Don’t believe that myth about Jaramogi as anti-Kikuyu; he was a true nationalist

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By MURITHI MUTIGA
Posted  Saturday, January 28  2012 at  18:15

Jaramogi Ajuma Odinga, who died 18 years ago this month, is probably the most misunderstood figure in Kenyan history.

he state broadcaster painted him as an aggressive, implacable and restlessly ambitious vice-president who was consumed by the idea of toppling Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.

I bought this view because I had few other sources of knowledge about Jaramogi until I picked up a copy of his autobiography Not Yet Uhuru recently.

Some will say that an autobiography is an unreliable source of information because the author has an obvious interest in painting himself in a positive light.

But Jaramogi’s book, written in the immediate aftermath of independence, was an attempt to chronicle the history of the struggle for Uhuru.

The book illustrates how, in a vacuum of information, myth easily usurps fact.

Jaramogi, for example, was not a rival but an ardent supporter of Mzee Kenyatta in the run-up to independence and saw in him the one figure that could unite Kenya’s ethnic groups in the post-colonial dispensation.

This is the letter he wrote to Kenyatta on June 27, 1952, after their first meeting: “You can’t imagine the happiness I derived from your one-day visit to Maseno on Tuesday.

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I really enjoyed your company heartily and hope we will have many more moments like that in the coming days of our self-government.

In this I am your disciple to the hilt. You were so much at home and felt so very much native to the house as if Maseno had been your home in Kikuyuni.

I will never forget that memorable day ... I remain, always, Your Disciple in Nationalism.”

Was Jaramogi anti-Kikuyu? Far from it; in fact, the early nationalist spends many pages of the book illustrating how the key strategy of the colonialists was to cast the independence struggle as a Kikuyu affair.

The key challenge of anti-colonial leaders from other ethnic groups, he says, was how to counteract colonial propaganda on this subject.

“Throughout the Emergency years the nightmare of the government was that the revolt would spread to the other tribes.

Immediate steps were taken to seal off the Kikuyu reserves and to subject the rest of the country to a continuous barrage of propaganda to inflame anti-Kikuyu feeling.

Government and settler tactics seemed designed at little less than the extinction of the Kikuyu and to win over the Luo, the second largest tribe in Kenya as an army of loyalists.

My primary objective was to block this government offensive to enrol the Luo as pro-government belligerents, and thus fatally to divide the African people of our country.”

Jaramogi notes how Kenyatta proposed that a delegation of 12 elders from the Kikuyu and Luo communities should travel the length and breadth of each other’s communities to understand their cultures and to strengthen the bond between them, which the two men saw as key to defeating the colonialists.

He also discusses other colonial tactics whose legacy is visible in modern-day Kenya such as the strategy of dispossessing the Mau Mau of their lands and handing them over to the loyalists, for example, which arguably led directly to the post-election violence at the last election.

Then there was the idea of creating an indigenous middle class, which the colonialists argued would serve as a “firewall” between the masses and the imperialists.

Jaramogi had his failings. If Kenya had chosen the path of pure communism, which he seemed to favour, it can be argued that the early economic success of the nation would not have been achieved.

He also comes across in the book as being a touch naïve, not necessarily a bad thing, but a trait that explains why he never achieved the presidency.

One thing that cannot be taken away from him was that he was a nationalist of the first water; a towering figure in Kenyan history whose contribution to the defeat of the colonialists and valiant attempt to create a cohesive, multi-ethnic Kenya in the wake of independence is seriously under-appreciated.

mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com