From hero to compromised insider, his life instructed the story of a nation undone by the very system it created.
Kenyans are wont to check with Raila Odinga, the long-reigning 80-year-old opposition chief who died on Wednesday, because the “Enigma of Kenyan politics,” a reference to the title of a 2006 biography of him penned by the Nigerian creator, Babafemi Badejo. His unequalled capacity to outlive, even thrive, on the high of the nation’s political panorama for many years confounded his rivals and inflicted complications on the regimes he plagued. However I believe he can be greatest remembered as extra mirror than thriller: the personification of Kenya’s tragedy.
The son of Kenya’s first vp, he carved out a path as a crusader for freedom and higher governance that led him from the nation’s prisons and torture chambers to a few of the highest political places of work within the land. However on the finish of his life, the compromises he had made to get there, the handshakes that peppered his profession, had taken their toll, with a brand new era shunning him, contemplating him a part of the issue.
All through his lengthy profession, he was inseparable from the battle for a greater Kenya. From the wrestle for the restoration of multiparty democracy within the Nineteen Nineties to the 25-year battle for a brand new structure, he was by no means removed from the limelight. Few might match his capacity to mobilise Kenyans or the sway he held over his supporters. Regardless of believing Kenya wanted to ditch its presidential system for a parliamentary one, a place he argued vociferously through the constitutional convention in 2003, he ran for president in each election since 1997 except the 2002 one, when his proclamation of “Kibaki Tosha” was enough to propel Mwai Kibaki to the workplace.
He was a person Kenya appeared content material to have a good time however decided to frustrate. He was arguably robbed of the presidency on a minimum of two, maybe three, of these makes an attempt, in 2007, 2013 and 2017. His refusal to meekly settle for the injustice led to his opponents, and even The New York Occasions, branding him “a perennial loser”. His resort to the road as an avenue to protest not simply the electoral controversies, however horrible state insurance policies, additionally led to accusations of being a harmful instigator of political violence, although in reality, the violence related to Kenyan political demonstrations nearly at all times comes from the state.
Nonetheless, it is usually vital to recall that for all his legendary contributions and deeply held beliefs, he was liable to startling bouts of hypocrisy. It’s a potent illustration of how energy in Kenya corrupts even its best reformers. In 2000, after his handshake with the dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi, which might finally see him appointed to his cupboard, he referred to as for his erstwhile comrades within the opposition to be charged with treason for holding unauthorised antigovernment rallies. In 2006 he boasted that, as a part of the Rainbow Coalition that had ended Moi’s KANU celebration’s grip on energy, he had blocked motion by the Kibaki administration to carry the dictator accountable for a few of the looting that had occurred throughout his 24 years in energy. In early 2008, the standoff between him and Kibaki over the bungled December 2007 presidential election would price 1,300 Kenyans their lives and see a whole lot of 1000’s displaced. But a couple of months later, following yet one more handshake leading to Raila changing into solely the second particular person in Kenya’s historical past to be appointed prime minister, his household and shut associates have been implicated in a maize subsidy rip-off that left a 3rd of the nation ravenous.
For his fame, the straw that broke the camel’s again was his notorious 2018 handshake with President Uhuru Kenyatta, which once more got here after the state’s violent repression following the historic annulment of the 2017 presidential election. It was broadly seen as a betrayal of his supporters, greater than 70 of whom had been murdered by safety forces whereas protesting the hasty repeat election, which Raila boycotted, and its aftermath. Following that, although he nonetheless had sufficient within the tank for a closing run on the presidency, he was largely a spent pressure. His problem to the William Ruto regime within the latter a part of 2022 and into 2023 was a pale shadow of the protests he had commanded in earlier years and was eclipsed by the Gen Z rebellion a yr later.
Raila’s life epitomised each the promise and disappointment of Kenya, which was born in wrestle, nurtured in hope and ruined by betrayal. The true tragedy, nevertheless, lies not in his compromises, however in a system that made, and continues to make, integrity practically not possible. Regardless of his large achievements which made him stand out amongst his contemporaries, not simply in Kenya however throughout the continent and the globe, his trajectory sadly traced a path that too lots of Kenya’s – and Africa’s – most promising politicians have walked. His dying is a giant blow to the nation, and he’ll undoubtedly be remembered fondly by many. However maybe it also needs to be with a tinge of disappointment and anger for what might have been however for Kenya itself.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
