Mzee Kenyatta vs. Jaramogi Odinga

In his fight with Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Mzee Kenyatta resorted to demanding an oath of allegiance that the “Flag of Kenya Shall Not Leave the House of Mumbi”. Mumbi is the mythical ancestor of the Kikuyu clans. Mzee Kenyatta went further than that in his reference to the Luo people as “kihii”—a term that is equivalent to “juvenile”, applied to an uncircumcised youth. Traditionally while the Kikuyu’s rites of passage required circumcision, Luo practiced the procedure of knocking six lower front teeth to mark the transition to adulthood. The Luo people stopped this practice years ago. In fact a disproportionate number of Kenyan doctors today is made up of Luo physicians and they know better than anyone the African cultural “idiocy” of many of these practices, including “female circumcision” that many African tribes of Kenya practice.

Mzee Kenyatta used the brilliant Luo son of the soil Tom Mboya to marginalize and eliminate what he considered as the “menace” of Jaramogi Odinga in Kenyan politics. He succeeded in doing that. After that, many expected Tom Mboya to assume the mantle of leadership after Mzee Kenyatta’s reign. But Tom Mboya was shot to death in broad daylight on a busy street in Nairobi.

In the course of time, Mzee Kenyatta formed a strong alliance with Daniel arap Moi who had the allegiance of the huge voting block of the Kalenjin in the Rift Valley.

After Kenyatta’s demise, Moi took over and promised to follow the footsteps of Mzee Kenyatta. He coined the term of “Nyayo” to legitimize his trajectory to power. Moi was ruthless. He left the suppression of dissidents to henchmen like Amos Biwott, the most feared man in Kenya for many years. During the reign of Moi, another prominent Luo leader, Robert Ouko, the Foreign Minister in Moi’s government, was brutally murdered in a most gruesome manner.

Kenya became a “one party” repressive state until the advent of multi-parties born out of the struggle by prominent Kenyans across the tribal divide. The current era of multi-parties has seen the recreation of the voting block of “Mount” Kenya tribes and Kalenjin tribes—a two tribes political formation that simply co-opted the support of other major tribes, particularly the Luhya and Kamba. The long time nemesis of the “two headed political monster” in Kenya has always been the Luo! That was so during Mzee Kenyatta’s time and remains so, today after what we have seen in this election: 2022.

Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga and the Handshake

To the credit of these two “political youngsters”, they tried to break the “curse” laid by Uhuru’s father by bridging the political divide through a symbolic gesture of a handshake that became known as the “Bridging of the Bridges Initiative”.

The “Bridging of the Bridges Initiative” was never received well by Kikuyu and Kalenjin leaders and king makers. It threatened to rupture the “two-tribe hegemony” of the Kikuyu (Mt. Kenya) and the Kalenjin.

The Kenya General Elections of 2022 was a critical test of whether the country would move beyond the “traditional fault line” of a “two horse monopoly” of power represented by Ruto, one side, and the group that represented the new era of politics in Kenya: Raila Odinga and Martha Karua. The naming of William Ruto as the winner means that Kenya has sunk once again into the putrid politics of the past. There are many people in the Kikuyu/Mount Kenya communities who defied their “own” Uhuru Kenyatta and voted for Ruto. Even in Kiambu, the domicile of Kikuyu “royalty” saw the abandonment of Uhuru Kenyatta and support for William Ruto.

It is pointless to litigate the process of vote tallying, because the elephant in the room is the “primitive” political process that is used by ruthless leaders to capture state power and protecting the corrupt and looting government coffers.