By James Okoth
When former President Uhuru Kenyatta rose to speak at Nyayo Stadium during the state funeral of Raila Amolo Odinga, the crowd expected politics — but what they got was something deeper.
He began softly, his voice thick with emotion. Then, in a moment that melted the tension of grief, he quipped;
“Saa ingine tukiwa tumetulia kidogo hapo, tulikuwa tunapewa kakitu kidogo na Raila… Mimi kakitu kidogo nasema ni chai ama uji. (Sometimes during our quiet moments, Raila would offer us something small… and by that I mean tea or porridge.)”
The stadium erupted in laughter, but beneath the humour was a truth few had ever known — that Uhuru and Raila shared more than politics; they shared friendship, familiarity, and fraternity.
For a nation that had long viewed the two as bitter rivals, that simple mention of uji unveiled the human bond behind decades of public drama — a relationship of bloodlines and brotherhood that stretched back to Kenya’s founding fathers.
Long before politics pitted them against each other, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga were children of Kenya’s most influential families — heirs to dynasties that shaped the nation’s destiny.
Their fathers — Jomo Kenyatta, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and Tom Mboya — were the towering architects of independence. They shared dinners, debates, and dreams of a new nation. Their homes were open to one another; their children, playmates in the elite circle of postcolonial Nairobi.
Raila and Uhuru, both educated in privilege but tempered by public expectation, grew up within the same social orbit.
They met at national family gatherings, political functions, and at times in the private spaces of their parents’ homes. Raila would later recall how the Kenyatta family was often in touch with the Odingas during the early post-independence years, when their fathers — Jomo and Jaramogi — still called each other brother.
At State House and in the Odinga homestead in Kisumu, laughter, not hostility, once ruled. The young boys — Uhuru, Raila, and even the children of Tom Mboya — saw one another as part of the same Kenya their fathers were building.
It was, for a brief moment, a golden age of unity among Kenya’s political dynasties.
But politics, as history would have it, tore that fraternity apart.
Jaramogi once refused to take the presidency in 1963, famously declaring that “no independence is real until Kenyatta is free.” But years later, he fell out with the very man he had lifted.
The Kenyatta–Odinga fallout of the 1960s left a wound that ran deeper than politics — it divided two families once bound by friendship.
Decades later, fate would circle back.
The children of those two men — Uhuru and Raila — would inherit both the rivalry and the responsibility to heal it.
They were destined, it seemed, to either continue the quarrel of their fathers or to finally end it.
Their journey was anything but linear.
In 2002, Raila Odinga’s dramatic declaration — “Kibaki Tosha!” — at Uhuru Park redrew Kenya’s political map.
At that moment, he endorsed Mwai Kibaki over Uhuru Kenyatta, splitting KANU and ending the Moi succession plan.
It was a betrayal that stung the young Uhuru deeply and set the stage for years of rivalry.
They would face off again in 2013 and 2017, each election more bruising than the last. Court battles, protests, and rhetoric widened the divide.
To many Kenyans, Uhuru and Raila symbolised the endless cycle of antagonism that defined the country’s politics.
On the steps of Harambee House, they stunned the nation. Their clasp was more than a gesture of peace; it was a moment of lineage reconciliation — the symbolic reunion of the Kenyatta and Odinga bloodlines.
From that moment, their relationship evolved from competition to companionship.
Uhuru began calling Raila “my brother.” Raila referred to him as “ndugu yangu.”
Together they embarked on the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) — a bold experiment in redefining inclusion, unity, and governance.
Those close to the two men speak of quiet, private moments the public never saw.
Uhuru would occasionally drop by Raila’s Karen home without cameras or aides. Raila, in turn, would visit the Kenyatta residence in Gatundu or Nairobi to check on his “younger brother.”
They shared stories, laughter, and — as Uhuru fondly revealed — cups of uji.
It was a friendship grounded in mutual respect and an understanding that history had handed them both the same burden: to heal what their fathers’ generation broke.
Uhuru once joked, during his eulogy, that he and Raila often wondered what their fathers — Jomo and Jaramogi — might be discussing in the afterlife.
“I told him,” Uhuru said, smiling through tears, “those two must still be arguing about politics like us.”
That candid remark revealed what no analyst could capture — a human bond, forged not by politics, but by shared destiny.
When Raila Odinga died, it was Uhuru — not a sitting official — who lingered longest after the burial in Bondo.
He arrived quietly, without the presidential motorcade that once followed him, and walked alone toward the grave.
Witnesses say he stood there for nearly half an hour — head bowed, lips moving in silent prayer — before kneeling to touch the red earth.
He did not speak to the cameras. He didn’t have to. His silence was eloquent enough.
It told a story of a man mourning not just a comrade, but a brother bound by history.
Uhuru and Raila, both sons of privilege and pain, carried the weight of Kenya’s contradictions.
One represented power; the other, resistance.
Yet in their later years, they came to represent something greater — reconciliation.
Their partnership blurred tribal boundaries that had long divided Kenya’s politics.
The Kikuyu and the Luo, once set apart by their fathers’ fallout, now watched their sons walk together.
In their twilight, they taught the nation that peace is not the absence of rivalry — it is the maturity to rise above it.
Kenyans spent decades watching them clash — in rallies, courts, and ballot boxes — never realising that behind the scenes they shared laughter, stories, and uji.
History, in its irony, waited until Raila’s death to reveal the depth of that kinship.
What began as political rivalry ended as blood reconciliation — not by lineage, but by legacy.
In death, Raila reminded the world of their brotherhood.
In grief, Uhuru proved it.
And as he walked away from the grave, a gust of wind lifted red dust into the sky — as though Jomo and Jaramogi, wherever they sat, finally nodded in agreement.
