Adapted from the Odede family by Dr. Joyce Nyairo whose first version of the article appeared in the Sunday Nation of October 20, 2024.
The July 1969 assassination of Tom Mboya threw a shadow on the General Election of December 1969. It
was a Waterloo for all sitting Luo MPs.
In the eyes of the electorate, they had not been militant in pursuing answers to Mboya’s killing. Our brother Jorry recalls that difficult season.
“The death of Tom hit dad like thunderbolt. It also reduced his political clout as Mr Odinga’s KPU dominated Nyanza politics… Dad was apprehensive that there would be a coverup to unmask the planners of Tom’s assassination.
He decided to seek help from neighbouring Uganda where Milton Obote was the president.
In Uganda, Dad drove us to the house of Tom’s friend and business partner, Dr Martin Aliker, who was to assist us in contacting Queen’s Counsel Godfrey Binaisa, a leading lawyer [who would later become President ] in Uganda … I was not at the meeting that 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 Kenyan Courts.
The most he could do was to be allowed to sit in as an observer and this could not add value to the trial.”
In Bondo, when the elections came, the fight was not so much about getting justice for Mboya — it was
about Jaramogi whose base wanted a candidate who would be willing to step down for him once he left detention.
Jaramogi had been detained following the violent fiasco of October 25, 1969 when President
Jomo Kenyatta visited Kisumu on 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 after the man who secured the funding).
At the opening ceremony, Jaramogi engaged Jomo in a shouting match. The President’s security opened fired killing scores of citizens.
KPU was banned. Oneko and Jaramogi were detained. Prevented from running in that 1969 election, some
say Jaramogi anointed the Principal of Egerton College, Dr. William Odongo Omamo alias ‘Dibo’, (the clean hearted) ‘Kaliech’ (elephant/lofty ideas). But, in his posthumously published memoir, Omamo says the Odinga-aligned candidate was Okelo Ogada.
It was easy, Omamo says, to beat Rachilo who was the other candidate on the ballot. For many years,
this moniker ‘Rachilo’ literally meaning “the dirty one” could be twisted for ill-intent by some. Omamo explains that as a “long-standing political rival of Jaramogi… [‘Rachilo’] was very unpopular … in Bondo.”
Despite yet another crushing defeat Rachilo and our brother Jorry visited Jaramogi at his Milimani home
in Kisumu soon after March 1971 when Jaramogi was released from 18 months in detention.
“We gave him a big Jogoo (cockerel) which was the party symbol of KANU.”
By the October 1974 General Election, Rachilo had lost his appetite for competitive politics though he
was still the KANU Branch Chairman in Siaya. His frenemy Jaramogi still had a cult following in Luo
Nyanza.
When KANU refused to clear Jaramogi to vie in Bondo, the blame was heaped on Omamo,
the incumbent who had not stepped down in 1971 after Jaramogi’s release. Consequently, Jaramogi
picked Hezekiah Ougo Ochieng as his protégé.
Jomo responded by nominating Rachilo to Parliament. He barely took up the seat.
Between 1966 and 1974, Rachilo served on the first Board of the Central Bank of Kenya. He also
took a loan from the Agricultural Finance Corporation to buy Senetewa Farm in Songhor from Mr. Doenhoff, a German settler.
Most of us grew up there and we remember the intense farming activities which we fully participated
in. Rachilo uprooted the coffee and planted sugarcane. He kept up the growing of oranges, exploiting the irrigation methods he had learnt in Israel many years ago.
He also maintained an admirable herd of dairy cows of exotic breeds, native 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, grew to be a close friend.
…TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT SERIES…
