How Raila survived detention to dominate the Kenyan political landscape
The late Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga, the enigma of Kenyan politics, who died aged 80, is the most enduring opposition figure.
Raila’s courage, resilience, and unyielding belief in democracy, a journey that began in the shadows of detention and ended with him straddling the country’s political landscape for more than four decades.
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Born into the family of Kenya’s first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Raila would grow to become both a symbol of resistance and a bridge between generations.
The former Prime Minister’s rise, however, was forged in hardship, most notably during his nine years in detention after the failed 1982 coup attempt against the then-President Daniel Arap Moi’s regime.
Years behind bars
The ODM leader, then a young engineer and budding politician, was arrested alongside eight others on suspicion of aiding the Kenya Air Force officers who had tried to overthrow Moi’s government.
Raila would spend nearly a decade in Kenya’s most notorious prisons, Shimo la Tewa, Manyani, Kamiti, and Naivasha, enduring physical suffering and psychological torment.
In later years, he recounted the pain of being separated from his young family. His youngest son, Raila Odinga Jnr, only met his father properly when he was nine years old, the age at which Raila was first released from prison.
“He was being told that he had a father who was away. When I came out, I stayed with him for six months before being taken back. I came out again after a year, stayed for a while, and then they took me back again,” he said.
Ida’s burden
During those dark years, it was his wife, Ida Odinga, who held the family together. She raised their four children, Fidel, Rosemary, Winnie, and Junior, often under the glare of state surveillance.
“All that time, Ida was a single mother, and he suffered humiliation and pain. My children were chased from school. She lost her job at Kenya High. But she never gave up,” Raila once recalled emotionally during her 70th birthday celebration at their Karen home.
Illness and shadows letter
Raila’s time in detention was marked by immense personal tragedy. In November 1984, his mother died, but he only learnt of her passing two months later. In his autobiography Flame of Freedom, Raila recounted how he first dreamt of her before the news reached him.
“One night, my mother’s image came strongly to my mind. The next day I could not eat. I told the warders I had had a bad dream, that something must have happened to my mother,” he wrote.
The confirmation came days later through a message smuggled to him on toilet paper by fellow detainee George Anyona.
Raila also suffered severe health problems while in Manyani Prison. A government doctor misdiagnosed his condition and prescribed medication that worsened his condition after a seven-day hunger strike. His life was saved only when another doctor, Mwita, was dispatched from Nairobi to examine him.
In Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Raila found a way to communicate with Ida through smuggled letters written on toilet paper. In one of them, he described his worsening health, prompting Ida to seek medical advice and secretly send him drug prescriptions, an act that nearly cost her freedom.
“When they found the letter under my blanket, they came for Ida. They wanted to know how she had managed to get the letter to me. But she stood firm,” he once said.
Freedom fighter and kingmaker
After years of transfers between prisons and intermittent hunger strikes, Raila was finally released alongside eight other detainees on February 5, 1988. Among those who intervened on his behalf was lawyer Kiraitu Murungi, who once pleaded with him to end his hunger strike.
“Don’t you think Nyayo would be happy to see you dead?” Kiraitu told him at Manyani, convincing the defiant detainee to eat his first proper meal in days: rice and fried eggs.
From that point on, Raila transformed himself into the nerve centre of Kenya’s pro‑democracy movement. He would go on to become a cabinet minister, opposition leader, prime minister, and a perennial presidential contender, shaping Kenya’s politics for half a century.
Through every twist of his career, the lessons of detention stayed with him: resilience, patience, and a belief in justice over vengeance.
As Kenyans now mourn his passing, Raila Odinga leaves behind a legacy that transcends party lines: a man who endured prison walls, personal loss, and political betrayal to stand tall as one of Africa’s great democrats.
