Uhuru-Raila handshake reunites bitter political foes

As President Uhuru Kenyatta retreated to the Sagana State Lodge on Wednesday, he carried the heavy weight of one particular question that troubled both his followers and political opponents alike: Just why would he dump his deputy of nine years, William Ruto, and support his erstwhile foe, Raila Odinga, to succeed him when he retires after the August polls?

He poured his heart out, and the national political arena came alive.

While the highly-charged summit has changed the political conversation and, inevitably, the course of the August polls, it’s the symbolism of President Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga’s enduring rapprochement since the March 2018 handshake that has caught the attention of many observers.

President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga have fought bruising political battles for more than a decade, and called each other all manner of expletives.

The bad blood between them has been more about the sins of their fathers than anything else, some handlers now say, adding they have more in common than “newcomer” Deputy President William Ruto whose bristling ambition rubbed the president the wrong way.

Bosom friends

Jomo Kenyatta (the president’s father) and Jaramogi Oginga (Mr Odinga’s father) were bosom friends at the birth of the nation and history records that Jaramogi even declined an offer from the colonial officials to form government as a show of solidarity with Jomo, who was in incarceration.

He insisted that Jomo was their undisputed leader, and only he could form a government for newly independent Kenya.

And true to this stance, Jomo formed the independence government on being released from prison while Jaramogi took the position of vice president.

Oginga, however, hardly lasted for three years before resigning in 1966, having fallen out with the president whom he accused of side-lining him.

“Dear Mr President, you have not given any considerations to me as your number 2 in State matters. I have a conscience and this, in fact, does prick me when I earn public money but with no job to do. I consider this a waste of public money and I am worried lest the future generation questions my sincerity when they learn that I allowed myself to hold a sinecure post in the midst of poverty and misery in our country. With this realisation, I cannot continue to hold this position any longer and I hereby tender my resignation. Yours, Oginga Odinga,” he wrote on April 14 of that year.

Kisumu massacre

Three years later, the differences would escalate in what is today called the Kisumu massacre, when presidential guards and police opened fire in a scuffle that left more than a dozen civilians dead on Jomo’s orders and in the presence of the two political leaders. The president had visited Kisumu to open a new hospital, then called Russia to signify ties with the Soviet Union, and now named after Jaramogi.

The assassination earlier that year of Cabinet Minister Tom Mboya, who hailed from the region, added more fuel to the riots that also threatened the president’s own safety. This one event, and successive political duels, also marked the beginning of fierce rivalry between the populous Kikuyu and Luo communities.

Old wounds

Could the duo’s reunion today heal the old wounds, on behalf of their departed fathers and their communities at large?

At the start of the handshake four years ago, President Kenyatta indicated that the bad blood between their families and communities would end with their generation.

In the event the ODM leader wins the presidency, history shall have in a way repeated itself since it took Jaramogi’s support for Jomo to be president and now Jomo’s son is pushing to have Mr Odinga as the chief tenant at the House on the Hill.

And even if Mr Odinga does not win the presidency, the fact that Mr Kenyatta supported his bid, alone, is good for the cohesion of their two communities and families, an Odinga insider told Sunday Nation.

Mr Kenyatta had told the nation in one of his public addresses that his choice of the next president would shock many, and true to his word, few expected the scion of the founding father of the nation to say ‘Raila Tosha’ having fought fiercely in the past two elections.

All along, DP Ruto and his allies held, albeit in private, that the president was only managing ‘a bothersome’ opposition chief to be able to govern the country in peace and that at the right time he would back his bid for presidency.

But now after the Wednesday announcement, the second-in-command is accusing his boss of betrayal and urging Central Kenya to stick with him in his State House quest.

Political barometer

Today, if you engage a random resident of Kondele, a notorious spot in Kisumu that serves as the political barometer for the region tightly under Mr Odinga stranglehold, you’ll get a different outlook from what it was in the past two General Elections.

“We will never fight again with our brothers from Central. Uhuru has demonstrated to us that they are not bad people after all. It is unbelievable that he is supporting our man, who would have thought, leave alone imagined that! The act should unite the country more than divide it,” Eric Nalo, a resident of the lakeside city said.

To the president’s men, the move is informed by both Mr Odinga’s suitability to lead the country as well as the need for national healing.

It is also a way of reciprocating the support enjoyed from the former Prime Minister since March 2018 which, they say, were it not for him, the president would have been held captive in his second term in office by an ‘impatient deputy’ who was in a rush to inherit instruments of power.

‘Mandela moment’

“I told guys that this is going to be a Mandela moment for the country. A period of healing for our country and communities, it is happening now,” Jubilee Vice Chairman and the president’s confidant David Murathe told the Nation.

Mr Odinga hailed the president for not going back on their agreement and shaming sceptics, even as some ODM diehards still hold that Mr Kenyatta is only clearing his conscience having  ‘stolen’ their victory in the last two elections.

“People said Uhuru is cheating you and he will abandon you. I told them I know he will not. I was certain because we had deep conversations and we agreed that this country needs to be moved where the ancestors want it to be,” said Mr Odinga on Friday on being endorsed by the ODM party delegates as the presidential flagbearer.

By virtue of being in the opposition and before the Constitution was changed to ensure devolved funds go to counties whether one supports government of the day or not, Mr Odinga’s Nyanza region lagged behind in development, a testament to skewed resource allocation owing to his time in opposition trenches.

The handshake projects launched in the region by the president such as the revival of Kisumu port serves as an inadvertent admission of isolation by the system and now there is a rush to complete them before he leaves office. Such are seen by locals as corrective measures.

Mega projects

The only other time since independence that the region witnessed an upsurge in mega development projects was during the coalition government 2008-2013, when Mr Odinga was the country’s premier.

The handshake has entirely changed the political climate in the country. Already families’ ties broken for decades have been restored. Former Kisumu Deputy Governor and Mr Odinga’s younger sister fondly remembers how they used to play at State House — as children of the president and his vice.

“There is no bad relationship between Uhuru and Raila as people put it; the two have a long history. When we were young, Raila would carry us (Uhuru and I) on his back and we grew up together as family friends. When our father (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga) was vice-president and Mzee Jomo Kenyatta was the President, we would visit each other. Uhuru would even visit us in our home in Kisumu and we would also visit them. The friends you make earlier in life are your friends forever and that is the truth. We were friends and forever we will remain friends” she narrates.

Mrs Ida Odinga, Mr Odinga’s wife, is a frequent visitor in the old Muthaiga home of Mama Ngina Kenyatta, the president’s mother.

The matriarch of the Kenyattas has also been spotted in Karen, where the Odingas stay, many times since the handshake took place.

A close aide of the ODM chief once told the Nation that the two were instrumental in actualising the handshake.

But to Mr Odinga’s camp, an endorsement alone is not enough for a man that generations in Central Kenya have been taught and brought up to believe is disruptive and does guarantee their wellbeing.

Jubilee insiders hold that Mr Kenyatta may be forced to soil his hands a bit, join the campaign trail to drum up support for his candidate in Mt Kenya to turn the tide that appears to be in favour of his deputy.

That, however, comes with the real risk of humiliation in the event Mr Odinga loses out to DP Ruto, who is upping his activities in the region to try and fend off the weight of the president’s endorsement.

“We are telling our president to retire and fade away peacefully like Mzee Kibaki did and everyone respects him for that,” Ford-Kenya party leader and DP Ruto’s partner in Kenya Kwanza, Moses Wetang’ula, says.

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