By Songa wa Songa
Posted Monday, October 7 2013 at 00:00
Posted Monday, October 7 2013 at 00:00
In Summary
His elder brother Oburu who by then had already gone
to school in the Soviet Union was not only refused a deserved admission
to the best schools in Kenya, he was also denied a passport when he
wanted to leave the country.
Dar es Salaam. The first travel document former
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga ever owned, which he used to go
abroad was issued here in Dar es Salaam in 1962, when the Mainland was
still known as Tanganyika.
Former Kenya prime minister - who also served as
minister in three different portfolios: Energy, Roads and Housing - used
the document to enter East Germany where he completed his secondary
school education at Herder-Institute and later graduated with a degree
in mechanical engineering from the Magdeburg College of Advanced
Technology before coming back to Kenya.
The temporary citizenship and passport was granted
to Raila and other two Kenyan boys in his company, two years before the
union with Zanzibar in 1964 which gave birth to the United Republic of
Tanzania. The enigmatic politician has revealed how, after being denied a
passport by the department of immigration of the British colonial
government which ruled his country, the first Prime Minister of
Tanganyika (later president) Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who was a friend of
Mr Odinga’s father, salvaged the situation.
Kenya was to gain its independence a year later in
1963 after a bloody Mau Mau uprising and Raila’s father, Jaramogi
Oginga Odinga, served as vice president with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta as the
country’s first president and father of the nation. Mr Odinga, who is
the leader of the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (Cord), an
opposition outfit, has made the disclosure and poignant details of his
childhood and political struggles in his new autobiography Raila
Odinga—The Flame of Freedom which was launched yesterday in Nairobi.
Raila who was 17 years old and in Form Two had to
go abroad because his father’s apparent opposition to colonial rule and
his links with the Soviet Union had created bad blood between the
Odingas and the government.
His elder brother Oburu who by then had already
gone to school in the Soviet Union was not only refused a deserved
admission to the best schools in Kenya, he was also denied a passport
when he wanted to leave the country.
“Oburu’s application had been rejected six months
earlier, on grounds that Jaramogi’s passport had been impounded by the
government because he had visited the Soviet Union and China. Jaramogi
was currently travelling on international passports given to him by
Kwame Nkrumah and another given to him by Gamal Abdiel Nasser, and he
had travelled with Oburu as a minor on one of them,” Raila writes.
“Oburu had passed with flying colours, gaining the
highest possible points and distinctions, but he had not been accepted
at Alliance High School, the best secondary school at the time. Oburu’s
second choice had been Kisii High School but they also refused him a
place. Only Maranda accepted him.”
He adds: “From that point, Jaramogi knew that, if
he wanted a good education for us boys, he would have to send us
abroad.” In the memoir, Raila writes how he was one day abruptly picked
by his father’s assistant Okuto Bala at Maranda High School in Nyanza
where he was a boarder and taken to Nairobi where he joined Oudia Okello
and Mirulo Okello for the trip to Dar es Salaam.
“By six we had left for the bus station, where we
boarded an OTC (Overseas Transport Company) operating in collaboration
with DMT (Dar es Salaam Motor Transport) bus at 7am. It set off at 7:30
sharp and we were on our way,” At the time, Raila narrates that the
tarmac from Nairobi City centre ended just at the airport junction and
all the way to Namanga border was a dirty road. “We passed through
Korogwe, Handeni and then Morogoro, where the tarmac began again.”
The bus arrived in Dar es Salaam at 7:30 am, 24
hours later and the boys were received by Dola Osman, personal assistant
to Oscar Kambona, then secretary-general of the ruling party,
Tanganyika African National Union (Tanu).
“Osman made us welcome and took us by car to a
hotel where he left us to make ourselves at home. We were dirty and
hungry after our long journey, so we showered and changed and had
breakfast before Osman came back for the three passport-size photos we
had been told to bring,”
Soon after lunch, Osman arrived with the travel documents and
reported to the boys that all arrangements were in hand for them to
travel to Cairo, Egypt by Air France in two days. The remaining time was
spent in exploring Dar es Salaam City and being guests of the state,
meeting prominent people as well.
Osman took them to Kambona’s office “where also we
got a warm welcome and were made to feel at home”, then to Tanu
headquarters which had been turned into University College of Dar es
Salaam, where the East African School of Law was located.
“On the day of our departure, he (Osman) collected
us from the hotel at 9am and took us to Prime Minister Nyerere’s
office. Mwalimu was very jovial and happy to see us.
He told me Jaramogi was his good friend and he
spoke of his visit to Kisumu the previous year when he had attended the
Pan-African rally. My parents had also attended the Tanganyika
independence celebrations on December 9 the previous year, and my mother
had told me of the warm welcome they had received. We were then driven
in Nyerere’s car to his residence, where we had lunch. Finally, we took
our leave and Mwalimu whished us well in our studies,” the 1,000-page
book reads, in part.
Read more tomorrow in The Citizen
SOURCE: THE CITIZEN
SOURCE: THE CITIZEN