Raila Odinga: The Man, The Ideology, and the Promise
Raila Odinga’s death is about a whole nation in mourning.
First, on behalf of Daily Focus Kenya, and in my own solemn voice, I extend heartfelt condolences to the Odinga family, and to friends and supporters of the late Raila Amolo Odinga. Kenya mourns not just a man, but a generation of political conviction embodied in human form. Raila’s death marks the end of a chapter, perhaps the most consequential in Kenya’s post-independence political story. He leaves the nation grappling with questions that reach beyond politics into the soul of its democracy.
Raila was a man whose life could be summarised in one word. Struggle. It revolved around the dungeons of detention without trial and the frontlines of opposition politics. His story reads like an unending battle for a freer, fairer Kenya.
To this man, democracy was not an abstract principle. Democracy was a personal vocation, and one that cost him years of imprisonment, alienation, and betrayal. But even then, to the very end, he remained resolute. He never abandoned the belief that the Kenyan people deserved dignity, justice, and equality.
The Polymath of Ideologies
Few leaders in Africa’s post-colonial journey have defied categorisation as profoundly as Raila Odinga. He was not a man easily defined by the rigid binaries of left and right, reformist or revolutionary, populist or institutionalist. To some, he was a socialist at heart. To others, a pragmatist with capitalist instincts. To most Kenyans, he was simply Baba, a political father figure whose ideological agility often mirrored the survival instincts of the nation itself. And her people.
Raila could sit with trade unionists and speak the language of class struggle. He could dine with corporate magnates and debate economic liberalisation. He could champion constitutional reform by day and defend national unity by night. His mind was a marketplace that was constantly trading, recalibrating, and merging philosophies that seemed incompatible yet necessary in Kenya’s evolving democracy.
In many ways, Raila represented what we might call a polymath of ideologies. A thinker and doer who borrowed from multiple schools of thought to craft a uniquely Kenyan political survival manual. His politics was neither imported nor rigid. It was situational, responsive, and human. It was as much about the people as it was about the delicate art of holding a fragile nation together. The latter being what we could call the handshake philosophy.
Raila Odinga: The Man Beyond Politics
To know Raila was to know the man behind the politics, a deeply human soul (as he has been described by many), a lover of people, music, and history, as we have seen him in public and private life. He could be fiery on the podium, but warm in private conversation. He was not infallible; indeed, he was a man of deep contradictions, as all great men often are.
He carried the Odinga name, a legacy both burden and blessing. His father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, had once declared, “No Kenyatta, No freedom,” epitomising Kenyatta as a nationalist leader. He, Jaramogi, would later “suffer” post-colonial injustices. And this extended to Raila, who chose to fight and carry the “Odingaism” torch with unrelenting tenacity for the benefit of Kenyans.
His political path has often been paved with thorns of betrayals, electoral disappointments, and unfulfilled alliances. But one thing remained: his resilience was unwavering. And now, in the history books, his life will echo the unfinished promises inherited from Kenya’s founding generation.
To many of his supporters, he was the conscience of the nation. To his critics, he was the perennial oppositionist who refused to retire. In truth, though, Raila was something far more complex. He was a bridge between Kenya’s past and its elusive future, between the idealism of liberation and the realism of governance.
The Cost of Conviction
Kenya’s democracy did not arrive by accident. It was midwifed by the struggles of men and women who paid the price for freedom, and among them, Raila stands tallest. Detained for nearly a decade under the Moi regime, tortured and exiled, he became the symbol of resistance against tyranny. He had every option to choose comfort, but instead chose conviction. He chose to live the struggle.
Each political season brought with it new trials. These ranged from the constitutional referendums, the contested elections, the coalition governments, to the handshake moments. Many have understood that behind every headline was a man who believed, sometimes naively, that the next compromise might birth a more democratic Kenya.
For Raila, politics was not an occupation; it was an adventure. His long march from detention cells to ballot boxes captured the imagination of generations. He lost elections but won history. He fell out with allies but gained the nation’s respect. In many ways, he lived out the paradox of leadership in a young democracy. He embraced the moral victory of perseverance over power.
After the Dust Settles
Now, as Kenya wakes to the silence of his absence, a haunting question lingers: What becomes of the political landscape when the dust settles?
The vacuum Raila leaves is not just political. It is philosophical. His death creates a fault line in the country’s political psyche. For decades, Raila was both the opposition’s moral compass and the government’s reluctant conscience. With him gone, who holds the system accountable? Who speaks truth to power with the same audacity, the same eloquent stubbornness?
In the short term, Kenya will witness the predictable scramble; inevitably, factions will realign, old rivals will reinvent themselves (they already started bellowing), and new voices will rise from the periphery.
But in the long term, there is something deeper at stake. That is, the loss of a unifying contradiction. Raila was, paradoxically, both a disruptor and a stabiliser. He could lead protests one week and broker peace the next. Without such figures, politics risks becoming either too compliant or too chaotic.
When the dust settles, Kenya may realise that Raila was not merely a politician, he was an institution. His absence will test the resilience of our democratic architecture, the maturity of our political class, and the patience of a citizenry accustomed to his voice as a constant in the national conversation.
The Promise: Lost, Lived, or Lingering?
It is tempting to frame Raila’s passing as the end of a dream not lived. After all, he never got the opportunity to be president. But perhaps that is too final, too simplistic. The truth lies somewhere between a promise lost and a vision yet to be fulfilled.
Yes, he did not achieve the presidency, the symbolic apex of his struggle, yet his influence transcended office. He reshaped the constitution, expanded civil liberties, and redefined what opposition politics could mean in Africa. He was not merely chasing power; he was chasing purpose.
The Kenyan promise of equality, integrity, and justice, however, remains incomplete. But it is not extinguished. It lingers in the institutions he fought to strengthen, in the young leaders he inspired, and in the restless civic spirit in Kenyans that refuses to be silenced. If Raila was the architect of the Kenyan dream’s scaffolding, then it falls to the next generation to complete the edifice.
Let not the measure of his legacy be summed in monuments or state funerals, but in the everyday courage of Kenyans who dare to speak, to dream, and to build.
How Will History Judge Him?
History will be kind to Raila, because it must. Great nations often need figures like him. People who are inconvenient, uncompromising, and unyielding. They force societies to confront uncomfortable truths, to stretch the limits of their moral imagination.
In time, Raila’s story will take on the rhythm of myth. Children will learn of the man who refused to bow to tyranny, who turned defeat into dialogue, and who bore the bruises of a country’s growing pains. Scholars will debate his ideology, biographers will dissect his alliances, and citizens will recall where they were when he first cried, metaphorically, “No one can stop an idea whose time has come.”
History, as it always does, will make sense of what the present cannot. Is that not why it is called history? And we have historians to make sense of it from this day henceforth.
Epilogue: The Man Who Belonged to the People
As Kenya lowered one of its most luminous sons to rest, we must remember that Raila Odinga did not belong to any tribe, party, or ideology. He belonged to the people. He was a man of the people. His life was a mirror reflecting the best and worst of us. In him was our national resilience, our contradictions, our “eternal” hope.
In his death, the Kenyan political experiment enters a new phase of uncertainty yet full of possibilities. For even in silence, Raila’s spirit whispers a challenge to us all. It dares us, “do not mourn me with tears alone; mourn me with courage. Aluta Continua.”
The man is gone. The ideology remains in fragments. The promise, that “eternal” Kenyan promise, awaits its keepers.
And so, as we stand at this crossroads between memory and future, we say not goodbye, but asante.
Fare thee well, Baba.
Your struggle was not in vain. It will never be in vain.
