Contributing to the impeachment debate of Siaya Deputy Governor William Oduol on the floor of the Senate on Monday last week, nominated Senator Esther Okenyuri remarked that her side would vote to retain the deputy governor in order to “save that part of Nyanza from 70 years of slavery”.
It was a continuation of a perennial but primitive and shallow mentality that has become the hallmark of UDA politics, where an entire community is dehumanised to score political points against the region’s kingpin, ODM chief Raila Odinga.
You only need to note that many parts of Kenya, especially the coastal, Lower Eastern, Nairobi and Western, have voted steadfastly for both Raila and his late father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, over the years, but it is only the Luo to whom this “slavery” is attached. It is a typical case of tribal contempt masked in political garb.
It used to be largely the preserve of cantankerous, often semi-literate elderly politicians, but it seems the younger generation of Senator Okenyuri has effortlessly inherited it.
The senator is yet to be elected, so she may want to open history books and find that the so-called community of slavery is the home to remarkable women who blazed the elective trail decades and years ago, like Grace Onyango, Phoebe Asiyo and Governor Gladys Wanga, to name just a few.
Talking of which, I was a bit surprised that the Kenya Kwanza brigade would mobilise so furiously to save Oduol. It was a massive strategic failure, in my view. In its attempts to gain a foothold in Luo Nyanza, using ODM rebels and government functionaries like CS Eliud Owalo and PS Raymond Omolo, the easier route would be first for the regime to not appear antagonistic towards community interests.
The Oduol motion offered Kenya Kwanza Senators a zero-stakes easy picking, in which they would have sacrificed Oduol for greater strategic ambition, by throwing him under the bus and appearing to have a pulse on local political dynamics in Siaya county.
Instead, they voted to make the task harder for their political ground forces in Luo Nyanza, yet they really had no dog in the fight. It may not be rocket science, but if the ruling UDA party has any ambitions to have a considerable presence in Raila’s stronghold, fighting the community and its leadership, while unleashing derogatory slurs, doesn’t appear smart at all.
The Luo are a thoroughly proud community. It takes quite a bit of pride to be at loggerheads with governments, while bearing the attendant cost in form of marginalisation and discrimination, while still holding your heads high.
Successive regimes have tried to post political point men to the region, attempting to change the political direction of the community. Instead, these point men have fallen by the wayside.
The current nine or so ODM rebels, like those before them, will not see parliament in 2027. The pattern won’t change, no matter what approach it takes. I can comfortably advise UDA messengers that for as long as your masters attend public rallies in the Mount Kenya regions and the Rift Valley, making derogatory references to the Luo people, then sending you with bags of maize meal and cooking oil to win them support in the land, you are doing zero work!
To understand the Luo ambivalence towards government, one has to go back to two key events and their resultant political fallouts. One was the community’s heavy investment in the struggle for independence and subsequently being kicked in the teeth by erstwhile partners later in 1966.
The second was voting to a man for Mwai Kibaki and the fall of Kanu in 2002, before being betrayed just months later. In both instances, the perceived sins of Jaramogi and Raila were lumped onto the entire community, with it bearing the now-familiar brunt of marginalisation from mainstream government.
Therefore, while the community on one hand is made to pay the price for what the leader has done or not done, on the other hand it is expected to divorce itself from that same leader and chart some other unexplained path.
There is something else to understand from Luo political leadership. Both Jaramogi and Raila, the two most dominant political forces in the community in the past 60 years, first distinguished themselves as frontline fighters for liberation, forthright and incorruptible, long before they sought elective political leadership.
These qualities are irreplaceable in Luo political psyche. To attempt a leadership change within the community, or at least the existing political ideology, you have to find local leaders who come close to matching the description.
To send young political operatives, donning Tom Ford luxury footwear and Maybach sunglasses, driving titanic machines and speaking Dholuo with Fijian accents, doesn’t count as a way of making forays into the land. The only thing worse than this is capturing a whopping nine ODM rebels who cannot even hold a single political rally in their constituencies after making the switch.
In fact, I dare remind the ODM rebels now working for the other side, and the regime itself, that when President Moi in the early 90s wanted MPs Charles Owino Likowa of Migori, Tom Obondo of Ndhiwa and Ochola Ogur of Nyatike to work with him, he got them to defect from Ford Kenya to Kanu and occasioned byelections in their constituencies.
They all lost, quite predictably. Among the nine current rebels, there must surely be one or two who are brave enough to take the plunge and defect to UDA openly. This way, the subsequent byelections can help their new benefactors gauge the popularity of the product they have acquired, while measuring how much headway UDA itself has made in Luoland.
Looking at UDA and government activities in the land recently, there seems to be an unspoken pressure on CS Owalo and PS Omolo to not only perform the duties for which they took the oath of office, but to also deliver their community to government.
They have held countless meetings with leaders at the smallest administrative units in the villages. They have been on fundraising tours and relief food distribution projects, which are brilliant things really, if they don’t come with a perceived need for reciprocity of some sort. I submit that if the intention is to lay the foundation for a new political order, then it is all vanity.
In my view, and history bears me witness, the community, when not in government via an election, has only ever worked with the government through their real leaders, starting from Jaramogi Odinga’s famous cooperation with Moi, Raila’s NDP’s merger with Kanu, the 2008 national accord and the 2018 Handshake.
Indeed, consensus in the land is that these are the only times the community saw any real development come its way. It is not farfetched to say that any current or future political forays into the heartland of the Luo must follow the same format; credible engagement with the true representatives of the people.
The wheel cannot be reinvented when the template exists. While at it, coming with a different party other than the local dominant one will only appear disrespectful and insensitive.
I honestly hope UDA and President Ruto are not investing too much resources into these vain UDA attempts to conquer the land of the proud Nilotes. I can guarantee that not only will the harvest be really poor, but there may be none at all!