. These are religious figures whom Achebe dramatises as the embodiment of collective authority in the clan.

They represent the ancestors, the law, memory, and communal legitimacy. They are an inherited moral universe, so to speak. When they sit in judgment of a case, the clan listens. Their voices are not just the voices of men behind masks, but the very soul and spirit of the nation. 

But then comes the new Christian religion that throws into a shamble everything that the tribe has believed in. One Christian convert unmasks an egwugwu. This is not just sacrilege, it is the closing of the distance between the symbol of authority and ordinary living human flesh. The power of what the community has revered is broken, its legitimacy punctured. 

The humiliation of James Orengo by the youth at a funeral can be looked at from at least two angles. One, an attack on inherited authority, the other the sanctity of a Luo funeral.

Orengo is not just a politician. He belongs to what we may call a “political priesthood,” built around the struggle for liberty and constitutionalism. People like Orengo are revered countrywide. When youths humiliate them at funerals, they break norms that hold communities together. 

Indeed, they perform rituals of inversion; power grabs. The juniors are punishing the elders. The crowd is not just disciplining memory; it is trampling on it and throwing it on the dumping heap. This resembles the unmasking of the egwugwu in Things Fall Apart. Orengo is, of course, not sacred. Yet, does he symbolise a certain respected historic authority and legitimacy? 

Is William Ruto the new religion that has crept in slowly, divided the community, and unmasked the egwugwu? When new religions emerge, some individuals are drawn to them because of gaps that old religions did not address in their lives. Others hold on to the old religions more fiercely. Figures like Orengo become flashpoints and custodians of old orthodoxies.

Whatever the case, this community is now caught between political maturation and cult transfer. These people are either waking up from docile “worship” of past leaders, or they have found “a new god” and a cult. And yet, are communities most vulnerable when symbols that have so far organised meaning for them stop commanding unanimous belief and respect? Do they begin falling apart?  

Careful reading of these happenings is more worrying. I said the humiliation of Orengo can be read at two levels. The second level is that of defilement of the funeral as a sacrosanct occasion. In an African setting, more so in the Luo, the funeral is a sacred societal ritual.

Here, existing antagonisms are temporarily suspended. The gathering is preoccupied with reflections on mortality, kinship, ancestry, and communal connectivity among the unborn, the living, and the dead. There is no room for sacrilegious violence. 

When the sanctity of a funeral is defiled because a section of the “mourners” wants to railroad everyone to new loyalties, it would seem the community is turning in a widening gyre. There is a weakening of agreement around the sanctity of institutions. When a society can no longer say, “Whatever our differences, not here; not now; not this way; then the centre is no longer holding. 

In history, transfers of allegiance to new deities have often come with violent crusades. Are we witnessing our own efforts to “protect Holy Lands” like the Christians of the 11th to 13th Centuries protected their Holy Land? 

 
Dr. Barrack Muluka, PhD [Politics & International Relations, Leicester, UK] Strategic Communications adviser