The Kenyan public stands in awe, and a somber bewilderment permeates the atmosphere following the sudden ascension of Raila Amolo Odinga into the ancestral realm. As the saying goes, “Revolutionaries are only beloved long after they’re dead.” Typically, this applies to social activists and agitators for change—figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Assata Shakur, and others—who are vilified by the liberal establishment while alive and venerated only once the threat they pose to the status quo has safely passed with their death.

While this pattern is evident, a variation of it also holds from a different angle, stemming from the purist politics of the global left, where, unless a political figure wholly embodies the ideals projected onto them, they risk being cast out and stripped of relevance. In such frameworks, only the passage of time—posthumous time—creates room for redemption, or at least for more nuanced and holistic assessments of a figure’s contributions to history.

Revolutionaries, intellectuals, and scholars have often been revered and vilified in equal measure after death, their legacies filtered through the ideological biases of the living. These patterns recur across contexts and epochs. By the time of his death, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s legacy was already under critical scrutiny—even by fellow liberation fighters and students at the Hill in Dar es Salaam, many of whom had once admired his early trajectory. Likewise, by the time of the 1966 coup in Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah’s revolutionary credentials were already contested, with allegations of authoritarianism and corruption clouding his leadership. Had that coup failed, how would Nkrumah be remembered today? So it goes with the eternal battle between Stalinists and Trotskyists—the latter largely spared scrutiny by the fact that their chosen hero never ascended to power, where the demands of governance under internal and external constraints may well have revealed a more fallible human, as happened with Stalin. Closer home, Dedan Kimathi was labeled a terrorist by colonial authorities and prevailing moral discourse until very recently, when the ban on the Mau Mau was lifted and his legacy rehabilitated.

To fall uncritically into the purity-politics bandwagon is to risk reinforcing systemic smear campaigns against revolutionaries and progressives. At the same time, this must not come at the cost of rigorous criticism and self-criticism, which remain essential tools of revolutionary practice.

The recent passing of Raila Amolo Odinga, one of Kenya’s most significant political figures, raises these questions anew among the left. Scholars have written extensively; former heads of state and institutions have offered condolences from afar. Volumes of analysis and polemical debate now overflow across platforms. And amid all this, the masses mourn—publicly, vocally, and without apology.

The man who has just been laid to rest will surely enter the historical record for his consistency in pursuing an alternative Kenya. He possessed an intuitive grasp of political conditions and an ability to transform interpretation into actionable force. For those who fought alongside him during the brutal years of the Daniel arap Moi dictatorship—or for those who remember growing up under its chilly repression—the contributions Raila made to Kenya’s democratic opening cannot be dismissed simply by pointing to his bourgeois credentials. Indeed, such references may ring hollow to those who understand the precarity of his upbringing in a pariah family or the suffering endured by his own young family during his years in detention.

To many, especially those who bore the brunt of dictatorship and repression, the suggestion that Raila Amolo Odinga is irrelevant to Kenya’s ongoing national liberation struggle beggars belief.

Postcolonial Kenya has passed through myriad political moments—each marked by state repression, waves of popular resistance and shifting alliances. Political organizers have faced tyranny, unlawful detentions, systemic violence, and the labyrinth of bureaucratic regimes. In his early years, Raila experienced the brute force of colonialism, but it was the iron grip of Uhuru Kenyatta’s presidency that politically molded him. He was unlawfully incarcerated by Moi during the 1980s, amid one of Kenya’s most politically turbulent periods, and suffered under successive waves of persecution.

Following his release from detention, Raila mastered the art of strategic and tactical alliance-making, the “handshakes” that predominated his public image in his later life, the first of which was with the Moi regime in 1998. And therefore, to a younger generation—especially Gen Z, who came of age under Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta, never having had to recite the National Pledge with a hand over their heart at Friday school assembly, nor whisper dissent for fear of informers lurking at every corner—Raila Odinga appears as little more than a political broker, navigating and surviving through every regime. This perception is not ahistorical. It reflects a society in motion, one whose struggles transform with changing conditions.

These critics are not wrong to point to the choices Raila made later in his political career—his alliances with ruling regimes, the enrichment of his family through elite networks—as reasons to challenge or even reject heroic framings of his legacy. Perhaps his years in detention changed his resolve. Perhaps it was the exhaustion of decades of struggle, only to watch electoral victories snatched away again and again, that led him to seek political truces. These explanations are not justifications, but they offer a materialist reading of his trajectory. Revolutionary history is filled with examples of tactical coalitions and strategic compromises, even between contending classes. Such maneuvers should not be confused with class reconciliation. And yet the revolutionary tradition insists: The most resolute struggle is the one waged against our own weaknesses.

This article does not aim to relitigate Raila’s legacy—that will be the work of future books, essays, and political debates. Rather, we insist that even now, especially now, our fidelity must remain with the immediate tasks of the struggle.

What, then, do we—those committed to writing history from the left—owe our struggle in this moment? We must examine Raila Amolo Odinga fully: the man, the organizer, the politician, the industrialist. We must place both the triumphs and failures of his legacy in historical perspective, so that we who remain can draw lessons, refine our methods, and grow stronger. Most of all, we must acknowledge that Raila long commanded the hearts and minds of the Kenyan people. If we fail to meet them where they are—if we do not build political vehicles capable of carrying their hopes forward—then for whom, and with whom, are we organizing?

Raila Amolo Odinga understood some of the core tenets of the left—above all, organizing. He was a central figure in national conversations around multiparty democracy, alternative leadership, constitutional reform, and people-led governance. Since independence, no one else has managed to build and sustain a broad, cross-class, multiethnic political formation as successfully as he did with the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), which turns 20 on the eve of his passing. Having attended one of his rallies in person, I can attest that ODM was not merely a special-purpose vehicle for his personal ambition. The poor women who used their own resources to traverse their poverty-stricken neighborhoods, knocking on doors to recruit new members, were not acting out of blind loyalty to Baba’s charismatic aura. They did so because they believed that ODM took seriously their everyday struggles—that it was the only political vehicle that represented their interests with conviction. As Amílcar Cabral reminds us, “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children…” We cannot assume that this does not hold true for the millions of Kenyans who, every five years for decades now, turned out to vote for Agwambo. The national mourning that has followed his passing—the mass outpouring from every corner of the country—is a reflection of that longstanding trust. It is this political intimacy that led millions to refer to him simply as Baba—Swahili for “father”—an honorific rooted not in reverence for power but in the comfort of belief in his aspirations for a better future for us all.

This kind of organizing is a feat that we on the Kenyan left have yet to accomplish. Politics of any kind, whether revolutionary, reformist, or reactionary, must win the hearts and minds of the people for it to be actionable. In moments like these, when the masses are agitated and politically awake, a refusal to contend with the resonance of Odinga and ODM’s appeal to the masses would be foolhardy. In doing so, we effectively cede the masses to the right-wing forces which are already out-organizing us, filling the vacuum that Odinga left with decidedly reactionary tribalist populist politics. Worse still, a reductionist approach to the reforms won by Odinga and his contemporaries and their dismissal as irrelevant to the broader struggle, especially as we face a global and national resurgence of fascism, are nigh on fatal. These meager victories and freedoms can, and likely will, be rolled back in the days and years ahead, absent a strong progressive force to counter state excesses.

All this considered, those of us within the conscious camp must treat this moment as a lesson—to preserve historic developments for future generations, and to reorient our privileges, our analysis, and our resources toward the advancement of the cause. Yes, we must be capable of discerning true revolutionaries from liberals and reactionaries, but of more importance is understanding how individuals fighting for liberation are transformed by different historical conditions, and assuming the task of dismantling the systems that compel compromise. As Patrick Gathara noted in his recent article on Al Jazeera on Odinga, “The true tragedy, however, lies not in his compromises, but in a system that made, and continues to make, integrity nearly impossible. Despite his tremendous achievements which made him stand out among his contemporaries, not just in Kenya but across the continent and the globe, his trajectory sadly traced a path that too many of Kenya’s—and Africa’s—most promising politicians have walked.”

“Every generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.” Ultimately, in the tradition of Fanon’s dictum, the Rt. Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga and his comrades played their part in the struggle of their generation, and we in turn enjoy a freer, more just Kenya for it. All serious organizers and left intellectuals in Kenya, the continent and beyond must continue to examine his record with honesty and diligence. However, it mustn’t be forgotten that, in this urgent moment in the country’s history, it remains our responsibility to pick the baton from where it has been laid down and to beat our own narrow path towards fulfilling the mission of our generation, as our descendants are watching and waiting, deserving of an even freer and more just society. May Raila Amolo Odinga rest in glory. Long Live Kenya! Long Live Africa!