Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga Set to Launch Autobiography Next Month

Raila, daughter Winnie and wife Ida

The long awaited autobiography of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has gone to press. The over 1000 pages book went to press early this week and is expected to be out in two weeks’ time.

The autobiography is set to give a personal account of Mr. Odinga on his life and political journey and perhaps answer most questions transcending the four decades that he has been in Kenya’s politics and conceivably mirror on his future endeavours.

The book is expected to be launched on 6th October 2013 before Mr. Odinga embarks on a two week trip to the United States.

Mr. Odinga is expected to travel to South Africa on Wednesday this week where he is expected to open a conference on democracy. He will return to Nairobi where he will launch his personal story before leaving for the US.

Currently his team is working on the list of guests to grace the launch.

Raila Masterminded the Discovery of New Kenya

By Dennis Onyango

At a meeting between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Israeli Prime Minister Mr Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in 2011, Mr Odinga asked Israel to assist in the irrigation of the Todonyang and other parts of Turkana where famine was a permanent feature, punctuated with conflicts over diminishing water and pastures.

The Israeli PM reached for the map of Kenya and followed the northern part with his fingers, carefully scanning the region from the border with Uganda, towards Somalia. His fingers stopped on Lake Turkana, then asked; “where is the problem? I can see there is a permanent lake here, surrounded by a vast dry area. Why is the lake not being used to irrigate the land?”

For about 50 years after independence, the Turkana lived desperately while the lake stood by, not a drop of its water being used to irrigate the sunbaked land around it. The straight answer should have been that previous regimes had refused to put money into it. But diplomacy dictates that you cannot talk ill of your country in a foreign land.

Mr Odinga needed Israel’s technical expertise to irrigate the land. Mr Netanyahu immediately obliged, asking his people to get in touch with Kenya and begin working on the project.

The result is the 10,000 hectares, Sh20 billion Todonyang Irrigation Scheme which Mr Odinga unveiled in August 2012.

Away from Mr Netanyahu’s boardroom, Mr Odinga later explained that there were people in government who were still not convinced that northern Kenya is worth developing.

He explained that government was full of either the authors of the Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1965 that Kenya had followed since independence, or their disciples. This is the policy paper that advocated for investment of precious government resources only in “high potential areas” to guarantee high returns on investment.

Israel’s intervention therefore would not only boost Kenya’s limited capacity but also shame the doubting Thomases.

Today, Mr Odinga must feel vindicated. While he is largely associated with the push for the new constitution, Raila biggest contribution to Kenya may be the discovery of “the other Kenya.”

This revolution is overshadowed by the new Constitution that has institutionalised the idea that no part of the country should ever be starved of resources on account of its geography, political choices and distance from Nairobi.

The discovery of oil in Turkana, coal in Kitui and rare earth minerals in Kwale while other regions look for hidden treasures is in reality a discovery of the Kenya that the rest of the nation chose to forget for close to 50 years.

This is the Kenya of oil, natural gas, underground water, iron ore, coal and irrigated agriculture.

The coming of the new Kenya, like the new constitution, equally came at a price. For half a century, Kenya was run on an assumption that the potential of a nation is measured by how fertile the land is and how much maize, tea, coffee and grade cattle it can produce. 

The founders and defenders of the old Kenya assumed that regions that cannot grow these crops and stuck to the traditional livestock, had no potential and was not worth public money.

As these once forgotten regions emerge, the leaders are today being forced to catch up with citizens.
Suddenly, everyone wants to be seen to be sympathetic to the wild north. At the Coast where for close to 50 years, the high and mighty went for holidays but refused to notice the myriad problems that kept the people down, everyone is talking about title deeds and grabbed land.

Given that Kenya’s leadership has barely changed hands in both ideology and personalities, the push to have the government rethink policies towards the former Northern Frontier District and the Coast has meant telling the authors of the economic blue print that Kenya relied on from independence that they were wrong.

At the centre of this quest has been Mr Odinga’s near solo onslaught on the Sessional Paper Number 10 of 1965.

Raila’s position has been that the development plan was inappropriate as its proposals resulted in skewed development of the country. In the ill-fated, propaganda laden 2007 campaigns, Raila vigorously attacked the blue-print, blaming it for the marginalisation of northern Kenya while other regions wallowed in government sponsored development.

The status quo of the PNU jumped in with claims that Raila was a Communist, anti-capital, anti-property, a man who would take from “the hard working” rich to reward the “lazy poor” who were his supporters.

At the Coast, Raila’s push involved embracing voices and causes including “the untouchable”. Years earlier, Raila had embraced the then fiery Islamic Party of Kenya and its preacher Sheikh Khalid Balala. IPK was considered “dangerous” and only an equally “dangerous” Raila Odinga could embrace it.

In the north, the creation of a Ministry of Northern Kenya for the first time since independence put focus on the region’s unique challenges.

Government explained the investment LAPSSET as an addition to what Kenya has, but Raila pitched it as a beginning for northern Kenya. Raila’s position was that LAPSSET would do for northern Kenya what the Kenya-Uganda Railway did for the south.

As the new Kenya emerges, the battle has shifted. The question today is no longer whether these regions are worth investing in. It is whether they will be allowed to take charge of their destinies through strong devolved units or they continue to be micro-managed from Nairobi.

Mr Dennis Onyango is an aide of the former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga. This article was first published on Sunday Nation.

SUSTAINING DEMOCRACY’S FUTURE IN AFRICA: A CHALLENGE TO THE NEXT GENERATION - Raila Odinga

Presentation by Hon. Raila A. Odinga, Former Prime Minister, Republic of Kenya during the Forum at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

Mr Chairman; Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is always an honour for me to have the opportunity to discuss a subject that ever-remains so close to my heart: democracy, particularly with special reference to my continent, Africa;

For some people in this audience, democracy in Africa could be mere theory; safely commented upon and discussed from the safe confines of the academia or a conference setting.

For some us though, it has become life; real life. At your age, my generation of Africans believed there was only one threat that, once conquered, everything would be fine on our continent.

Growing up in the Africa of the 1950s and 1960s, we believed that once colonialism was defeated, the future would be bliss.

While today we repeatedly say Africa’s future belongs to its young people, in the Africa of pre and immediate post independence period, the present and the future were in the hands of the revered founding fathers. We deeply trusted the founders of our newly independent nations.

The idea that after independence, Africans could once again take up arms, return to the streets and even to the bushes to fight fellow Africans who were taking over the reigns of power from the colonialists was extremely remote.
Independence had come. The leadership comprised those who had fought for basic freedoms of expression, speech, association and movement.

We assumed the leaders understood the pain of being denied these freedoms. They understood the pain of inequitable distribution of resources.

They knew the pain of being discriminated against on the basis of tribe, race, religion and place of origin. They would not commit such sins against their own people.

Today, we know we were wrong. The struggle that the African people have had to endure in the years after independence have been as vicious as, sometimes more vicious than, the ones they waged against the colonialists.
It was a struggle laced with the pain of being betrayed by a brother, an uncle, a father, a neighbour, and a friend. Where were we to turn?

This is the reality this generation of Africans here in Pretoria and across the Continent have to face. We must never trust individuals. Only institutions count.
Even more importantly, we bequeath to you that the reality that freedom, as President Ronal Reagan said, is never more than a generation from extinction.

It must be fought for, protected, and handed on to the next generation to do the same, “or one day, we will spend our sunset years telling our children and their children how it was once like in a land where men were free.”

Let a young Kenyan, Zimbabwean, Sudanese, South African or Ugandan not say “the environment is so bad here, let me struggle and get out to Britain, the U.S, France or any other countries where systems seem to work.”

You have a rendezvous with destiny. To protect democracy, the youth of Africa must reinvent the spirit of patriotism that informed our struggle to be free.

And by patriotism, I don’t mean blind obedience. I mean a deliberate effort by the youth to treat their countries as the last heaven on earth where if they lose freedom, there is nowhere to escape to.

You have the responsibility to tell those in power that the first duty of the government is to protect the people, not run or ruin their lives.

Sometimes you will succeed in these efforts. Sometimes you will fail. But there is always an option. You have the energy, the flexibility the audacity to dream. And you have the numbers.

So do what Reagan told us: “When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.”

Engage in the affairs of your nation and your parties. Retreat and surrender are never options.

Leaders, elders and pioneers; whether in government or out have a duty to keep empowering the youth, support their education, strengthen their grassroots networks and help them keep the flames of liberation burning.

Your generation is coming up well aware that the single goal we were made to pursue; that of throwing out the colonialists, was not good enough.
We know the colonialists left, but in a number of places, secret admirers took over from where they left.

This generation is therefore confronted with two paths and two realities. One reality you must grow up with is that the struggle in Africa continues.
You must know that without securing the basic freedoms, you are on a path to conflict, bloodshed, underdevelopment, poverty, racism, tribalism and religious intolerance and strife.
The other path will lead you to more democratic space, more opportunities more freedoms. It is the path to take.

Let me conclude by reminding you that there still remain forces that want to perpetuate impunity in the continent.

They scheme to scuttle the free expression of the popular will by ensuring that even the most expensive electoral technology must fail in African elections.

They endorse fraudulent elections, even where all other facts point to the contrary;
They ensure that even judicial decisions are compromised and a far cry from basic sense of natural justice and expectations, and;

Who knows, they will ensure that any remnants of true African liberators are gagged, hounded and tormented to their graves;

I remain optimistic and emboldened by faith; that with your engagement, propelled by the history you have been eye witnesses to, Africa will triumph; the goodness that God intended for all of us will triumph over all evil;

And as I said as Prime Minister, Africa remains the next frontier for genuine economic hope, peace and prosperity.

RT. HON. RAILA AMOLO ODINGA

Christmas Message from the Prime Minister Raila Odinga