There is this big guy sitting in front of you, and you cannot see properly the exciting events in the arena. To make matters worse, he keeps shifting his elbows on the armrests of his chair. If you have no special attachment to him, you probably wish he was not in the stadium at all. Well, Raila Odinga did not have the natural charm and intellectual range of Tom Mboya or even Dr Robert Ouko; two Luo politicians who had fallen in Kenya’s sometimes very deadly politics. But he stayed around for so many years that his longevity and political endurance compensated him. Mboya was already a towering figure at 39 in 1969, and Ouko at 58 in 1990 when they were assassinated. Odinga died naturally at 80.
He was the big man sitting and shifting in front of many Kenyans. When Africans love, they are sometimes not satisfied until their emotional intensity veers into folly. In the stampede that spontaneously formed after his death, at least five mourners were reported to have been trampled to death. Those who died were probably not Odinga family members; or managers in his many business outfits; or politicians who had been raised to high positions because of their connection with him. They were probably ordinary people who were sufficiently distanced from him to see him as a figure of worship; not the big guy sitting in front of them and obstructing their vision. An observer has described Odinga as an enigma, which suggests ‘inscrutable’, perhaps avoiding the description of ‘inconsistent’, which is less dignified.
Could Odinga avoid two common African problems? If in Western democracies, rich men sometimes seek high political offices, in Africa many people of modest means seek high political offices to get rich. Then again, those with power often use their different tools to financially weaken their political rivals. You had to lodge inside Odinga’s mind to know whether his political/ideological passion was stronger or weaker than his desire to make money; whether his targets of transforming Kenyan lives and consolidating the East African block were not overarched by the goal of growing his business empire; whether his weird political turns and twists after every defeat were for preserving Kenya or hedging his business interests against politically driven sabotage by his conquerors. In the end, perhaps, it did not matter.
There were so many Kenyans – especially of Luo stock – who believed that what was good for him was good for Kenya. To them, the worshippers who died on the journey of his body can be remembered only in footnotes. Riding with hordes in the cults of big men has its hazards. The high and mighty in Kenya were unreserved in singing the virtues of the departed. Their acrimonious relationships with him had magically been transformed by death into the most beautiful alliances made in heaven.
In neighbouring Uganda, where alarm signals for dynastic autocracy now sometimes sound louder than the celebrations of democratic progress, Opposition politicians have been extolling Odinga for being strong and resolved enough to create for Opposition causes visible space and pushing through some major constitutional reforms, even though the presidency had eluded him.
For their part, ruling NRM bigwigs have been extolling Odinga for exemplifying the spirit of compromise and always being able to work with the winners ‘for the sake of Kenya’. Tomorrow, when his grave is firm and the big man is unable to shift or come out, naughty storytellers may stealthily begin to blemish the enigma with insinuations of duplicity.