Legendary reggae maestro, Bob Marley, says in his famous tune, Natural Mystic, that “there is a natural mystic blowing through the air; if you listen carefully now, you will hear”. Nothing captures these lyrics better than the current situation in our own country. There is a youth revolution blowing through the air. And if we listen and watch carefully, we will hear and see.
In recent days, there is universal acknowledgement that the Gen Z revolution has probably turned our politics and governance upside down, and things will never be the same again. There is a joke in town that these days, all you need to do is take a picture of a pothole on the road, post it online with a warning, and it will be gone by the next morning.
Young Kenyans protesting for better living conditions have, by practically waving a magic wand of instant demos, ensured that moving forward, we will have a more responsive government. To be honest, it has come at a hefty price in terms of human life and property, largely unnecessary losses, but still fitting within the old format of all freedom struggles. I hold that no matter how our politics pans out in future, these few months in 2024 will remain etched in memory for a long time.
However, I feel that both Gen Z activists and the entire nation have ignored one key area: political parties. In terms of governance and legislation, the role of political parties is so massive that attempting to reform government without reforming political parties, especially their structures, ideologies and character, amounts to the proverbial application of lipstick on a pig.
As far as ideological grounding goes, the ODM is probably the most progressive and liberal of all the parties in the republic. It is also the one from which four top officials have just been nominated to join the Kenya Kwanza Cabinet, leaving behind an intriguing and possibly vicious fight to fill the new vacancies. To compound this, the party leader himself may be taking up a continental seat in Addis Ababa as early as February next year.
Political party transitions have always been very delicate, since the restoration of multiparty politics in 1992. I doubt that there has even been a success story in this aspect. Nevertheless, ODM abounds with politicians and leaders who can lay claim to having been mentored almost entirely by the party leader, whose own longevity on the scene makes rivals green with envy.
Additionally, you can credibly state that there is a huge reservoir of young talent in the party, which, if deployed well in the envisaged generational change in the party, would form the critical cream of leadership to see what would otherwise have been a difficult transition becoming an exciting renaissance. You only need to watch the brilliant performance of young ODM leaders like Senator Edwin Sifuna and Senator Moses Kajwang', to know that the future is after all bright.
Then there is Embakasi East MP Babu Owino. A rather controversial figure within the party, he packs enough ambition to make the party hierarchy sometimes a little uncomfortable. First, in the early days of the current parliament, he made a move for the chairmanship of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee, against no less a person than the chairman of his own party, John Mbadi. But even after that, he has shown a restlessness for change that the others often don’t.
In May this year, the Embakasi legislator made a whirlwind tour of parts of Nyanza, eliciting excitement and receiving a triumphant welcome. Granted, the youthful MP is a heavy-duty mobiliser and has a way with the youth. In view of the said youth revolution, he seems to be what the doctor ordered in ODM’s quest to remain one of the leading movements in the country and region. Luckily for the party, if the problem had been how to contain the firebrand MP, it now has four major slots in the offing to fill.
Transitions require courage. And a huge multi-tribal and multisectoral organisation like the Orange party will need it in heavier doses. It is not far-fetched to say that there will be fallouts along the way, but the bigger need is to have all the big egos, like a football dressing room, coming together to pull in one direction.
I see Babu as a potential chairman or secretary general in the party’s new dispensation. But his forays into Luoland also present exciting prospects for a young, new community leader. Quite obviously, the nominees for Treasury and Energy, Mbadi and Opiyo Wandayi respectively, happen to be the two most senior Luo politicians after Raila Odinga, at this time. Their anticipated move to government, and absence from the political scene, opens the way for new political play in the land.
Over the decades, there have only ever been two major Luo leaders: Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and his son, Raila Odinga. Intriguingly, the community is now headed into an unchartered territory, where the next unifying figure will, for the first, time be a non-Odinga, and possibly, a much younger person than the image built over time. Can Babu make the cut? Would he manage to secure and sustain the voting bloc in a way in which it retains its power as a frontline determinant of Kenyan political direction?
My answer would be yes! I think he has already exhibited enough grit, both as an urban politician,and now as an envisaged community favourite son. There are reminders of Raila’s 1992 and 1997 campaigns in Lang'ata, Nairobi, where the community back home invested heavily in the success of the faraway contest. There are those who find Babu to be abrasive in nature and uncompromising in his politics. But anyone mentored by Raila would simply need to look back at those two Raila runs in 1992 and 1997 and draw parallels with the younger version of the Azimio boss.
Ultimately, I submit that whatever manner the party moves to fill the new vacancies, it will have to do it in a manner that fulfils the aspirations of all its disparate constituencies, especially the youth. If the Gen Z revolution now sweeping the country transforms into a large number of registered voters ahead of the 2027 election, political parties will have to also transform fast to match the needs of this new young movement. And whether the party desires it or not, in Babu, they have a fighter and young firebrand who will play a big part in embracing this new, formidable vote bloc. The chips will fall in place, at the end.
Political commentator