By Moses Oburu
On Thursday, Siaya Governor James Orengo was out in the streets alongside demonstrators, carrying the Kenyan flag and standing shoulder to shoulder with citizens demanding accountability and justice.
At a time when many leaders prefer the safety of boardrooms and carefully scripted statements, Orengo chose to be where the action was. It was a reminder that some politicians still believe leadership is a contact sport, not a spectator event.
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For more than four decades, he has remained a familiar figure in Kenya’s struggle for democracy, constitutionalism and civil liberties.
Orengo was in the trenches long before it became fashionable to speak the language of reforms.
When many of today’s loudest freedom fighters were still learning the alphabet, Orengo was already challenging powerful regimes and paying the price for it.
From his days as a student leader at the University of Nairobi (UoN) to his detention during the one-party era and his prominent role in the push for multiparty democracy and constitutional reforms, Orengo has consistently been associated with the fight for greater political freedoms.
Whether in Parliament, the courts or on the streets, he has rarely been far from the centre of Kenya’s democratic struggles.
Like an old baobab tree that has weathered countless storms, he has remained standing through changing political seasons. He has been detained, vilified, celebrated and criticised, yet he has never entirely abandoned the causes he believed in.
There is also a touch of satire in Thursday’s events. In a political landscape crowded with leaders who issue revolutionary statements from air-conditioned offices, Orengo was physically present in the streets. It was a striking contrast between those who merely narrate the struggle and those who have actually lived it.
One may agree or disagree with Orengo’s politics, but history demands honesty. Few Kenyan leaders can claim to have carried the torch of political reform for as long, or as consistently, as he has.
As the saying goes, give people their flowers while they are alive. Yesterday, Orengo reminded the nation that some old lions still have a roar left in them.
-Mr Oburu is a journalist.
