Understanding Hon. Raila Odinga

Interesting it is for many to treat Raila Odinga as ‘an onion to be peeled leaf-by-leaf in layers to nothingness. Likewise it was utterly wrong for others (like Prof. Makau Mutua) et al as political ‘carpenters' to turn the ‘Odinga family tree into political tables and chairs and a leadership coffin’. What Kenyans need is not only to believe about the sentiments that many, I included, may choose to say about Raila but for us all to experience his type of leadership that is in question. May be Odingaism is turning out to be a mutating philosophy similar to Nyerere’s Ujamaa ideology that changed lived of many and not a particular ethnic tribe.

Though all of us have a right to air our literary pro-Odinga sentiments we at times confess ‘indifferences and misunderstanding’ that we may be having with the Odingas.

Whether our sentiments are seen to be tribal or not our own bitter-sweet altercations that may be aligned to the Odingas are but of our own making. I wonder why some writer, in her piece, chose to be so defensive and pro-Raila but with a ‘clever activism for neo-tribalism’.

Aren’t the some of us infecting readers with tribo-political psychosis of our own making? Why practice literary violence and counter attacks with a tribal lining? Both are wrong. We all need to separate the tribal chaff from the leadership and literary grain by enlightening readers about who Raila and the Odingas are without lacing imagined tribal facets and selective political hypotheses with personal amnesia.

There is at least one thing in Raila’s life that is beyond good and evil, which is being rightly himself. For some of us, there are no absolutes except those that we ourselves create as individuals.

This elitist ‘stinking-thinking’ in the name of having counter-attacks for favor is only stage-managed by our current political temperatures and has contributed to our misunderstanding Raila and the Odingas. I’m not trying to justify any ‘controversy’ or any other as some may wish to believe.

Certainly from what I have been gathering, many of us have opted to ‘talk, judge and make’ Raila for us by having personal standards that are selectively chosen as tools for displacing the other and even going to an extent of politically ‘provoking’ others with campaign platitudes on paper on how Kenyans should think, say and vote for their candidate including Raila.

What some of us do is only to create political popularity monologues as conflict and less leadership dialogue that we need most when we choose to have intercourse of mass-populist violence to prove a point that some politician is most qualified as a leader than others than to offer ideologies from their preferred candidates as an alternative that would help save Kenyan from the jaws of some selfish few.

We have literally chosen to discover tribal political standards for us by creating their personal ‘elimination’ tactics that they feel serve their interests best and at the expense of ordinary Kenyans.

The point is that to be authentic in leadership, like how Raila has chosen to be, is being honest with oneself first even in the face of nothingness and to all Kenyans no matter where one comes from. It seems that tribal and ‘attitudinal’ beliefs learnt from our historical past have refused to leave many of us including the very learned.

In fact many of what we believe in politically, as we touch leadership, are pure ‘prejudices and myths’. By the way who is the ruler of our current leadership destiny that has been soiled by insecurity, poverty, human rights violations and unequal livelihoods, among many others?

Must we ‘religiously’ maintain the approval of our historical past to rule today, as if our current existence is directly depended on them? What about individuals like Raila as a presidential aspirant and his ‘different’ but logical ideological stand?

Many of us expect tribal leadership to treat us fairly, as if the same can conform to our innate ethnic wishes or what we would deem right to hear from our previous leaders and some writers to ‘make us smile more as we approach the ballot box’.

Those upset and angry with Raila, as anti-ODM Kenya et al may be, are only expressing their own personal problems and not Agwambo’s or the Luo community.

Raila never minces words when he knows he is right, ‘only meat when he may want to make some Orange political Samosa’ for his people. Many strongly believe in him because we abide by his living philosophies that touch on the common Kenyan. Though everyone is entitled to his/her opinion some have lacked respect for the Odingas. Their wish is to ‘prove’ to others how bad, dictatorial, dirty, bitter and uncircumcised some are at the expense of true leadership.

What we need is to learn to accept differences as opportunities for growth and maturity, by even accepting our leadership mistakes when we make them and not as reasons for conflicts that massage the political egos of a select few.

This year should be one that makes us sanctify our historical leadership than to be overtaken by our own history. Should we not justify our leadership by some higher value than the purely intrinsic tribal and sectarian pleasure it is currently producing and in a more ‘biological’ manner?

Should blaming or cursing Raila be part of accepting political reality that is always elusive to many? To my mind reality entails accepting limits no matter how opposing they appear to be.

As a fact some of us may want to know the answer to Raila’s urge (read problem) to be president. I tell their ilk that Raila’s urge to lead the country is first of all not a question to be solved but a leadership process to be experienced, come next year. We should thus not, as Kenyans, decide who shall vote for who, who is ‘cut’ or not or what tribe should lead others.

In fact how many circumcised 'leaders' have we previously had and who messed up our country? For the fanatics, tribalism would always be static and confined inside the ethnic box while leadership and democracy changes in every generation that comes forth.

Political life is limitless and political boundaries and blocks that we create only make us to be resistant to have democratic changes. We only become more confined to the obsolete Mugithi, Sukuti or Ohangla verses of our historical leadership as 'genocide'. The Kenya that we tribally relate to is our own construction because what our leaders and writers say today may determine how our lives would be tomorrow and in future.

A practical example, Raila just like Malcolm X, et al, have been targets of mass-violence, hatred, blame and discrimination because they reminded some ‘very static’ individuals of how empty and inauthentic their political and leadership ideas are in comparison. They bring change to the world with the ‘different opinions’ that they have with them.

Certainly any genetically tribal Kenyan trying to control others’ political opinion is essentially destroying and objectifying them. Let us learn not to be primitive and to set leadership standards for others. Let us all vacate the country of tribalism and hatred even in our literary discourses. Kenya as a nation needs us most.

Lastly, Raila does not care what ‘some writers’ and politicians may literally dictate to others about him, his family and community at large, but only minds what you the voter would decide while voting come December.

Sincere Regards,
Mundia Mundia Jnr.