uncle to leave the meeting, as he was not even a member, and the uncle with four others who were sitting on the wings left muttering that a curse would befall the family for ignoring them.
What had started as a gathering to plan a befitting send off for the head of the family had been turned into a platform to belittle the wife who the uncle threw a final shot as he exited reminding all that she was not a relative but merely a friend of the deceased.
So, when Ochieng sat in church listening to Tieni, choking with the grief of loss, he wondered what was more painful, the loss of her beloved father or the loss of her worldview that had been shattered by an insensitive and malevolent uncle.
Sadly, what Ochieng had witnessed in Tieni’ s family saga was a common occurrence in many families irrespective of the family status. This undercurrent of intrigue and machinations during burial arrangements played out on a national scale on the demise of Baba.
When Baba passed on, the country quickly overlooked the fact that he was a head of a small nuclear family that were devasted by the loss of a husband and a father and everyone projected him as the father of national opposition and took over his life.
The name Baba, was a respectful reference to the fact that Kenyans recognized him as the doyen of opposition and the person that best articulated the displeasure Kenyans felt about the trajectory that the country had taken in the hands of an arrogant regime.
But Baba was also a conflicted and enigmatic person and Kenyans were dismayed when they felt that he betrayed them when he threw his lot with the current administration and thwarted the efforts of the Gen-Z uprising to remove a despot.
At the time of his passing, he was involved in an illegitimate extra-judicial political marriage, dubbed the broadbased government that had had Kenyans thoroughly confused as to whether he was even in opposition.
The sitting government took full advantage of his death by taking over his burial arrangements and organized a burial befitting of a sitting president. The country was bamboozled by pomp and ceremony not realizing their hero was being hijacked.
In a shock and awe operation, the government, was able to capture the
If like a pack of baying wolves, a disorganized opposition, each try to dislodge the current administration, they will spectacularly fail. The opposition must decide what their principal goal is- simply to remove an incompetent government, not who leads. A leader shall arise!!!
imagination of his constituency as they celebrated in the reflected glory of their fallen hero, they were appeased that Jakom got a magnificent send off.
There was no time to reflect that practically every traditional custom had been broken and especially where it appertained to the process of burying a prominent member of their community. Baba was not buried by them but for them.
How do you begin to attack a person who honors your dead, the people on the ground were impressed and since their traditional enemies from the mountain had been emasculated in the government, it was a double victory for them.
The Kenyan opposition were alarmed by this development, they realized that they had been eclipsed by a shrewd administration who had taken over their natural leader and made the rest of the opposition leaders irrelevant in the proceedings.
When you realize that the person who was being buried was the one person in Kenya whose‘ Tosha’ endorsement was enough to propel one to national prominence, then one can appreciate the devastation at the opposition ranks.
Kenyan politics had for a long time been shaped by Baba and the contests were usually between those that formed an alliance with him against those that formed alliances against him. The Railaphile and Raila-phobia phenomenon defined Kenyan politics.
Currently the opposition is orphaned as they do not have a rallying point which was held by the departed for so long that election campaigns started in earnest only after Baba had taken a position and one decided if they were for or against him.
Baba also ruled his region with an iron fist and so strong was his hold on the ground that to get an ODM nomination was a through pass to parliament. So, the
battle in this tuff was who would get the nomination in ODM primaries.
There are many politicians in the ODM sphere of influence who were shedding crocodile tears on his demise since they had learnt the hard way that they could not run their constituencies without the blessing of Baba.
There were even more casualties of political rejects whose only crime was to have had an opinion different from that of Baba and strongly believed that Baba was not an influence of positive change but a figure that had a cult like following in the region.
If one is to check development records of Baba, one ends up with a dismal record of lack of development mainly because those in power starved his region of development as Moi famously quipped‘ Siasa mbaya, Maisha mbaya’.
Kenya practices the unfortunate politics of patronage and development is given or denied depending on which side of the political divide one falls on. Baba was truly a leader of poverty if the Kibera constituency is an example of his leadership.
There has been a long-stated claim that Baba is the best president that Kenya never had but if he was going to run the country in the way that he ran ODM, then one wonders if we would have ended with an autocrat. If you are in doubt, ask those who dared oppose him.
One is forced to wonder if he even wanted to be president. Here is a man who had the life of a president without the responsibility of being one. Did he betray the opposition or had he always been in government speaking with a forked tongue.
He refused to endorse any opposition candidate, insisting that he was the most suited to lead the country and