Raila Odinga's faith in Kenya never wavered

Raila died a month ago, but like millions of Kenyans who continue to make known their love of Baba, I still feel unmoored, feeling that I have lost not just a great leader and a friend, but a whole country.

Kenya without Raila will be a different, lesser country. There is deeply felt grief and a profound sense of personal and national loss that is still resonating across the country. Kenyans knew that more than any of our presidents, Raila had kept Kenya together in this century’s turbulent decades by giving hope to the struggling and the impoverished. 

As detailed in last week’s column, Raila’s renown was worldwide. In death, this is beautifully symbolised by Ghana’s former President Nana Akufu-Addo coming to deliver an exceptional, personal tribute at Kang’o ka Jaramogi in Bondo, where Raila now rests next to his father. 

In Germany, the president of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, where Raila studied engineering, travelled to Berlin to present a commemorative plate highlighting Raila’s legacy “as a great engineer and bridge-builder,” to our ambassador Stella Mokaya for delivery to Mama Ida. The university has also set up a Raila Odinga Scholarship programme for engineers. A German children’s choir earlier performed at Kang’o ka Jaramogi, Durham and Birmingham Universities in England are also honouring Raila. The list is endless.   

The only African farewell that compares to Raila’s for me was the goodbye accorded Egypt’s wildly popular leader Col Gamal Abdel Nasser, when over three million mourners thronged Cairo in 1970, because he radically transformed Egyptian lives in his 16 years as President.

Among Raila’s grievers were record-breaking levels of crocodile tearers, but I am convinced a significant minority of them had a genuine conversion when they saw the unparalleled outpouring of grief from every corner in Kenya.

No less important, this outpouring has given the lie to or shown how misguided were the Raila supporters who said he had compromised his glorious legacy by choosing to work with President Ruto to stabilise and undertake urgently needed reforms to protect the poor.  

I have absolutely no problem with people who felt that Raila was wrong to ally with Ruto. But to have claimed that this cooperation had destroyed all his previous accomplishments was at best naïve and at worst strengthened the hands of those fighting to stop change. The real irony is that Raila died with a legacy even stronger than the astonishing one he enjoyed during his lifetime. 

There is a lot to unpack about his long, painful and ultimately astounding life of innovation and accomplishment, which uplifted Kenyans. For years, he fought fiercely for fundamental democratic rights, including for the media, and inclusion for forgotten communities and groups in the national narrative. He paid a very heavy price for it.

Let me turn now to my life with Raila and the extraordinary ride of tumult and learning that came with it.

Not too long after the 2018 Uhuru Handshake, I got my first-ever difficult call from Raila.

“Salim, I hear that you think I was given some money for the Uhuru handshake,” he said.

I was stunned. It was, of course, absolutely false, and I told Raila that even if I had suspected that, I would not have shared the suspicion with anyone.

The immediate post-Handshake period was a difficult one for Raila, and he felt that he could not possibly have continued working with me without clearing the air about such a fundamental suspicion. I really respected him for raising it.

In that discussion, he went on to discuss what I had said to him a few days earlier, that I had initially been taken aback by the Handshake, which occurred even as scores of his supporters were being killed and he was condemning Uhuru vehemently. Suddenly, out of the blue, he was embracing his brother Uhuru. There needed to have been some way of telegraphing an about-turn.

But I said I was also aware that sometimes things can move at lightning speed and urgent action is unavoidable. He had told me then that one of Jaramogi’s principal political weapons was timing – one had to seize the opportunity as soon as it was offered. There were few options left as the state’s forces were not going to stop killing his people.

That shock of the Handshake apart, I had been convinced that a whole new comity lessening the historic tensions between Central and Nyanza would follow and if Raila won the election with Central’s support, it would finally end the monopoly of power that the two main regions had held for nearly 60 years, opening up space for the rest of Kenya and bring in other communities into the political fold. The plan did not succeed at that level, but there were a number of other progressive breakthroughs, including the demystification of ethnic power as the organising political force, as seen in many appointments. In addition, Uhuru’s second term saw exponential infrastructure growth that was based on its being Raila’s principal priority.   

I mention the Handshake suspicion to show what an extraordinary close and honest relationship Raila and I had for 45 years, which is probably unmatched by any other beyond his immediate circle.

To move to the present: On the evening of June 19, during my six-week visit to Kenya, I called Raila to chat and fix a time for a meeting. He said anytime except the next morning, when he was addressing the Cabinet retreat. Wow, I said, I would love to hear what you will tell them and also get a firsthand sense of the dynamic of your engagement with the Ruto side. Well, then, come, that would be very nice.

So I went early the next morning. I thought I would be sitting in a hall with an audience listening to proceedings and taking the lay of the land, the body language, etc. Not so – Raila took me into the presidential tent where the Deputy President, cabinet secretaries and senior officials were gathered before the president’s arrival. I was looking for a back seat somewhere, but Raila said I should sit next to him.

Pretty soon, a protocol officer rushed in and said the president has arrived, let us go receive him. Everybody rushed out, but not Raila! The protocol officer looked worried but left. A few minutes later, he returned to tell Raila that the president was approaching. Raila went out, with me in tow, and the two greeted each other heartily, and then the President gave me a warm handshake and we exchanged greetings (we had worked together very closely from 2005 to 2009).

As Raila, President Ruto and I were talking about old times in the tent, the pictures of me with them were lighting up a storm, speculating about whether I am the latest recruit to the new coalition arrangement.

There is an interesting back story to this totally unexpected encounter with Raila, President Ruto and me. Fifteen years earlier, an early Sunday morning in February 2010, Raila, then Prime Minister, had called me to come urgently to the office.

There, I was told that he was suspending Mr Ruto, who was the Agriculture Minister, along with another minister, and asked to prepare a statement explaining why. While things were tense between the PM and Mr Ruto those days, I thought this move could hurt ODM as Ruto commanded a region whose population could desert us. But Raila was sure about the suspension and out went the statement a bit later.

When I encountered Mr Ruto a few days later, he expressed his unhappiness with me over the matter. I could not, of course, tell him that I had actually been opposed to the suspension.

I feel very pleased that when I spent six weeks at home in June and July, I had conversations with nearly 300 people, mostly service workers, in Nairobi and Mombasa, which were among his strongholds. Virtually all of them recognised me and knew I wanted to hear their genuine views so that I could appropriately brief Raila.

The vast majority of these supporters were still solidly in his camp, citing the benefits of cooperation, and most also cited their conviction that Raila as always known what he was doing. But many did say he should push Ruto harder to act on the burning issue of the day, the rising cost of living and lack of decent-paying jobs. 

I feel very happy that I was able to convey this to Raila, who was of course pained by the Gen-Z condemnations, since the young were his primary support group demanding change. I had mentioned to him earlier that the damage resulted from the inability of his communications team to craft a strong counter-narrative on this pivotal political issue.

Obituary writing

As I wrote a few months ago, I find the current system of obituary writing deeply flawed. We in the media in particular, but within social groups which include active elders, we need to tell those who have done so much for our country and communities how much they are appreciated.   

That was one reason that in my last meeting with Raila, at a coast hotel 10 miles north of Mombasa, where he insisted, he would come to greet me and my family, I emphasised to him his array of achievements, which were pivotal for our democratic freedoms and inclusiveness. The last was particularly important because it brought the many smaller forgotten groups at the periphery of political discourse into the centre to argue their own cases. I also spoke about the one huge achievement which is not fully recognised, the independence of the media he believed to an extraordinary degree. He smiled at that.       

Raila and I first met in 1981 when I was Editor of Viva magazine and decided to partially enter politics by becoming campaign manager for my then closest political friend, Wango’ndu wa Kariuki. He was running in the Nyeri by-election triggered by the imprisonment of its very progressive MP, Waruru Kanja, a Mau Mau freedom fighter who had escaped the gallows after winning clemency from Queen Elizabeth, but was now jailed on trumped-up charges.

I invited political friends like George Anyona and Micere Mugo, along with some small, progressive businessmen, for a fundraiser for Wango’ndu.

I also invited Raila. I had never met him, nor my political idol, Jaramogi, but my political leanings were clear from our Volkswagen’s number plate, KPU 5 – the plan to get KPU 1 did not work out. KPU, the Kenya People’s Party, was Jaramogi’s party, which was banned by President Jomo Kenyatta before the 1969 election.

My family’s first contact with an Odinga had occurred in 1973, when Mama Ida was a teacher at Highway Secondary School, as was my brother Naeem; my father Siddique was the Deputy Headmaster. Naeem would often regale us with Ida stories, who was always full of life and very sharp.

Raila donated a small amount but, more importantly, helped me get the whole group of seven renowned and very progressive MPs (dubbed the 7 bearded sisters by Attorney Charles Njonjo!) to come to Nyeri for the campaign, even though he himself was not an MP yet. Raila and I became instant friends because we shared so much and had the same egalitarian vision for Kenya - and he was Jaramogi’s son and Mama Ida’s husband!

That kind of national presence, especially for a by-election was unheard of. The young Wango’ndu did not win many votes. But he was identified as a “radical” through his open embrace of the supposedly convicted Waruru and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for being a member of Mwakenya.

The underground movements were growing as impoverishment, political repression and corruption were growing at a furious pace and President Moi was quickly losing the support of key political and financial groups, including within sections of the armed forces and the police.

In the midst of a growing political storm, Anyona said Jaramogi wished to see me. I was thrilled! Jaramogi told me he had been carefully observing the journalistic work I had been doing and my commitment really pleased him at a time when most editors were afraid to raise their heads above the ramparts. Would I take a very private sealed message to Tanzanian President Mwalimu Nyerere? He warned me about the tight surveillance at our airports.

Luckily, I had been invited by Roger Mann, a Washington Post reporter who was a friend helping a Swedish NGO, to speak at a conference on poverty reduction.

So I drove to Arusha via the Namanga border post, where the special branch let me through without a search thanks to the NGO invitation.

I had friends at State House in Dar es Salaam, where Major James Butiku, Mwalimu’s Principal Private Secretary and Chief of Staff, was based.

He said, given the sensitivity of the letter, Mwalimu would not meet me, but I would be able to see him sitting at his desk.

Mwalimu read the message and asked that I thank Jaramogi for the analysis of the political situation in Kenya he had provided and he supported the democratic efforts to broaden participation in the political process.

That is, in fact, what Jaramogi and Raila were trying to do. Despite the growing political repression, Kenya’s constitution allowed the formation of political parties. Raila, with close Jaramogi ally Anyona, began quietly organising the formation of a political party to be headed by Jaramogi and possibly Bildad Kaggia, another socialist leader and fiery nationalist. Then the Observer reported that a Kenya Socialist Party was to be formed by Jaramogi, which he denied. But the race against time was on.

The final meeting where the Constitution of the Kenya African Socialist Alliance party was approved and typed out was held at our home on a Saturday afternoon in May.  Signing on were Raila, Anyona, Atieno Odhiambo, Paddy Odhiambo, Kamoji Wachira, myself and Neera Kapur, who did the typing.   

Anyona decided he would spend the night with us. That evening, Chelagat Mutai called from Dar to chat and I later put Anyona on the phone, which I had told him was most likely tapped. He mentioned to her that the party was ready to be registered.

The next morning, Anyona received a phone call from a “journalist” who wanted to provide some information. When Anyona, who had the copy of the constitution, showed up at the meeting place, he was arrested and the only copy of the Constitution was confiscated.

Mass arrests began soon afterwards. I fled to London on June 18 after being alerted by a fan within the police of my imminent arrest. Another democratic dream had been crushed.