Sunday, January 23, 2011

The burial place where marriages are made


File | NATION A picture of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in his younger days. A ceremony to mark his 17th anniversary was held on Saturday.
File | NATION A picture of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in his younger days. A ceremony to mark his 17th anniversary was held on Saturday.  
By DANIEL OTIENO danotieno@ke.nationmedia.comPosted Saturday, January 22 2011 at 21:00
In Summary
  • Jaramogi’s burial place provides a symbolic platform for politicians to announce alliances and defections

Seventeen years ago on January 20, the curtain came down on the life of the doyen of Kenyan opposition politics, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
After his death, his final resting place has provided a symbolic platform for politicians to announce their alliances and defections.
And this year’s ceremony to mark his 17th anniversary continued to inspire political marriages. Former Kangundo MP Moffat Maitha led a group of 20 elders from Ukambani who asked Prime Minister Raila Odinga to “move in” to their political backyard.
Mr Maitha said that Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka was playing community leader without conducting wide consultations.
To some the late Jaramogi was a hero, while to others he was a villain out to destabilise the government.
Young politicians sought his help to open up political space, while both former presidents Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi bundled him off to detention for attempting the same thing.
The ceremony to mark his 17th anniversary started at midday on Saturday with prayers from the Anglican Church Bishop Kenneth Ochiel.
The bishop urged the family to stay united and propagate the ideals of their late father.
The bishop said that Jaramogi believed that power at the hands of a leader was not complete unless he engaged in the lives of his community.
Jaramogi’s elder son Oburu Oginga introduced the family to the thousands gathered for the public occasion. He described his father as a courageous man who fell out with successive leaders because of his divergent views rooted in the belief that all Kenyans were equal.
Family man
Jaramogi’s daughter Walkowa Akinyi described the father as a family man who opened their house to many.
After the ceremony, the family and a few selected guests proceeded to his mausoleum to pay their respects.
At independence Jaramogi was instrumental in making the country a single-party state by convincing Kadu to join Kanu, believing it was good for national unity. He later registered the opposition party Kenya People’s Union (KPU) after he fell out with Kenyatta.
When Kenyatta and other freedom fighters were detained, the task of mobilising Kenyans against the British fell on Jaramogi. In particular, he pushed hard for the recognition of Kenyatta as the leader of the Kenyan people and for his release.
The British colonial administration would have preferred that Jaramogi disown the struggle for independence by the Mau Mau as a Kikuyu affair.
But he felt that because of Kenyatta’s detention and long struggle, he had achieved the status of a father figure and was capable of unifying the country and turning it into a state whererace, status and tribe would not matter.
Today his son Raila Odinga is the country’s Prime Minister. Ironically, the proposed creation of the office of the Prime Minister in 1968 was defeated in Parliament because powerful people in the Kenyatta administration feared Jaramogi would occupy it.
The PM believes that in some areas, the struggles of Jaramogi bore fruit, while in others the dreams are yet to be realised.
Govern ourselves

“To the extent that we govern ourselves, we can say the struggles paid off. But if you have followed Jaramogi’s life and politics closely, it is clear that he believed in economic liberation as part of the bigger push for freedom,” Mr Odinga said.
“The fact that we still depend so much on foreign aid is an indication that not all the components of his struggle have been realised. Even the political liberty he pushed hard for has not been fully realised.”
The friction between Jaramogi Odinga and Kenyatta continued, and in 1969 Jaramogi was arrested after the two differed in public at a chaotic function in Kisumu where at least 11 people were killed and dozens injured in riots.
In 1991, he co-founded and was the interim chairman of the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (Ford). The formation of Ford triggered a chain of events that changed Kenya’s political landscape, culminating in ending Kanu’s 40 years in power – eight years after Jaramogi’s death.
Ford split before the 1992 elections. Jaramogi vied for the presidency on a Ford-Kenya ticket, but finished fourth with 17.5 per cent of the vote. However, he regained the Bondo seat after being forced out of parliamentary politics for over two decades.

No comments:

Post a Comment