Is it yet Uhuru? East Africans revisit the contract with their rulers

In 1967, former vice-president Jaramogi Oginga Odinga published his autobiography, Not Yet Uhuru. And with it he gave Africa one of the two most used phrases from post-colonial Kenya; the other is “Harambee,” coined by his nemesis, founding president Jomo Kenyatta.

In the week that Kenyans marked the 32nd anniversary of Kenyatta’s death, they also publicly usher in a new constitution. The birth of the new Constitution will remind many of Odinga’s cynical statement about the kind of independence Kenyans got in 1963 when the instruments of governance and power were passed from the governor of the former British colony to a new government led by Kenyatta.

They will remember how Odinga’s phrase proved prophetic in describing the ensuing political stagnation in Kenya and across the continent.
Which is why we need to revisit Not Yet Uhuru and ask: Does the new Constitution herald a new beginning?

Is this Constitution really people-driven? Will power eventually seep down from the capital city to the countryside, or mashinani (the grassroots)?
What evil lurks in the shadows to ensure that Odinga’s words remain as true tomorrow as when they were written in 1966, a period of more optimism and unity in the country than today?

And why did a man who had fought so gallantly for freedom seek to repudiate Uhuru?
Odinga spells out clearly in Not Yet Uhuru why and how the dreams of independence aborted and a majority of Kenyans alienated from the mainstream of the new nation’s political and socio-economic life.

More, he was speaking for the majority of East Africa’s people when he questioned whether Uhuru had indeed arrived.
It is therefore important to review his worries in Not Yet Uhuru not only in the context of the inauguration of the new Kenya but also within the geopolitics in the broader Great Lakes region.

Rwanda has just re-elected Paul Kagame with a 97 per cent majority amid much controversy over the state’s perceived intolerance of opposing views; Burundi concluded its presidential election with the incumbent the only candidate; Tanzania is scheduled to hold its general elections in October this year; Ugandans will vote in February and March 2011 for their president and parliamentarians; Southern Sudan will determine whether to remain part of the larger Sudan in 2011; Somalia is still in the throes of internecine civil strife.

All these activities involve how ordinary citizens relate to themselves and their governments. Either people are determining who will rule them for the next five years or they are taking up arms to defend themselves or attack others or rebel against the government.

What these activities also highlight is that after five decades many Africans are still struggling for Uhuru. From North to South, East to West, Africans are still struggling for a decent life; the life that the leaders of the anti-colonial struggles promised. In Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, matunda ya Uhuru (the fruits of freedom), promised after the end of colonial rule.

But the tree with the fruits of independence somehow ended up being fenced inside someone’s “private property.”
Thus, as Kenyans ponder the unknowns of the new Constitution, and its wider implications in the region considering the urge among East Africa’s people for closer relations, they should think about Odinga’s musings about Uhuru.

One of Odinga’s concerns about how the freedom was betrayed is already manifesting itself through the alienation of the common woman and man from the processes of rebuilding national institutions.

The hyena-like tendencies of those around power to take care of their interests first to the exclusion of those who shed blood and tears for change can be witnessed again.

The scramble for the governorships and Senate seats and the talk of marginalisation of the minorities within the counties echoes Odinga’s worries. But perhaps Odinga’s biggest gripe was about land.

He was not alone in asking why, if Kenyans had fought to reclaim the land that had been appropriated by the colonialists, they were still landless. Others like Bildad Kaggia resigned in protest at the government’s reluctance to resettle Africans or help them to buy land in the schemes at affordable prices.
Land still remains an emotive issue in Kenya.

One of the most shameful post-colonial realities is that we still have squatters, some who live on land that is undeniably theirs but which was “legally” acquired by absentee landlords.

Odinga worried that opposition to the East African federation (later the East African Community) would deny the region’s people economic cooperation and affect the ties that had bound them culturally and socially for millennia.

It came to pass that the EAC collapsed. Will the new EAC survive? Will it bring Uhuru to the ordinary citizens of the region or will it, once more, be held hostage by selfish interests?

Odinga also felt that to build the new State one needed a party that was strong and responsive to its followers and the citizens: “The party, as I saw it, was the guardian of our Uhuru aims.