<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Peter Owino Rang\u2019inya<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison for the first time in 27 years, flanked by his fellow Rivonia Trial comrades \u2014 Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Denis Goldberg. Many of these icons believed that after the ANC\u2019s 1994 election victory, they would naturally step into the seats of government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mandela thought otherwise. He reminded them that the skills required to liberate South Africa were not the same skills needed to govern it. The new South Africa, he argued, had to be entrusted to a younger generation of comrades who had grown within the movement and acquired the administrative and economic expertise required for a modern state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is how Thabo Mbeki \u2014 the younger Mbeki who cut his teeth in the ANC Youth League and studied economics in England \u2014 became Mandela\u2019s deputy rather than his father Govan. As deputy president, Mbeki became the custodian of the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy, and in 1999 ascended to the presidency. In my view, he remains the most effective post-apartheid president to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet as Mbeki\u2019s second term neared its end, a tide of nostalgia swept through the ANC. Veterans of the bush struggle clamoured to see one of their own at the helm. That sentiment delivered the Jacob Zuma presidency \u2014 a triumph of liberation history over technocratic readiness, with consequences South Africans continue to wrestle with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have long argued that Governor James Orengo should never have taken the governorship of Siaya \u2014 and I made that case vigorously, even up to Baba himself. Orengo is a political scientist in the truest sense: a generator of ideas, a custodian of ideology, not the engineer of daily administration. Comrades like him are rare gems; you don\u2019t discard them, you deploy them where they are most valuable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To his credit, Orengo appears to recognise this. And when he took the stage on Friday, speaking to ODM\u2019s identity and ideological ancestry, he reminded the country exactly where he belongs. Few can articulate the soul of ODM better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is why I am baffled when ODM opportunists declare that the party \u201cwill never return to the streets.\u201d How unread can leaders be? ODM is a social democratic party. And across the world, from Europe to Latin America, protest is not an aberration of social democratic, socialist or labour movements \u2014 it is one of their foundational tools of political expression. Not a single one of the 132 such parties globally omits protest as a legitimate method of agitation and reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have watched how \u201cNo Kings\u201d protests in the United States have unsettled Donald Trump. Protests are a constitutional right \u2014 in Kenya and everywhere else \u2014 and they have delivered many of the freedoms citizens enjoy today. Yet instead of condemning those who unleash violence on peaceful demonstrators, some in ODM have turned their ire against protest itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is political Stockholm syndrome \u2014 the kind of psychological jiu-jitsu at which modern authoritarian leaders excel. For insight into these tactics, ODM leaders need only read William J. Dobson\u2019s The Dictator\u2019s Learning Curve<\/em>, which lays bare how 21st-century strongmen undermine institutions without overtly dismantling them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Dobson\u2019s examples is telling: when the EU funded human-rights programmes at St. Petersburg University, Vladimir Putin didn\u2019t block the money or arrest anyone. Instead, he sent in building and environmental inspectors who declared the 19th-century campus uninhabitable until hundreds of \u201cfaults\u201d were fixed. The university was effectively shut down for years. No violence. No arrests. Just bureaucratic suffocation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All leaders \u2014 democratic or autocratic \u2014 fear mass protest. That is why every Kenyan president has been wary of Raila Odinga. His capacity to mobilize the streets has always been his most potent leverage. And let us be honest: President Ruto sought Baba\u2019s hand not out of affection, but because the Gen Z protests shook the foundations of his administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So if ODM insists on negotiating with Ruto, it cannot voluntarily abandon its greatest bargaining chip. As Theodore Roosevelt advised in describing his own diplomatic doctrine: \u201cSpeak softly and carry a big stick.\u201d Our big sticks are Orengo, Nyong\u2019o, Sifuna, Osotsi, Winnie, Babu \u2014 and the millions of Jezi ya Baba faithful who know what ODM stands for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOge matek.\u201d ODM is, at its core, a social democratic movement. Protests are woven into its DNA. And the freedoms ODM has fought for give Mbadi, Wandayi and others the right to join parties that forbid protest and promise \u201cbroad-based government\u201d until the end of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But history has taught us this: when leaders drift too close to power, they sometimes lose the clarity with which they once saw it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Peter Owino Rang\u2019inya. On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison for the first time in 27 years, flanked by his fellow Rivonia Trial comrades \u2014 Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Denis Goldberg. Many of these icons believed that after the ANC\u2019s 1994 election …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18686,"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18685\/revisions\/18686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodmorningkenya.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n