BOOK REVIEW: Peeling Back the Mask: A Quest for Justice

Peeling Back the Mask: A Quest for Justice

Author: Miguna Miguna

Reviewed by Onyango Oloo, July 2012

One of the most anticipated books in Kenya is finally out.

Miguna Miguna’s unflinching book, Peeling Back the Mask, is off the printing presses and available in book stores in Kenya, the UK and North America.

In the run up to the publication, some individuals took to blogs and social media with “leaked excerpts” from the book as early as six months ago.

Contrary to popular myth and urban legends, what Miguna has put out is NOT a “tell all” tract whose sole aim is to discredit Raila Odinga, the Prime Minister of Kenya.

Peeling Back the Mask is a political memoir, a retracing and retelling of the author’s ongoing existence.

Given Miguna’s professional, personal and political engagement with Raila Odinga especially over the last two or three years, that period of Miguna’s life is given prominence and one finds fascinating details, not just about the backdrop of the events that led to the stormy, bitter and very public parting of ways between the two, but more interestingly, the painstaking role that he and other ODM insiders and strategists played in building the Orange Democratic Movement into the electoral behemoth that it grew into.

Cobbled together

It also sheds light into the ultimate ascendancy of the man popularly known as “Agwambo” to become the co-principal of Kenya’s grand coalition government cobbled together in the aftermath of the post-election violence, which broke out in the aftermath of the fiercely contested presidential election results of December 2007.

The memoirs, which run to 614 pages is divided into eight parts (Books One to Eight), comprising 21 chapters.

Book One is about the author’s formative years growing up in Nyando, Nyanza province in western Kenya among members of his Luo ethnic and cultural community. Miguna describes vividly his childhood and adolescent years in Magina, Nyatoto and Apondo; his time at the Onjiko Secondary School where he made his first mark as a militant youth and at Njiiri’s High School in Murang’a where he completed his A-levels before proceeding to the University of Nairobi.

He recalls the numerous run-ins with the State during his stint at the National Youth Service and ends by delving into the radical campus politics from where he was ultimately rounded up along with other elected student leaders and forced to flee into exile in 1987.

Book Two commences with the traumatic transition which sees Miguna and his comrades travelling through neighbouring Tanzania and 'squatting' in Swaziland for several months before being airlifted to Canada as a government refugee and permanent resident in 1988.

This section portrays the emergence of Miguna Miguna as a Pan Africanist and global citizen and his sojourn at the University of Toronto where he completed his undergraduate studies in political science and Osgoode Law School at York University where he earned his first and second law degrees come alive with memories of his involvement in the struggles of African immigrants, Caribbean people of African descent, Native and Indigenous People of the Americas and other progressive people in anti-racist and other struggles against oppression.

Advocate for the marginalised

As a young lawyer concentrating on human rights, refugee and immigration law Miguna developed a reputation as a courageous, outspoken and implacable advocate for the marginalised and dispossessed at the periphery of mainstream Canadian society. One has to read the book for the many fascinating accounts of some of these court and community battles in the broader war to contribute to a more humane and equitable Canada.

Book Three covers Miguna’s re-entry into Kenya after all those years abroad. Book Five is subtitled “In the Trenches” and looks at the battles pitting ODM against PNU through the tumultuous  2007 campaign right up to the onset of crisis following the disputed presidential election results.

The reader has a front row seat as he or she partakes in Miguna’s first hand, passionate account.

Book Five subtitled “Standing Tall in the Corridors of Power” sees Miguna take a critical look at the internal dynamics within the ODM team-dissecting the strengths and weaknesses of the party position during retreats to negotiate a power sharing arrangement; the author dangles some of the warning signs he observed in his unravelling relationship with the Prime Minister and his coterie of aides and cites some of the skirmishes he engaged in.