Generational change of guard and the Odinga dynasty

In politics, power begets power. This is the basis of political dynasties, fast becoming an indelible feature of Africa’s embryonic democracies.

But the rendezvous with power can sometimes be short, brutal and nasty.

In recent weeks, the Odinga dynasty has reached a crossroads.

Seismic political, generational and intellectual shifts are forcing one of Kenya’s most powerful political dynasties that has enjoyed a vice-like grip over Nyanza politics for more than half a century to rethink its future.

On October 17, Raila Odinga’s wife Ida declared that her son Fidel Odinga can make a good politician who was nurtured by his grandfather (Odinga) and his father (Raila). Is Fidel the next heir to the Odinga dynasty?

A PERFECT DYNASTY

The Odinga family is a perfect political dynasty. It has not only produced a Vice-President and a Prime Minister, but many of its scions and relatives have become political leaders in varied ranks of Kenya’s political process.

The Odingas rank as one of Kenya’s four most influential political families. In addition to the Kenyatta and Moi families is the less known Mazrui dynasty — Kenya’s oldest dynasty that helped overthrow the Portuguese rule in 1698, resisted the Omani Al Bu Sa’id dynasty that ruled over Zanzibar, fought against the British rule in the 19th century that wields immense political, theocratic and intellectual power particularly at the Coast.

Political families are the pivot of power in contemporary African politics, not ethnicity. The Odingas exemplify the paradox of dynasties in Africa’s emerging democracies.

But the Odingas are nowhere near America’s Bush family, the “most successful political dynasty in American history” — that has produced the 41st and 43rd Presidents (George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush respectively), a Governor of Texas (George W. Bush), a Governor of Florida (Jeb Bush), a US Senator from Connecticut (Prescott Bush) amongst other prominent members.

The Odinga dynasty has seen better days. The dynasty’s patriarch, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was a credible nationalist and Kenya’s first Vice-President before resigning in 1966.

Odinga won the fierce battle for the soul of the Luo nation between him and Tom Mboya, but after Mboya’s assassination in 1969, he deftly tapped into the ensuing ire to harness the dynasty’s hold on Nyanza.

A détente with Daniel arap Moi in 1978 enabled Jaramogi to become the Chairman of the Cotton Lint and Seed Marketing Board. But he lost the post after publicly criticising Jomo Kenyatta’s policies.

Although Jaramogi lost the 1992 presidential election, he returned to national politics as an MP and influential opposition leader and a parliamentarian while his son, Raila, became the MP for Langata in Nairobi and a coterie of loyalists became MPs in Nyanza.

Jaramogi’s heir, Raila, lost the 1997 presidential election, but was appointed to President Moi’s Cabinet following a strategic cooperation between his National Development Party (NDP) and Kanu.

However, five years later, Raila led the Luo in a mass walkout of the government, protesting at Moi’s decision to back Uhuru Kenyatta as Kanu’s presidential candidate in the 2002 election.

Raila and his allies became cabinet ministers in President Mwai Kibaki’s Narc government following his victory.

The Odingas reached the acme of their power after the tragic 2007 elections when Raila became Prime Minister in a power-sharing government with President Kibaki.

Although the Odingas were back in the cold after Raila lost the 2013 contest, they have maintained their sway in Nyanza politics.

A SECURITY THREAT

In the official minds of Kenya’s successive governments, the political strategies of the Odinga dynasty are viewed as a security threat.

In November 1964, Jaramogi was accused of smuggling arms into the country and storing them in the basement of the Ministry of Home Affairs headquarters.

“Suddenly I found myself the so-called evil genius of a ruthless plot to overthrow the government,” he wrote in 1967.

The association of the Odingas with insecurity took a new dimension after the stoning of President Jomo Kenyatta in Nyanza in October 1969 and the abortive coup by the Air Force on August 1, 1982.

This perception loomed even larger after the “Men-in-Black” spectacle, the high-pitch rhetoric in the run-up to the opposition’s Saba Saba (July 7) rally and in the wake of the Migori incident where “hired people” threw shoes in the direction of the Presidential dais.

But Raila has maintained that he has pursued change “not through violence, but through popular mass action”.

Criticism of the Odingas is also hoisted on the painting of Nyanza as a zone of “democratic deficit” and the dynasty as a classic “family dictatorship” — described by experts as a form of absolutism where a powerful family operates much like an absolute monarchy, controlling every aspect of life of the people in a nominally republican state.

Against this backdrop of seething discontent in Nyanza, Jubilee’s leadership is on a charm offensive to win the hearts and minds of the Luo nation and to craft an alternative centre of gravity in Nyanza politics.

In the last one year, President Kenyatta’s government has made no less than eight major appointments of members of the Luo nation, including Raychelle Omamo (Defence Cabinet Secretary) and, more recently, Major-General (Rtd) Jeoff Otieno, as Ambassador to Egypt.

Ideologically, they are juxtaposing their developmental approach against what they depict as the Odinga dynasty’s populist rhetoric responsible for Nyanza’s poverty and under-development.

In the face of the raging clash of generations, the future of the Odinga dynasty in Kenyan politics lies in embracing the idiom of generational change of guard.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is the Chief Executive of the Africa Policy Institute and former Government Adviser.