• Nine years in Kamiti and Manyani prisons, and many years in political exile cannot compare with trading goats at Nyagwethe market for personal survival.
• His history is embossed with patriotism; he compromises whenever dialogue serves the national interest.
History is stubborn. No person can reconstruct history to his own liking. It's harder to rewrite history when there are living witnesses to the facts.
A journalist I met in New York in 1994 asked me, last week: "How many Raila Odingas are there in Kenya? Is there another Raila Odinga known only to some politicians?"
The US journalist monitors Kenya closely, with six visits since 1994. He visited in 1997, 2002, and during the 2007 General Election. He stayed for two months after the mangled presidential election. He returned in 2013 and 2017, and stayed through the post-election tension that pitted the Jubilee regime against the National Super Alliance. Each of the visits coincided with a rigged presidential election.
The Raila he knows is a cut above the average politician. This is the Raila whose history is embossed with patriotism. This is the Raila who compromises whenever dialogue serves the national interest.
The Raila of history is closer to Nelson Mandela of South Africa. The Boers detained Mandela for 27 years, but a free Madiba forgave and worked with his apartheid jailers for the good of South Africa.
Raila is an enduring study in defiance and resilience...he knows when to retreat and when to advance. This Raila is a master of folk narratives. He is a weaver of metaphors that bind him with ordinary Kenyans, whose fights he personifies. This is not the kind of history you rewrite at the pick of a microphone.
The Kanu regime of Daniel arap Moi detained Raila, the scion of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, for nine years because he wanted freedom for Kenyans. Nine years in Kamiti and Manyani prisons, and many years in political exile cannot compare with trading goats at Nyagwethe market for personal survival.
The Raila of the jaundiced eyes of steak-holders is a fair-weather politician. This is the Raila whose past opportunists are skewing. Many are strangers to the re-invented Raila. Deputy President William Ruto is the architect of pre-2022 Raila Odinga. This Raila is reconstructed to mis-teach children who should know verifiable historical facts.
The only other person who has re-invented his Raila, when it's opportune, is the political rabble-rouser Miguna Miguna, an alumnus of the nondescript Onjiko High School. This other abuser of history re-invents Raila when he wants to eat sour grapes. He does it from the comfort of economic exile in Toronto, Canada.
Miguna Miguna fled to North America in 1987, at the burst of teargas canisters during student protests at the University of Nairobi. The leader of Students Organisation of the University of Nairobi then, Wafula Buke, a career reformer, is a witness to history. Miguna Miguna was a junior official of a radical Sonu.
The Raila familiar to the US journalist is an icon of liberation politics—an enduring study in defiance and resilience. This is the Raila Odinga historians describe as the enigma of Kenyan, and African, politics. The one who rises even when pessimists have written him off.
This verifiable Raila knows when to retreat and when to advance. This Raila is a master of folk narratives. He is a weaver of metaphors that bind him with ordinary Kenyans, whose fights he personifies. This is not the kind of history you rewrite at the pick of a microphone.
A social media poet, Martha Moraa, captures the Raila Odinga of public history:
"They will mock you. They will call you a loser. They will make memes of you and photoshop you in obscene photos. They will say you are a perennial loser. But they will also never forget that you suffered in Nyayo torture chambers, preserving the dignity of Kenya. You are the reason we have a multiparty system. You were the force that liberated us from Kanu tyranny. You gave us a new Constitution. You gave us hope.
Only you could put your presidential bid aside to campaign for someone who betrayed you. You are a whistleblower to many scandals that eat our country.
Our Baba you are an icon. You are the Mandela of our Nation. You are the son of this land. My grands will ask me, "Who was Raila Amollo Odinga?" With tears in my eyes and a heart full of joy and appreciation, I will proudly tell them, he is the icon of liberation. He is Baba who had the hugest command of this nation. I will open your bibliography - page by page - and read unto them the hearkening stories of how you suffered to bring Kenya where it is.
Legends never get destroyed. Legends never give up. Legends live to fight another day. Legends reincarnate. Legends are forever."