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Post by jumo on Sept 24, 2005 20:31:06 GMT 3
Evolution of Luo Politics Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 21:02:36 -0400
It is still too early to foretell the future direction of politics in Luoland now that Hon. Raphael Tuju has dared to bell the cat. However, if the past is anything to go by, we can infer some lessons. For the Luo of Nyanza Province, that past consisted of two opposing socioeconomic ideologies that became embodied in personality politics and has continued to haunt the present and threaten the future.
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Thomas Joseph Mboya, two equally ambitious Luo politicians, appeared on Kenya's political landscape at a defining moment in world and Kenya politics. The fatherly Odinga projected a [Luo] domestic model onto Kenya politics; the youthful Mboya embodied the fortunes and risks of captialism that was beginning to make inroads into the very heart of Kenya. Not surprisingly, the fatherly Odinga represented rural Bondo while the youthful Mboya represented the metropolitan Nairobi.
In time, Mboya was taken by the risks that he represented while Jaramogi remained in the political cold, thanks to Mboya's artful manipulation of the political field. Mboya's death removed from the Luos' options an alternative center of power, but it also condensed their anger and frustration in the isolated and quarantined Jaramogi. For decades, politics in Luoland remained frozen in the memory of the slain Mboya and the wronged Odinga.
It is now an ironical twist of fate that a son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga should represent an urban setting while the youthful and urbane Tuju should represent rural Nyanza. It is as if Jaramogi and Tom were transposed into another key. Such are the times now and it remains to be seen whether this is another epoch when Luos have arrived at a second point of political transfixion. If it is, they are of all people the most unfortunate at a very fundamental level.
If we have learnt anything from the political conduct of Raila Odinga, it is that he's a vengeful and vindictive man. There was a time when his father's word against politicians he did not like was a political death sentence. He became nicknamed as the Ayatollah (Khomeini) of Luo Nyanza. Ogutu, Omamo, Amayo, etc., became victims while Orengo, Ondiek, Asiyo, etc., became beneficiaries of the Ayatollah's ire. The son has faithfully followed in the father's emotional and political footsteps as his word has meant political death to some and political fortune to others. Not surprisingly, many are trooping to Raila's side even when inwardly they resent his domination of the political spirit in Luo Nyanza, the same way politicians did during Raila's father's domination.
There comes a time when the past loses elements of its magnetic relevance. Such time may be now. Raila's inclination to use his LDP (which some have cynically translated as Luo Discriminative Party) to exclude his perceived enemies from the political process is similar to Moi's Kanu to exclude his father from the political process. This feels like inverted revenge.
Tuju's daring inauguration of a second party in Luoland may in the end amount to nothing if the grassroots troops to Raila in the same way it trooped to his father. To maintain that sentiment, Raila will and must present himself as a political victim of forces from outside of Luoland, forces to which Tuju is beholden to.
Should that be the case, then Tuju will end up as did Mboya: as a man who thought himself smart but ended up being used by the very system he put into place. That will have given the Luos the second point of political transfixion.
But it need not be that way. All will depend on Tuju and his Luo friends.
/jumo
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Post by AOpEd on Sept 24, 2005 20:58:28 GMT 3
On Behalf Of jkkioko@...
Subject: Re: [africa-oped] Evolution of Luo politics & Tuju's party
What does Tuju and Mboya have in common?
Both were brought up in the city, away from the evident herding instincts of rural Jaluos. Mboya was brought up with Kamba children, while Tuju grew up in Nairobi, and went to school with Kikuyu Mau Mau orphans. Their cosmos, while obviously informed by Luo culture, clearly benefited from inter-tribal exposure at an early, formative stage. Thus, inter-ethnic interaction comes naturally to them. They know that Luos do not have to be isolated, that they have equal right to political leadership and development like any other Kenyan community, but these are not attainable by antagonizing others through politics of boisterousness and gusto. Their politics thus attempts to build bridges.
Raila's, on the other hand, is a scorched earth kind of politics, a zero-sum pincer attack in which the victim is caught between propaganda and parakeetering. He is the quintessential alpha male guerrilla who wants to monopolize all the females. True, Raila represents a cosmopolitan constituency in Nairobi, but notice who elects him. It is the same rural Jaluos who have migrated to Nairobi. On finding themselves an urban setting, surrounded by individualistic, unforgiving folks of all tribal and national provenance, they resort to tribal identity politics, of which Raila is a beneficiary, an exploiter per excellence. You can take a Jaluo out of Nyanza but you cannot take Nyanza out of the Jaluo as the case of SM Otieno clearly indicates.
Raila encountered cosmopolitanism when he was already too old, I submit. His moral ethic was corrupted by exposure to, and drilling into, communism in East Germany where he went to college, and a certain seige mentality that engulfed Luos with their perceived ostracization from government in the 1960s, following the ideological parting of ways between the communist Jaramogi and the capitalist mzee. I bet Raila is still a communist at heart; at any rate, I have never heard him disavow the ideology. All the talk about Presidential powers is but a ruse to deflect attention from his ideology. I keep asking myself this question: if Raila wants executive power to be concentrated in the office of the Prime Minster, who tells him that Kikuyus, whose hands he wants keep away from executive power, have no co-ordinates to this office? What would prevent them from using their alleged machinations to grap this office? Or does he think you can hide power where they won't find it? And now that he wants to be president, why can't he just get to it following laid down rules like everyone else? This is what competition is all about, isn't it?
Note that while Odinga retained a Luo term of reverence at a fairly youthful age, Jaramogi (and some would want us to believe that Jaramogi is a title retained for elders), Mboya did not, and Tuju has not burdened himself with a tribal tag. (By the way, how come Kaliech, Omamo, has not made it to Jaramogi yet) It is anyone's guess whether Raila will not be Jaramogi, if he is not already one. Indeed, towards this end, Raila has already inherited his father's mantle.
Luo politics is a monarchy, with the baton of leadership passed from father to son, the son owing his position, prestige, influence, on political inheritance. The monolithic nature of Luo politics hacks to this fact. How can subjects go against their supreme ruler? Who needs political pluralism when you are safe in the bliss of groupthink? George Orwell once said that when everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking, but how many Jaluos care? They are too educated (how does this fact square with their alleged discrimination in the allocation of the national cake? Shouldn't the Turkanas and the Somalis not be the ones who should be complaining? How can the most educated community, the community with perhaps the most professionals per capita, with rich businessmen and successful musicians and other artists, also be the most discriminated against? This could only have happened through a deliberate campaign of politics of victimhood by both the leader of the Luo and the Luo intellegensia that surrounds him. Or are Luos discriminated against because they have not yet produced a president?)
A lot of folks will probably respond and stake a claim to their being cosmopolitan, by dint of having lived in some town or other, or having married a Kamba here, a Kikuyu there. My retort is that cosmopolitanism is known by its acts; you cannnot claim a cosmopolitan or modern identity and continue to be driven by collective tribal will. This is the era of liberal democracy, for heavens sake. Pluralism must surely mean something!
It does not matter whether Tuju succeeds in his mission or not. What he has done is to point the Luos to the hill, to enlarge their horizon. But then again, you can take a donkey to the water, but can you make him drink?
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