It is themed around the one stone that David unleashed to kill Goliath in the biblical story. But the late Hill philosophically deploys the imagery around one stone to represent any idea or revolutionary action that results in massive change among the people.
Among the “one stone” moments narrated in the song includes Nelson Mandela going to prison for his principles and returning to become president of his nation. By its nature, this “throwing one stone” brings “a bad feeling to all wicked men”, here represented by agents of the status quo, lords of impunity and merchants of division and political regression.
Towards the end of his second term, President Uhuru Kenyatta, in my view, “threw one stone” by endorsing the most unlikely of candidates to be his successor.
I have opined several times that the act of a Kenyatta attempting to hand power to an Odinga constituted the most revolutionary moment in our history. This is because it did not just symbolically amount to burying of the hatchet between the two feuding families but amounted to the bravest act in thawing of perennially strained relations between their two ethnic communities.
As fate would have it, and as Joseph Hill may have summarized it, the stone brought a bad feeling, and the dream didn’t come to fruition.
For a long time during and after the campaigns, I hoped the brilliant coalition of communities and interests that ODM boss Raila Odinga and President Kenyatta had built would outlive Uhuru’s reign and Raila’s possible retirement from politics, to stake its claim in another run in five years’ time.
You see, when those who voted simply to “punish Uhuru and Raila” realize the alternative is Rigathi Gachagua singing songs of division on your TV set every day, even they will cry for redemption.
The Azimio coalition would have come in as the voices of the people. But you have to admit, it is hard to maintain a coalition within government and much harder to do it from the opposition benches. I am actually perplexed when the coalition’s high brass tries to bandage the political bruises for what are basically short-term measures.
Two or so weeks ago, sections of the Azimio coalition came out guns blazing, accusing the biggest party in the outfit, ODM, of “politics of conmanship” over the allocation of house leadership positions.
From the onset, let us be clear that when family members insult you with words that sound eerily similar to those you have heard from enemies and within the village gossip networks, it is time to call it a day in that family.
But there is something else, and ODM secretary general Edwin Sifuna captured it perfectly in a tweet when the controversy was hot: The role and quantitative values delivered by coalition partners in the last general election. The loudest of the complaining troops were from Jubilee, yet the party got a monumental whitewash in the region where it was to mount a challenge on behalf of the coalition.
The not-surprising exemptions obviously were Jubilee candidates in the capital city, who benefited from the “Raila tribes” in Nairobi, who were not trying to send anyone to Bondo or Gatundu.
In a strange bout of self-entitlement therefore, the complaining Jubilee folks were asking ODM to share with them proceeds from a hunt in which they themselves had been near-spectators or had delivered so little as to form a basis for silence of shame.
The foolishness per capita in this country usually tends to be rather high. So in political disputes, especially in the opposition, the blackmail line is for partners to threaten to work with government. And within the Azimio coalition, there are those who have already cast their lot with the sitting regime, and those who promise to do the same, if their demands are not met.
The underlying narrative behind this political philosophy is that everyone can go to government except ODM. Believers of this doctrine obviously haven’t checked recent history!
It is not my duty to be the bearer of bad news, but I would advise anyone who cares to listen that holding onto the Azimio bloc hoping it can live until 2027, when the next general election is due, is a wild dream. As I have stated earlier, even within government, where there are millions of carrots and sticks to deploy, coalitions hardly survive. President Mwai Kibaki saw his Narc-Rainbow coalition die as soon as his first Cabinet was read out.
The story of President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto has been around too much to be retold.
As for the current regime, media houses have already gone to town depicting it as a house divided as the varying interests within it scramble for the national cake. And they haven’t even “eaten” their first Christmas together. Now try to imagine holding onto a coalition from the opposition, without even bare crumbs to appease the political vultures within.
Those usually “reliable” sources who decline to be named, have already been quoted in mainstream media as stating that given Raila may not be on the ballot again, ODM doesn’t feel the need to be turned and twisted by its current partners like the ones before it, which made the party the donkey for their political burdens. Beyond that elephant in the room however, after defeat, it is imperative that each political formation within the coalition goes its own way to chart its own path. If need be, they can reunite in time for the next general election.
Between now and 2027, attempting to hold onto dead relationships will just put a strain on everyone. In fact, I can predict that months from now, ODM, like in the last Parliament, will be petitioning the Speakers of both Houses to reclaim seats it shared with its coalition partners.
One thing makes me sad from all of it. If the one stone President Kenyatta threw had succeeded, we may not really have seen the death of tribalism in its raw form, but at least a conscious move towards blunting its bared fangs.
Typically, Azimio parties leaving the coalition are returning merely to their tribal bases and little cocoons of ethnic politics. If Uhuru and Raila came close to achieving a revolutionary moment, the collapse of the coalition will basically make all they worked for to have been in vain. But that is till better than being in a political marriage where the spouse is painting the town red by night, while acting the model husband or wife by day.
To bury Azimio now may afford all partners an opportunity to reflect and rebuild and find peace in the arms of new suitors. It’s the reality of our world.
