Raila’s political blitzkrieg debunks myths, stirs new wave in Mt Kenya 

Raila Odinga

ODM party leader Raila Odinga addresses members of the public in Karatina town on September 27, 2021.

Photo credit: Pool | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Mt Kenya region prevented Raila Odinga from winning the presidency in 2007, 2013 and 2017.
  • In seeking to succeed Kenyatta, Odinga is building on old ties that bind the Mountain and Lake regions.

We live in the age of post-truth politics, marked by extreme rhetorical inflation. Kenya has a particularly dangerous addiction to demagogic exaggeration of political reality. Two months ago, Lugari MP Ayub Savala surmised that trying to campaign for Raila Odinga in the larger Mt Kenya region is like selling pork to Muslims in Saudi Arabia. The region, he averred, is firmly in the hands of Deputy President William Ruto.

Two months later, Raila Odinga launched a political blitzkrieg that set off a new “Raila wave” in Mt Kenya politics and radically changed his political fortunes in the 2022 election.

In military lingo, blitzkrieg is a war tactic that involves a surprise attack using a rapid, overwhelming force to break through the enemy’s lines, leading to a swift and decisive victory.

Odinga’s Mt Kenya blitzkrieg has familiar echoes in Winston Churchill’s famous June 4, 1940 speech: “We shall fight on the beaches.”

Odinga launched the blitz between September 27 and 30. The new strategy involves use of overwhelming political fire-power to control the region. On September 27, he met with regional governors in Nanyuki, climbed Mt Kenya and addressed eight whistle-stop rallies between Nanyuki and Nairobi.

This was followed by a day-long meeting with professionals, business and political leaders organised by the Mount Kenya Foundation on September 28, in an emerging grand search for President Uhuru Kenyatta's successor.

On September 29, Kenyatta joined Odinga in an evening tour of Kibra where he tacitly endorsed Odinga and castigated opponents of the March 9, 2018 handshake. Finally, on September 30, the former Premier met legislators from the region.

The blitz is part of Raila’s new strategy. Although he has raised his popularity from 0.67 million votes (10.82 per cent) in 1997 to 6.8 million (44.9 per cent) by August 2017, the Mt Kenya region prevented him from winning the presidency in 2007, 2013 and 2017. His post-2017 political strategy has, therefore, focused on the Mountain. 

Ties that bind Mountain and Lake

The ‘Handshake’ peace pact with President Kenyatta, Mt Kenya’s political kingpin, marked a significant milestone in this journey. Although the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) was shot down by the courts, it enabled Odinga to hold some of the largest rallies across the region.

This strategy rests on four inter-related planks. First, ideologically, it seeks to rekindle Kenyan nationalism to counter the surging parochial micro-nationalisms, ethnicity and class-based populism. This aims at shifting the 2022 contest from a banal clash of personalities to a clash of ideologies between nationalism and divisive class populism. 

Second, Odinga is tapping into the well-springs of the long history of common political mobilisation and experiences over the last eight decades between the Mountain and Lake regions as a narrative to fortify peace and unity as pre-requisites for sustainable prosperity.

In seeking to succeed Kenyatta, Odinga is building on old ties that bind the Mountain and Lake regions. In Not Yet Uhuru, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga documents Jomo Kenyatta’s several visits to Nyanza in the 1940s and early 1950s that recruited him and the region to Kenya’s nationalist struggle.

Raila saw his father welcome Jomo Kenyatta and the Luo folk sheltering and helping Mau Mau detainees escape from Mageta Island into Uganda during the dark emergency days. 

In the 1960s, Raila’s father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga declined to take over leadership until Mzee Kenyatta was released from prison to lead the country.

The ensuing Kikuyu–Luo detente birthed the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) and the first nationalist coalition that won the 1963 elections. 

Shared destiny for all Kenyans

Raila is not a newcomer to Mt Kenya politics. In 2002, he said ‘Kibaki Tosha’, which many thought would finish him politically as it was widely believed nobody in Luoland could vote for a Kikuyu. But Nyanza voted 98 per cent for Mwai Kibaki. 

As a result, when he visited the region, he was hailed as “Mutongoria Njamba” (hero). However, this historic partnership has had its ebbs and flows. Odinga is confronting them in a frank and candid fashion to hew a united and prosperous Kenyan nation for the 21st century. 

Third, Odinga is carrying a message of a shared destiny for all Kenyans. At the MKF luncheon, he invoked the language of partnership that won Kenya’s independence.

Echoing Martin Luther King Junior’s message of inspiration, Odinga declared that “I have been to the Mountain top. I have seen the promised land. I will go there with you.” He depicts his recent march to the top of Mt Kenya as part of the Kenyan people’s long walk to liberate themselves and reach the glory land envisioned by the founding fathers of our nation. For the sake of this partnership, Odinga has jettisoned political militancy and, like Mandela, re-embraced the doctrine of reconciliation to empower the nation. 

Fourth, Odinga is promising a business-friendly leadership. This is music to the ears of the Mt Kenya’s business community. Odinga rightly said his has been a business family since the days of the Luo Thrift Trading Company in the 1940s.

In Nanyuki, Odinga saw and promised to support “made-in-Kenya” products and innovations. He also promised to promote local manufacturing to add value to raw materials such as coffee, tea and milk and increase the incomes of the people.

Odinga consciously avoided attacking Ruto’s “Bottoms-Up” model. His economic blueprint will build on Kenya Vision 2030 to address poverty, youth unemployment and soar the country to greater heights of development. This model will borrow from China. By December 2020, China had become the world factory and managed to pull almost all its 1.4 billion people out of extreme poverty. With Vision 2030 expiring in nine years, Odinga will lay the ground for the successor vision to 2060.

The impact of Odinga’s blitzkrieg has been immediate. The strategy of depicting him as an enemy of Mount Kenya and exploiting this scarecrow image to isolate him has crumbled. He now has a greater winning chance in 2022.

Professor Peter Kagwanja is a former Government Adviser and Chief Executive at the Africa Policy Institute (API).