My Take: Not Yet Uhuru by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga
So, where do I start?
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga is a man not much talked about, as in, his ideologies have often been brushed aside by neo-historians as communist and a trouble-maker in the Kenyatta and Moi governments.
Those who argue this way have not read his book or they outrightly don’t love the man.
They also are people from positions of privilege in that, Jaamogi, who wanted the best for all, stood in the way of their grandfathers’ primitive accumulation of wealth which they still enjoy to this day.
At some point in 2015, I called out activist Boniface Mwangi for holding a public exhibition near the National Archives in Nairobi for not including the pictures and short history of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
Indeed, what Mr Mwangi was doing was to brush aside, black the story of one of Kenya’s most important politician in history. He was carefully following in the government of Kenya agenda; perhaps even US funders agenda.
‘The agenda must agend’
Jaramogi was what you would equate with none.
He came from deep in the village of Sakwa, worked hard to start businesses and unit his people before working on the unity of all Kenyans and even East Africans (Uganda and Tanganyika/Tanzania).
He accounts how sometimes he would walk long distances, endure much hardship to get things done.
Some quick things about Odinga’s book not easily written about anywhere
- Odinga on being accused that he is a communist said, ‘I will accept money from anywhere provided I can get it without strings attached to it’, he also in another occassion said, ‘I understood that in communist countries the emphasis was on food for all. If that was what communism mean then there was nothing wrong with that objective’.
- The colonial and later the Kenyatta govt used propaganda about communism to make Oginga unfavourable to their western sponsors. They succeeded much.
- Oginga was once beaten unconsious by KADU youths along Harambee Avenue.
- Oginga beautifully and perfectly paints Tom Mboya as a man used by USA. I believe him.
- There’s a famous story that Tom Mboya airlifts did Kenya great. But what is less talked about is the airlifts done by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Kenyan students went to Russia, Canada, USA and Germany.
His straight-shooting is what made him hated by the powers that be.
Not Yet Uhuru still rings true today.
Some words are fresh, one would think they were written in 2012.
There are some aspects of the celebrated Kenyan political leaders of the past that are always not tackled. The media and powers that be gloss over them, paint them as saints but truly without deceit, we need to revisit.
I hold the position, and not from long ago, that, any past African leader that is celebrated even by whites was a sellout in major ways.
Before you bring the argument that Western countries control money (through IMF and World Bank), please let me ask you, how did the North Koreans and Iran make it through alive?
Didn’t Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, a country in the continent of the godforsaken, full of bootlicking politicians, do it?
Oginga to me was such a man, a man f conviction as I see through his own accounts. He would have pulled off a Libya-ic Kenya.
‘It is disturbing that the spreading tendency is to put promotion and salary above all else, including the national interest. The rot does not start in the Civil service, but with politicians’ – Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, 1967
But he had one flaw, he trusted too much and became attached to the point he didn’t know what else to do.
This, unfortunately, not covered in this book, culminated in the Kisumu massacre.
A man he had once defended with his life turned against him, placed him under house arrest.
‘The colonial system of education in our settler-dominated system created dependence’ – Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, 1967
Following the above quotes, have you checked Competency-Based Curriculum – CBC? Chieth!. The error in 8-4-4 was mostly the examinations. All in all, education shouldn’t be depressing and full of such violence as these two systems in Kenya offer large quantities of those.
Oginga run for the presidency in the age of the reintroduction of multi-partyism but until his transition to glory in 1994. He was still the defender of the wananchi.
It is 2021, and it is Not Yet Uhuru.
(Tom) Mboya the ‘hatchman’ (who was a member of KADU, then joined KANU)…paid dearly for precipitating the politics of intrigue in the party (KANU) – Prof Walter O. Oyugi.
