Raila Odinga at Mjadala Africa rehearsals at the Africa Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa.
“What has African Unity done for you lately?” seems to be the cruel, contemptuous and mocking rhetorical question implied in the astonishingly bilious vehemence of various local Tobiases and Sanballats who are unaccountably disenchanted with the resolute bipartisan support for Raila Odinga’s historic bid to become the chairman of the African Union Commission.
Generally speaking, the opposition, if it may be termed such, is inarticulate yet no less intense and visceral, and for want of a cogent argument, many a naysayer has defaulted to either trivialising the position desired by Odinga, diminishing the importance of the AU Commission or spuriously underrating the power of the African Union.
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Despite sophisticated discursive contortions, it is rather obvious that this green-eyed disaffection is of a piece with the unprincipled subversion that frequently passes for legitimate opposition in these parts.
Before the hollow mockery explodes in the faces of Odinga’s unreflective detractors, it might be time to reflect upon the fact that African Unity is a powerful fact of our political universe that should be institutionalised as a dimension of our reality.
To answer the quotidian domestic aspects of the disdainful challenge, yes, African Unity can raise your children, and, yes, Odinga is a case in point.
In his autobiography The Flame of Freedom, Odinga informs us that when he was a lad of 13, he accompanied his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who had just been elected into the Legislative Council, on a three week-long tour of Uganda, where he encountered luminaries like Dr Milton Obote and Michael Kiwanuka.
He also narrates that many African liberation leaders congregated in Kisumu about the same time for a Pan African event.
A year later, Odinga would circumvent vindictive colonial sanctions against his father by travelling to Tanganyika, where he met Oscar Kambona and Dr Nyerere and obtained Tanzanian documents which enabled him to travel, by way of Cairo to Germany, for his studies.
Both Odinga and his brother, Dr Oburu Oginga, narrate that their father used Ghanaian and Egyptian travel documents, and that the Africa Unity House in London, acquired by Ghana’s Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, provided hospitality, logistical services and other forms of necessary support for many a traveller, including these callow teenagers on their quests in different parts of Europe.
By dint of the colonial governor’s vindictive marginalisation crusade, the Odinga patriarch was plunged into an underground ecosystem of liberation movements which had developed efficient mechanisms for surviving, growing and becoming unstoppable in their mission to overthrow colonialism.
In many ways, this ecosystem was a surrogate support system, like an extended family made up of strangers from all over the world, for his young sons.
It is literally impossible for Odinga to narrate his life story without including accounts of Kenya’s freedom struggle, African unity and its role in empowering many movements in the continent which successfully delivered independence in due course.
To understand that African liberation and unity constitute indispensable context for Odinga’s life story is to appreciate that he is exceptional to the extent that his formal and informal education, as well as the totality of his world view, are substantially defined by the power of African Unity, and the values which inspired it.
Those of us who have been privileged to follow Odinga’s metamorphosis from a youthful revolutionary, to a radical socialist and now progressive social democrat will acknowledge that his Pan-African commitments have stayed intact in every season, and that he not only espouses them with extraordinary composure; he also articulates them with peerless coherence and vigour.
In a landscape where elites are notoriously parochial, Odinga stands out for his intimate cosmopolitan connections, turning up for family events of friends in distant capitals, and regularly receiving impressive constellations of African luminaries at his Bondo address.
Pan-Africanism is not a thing Odinga does, it is who he is and that is why it comes effortlessly to him.
He understands at a deep personal level that our continent has yet to plug into the power of African Unity, which has taken time to transform from the subversive solidarity of the liberation era, into a framework for inclusive transformation in our time.
His enthusiasm as the High Representative for Infrastructure Development is unforgettable, as is his insistent optimism about Africa’s future.
Odinga’s election as chair of the African Union Commission will not just be a personal victory, it will be a vindication of all the hope that drives the collective yearning for an African Renaissance.
Most importantly, it will be a homecoming for Odinga, an African statesman who was literally raised inside the torrid crucible of African Unity, by visionaries whose minds transcended the deliberate colonial agenda of fragmentation and imagined Africa as one family.
For Odinga, Pan-Africanism has never been abstract idea; it is a commitment to a programme of action that affirms our continent’s capacity to deliver prosperity for every nation by bestowing upon all young persons opportunities to actualise their potential.
African Unity can raise powerful children.
The writer is the Secretary, Policy Messaging and Speechwriting, The Presidency
