How can we account for the erasure of Fanuel Walter Odede from stories of the making of Kenya? Why does popular culture that invokes the history of our liberation bear little or no mention of his name? In the “Unbwogable ” hit by Gidi Gidi and Maji Maji that defined the 2002 election, for instance, we are told we must remember the elders, those who lifted us (Ya Jodongo nyaku par…Joma otingi nyaki par , they sing in Dholuo). Odede is missing when the rollcall salutes generations of fighters and truth-tellers – Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Tom Mboya, Robert Ouko, Raila Amolo, Gor Mahia, Okatch Biggy, James Orengo, Princess Jully, Anyang Nyong’o, Joe Donde and (Shem) Ochuodho.
Gidi Gidi boasts of his fame in Kanyamwa, Homa Bay. When he seeks inspiration for a difficult fight from distinguished descendants of Bondo, Ugenya, Seme, Gem, Rangwe, nothing is said of the sacrifices of the son of Uyoma, Rarieda. Odede – a veterinary surgeon, lawmaker and farmer – is even more erased from the annals of our liberation narratives than his contemporary from the same Uyoma, Ramogi Achieng Oneko.
Both were detained by the colonial government. Oneko found his rightful place in the legend called Kapenguria Six. Odede was relegated, unremembered as an articulate nominated member of the Legislative Council (Legco), uncelebrated as president of the Kenya African Union (Kau) in the heat of Mau Mau, unsung as a detainee who was held for eight years.
How we remember and who we forget is a politics of expediency and accumulated deletion. Those with the lived experience of an era are distracted or manipulated into paying attention to one dominant narrative that serves a particular end and specific individuals. Subsequent generations find hardly any record – in museums, books, fiction, place names or oral history. In three decades, a near-complete erasure or distortion of events, actions and actors is sealed.
Reflecting on the untold story of Mau Mau and nationhood 50 years after the clampdown that began with Operation Jock Scott in October 1952, Prof Bethwell Ogot observed that some heroes are inconvenient. By dint of their associations, and perhaps their achievements, they don’t fit in well with the stories we tell ourselves about who suffered the most, who lost the most and who gave the most for our freedom.
Odede was arrested under “emergency regulations” in Kaloleni, Nairobi, on the night of March 8, 1953. Earlier in the day, he had attended a Kau celebration at Desai Memorial Hall. He had taken on the role of Kau president following the arrest of Jomo. With Pio Gama Pinto, Joseph Murumbi and W.W. Awori, he raised funds for the defence of Kenyatta, Oneko, Fred Kubai, Kung’u Karumba, Bildad Kaggia and Paul Ngei at their Kapenguria trial. At Desai Hall, Kau rejoiced over the powerful submissions made at the trial by Dennis Pritt, one of Kenyatta’s lawyers.
The colonial government issued a statement the following day. Odede had been suspended from Legco and detained “for attempting to spread into Nyanza Province the violent methods adopted by Mau Mau…has threatened a number of loyal Africans with the same fate as has been suffered by some law-abiding Kikuyu”.
In a letter six weeks after Odede’s arrest, Nairobi Councillor Ambrose Ofafa said Governor Evelyn Baring had told him Odede would stand trial as soon as witnesses agreed to testify.
Three months later, Ofafa was killed, reportedly by Mau Mau. Members of the Luo Union (East Africa) raised funds and built the Ofafa Memorial Hall in Kisumu. In Nairobi’s Eastlands, a new housing estate of two-storey apartments was named Ofafa Jericho.
Odede’s detention invoked outrage. On March 10, 1953, Mr Fenner Brockway, a Labour Party MP and founding member of the Congress of Peoples Against Imperialism and the Movement for Colonial Freedom, called for Odede’s release in the British Parliament.
In South Africa, two magazines – Drum and Contact – restated in October 1958 that “Odede should have been brought to public trial some five years ago”.
Like Pinto, who was arrested in April 1954 during Operation Anvil, Odede was never tried in court. Colonial officers raided his Uyoma home in search of evidence of his Mau Mau activities. Seemingly, they found nothing. No one ever stepped forward to bear witness against Odede, not even the alleged snitch, Chief Gideon Magak of Kasipul.
Odede was held for eight years. First in Kwale and Maralal, later in Samburu where his veterinary skills were exploited on settler ranches. He also inspected the herds of local pastoralists since range management and livestock control were key to colonial occupation and containing Mau Mau.
In restriction, Odede was allowed visits from family. In his autobiography, Not Yet Uhuru, Jaramogi says the Chief Secretary declined to grant him and his wife permission to visit Odede. But Odede’s children remember Jaramogi’s sacrifices. He drove them and their mother, Clara, to the train station to start the journey to Archer’s Post abattoir where their father was held.
Alice Magolo, who was the youngest child of Odede’s first wife then, Fidelia, explains the strict terms of the family visits and how freedom fighters circumvented scrutiny.
“We were not allowed to carry anything. No one was allowed to talk to him except in English which the White men could understand. That is why Jaramogi wrote letters updating him about the situation in the country. Such letters were hidden in my rubber shoes. Upon arrival, I would remove the letter and give to dad,” Magolo says.
Her brother Jorry, now an ophthalmic surgeon, was four months old the night their father was taken.
“In detention, we could only see our dad in the evening. He would leave the house very early in the morning to treat the wazungu cattle...not only in Samburu but as far as Dol Dol and Mukogodo in Laikipia. We were left under the care of mum and my sister Alice. When dad came in the evenings, he would take us for a walk and sometimes we would race against him in the nearby field,” Jorry says.
His younger sister was conceived during one of those visits. Odede named her Samburu. At the end of one family visit, Odede refused to let go of Jorry.
“I stayed with him until the day he was released. We were driven in a Land Rover to our Ruma home. He would leave very early in the morning and leave me in the house after making breakfast and lunch. He would come back at dusk, assist me in lighting the pressure lamp, coach me in reading and writing before settling me to bed. I often made jokes to friends that I was also a detainee!”
It has become fashionable to sneer at restriction, to argue that those held under its terms suffered little as they had comforts unknown to prisoners in detention camps. But the eight-year absence of Odede unsettled him, his family and community. His father, a fisherman, took on the extra burden of caring for his grandchildren and their two mothers.
Even so, their standard of living had come a long way down from the Makerere years when their father was a lecturer in the School of Veterinary Science.
“We suffered...as Mama Nyamuga could only cook maize meal with vegetables. This was a shock to us children who were used to balanced meals,” Alice says.
National politics was shifting. Obadiah Adonijah Oginga Odinga, popularly known as Jaramogi – meaning the descendant of Ramogi, the forefather of the Luo nation – had moved to Nairobi in 1957. He campaigned against Beneah Apollo Ohanga and won the Central Nyanza seat in the Legco.
Jomo Kenyatta hugs Walter Odede in August 14, 1961 after the former's release from prison. they remained friends until Odede's death in 1974.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
Prof Ogot explains that by October 1960 when Odede left detention, he found “that since he was not one of the Kapenguria group, he was not regarded as a freedom fighter. Odinga was so well established that Odede’s attempt to challenge him for a parliamentary seat led to his being branded a traitor of the Luo cause.”
In Not Yet Uhuru, Jaramogi expresses surprise that Odede challenged him for the Central Nyanza seat in the February 1961 Legco election.
“While in detention, he had been visited by the Chief Secretary and then suddenly released. I heard reports that he would stand in the elections but when I asked him, his reply was evasive. Later, I suggested that if he wanted to contest, it should be the special seat and we could campaign together. ‘No’, Odede said. He had decided to contest my seat.”
“He seemed to have no shortage of lorries and money to carry voters to the polls and it seemed there were forces secretly supporting him to oust me,” Jaramogi says in the book.
Odede managed 1,770 votes against Jaramogi’s 46,638. Fortunately, he secured a nomination.
In the Legco, he said the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) be listened to, and “deal with them constructively, not only destructively.”
Advocating for Pan-Africanism, he said the federation of Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar was “economically and politically desirable and can only be achieved in proper form by synchronism of the date for independence of these territories.”
Odede pleaded with Kanu to stop attacking Kadu, saying Majimbo was not bad. He warned that Communist money was “destroying the progress of the people of Central Nyanza.”
Jaramogi sympathised with the socialist cause. While at the Lancaster Conference in 1961, he met Eastern Europe leaders. It was the start of his Eastern Bloc scholarship scheme – launched to match the Tom Mboya-Gikonyo Kiano airlifts to the United States.
The rift between Jaramogi and Odede – friends who had once shared a house in Maseno – appeared to grow. On January 20, 1962, Jaramogi’s youthful and urbane rival in Kanu, Mboya, married Odede’s daughter Pamela, a Makerere graduate and a beneficiary of the Mboya-Kiano airlifts.
Within Kau, Mboya had often dimmed Jaramogi’s light with oratory and dexterous fundraising. As Kau president, Odede had assigned Mboya the post of Director of Information. Mboya became Kau's treasurer in 1956. Whenever he called for the termination of the emergency regulations, including the release of detainees, he mentioned Odede.
According to Mboya’s biographer, David Goldsworthy, Mboya also took on the responsibility of looking after Odede’s family.
But long before Mboya entered the mix, a subtle rivalry had marked the relationship between Jaramogi and Odede. The two were classmates at Maseno School – along with Elly Athembo, Archer Nyalik and Peter Oranga – where they completed Grade Eight in 1934.
They proceeded to Alliance High School. At Makerere College, then an affiliate of the University of London, they completed diploma courses – Jaramogi’s in Education (mathematics) and Odede in veterinary science.
They returned to Maseno. When Jaramogi ran into problems with the school administration, Odede suggested that he join him at the nearby Veterinary School.
In 1946, together with their colleague Richard Arina, they hatched the idea of setting up an East Africa-wide Luo Union, headquartered in Kisumu, not Nairobi, to raise the consciousness of the people, spread education and undertake investments. Odede also became one of the founding members of the United Kenya Club in Nairobi, a multiracial assembly.
The following year, Odede and ex-Sergeant-Major S.O. Josiah were invited for a course conducted by future Provincial Commissioner Desmond O’Hagan to train African administrators. Next, along with Argwings-Kodhek and two others, Odede secured a scholarship for studies in Britain.
Jaramogi’s application for the scholarship was ignored. He was suspended from Maseno not long after.
Odede returned from Lancashire in January 1949 and joined the faculty at Makerere where he settled in with a growing family – two wives and several children. On his return to Kenya in 1952, he was nominated as a Legco member, representing Central Nyanza. He served for months before being detained.
In the run-up to independence, Odede backed the formation of the Nairobi Peoples Convention Party (NPCP).
“I can understand why the Luo in Nairobi should want their own political organisation,” he said.
NPCP was soon after renamed Luo United Movement (LUM). In the May 8, 1963 elections, the seemingly pro-Mboya LUM was pitted against the Pro-Jaramogi Kenya African National Union (Kanu). Two people died in the Central Nyanza contest. Several of Odede’s youthwingers were arrested. He hired lawyer Byron Georgiadis to represent them. They were acquitted.
According to Jaramogi, Odede had told him while they were in London for the second Lancaster House conference that he had never forgiven me for defeating him in the 1961 election.
Odede left Central Nyanza to Jaramogi and went for the Kisumu seat against Hasham Amir Jamal. He lost.
Jaramogi became Vice-President of Kenya, but a scheme to isolate him from President Kenyatta and within Kanu was quickly hatched. As Secretary-General, Mboya played a part in that plan. Following the assassination of Jaramogi’s ideologue, Pinto, in February 1965, Jaramogi lost support in Parliament.
The opposition Kadu had crossed the floor in November 1964. Mboya and Kenyatta moved swiftly to ensure most of the former Kadu representatives would vote with them on whatever issue in the House. Their first win was replacing Pinto with Wycliffe Adonijah Onyango Ayoki. The loser – Jaramogi’s man – was Wilson Ndolo Ayah, a Makererian who had once courted Pamela Odede.
Jaramogi resigned as VP on April 14, 1966. Mboya had outmanoeuvred him through a new Kanu constitution that diminished his power by creating eight provincial vice-presidents. Jaramogi was now labelled “an agent of rapacious international Communism”. Working with few allies, including two former detainees – Oneko and Kaggia – they formed the Kenya People’s Union (KPU).
The constitution was quickly amended to send back to the polls 29 elected officials who resigned from Kanu to join KPU. The sacrificial lamb that Kanu chose to stand against Jaramogi was Mboya’s father-in-law, Odede. Jomo sent all his Luo ministers to Nyanza to campaign against KPU.
Odede managed only 1,942 votes against Jaramogi’s 16,695. As Cheryl Gertzel and J.J. Okumu wrote of the mini-General Election: “The opposition’s exploitation of Luo tradition portrayed Mboya as an enemy of the tribe.” Seemingly, Odede caught the fleas.
The July 1969 assassination of Mboya threw a shadow on the General Election of December that year. It was a waterloo for sitting Luo MPs. In the eyes of the electorate, they had not been militant in pursuing answers to the killing.
“The death of Tom hit dad like thunderbolt. It reduced his political clout as KPU dominated Nyanza politics. Dad was apprehensive that there would be a cover-up in Tom’s assassination. He decided to seek help from Uganda where Milton Obote was president. In Uganda, dad drove us to the house of Tom’s friend and business partner, Dr Martin Aliker. He was to assist us in contacting Queen’s Counsel Godfrey Binaisa, a lawyer (who would later become President) of Uganda. I was not at the meeting which dad and Tom’s brother Alphonse Okuku held with Binaisa, but it turned out that Binaisa could not be allowed to represent the Mboya family in Kenya. The most he could do was to be allowed to sit in as an observer and this could not add value to the trial,” Jorry says.
In Bondo, when the elections came, the fight was more about Jaramogi than about getting justice for Mboya. President Kenyatta had visited Kisumu on October 25, 1969, to open the New Nyanza General Hospital, popularly called Russia, in acknowledgement of its funders. It has since been renamed Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital.
At the opening ceremony, Jaramogi engaged Kenyatta in a shouting match. The president’s security opened fire, killing scores. KPU was banned. Oneko and Jaramogi were detained.
Prevented from running in the 1969 election, some say Jaramogi anointed the Principal of Egerton College, Dr William Odongo Omamo alias Dibo, (white, or clean-hearted), Kaliech (like an elephant or having lofty ideas).
In his posthumously-published memoir, Omamo says the Odinga-aligned candidate was Okelo Ogada. It was easy, Omamo says, to beat the other candidate on the ballot, Odede, whose moniker was Rachilo – the dirty one.
“As a long standing rival of Jaramogi… he was unpopular in Bondo,” he writes.
Despite yet another defeat, Odede and his son Jorry visited Jaramogi at his Milimani home in Kisumu soon after March 1971 when Jaramogi was freed after 18 months in detention.
“We gave him a big jogoo (cockerel) which was the party symbol of Kanu,” Jorry says.
By the October 1974 General Election, Odede had lost his appetite for competitive politics though he was the Kanu Branch Chairman in Bondo. His frenemy Jaramogi still had a cult following in Nyanza.
When Kanu refused to clear Jaramogi to vie in Bondo, the blame was heaped on Omamo, the incumbent. Jaramogi picked Hezekiah Ougo Ochieng as his protégé. Kenyatta responded by nominating Odede to Parliament. He barely took up the seat.
Odede served on the first Board of the Central Bank of Kenya from 1966 to 1974. He also took a loan from Agricultural Finance Corporation to buy land in Songhor from Mr Doenhoff, a German settler. Odede uprooted the coffee and planted sugarcane. He kept up the growing of oranges, exploiting the irrigation methods he had learnt in Israel.
He maintained a herd of exotic dairy cows, Borana cattle pigs, and poultry. He ferried farm produce by train to Nairobi and consulted often with the Kenya Farmers Association in Nakuru where the first African Chairman, Rueben Chesire, became a close friend.
Hypertension-related complications
Odede was born in Uyoma Katwenga, Siaya in 1912. He died at Nairobi Hospital on Christmas Eve in 1974. Hypertension-related complications had led to a stroke two months after his nomination to Parliament. Was his life of advocacy, mentoring, and public service given due recognition?
Kenyatta gave Odede and 41 others from around the country state honours in 1968: Elder of the Burning Spear “in recognition of their great contribution to nation-building and the hard work… in organising and consolidating the political foundation of the ruling party”.
Whenever freedom fighters are listed, lifted on street names, institutions, or celebrated in children’s primers, in songs, or commemorative stamps like the 2008 Heroes of Kenya series where Mekatilili wa Menza, Koitalel Samoei, Elijah Masinde, Dedan Kimathi, Ronald Ngala, Pinto, Jaramogi, Mboya made the cut, Odede is often missing.
To fall out of the memory of your people is akin to dying a second death. Odede may be an inconvenient hero because in the realm of cultural nationalism, he blocked the path of Jaramogi, a patriot, revolutionary and kingpin in the tribal arithmetic that prevents our political formation from evolving into nationhood.
The Ibo say that no man, however great, can win judgment against his clan. But should this perception of dimming Jaramogi erase Odede’s place in our history? To echo Ogot: “What should we do with nationalists like Odede?”
Perhaps the mistake we make as a nation is anchoring heroism to individuals rather than deeds and moments. In the early 1970s, the people of Uyoma burst into song, celebrating Odede for coming to their rescue when they killed a policeman and the brute force of the GSU landed there, raping, killing and maiming many. Odede called Kenyatta and convinced him to stop the carnage.
Heroism is not a permanent state of grace, it comes in moments. If we named those moments and elevated those deeds – Freedom Avenue ‘56 or Justice 1965 rather than Kimathi Street and Pio Gama Pinto Avenue – we might be less wired to messiahs and their inevitable betrayal of our causes. We would do better to remember the attributes that make us humane, the values that generate transformation. If we must praise people and elevate them to hero status, let us not forget Odede.
On December 24, Odede’s descendants from his three wives and 30 children will gather in Uyoma to mark 50 years since his death.
Memories of those who knew him will fill the gaps for those who never met Odede but have had to negotiate their lives bearing his name, his legacy. It is a legacy that has been shrouded in careless innuendo, ugly nicknames and cautious recognition. His is a name that should be raised whenever we mention the risks, sacrifices and devotion of those who created defining moments in our never-ending quest for freedom.
Dr Nyairo is a Cultural Analyst and the author of ‘Kenya@50: Trends, Identities and the Politics of Belonging’; [email protected]
