Some time in the not-too-distant past, former Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale and his successor Cleophas Malala could only refer to each other in a negative light.
In bullfighting terms, the two would have been compared to irritable oxen that can hardly stay together without one getting the urge to maim the other.
Khalwale would refer to Malala as someone only knowledgeable enough to teach drama to children and whose mental faculties could not measure up to a doctor’s.
In a rejoinder, Malala called Khalwale a doctor without a hospital, who had reduced himself to Deputy President William Ruto’s domestic worker.
So caustic were their verbal exchanges that one could hardly imagine a day the pair would ever agree on anything.
And so, on Wednesday when Khalwale, 61, ceded ground to allow Malala, 36, run for the Kakamega governor position, it looked like someone had coerced two ill-tempered and fuming bulls to coexist in the same pen.
Now Khalwale will be seeking the voters’ mandate to return to the Senate – a seat he captured in 2013 and abandoned in 2017 hoping to unseat Governor Wycliffe Oparanya.
It was a miscalculation as Khalwale emerged second with 134,999 votes, against Oparanya’s 387,999.
The senator thanked Khalwale, whom he called his political father, for the decision.
It was a different Malala from the one who was once quoted as saying: “When I was in primary school, I used to tell myself, ‘When I grow up, I want to be like Boni Khalwale. But now I’ve grown up and discovered that he is useless’.”
The Wednesday deal was a 180 degree turn from the Malala who once mocked Khalwale and his relationship with the Deputy President.
“Let Khalwale know that money from (Ruto’s Uasin Gishu rural home) Sugoi will not scare us. We also have money and will not go there to beg as he does,” so said Malala.
Wednesday’s truce, brokered at DP Ruto’s Karen residence, shed more light on the political character of Khalwale, a man who has been in the national limelight since 2003 when he was elected Ikolomani MP.
In his two-decade political career, he has changed parties many times, starting with Ford Kenya in 2002, New Ford Kenya (2007), United Democratic Forum (2013), Ford Kenya (2017), Jubilee (2019) and currently the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) that is associated with Ruto.
In those movements, Khalwale has also changed friends and enemies.
Before the 2017 General Election, he was a bitter critic of President Uhuru Kenyatta and the DP.
Things changed after the Uhuru-Ruto re-election was annulled by the David Maraga-led Supreme Court in September 2017.
The DP reached out to Khalwale, seeking to work out a strategy to win the presidency.
“He said that as a fellow politician, he understood that I was only searching for votes,” Khalwale told the Sunday Nation in 2018.
Though Khalwale didn’t change camps immediately, he would eventually dump Ford-Kenya for Jubilee and later UDA.
“Rather than gamble, I decided to stick with this man who made Raila (Odinga) prime minister and Uhuru president twice,” Khalwale said in 2019.
He might well be the bull that tackles an opponent viciously, but become inseparable when they reconcile.
He hurled stones as a by-election agent in 2019, rattled the state by forming people’s assemblies in 2018, participated in parallel rallies to oppose the Building Bridges Initiative in 2020, among other actions – in an effort to be the winning bull.
