Tinga's reformation and transformation of rebel to 'project'

Azimio la Umoja presidential candidate Raila Amollo Odinga. [File, Standard]

I’m lost for words,” the man who has a long list of names and monikers admitted, his face aglow with unalloyed joy. There was even more joy when he delivered greetings from the chairman of some little-known outfit, the Azimio Council.

The name of the sender of the greetings, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, elicited even more buzz, even though he wasn’t there in person. But he was there, the gathering was told, in spirit.

This was Raila Amollo Odinga aka Tinga, aka Baba, aka Baba the Fifth, as he launched his party manifesto last Monday. In recent months, he has become “State project,” a tag that’s comical if read alongside his official biography, Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics.

One of the major revelations in the book, of course, was Tinga’s involvement in the 1982 military putsch, when stoned junior soldiers arrived at the national broadcaster and announced they had taken charge. Reggae beats rent the air and the soldiers took a nap, got more stoned, or both, before being routed out within hours.

Last Monday, Tinga, or Baba the Fifth, as he was addressed deferentially, looked relaxed, even happy. Reggae music still rent the air, even though he did a small jig to “Lero ni lero,” Predictably, he took the airwaves, jamming them with fat bites from his Azimio manifesto.

And he appeared confident enough to envision his near future, spelling out his first 100 days in office.

This time, he wouldn’t need the backing of the army, as he did in 1982, or a roiling swirl of supporters, as he did in 2018, when Miguna Miguna attempted to install him as “the people’s president.”

Alright, these are too many histories: State project, revolutionary, visionary, future president - it’s difficult to keep track of Tinga’s political evolution. And he was about to undergo yet another transformation.

Martha Karua consults with Raila Odinga during a past event. [File, Standard]

I doubt it that this was on the teleprompter, but Tinga, resplendent in a light blue suit, oozing the airs The Fifth, tilted his gaze to focus on the assembled crowd, perhaps dazzled by the many familiar faces, but also the many others that were simply “truly Kenyan.”

He would establish, he said, a cotton-growing tradition in our midst, so that Kenyans would be weaned off this idea of inheriting clothing items discarded, after “they have been worn by people who are dead…”

Even in the dead of night - Tinga the revolutionary streak wavered. Mitumba and dead people are strange bedfellows. You cannot have both in the same sentence and hope to come out of it alive.

Not when our ginneries have been dead for such a long time, generations of Kenya’s youthful population, millions of them, have grown in nothing else but mtumba.

The din generated by this faux pas was strong enough to lift the roof of the dome at the Nyayo Stadium; so Tinga instantly knew that a critical mass who wear mitumba are alive and well, even if their benefactors are long dead.

Bales of mitumba being offloaded in Nakuru County. [File, Standard]

 

So, the man has been lost for words ever since. I hear he’s gone overseas, for a day or two. Perhaps he will return with a bale or two of mitumba, as a peace offering to his mitumba-wearing base.

But there is something deeper and more visceral in the outright rejection of Tinga’s proposition to phase out second-hand clothing from our borders: raised in the idea that our nakedness can only be clothed in what others have discarded, the idea of spanking new clothing can be intimidating.

That’s what happens when people’s confidence in themselves is dented; even the realisation of the most basic human need, using resources found within our border, sounds like a novelty.