*Understanding the Odinga mystique *

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(sent by Obias Odingo)

Thirty five years ago, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga resigned from the vice-presidency of Kenya (as well as of the ruling party) to form the Kenya People's Union (KPU) and lead the Luo community into the opposition.

Led by Raila Odinga, a son of Jaramogi and leader of the National Development Party (NDP), the Luo have only this year returned to the mainstream, out of opposition), the younger Odinga being appointed Minister for Energy.

How do the Odinga's do it? What trick do they have up their sleeves that never fails to strike the right chord with the Luo? How have they managed to establish such a poweful dynasty, indeed, so far the only invincible powerhouse among any of Kenya's 42 tribes?"

Consider this: Musalia Mudavadi and Michael Wamalwa are both frontrunners in the race for political supremacy in Western Province and both had fathers who were influential politicians. But neither has been able to extend his influence very far beyond his own immediate backyard. Mr Katana Ngala, Minister for the Environment, falls in this same category. Despite having had a father who was a nationalist to reckon with nationally and whose influence over the Mijikenda was overriding, the younger Ngala has never been able to command more than his own constituency's support.

We have even had "kings" who somehow did not manage to beget "heirs": Jackson Harvester Angaine (King of the Meru), Francis Lotodo (King of the Pokot) and Paul Ngei (King of the Akamba)...Not one of the supposed "crown princes" (and all these men had sons) has managed to inherit the throne.

Let us hop over to Central Province to take a look at what our founding President Jomo Kenyatta, left behind. Mzee's heroic, indeed, mystical power has left no heir-apparent. When, in 1992, no less than three members of the extended Kenyatta family ran for parliamentary seats, the results were humiliating defeats all round.

The Kenyatta link counted for very little. Members of the Kikuyu community have frequently proclaimed aloud that, even if Kenyatta were to come back to earth, he would not be able to persuade them to rejoin the Kanu they so bitterly despise.

The irony is that the Luo have opposed Kanu since Jaramogi's fallout with Kenyatta in 1966, namely, for far longer than the Kikuyu, whose opposition goes no further back at most to the droll of elections of 1988.

Now Raila Odinga has changed all that. Again we ask: How do the Odinga's do it? Where does this overwhelming influence they have over the Luo Community come from? Why has it lasted for so long?

To understand the younger odinga's position among the Luo, suppose the movement towards the return to multi-partyism in the early 1990s had been spearheaded by a son of Mzee Kenyatta. The young man would have been detained without trial for his role in agitating for an end to the single-party state.

Doubtlessly, this would have re-established the Kenyatta family's pre-eminence in Central Province (and nationally) beyond any dispute.

Might not such a man, combining his father's prestige with his own, have been able to lead the Kikuyu, over a period, by slow and cautious stages, from "co-operation" to "partnership" to "coalition" and, as is now rumoured with the regard to the Kanu-NDP confederacy, to a merger with the ruling party?

On the surface, it would appear that Kanu has been irrevocably (indeed, eternally) rejected by the Kikuyu community. But is it so? Ask yourself this: Was it any less difficult for Kenyatta to effectively preach a gospel of "forgive but don't forget" to the Kikuyu people at independence than it would have been in the present day for an acknowledged Kikuyu leader of like stature to preach reconciliation with the Moi Government?

What's even more revealing, was it even thinkable, just before the last General Election, that, a mere three years later, Raila Odinga would speak the same political language as President Moi about a single government composed of both parties? This explains part of the Odinga mystique: whether a colonial or a Moi Government, there was always an Odinga willing to sacrifice the self, to criticise, to oppose, to challenge, but, when politically or morally possible, to join and influence from within.

The ticket was usually expensive: protracted and numerous detentions without trial. Yet the Odingas paid for it unflinchingly. Even if they are by no means the only politicians to have played this card, their unique achievement is that they have personified individual sacrifice in order to pursue the higher truth. The older Odinga did it even for Kenyatta and paid dearly for it in Kenyatta's own hands.

What counts in this scenario is not that Raila Odinga is now in the Cabinet. After the 1992 elections, Dalmas Otieno and Ndolo Ayah were nominated to Parliament and then appointed to the Cabinet in much the same way as Joseph Kamotho now enjoys a ministerial portfolio from among the Kikuyu despite having lost in the 1997 Parliamentary elections.

The Luo community were excited by Mr Otieno and Mr Ayah's elevation just as little as the Kikuyu community exuberate over Mr Kamotho's presence in the Cabinet and as secretray-general of the ruling Kanu. No, the difference is this. Kanu did not take Otieno, Ayah and Kamotho in their own terms. For Mr Odinga and his supporters, that is what counts. Kanu has had to accept him under his own conditions as a partner. He did not have to dissolve his party and join Kanu.

In that, he has undoubtedly broken new ground. That is why his supporters are so ecstatic: not because he is in the Cabinet but because he has sprung to that powerhouse from his own pedestal of power.

The terms of his entry into the Cabinet suggest (to his supporters) that he is a rather different category of minister than all other ministers in the present Cabinet. And who can deny that, in an important sense, he really is? Which of his Cabinet colleagues negotiated his own entry, and from a position of strength?

For the forseeable future, then, it seems, whenever Raila Odinga says: "Jump", the Luo community, as one, will ask merely: "How high?"

*The writer is a Saturday Nation columnist based in Mombasa

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