When ‘things were elephant’

Few politicians like William Odongo Omamo, who died early on Tuesday, were born with the gift of the gab and a sense of humour.

As young cub reporters of the 1980s, we were fascinated by his pulsating jokes which left his audience in stitches. Every reporter wanted to cover him.

But he was an astute politician with the ability to read the game of politics according to the prevailing circumstances.

During the Kanu era, he understood the exigencies of single party environment and toed the line, although he frequently stumbled and fell.

When it came to multipartyism, he switched alliances to remain relevant.

Clean as cotton

Kaliech, meaning elephant-like (he was tall and burly), kuri kuri (come this way, this way) and “clean as cotton” are some nicknames he will be remembered with.

And for 41 years as a politician, his speeches were full of quotable quotes, even when he was humiliated. He was in and out of Mr Moi’s Cabinet.

For instance, when he was first sacked from the Cabinet in the 1980s, he called a news conference in his Kencom office, where he thanked the president for having given him a chance to serve Kenyans and declared: “I am as clean as cotton.”

It was a norm during the single party Kanu rule that one had to thank the president for sacking him and declare that he “would be ready to serve under him in any other capacity”.

Anything short of this was disloyalty, and Dr Omamo had mastered this in a manner only comparable to the Kremlin of the former Soviet Union era.

He was to repeat this when he was sacked for a second time. He told Kenyans that he had “failed the loyalty test” and thanked the president for having accorded him a second chance in the Cabinet.

For most of his two-phase political career, he was firstly on the opposite side of the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a powerful political family in his native Nyanza. Jaramogi, Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s father reigned. Any politician who went against the family risked being consigned to political oblivion.

And when Jaramogi fell out with founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in 1969 leading to his detention, the government of the day desparately wanted another politician to fill in.

Dr Omamo, then a youthful lecturer at Egerton College threw his ring into politics, going to contest in Bondo to try and fill in the big shoes of Jaramogi who had held the same seat since independence.

Jaramogi represented

He won, but did not win the hearts of the people Jaramogi represented. A popular view in Nyanza then was that whoever went against Jaramogi was a traitor.

The advent of multipartyism in the 1990s saw the second phase of Dr Omamo when he slowly moved to the left to join the Jaramogi family train.

Even when it appeared obvious he would not beat Jaramogi in the 1992 first multiparty elections after two decades, he still went to Bondo to put up a fight on a Kanu ticket against Mr Odinga’s opposition Ford Kenya. He lost.

He was to stay out of politics for five years, thanks to Mr Odinga’s National Development Party which his allies used in the 1997 elections to win seats. But he switched over from Bondo to Muhoroni constituency where he has a big farm of sugarcane and cattle.

During the campaigns, that year, he endeared his supporters in Muhoroni by telling them that it was not only in Bondo that he was popular but even in his new Muhoroni. Kuri kuri, kuri kuri! and sure enough he won.

His presence in Mr Odinga’s NDP was seen as a boon to Mr Moi’s Kanu. It is thought that Mr Omamo was one of the politicians whose behind the scenes role led to talks between Kanu and NDP that led to the short-lived merger and afterwards, an acrimonious parting.

He was in his true colours during the merger ceremony at the Moi International Sports Stadium, Kasarani when he told of a story during his university years of a girl and a boy.

He electrified the audience as he told of how they were initially unwilling suitors but persistence of the boy every time they met moved “close, closer and closer until the gap was closed!”

On the Kenyan political scene, Dr Omamo did not belong to the independence struggle generation of politicians.

But he belonged to the second tier politicians seen as a “seed generation” that was intended to grow Kenya during the post-independence era.

This group of politicians who included President Kibaki, the late Elijah Wasike Mwangale, Dr Gikonyo Kiano and Dr Zachary Onyonka (all held Cabinet posts) were in search of education during most of the independence struggle.

They returned to Kenya or East Africa and found themselves in the young institutions of higher learning but quickly switched to politics.

Dr Omamo’s, like his peers was teaching agriculture at Egerton. Later, he found himself thrust in the midst of siasa which Tanzania’s founding President Julius Nyerere described as mchezo mbaya (bad game).

He lived through three presidents, served in the Cabinets of two and died leaving behind fond memories among his peers and all those who knew him.

When MPs had difficulties defining a pothole as opposed to a crack on the road, he came up with the perfect definition: “A pothole is a crack on the road large enough to rest a pot on.”

Dr Omamo’s humour was not confined to his own woes in the Cabinet. He could declare to President Moi at a public rally, that much as he could tell the amount of honey Kenya produced, he could not tell His Excellency the number of bees that produced the honey.

And, looking at cattle semen with President Nyerere over a microscope, who would wish aloud that those were his voters.

Dr Omamo would often tickle former President Moi and President Kibaki, then his vice-president into laughter during public rallies. It was obvious that they relished the presence of Billy, as they fondly called him.

If nature had a way of resurrecting humanity, William Odongo Omamo would be one man who would have woken up and mused about his death thus: “I have passed the loyalty test to go to heaven.”

Mr Omari, a former Nation political editor, is a media consultant.