Odinga entered politics in , when he became a member of Kenya's legislative council. After hearing a speech by the future leader of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, Odinga became his devoted follower. In , Kenyatta was jailed by the British, and during Kenyatta's years in detention Odinga became one of the most outspoken resistance leaders calling for his release. In the first African elections for the legislature in , Odinga won election in his home district of central Nyanza.
A major British effort to control Kenya's evolution in peaceful fashion was the Lancaster House Conference of A unified African delegation attended and accepted the conference's decisions as a step on the path to independence.
But when the delegates returned to Kenya, rivalries shattered the unity of the African politicians, with Odinga emerging as one of the leaders of the radical group of dissatisfied Africans. Kenya gained independence in December , and Kenyatta, a member of the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest ethnic group, became president. Odinga, a leader of the second largest ethnic group, the Luo, was appointed minister for home affairs in , and in he became vice-president.
Odinga increasingly opposed KANU's direction after the merger, which in his opinion helped turn the government's policies to the right. He openly challenged the government's use of private and foreign investment capital and its close ties with the West.
He was left out of decision making, and in a KANU reorganization conference abolished his post of party vice-president. The KPU faced government harassment, and some of its leaders were jailed. In October , Odinga was jailed by the government on the charge of organizing a demonstration which turned into a riot.
The KPU was banned, and Odinga stayed in prison for 15 months. Odinga remained an opposition leader throughout the s. But when Odinga was reinstated into the party in , he attacked Moi and Kenyatta as corrupt and protested U. In , the party again banished Odinga and amended the constitution to make Kenya officially a one-party state.
Throughout the s, international criticism of KANU's human rights record grew and Odinga remained vocal in calling for democracy. Born in in the far west of Kenya, near the shores of the Victoria Nyanza, Odinga was one of the earliest to be sent to an Anglican mission school. He learnt how to combine the new religion with service to his people in boyhood journeys as bag-carrier to the Luo inspector of rural schools, later entered into close but critical relations with his white mission teachers, was involved in school strikes over food and clothing regulations, became a dedicated teacher himself and a businessman, as much concerned to show white and Kikuyu doubters that Luo could run anything as to make money.
He was nicknamed 'Jaramogi' after the legendary founder of his Luo nationality. After the Second World War, he joined the nationalist congress, the Kenya African Union, but was never at its heart; he remained a farmer, rural trader and local councillor and never became a townsman.
His genius lay in mobilising, as president of the Luo Union, the Luo to invest in their own educational and social progress. It was as local boss that he was elected to the Legislative Council in the first African elections in and thereafter, in all the heated politics that led to independence in he remained the rural sheet-anchor of Luo participation in nationalism, outmanoeuvred at the centre by his much younger, streetwise rival for Luo leadership, Tom Mboya.
It was Mboya's access to American funds that drove Odinga to seek links with the People's Republic of China, as much as any ideological conviction. In Odinga became Kenya's first vice-president more by virtue of his ethnic leadership than any political affinity with Kenyatta, who marginalised him. Kenyatta's KANU government did all in its power to suppress the KPU, culminating in with Kenyatta's bodyguard shooting on hostile, but scarcely violent, Luo demonstrators, the banning of the KPU and Odinga's detention for two years.
He never regained Kenyatta's confidence, and any hope of rapprochement with the new president, arap Moi, was dashed by the strong Luo involvement in the attempted Air Force coup in Thereafter, Odinga became increasingly disillusioned with government oppression and corruption, his son Raila being his chief supporter.
It was not until that Odinga acquired the powerful allies that made an organised opposition look plausible, when the Kikuyu ex-cabinet ministers Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia launched a campaign for political pluralism. By early Odinga had reluctantly agreed to play a leading role in FORD - the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy - which sought to unite the opposition.
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