Raila Amolo Odinga’s death signals not merely the end of a political life, but the exhaustion of a historical phase in Kenya’s bourgeois-democratic struggle. His career embodied the contradictions of reform within a capitalist state — heroic in gesture, limited in scope, and tragic in conclusion.
For more than five decades, Raila stood at the center of Kenya’s national democratic movement. His politics was grounded in defiance against dictatorship yet firmly anchored within the parameters of capitalist reform. He fought for freedom of expression, constitutionalism, and participatory politics, but never for the revolutionary reorganization of society. His opposition to tyranny was real, but so was his faith in the very system that produced it.
Aptly put, Raila Odinga represents the archetype of the radical reformer — a man who opposed oppression without seeking to destroy its economic base. He humanized the capitalist state but never sought to overthrow it. He expanded democratic space but preserved the rule of the bourgeoisie. In him, one finds both progress and limitation, courage and compromise, resistance and reconciliation.
The Revolutionary Potential That Never Matured
Raila’s early political life emerged in the crucible of repression. Detained for nearly eight years following the failed 1982 coup, he experienced firsthand the coercive apparatus of the Kenyan postcolonial state. His incarceration transformed him into a political martyr — the face of defiance against the Moi dictatorship. Upon release, he became one of the central figures in the movement that dismantled the one-party state and ushered in multi-party politics.
Yet, for all his revolutionary potential, Raila never crossed the line into class struggle. His politics were consistently populist but never proletarian. He mobilized masses not around class consciousness but around democratic slogans — freedom, fairness, justice — that, while noble, stopped short of questioning the ownership of production, the privatization of wealth, or the class nature of the Kenyan state.
In the dialectic of reform and revolution, Raila remained trapped in reform. He saw dictatorship as the problem rather than the symptom of capitalist inequality. His project, therefore, was to liberalize oppression, not abolish it. To understand Raila, one distinction must be made: Raila’s bravery was historical, but his solution was systemic accommodation, not transformation.
The Engine of Democratic Reform and the Guardian of Stability
Raila Odinga’s greatest achievements lie in his role as an engine of bourgeois democratic reform. He was central to Kenya’s political pluralism, the 2010 Constitution, and the evolution of electoral accountability. Through mass protests, negotiations, and political organization, he forced the ruling elite to concede democratic reforms they would otherwise have resisted indefinitely.
It is under his watch that Kenya witnessed the institutionalization of devolution, the establishment of an independent judiciary, and the creation of the Supreme Court. He championed the digitalization of voting systems, insisted on transparent electoral management, and normalized the culture of contesting power peacefully through institutions.
These achievements were not trivial. They represented an important stage in Kenya’s historical development — the transition from naked autocracy to liberal democracy. Yet from a progressive standpoint, they also represent the ceiling of reform. They democratized the political superstructure while leaving untouched the economic foundation of class domination.
Raila became, in effect, the stabilizer of Kenya’s capitalist order — the man who, by moderating the discontent of the working masses, ensured the continuity of elite rule. His famous handshakes, whether with Kibaki, Uhuru, or Ruto, were acts of national reconciliation, yes — but also acts of class preservation. They prevented Kenya’s contradictions from erupting into revolution. Raila absorbed popular anger and redirected it into constitutional discourse, giving capitalism breathing space.
The Tragedy of a Reformist in a Revolutionary Context
Raila’s life and political journey illustrate a fundamental tragedy: the inability of reformists to transcend the logic of the systems they seek to humanize. He dedicated his life to perfecting democracy within a state built to protect private accumulation. His struggles for fair elections, constitutionalism, and social justice were perpetually undermined by the very class alliances he refused to confront.
Every electoral theft he suffered — in 2007, 2013, 2017, and 2022 — was not merely a political loss but a structural inevitability. The Kenyan state, as a capitalist institution, cannot permit genuine transfer of power through electoral means when that power threatens its economic custodians. Raila’s faith in the system blinded him to its class logic. His repeated calls for reform through the ballot box were noble but naive; in a class-divided society, elections do not change the state — they reproduce it.
This is not to diminish his contribution but to situate it historically. Raila advanced the national democratic revolution to its logical limit within capitalism. He expanded civil rights, legalized opposition, and deepened civic participation. But he also demonstrated the futility of expecting structural transformation without confronting the material relations that sustain inequality.
His alliances with the same ruling elites he opposed — his entry into KANU, his partnerships in the Grand Coalition Government, and his later handshakes — underscore this contradiction. He became both the critic and custodian of the capitalist order. His legacy is therefore one of duality: a democrat who fought for the people but not for their liberation from capital.
Raila Opened the Democratic Space: Beyond Eulogy, Toward Renewal
How, then, should progressives and the Left view Raila Odinga’s political obituary? With respect, but without romanticism. Raila’s courage and endurance are undeniable. He risked his life, endured imprisonment, and sacrificed personal comfort for political freedom. But the revolutionary must evaluate not intention, but outcome.
Raila’s politics produced a freer society but not a just one. He opened democratic space, yet the working class remains exploited, peasants are dispossessed, and the youth are unemployed. The oligarchic control of capital persists, the state remains a tool of accumulation, and corruption thrives under new constitutional veneers.
Supporters and critics must therefore read Raila’s life as both inspiration and warning. Inspiration because he demonstrated the power of organization, mass mobilization, and perseverance against repression. Warning, because his life also shows the limits of reform without revolution. His death should remind the left that Kenya’s democratic project remains incomplete until the class question is addressed.
True democracy cannot coexist with economic domination. Political pluralism without social equality is an illusion. Specifically, the task of the Kenyan Left is not to mourn Raila as a lost messiah, but to continue the struggle he could not complete — to move beyond electoral reform toward economic transformation.
What is to be Done? From Reform to Revolution
Raila Odinga’s passing invites not only reflection but reckoning. Kenya’s bourgeois democracy — the system he helped to construct — has reached its historical saturation point. It now functions not as a tool for liberation but as a mechanism for managing discontent. The working class, the unemployed youth, and the rural poor must recognize that no saviour will emerge from within this system.
The time has come to advance beyond Raila’s reformism and complete the unfinished task of the national democratic revolution. This requires building a Left-oriented alternative — a movement rooted in class consciousness, guided by the principles of equality, and oriented toward collective ownership of wealth and production.
Raila’s legacy, viewed through a revolutionary lens, is not the end of struggle but its renewal. His life proved that courage and conviction can confront power. The next step is to ensure that such confrontation no longer stops at the gates of capital. His death should, therefore, awaken Kenya’s progressive forces to a singular historical truth: democracy without economic liberation is an illusion, and reform without revolution is resignation.
Raila Amolo Odinga will be remembered as the reformer who dared, but his concious follower must become the revolutionary who delivers.
Okoth Osewe
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