“Livondo” is what the Luhya call the painful swelling that crops up on the body and is accompanied by pain. Whenever you spot a livondo, you know some pus and a lot of hurting are on the way.
And Stanley Livondo, the explosive politician whose rural home is in Ikolomani, Kakamega County, can cause pain to his opponents. If he is not involved in melodrama or displays of opulence, he will be throwing punches at one rival or another. And like a boil which can show up anywhere, he can spring up anywhere and be a pain in an opponent’s body.
After a long stay away from the limelight following his unsuccessful run for the Kakamega Senate seat in 2017, Mr Livondo sprang up last Saturday at a thanksgiving event for Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria and went ahead to be a pain on the backside of Deputy President William Ruto.
Mr Livondo’s allegations about an assassination plot targeting the President, which depicted the deputy in an unflattering light, saw him summoned to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations on Monday for interrogation. He left the headquarters vowing to spill the beans.
“After the investigation begins, you will know this is big,” he told journalists. “Any hour from today, you’ll hear people being picked one by one.”
In 2020, Mr Livondo moved to court seeking an order barring Dr Ruto from vying for president because by August, he will have completed two terms as the second-in-command. The case is ongoing.
It would appear that he is in an all-out war against Dr Ruto and he won’t stop until a knock-out is declared.
Mr Livondo’s maternal grandfather is the late Mmeywa Seii, a Luhya warrior. Whether or not he carries the warrior gene is subject to confirmation, but one sure thing is that the politician loves a fight.
Incidentally, Mr Livondo was also the chairman of the Kenya Professional Boxing Commission in the early 2000s.
When he burst into the scene ahead of the 2007 General Election, he was the man the Party of National Unity (PNU), then headed by President Mwai Kibaki, chose to be a pain on the backside of ODM leader Raila Odinga.
Mr Livondo took the war to Mr Odinga, vociferously campaigning to unseat the latter as Lang’ata MP. For Mr Odinga, to lose an MP seat when he was running for president would have meant failure to clinch the top seat.
However, Mr Livondo did not fell him, despite a spirited campaign. Not the one to back off, Mr Livondo later dragged Mr Odinga to court through an election petition.
His habit of not backing off a fight was also relayed in an American court where Mr Livondo was mentioned as having been involved in a scuffle. That was in a case about drug dealers Baktash Akasha and his brother Ibrahim Akasha.
The court heard that Mr Livondo was protecting South African drug lord David Armstrong in Kenya, and that Armstrong was a rival of the Akasha brothers. At some point, Armstrong was beaten up and Mr Livondo confronted the brothers about it. It degenerated into an ugly scuffle that saw one of the brothers draw a gun and threaten to shoot Mr Livondo.
“I have never seen any drug myself. Never. And let me tell you: if Livondo was dealing with drugs, right now I could be in prison,” he told Y254 TV in 2019, adding that the South African he is alleged to have been protecting is long dead.
Regardless, he was a flashy politician who seemingly had bottomless sources of cash when he threw his hat in the political ring. At one point in 2007, he caused a stir in Ikolomani when he reportedly arrived at a rally in a helicopter and threw wads of cash to the attendants.
“In 2007, I had 200 kiosks in Kibera, 50 in Kangemi – almost 500 kiosks in Nairobi,” he claimed.
He added that he later ventured into trading in gold that is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo and selling it in Dubai and Turkey.
“The good thing is that I am from Ikolomani where there is gold. Even where I have built my house, if you go there now you’ll get some gold,” he said.
Controversy surrounds not just his source of wealth but also his conduct. In 2007, he was involved in gun drama in Hamisi, Vihiga County, where a man was shot dead. Some claimed it was Mr Livondo’s bodyguards who pulled the trigger but he fought back, saying his security detail was actually under attack.
An old boy of Chavakali High School, Mr Livondo has never won any political seat he has vied for. He had unsuccessful bids for Lang’ata constituency in 2007, Kamukunji constituency in 2013 and Kakamega Senate in 2017.
But now with his no-holds-barred attack on Dr Ruto, it appears he is angling for visibility and a plum position after the August elections. Will he strike gold this time or he will be nursing a painful “livondo” in the end?
