17/10/2025
GUEST ARTICLE: Raila Odinga’s death, a lesson to Zambia
By Dillon Mayangwa
REGARDED as the engine of reforms and the guardian of stability, Raila Amolo Odinga was a Kenyan politician who died in India aged 80.
Raila’s early political life emerged in the crucible of repression, with his freedom stripped away. In 1982 he was detained and spent eight years behind bars.
His incarceration transformed him into a political martyr, the face of defiance against the Daniel Arap Moi leadership. Upon release, he became one of the central figures in the movement that dismantled the one-party state and ushered in multi-party politics.
Odinga, the former Kenyan Prime minister did not have a smooth path to the political position he served in but was still prosecuted, insulted, jailed and many other ugly activities that came with politics were showered on him.
Despite passing through these political storms, and his family being first hand witnesses, 48 hours after his death, his family and the Kenyan government have found a common ground to facilitate his burial.
There are no disorderly pressers sponsored by clergy men and women. No pillow talks and gossip of who Odinga hated or who he loved the most. No Odinga party official has called for a presser to remind the masses what Odinga went through, simply because they understand that death brings a whole lot of a different meaning to life and, the living are expected to do the right thing for the dead.
Here in Zambia, PF can never compare themselves to the political fights’ betrayals and pain Odinga went through at the hands of several Governments, yet despite it all Odinga’s wish was to allow the State to burry him within 72 hours.
No hate, no confusion, no vergency but pure hearts, true statesmanship.
According to African culture, the respect of death is the burial and Kenyan government and the family of Odinga are just doing that to honour, protect and respect his legacy.
Unlike what we are now seing in Zambia.
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