End of the ‘young turks’

By Edward Indakwa

It remains one of the most tender images of the 2013 Presidential Debate: Raila Odinga and Martha Karua standing side by side, their little granddaughters shaking hands.

It was a sign that the so-called Young Turks, a band of abrasive opposition brawlers who took the battle to Kanu in the 1990s and midwifed the ‘second liberation’, are young no more.

The Premier’s hair may be black, but age has slowed him considerably. The political firebrand of the 1990s is gone and as I write this, he is locked in what promises to be the most bruising political battle of his life. Watching Paul Muite during the presidential debate, one noticed that his eyes still burn with defiance, the razor-sharp mind remains intact, but the once fiery lawyer and political activist’s thunder was gone.

And what can one say of Martha Karua? In her day, Karua’s eyes were set in a permanent glare and when she attacked, her words came rushing in a stinging fusillade. Now the feisty politician is battle scarred and grandmotherly. Her red and black power suits have been replaced with lovely dresses. Age has mellowed the fighter.  

Punctured careers

Away from the presidential race, political misfortunes have punctured the careers of Gitobu Imanyara, Shem Ochuodho and Mukhisa Kituyi. It is inconceivable that following former Vice President Michael Kijana Wamalwa’s demise (another Young Turk), Kituyi was touted as his replacement. Yet barely a decade later, the people of Bungoma would swat the political giant away from the political scene with casual disdain. If the Young Turks have performed below expectations (one of them should long have been president), it is because they were too gifted and competitive individually to fight as one hunting pack. ‘Tribe’ wouldn’t let them anyway. 

Their activist credentials also made it impossible for them to transit into successful political mongrels. A good politician requires a certain level of duplicity and malleability, that ‘watermelon’ thing. But these strong-willed brawlers hardly bent, not even when political winds dictated otherwise.

That stubborn streak, which served them well as activists, fixed them. Now see how politicians who belong to a system and a past they fought so bitterly have mowed them down.

Five of them — James Orengo, Prof Anyang Nyong’o, Kiraitu Murungi, Prof Kivutha Kibwana and Dr Willy Mutunga — remain standing, though. But note that when Orengo and Nyong’o tried to rekindle their activist and reformist credentials, ethnic winds cast them into the sea. They have had to lie low to remain politically relevant.

As curtains fall on a band of rebels whose exploits only compare to the illustrious Uhuru Class of 1964 and the ‘bearded sisters’ of the mid 1970s, young firebrands like Agostino Neto who hope to make a career out of politics need to reflect on why Kiraitu Murungi and Raila Odinga have managed to remain the most successful of that lot.

But darn it, these rebels were a jolly good bunch to have behind you in a messy dogfight!

Welcome the Kajiado county chief

When I was newly employed, I wandered into a talk shop on human-wildlife conflict management. After about an hour, one fellow who hadn’t said a word raised his hand.

He was forceful, eloquent and brilliant, with an extremely firm grasp of what he was talking about. I never heard about him till last December when I saw his campaign poster in Ongata Rongai. Not surprisingly, IEBC has declared him governor-elect for Kajiado County.

In Dr David ole Nkedienye, an ecologist, the people of Kajiado couldn’t have made a better choice because if you are looking for an environmental disaster, go to their county.  Climate change is biting. Poverty is appalling. Water is scarce. Unplanned urban centres spring up and morph into seedy slums. In Ongata Rongai, for instance, traffic jams begin at 5am because the town’s main street was constructed when zebras were still roaming around. No playgrounds, public schools, nothing. 

Dogs, donkeys, cattle and goats recycle garbage at the bus stop. Some evenings, the stench of raw sewage hangs in the air. Churches and noisy bars intermingle with schools and residential homes.  A multi-million shillings residence could be next to a slaughterhouse, half the town’s boreholes were probably dug up illegally and animal carcasses rot on the tarmac.

More scaring is that Nairobi and Amboseli National Parks and the Ngong Forest, totems battling immense pressure from human activity, are dying slowly as the indigenous Masai sell their ancestral land to urbanites.  It should be interesting to watch Dr Nkedienye get down to work and to see if, he will infuse ecological governance in his operations as county boss.