WHo are all those people?
Insights | February 17, 2008
Class and kinship in Kenya’s killing fields
Oduor Ong’wen
In this second and last part, Oduor Ong’wen argues that ethnicity is a drug that the ruling elite in Kenya keep administering to their victims to cloud their vision
It is safe to assume that if it was any of his other five opponents that had won the elections, Kibaki would have no problem handing over to them – but not to one Raila Amolo Odinga.
The reasons for this may be found in the platform of his campaign and his personal history. Odinga’s campaign was anchored on five planks: addressing economic and social inequalities; devolution of power and resources from the centre to the regions in the context of subsidiarity; eradication of corruption and administrative injustice; state provision of basic social services; and pursuit of a progressive Pan- Africanist and Foreign Policy.
In a country where neo-liberal policies have found a very fertile ground, it was quite brave for Odinga to declare from the rooftops that he was a social democrat and would faithfully pursue a social democratic agenda.
The first line of attack was that Odinga was trying to introduce communism through the back door. Scaring mongering that provision of free basic social services would mean increased taxation also did not wash. Kibaki’s supporters finally latched onto the pain factor – land.
They demonised devolution of power as a recipe for dispossessing the Kikuyu people who had settled in the Rift Valley and elsewhere. This worked for members of the Kikuyu community but not other Kenyans. It is therefore not surprising that members of Kikuyu community from rural areas, regardless of whether they lived in their ancestral regions or not, voted for Kibaki to a person. Only young urbanised ones were able to see through this diversion.
But the biggest worry for the ruling elite was Odinga’s anti-corruption stance. On September 22, 2007, he declared that there would be no blanket amnesty for former heads of state and that both former President Daniel arap Moi and Kibaki would be called to account personally for their improprieties. This announcement came barely two weeks after it had been exposed that Moi and his family had allegedly stolen public money to the tune of Kenya Shillings 130 billion ($2 billion) and stashed it offshore.
Wielding of or proximity to state power has been the main avenue of primitive accumulation of wealth in Kenya. All those who lay claim to being indigenous bourgeoisie in Kenya trace their wealth and status from state connections. On this score, concentration of power at the centre has been particularly beneficial. Odinga’s devolution, anti-inequality anti-corruption package was therefore seen by the captains of politics and industry as going against the natural order of things.
Odinga’s personality and history did not help him either. From the onset of the campaign, Odinga did not refer to himself as a candidate. He simply declared himself “The People’s President.” Odinga cannot claim membership among the proletariat. He is not a peasant either.
Nor was his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. In fact, although born to a simple school teacher, Odinga grew in relative privilege as his father abandoned teaching when he was still in his early teens, built a business empire and quickly plunged into nationalist struggle for independence. Odinga Senior was so passionately anti-colonialism, anti- exploitation and charismatic that it was almost automatic for him to be named Kenya’s Vice President at independence.
The senior Odinga was anti-imperialist. During the struggle for independence, he opposed the exploitative economic system the colonialists had erected. The colonial government accused him of being a Communist to which he retorted:’ “Communism is like food to me.” He was quick to establish Kenya nationalist movement’s fraternal links with the then Socialist bloc and as a result, many Kenyans benefited from educational scholarships. Among the beneficiaries was Raila Odinga, who studied mechanical engineering in the then German Democratic Republic.
But Raila Odinga began charting a path for himself much early in life. As a student in the then East Germany, he took the initiative to establish an international office of the opposition Kenya Peoples Union (KPU), a left-leaning opposition founded by progressive nationalists and headed by his father.
(snip)