Word: odinga
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Africans have a superstitious horror of the chameleon, which in Kikuyu is pronounced kipu. It so happens that the initials of Leftist Oginga Odinga's nascent opposition party, the Kenya People's Union, have the same phonetic pronunciation-a fact that President Jomo Kenyatta's political songwriters did not overlook during the nation's three-week special election campaign. All through Kikuyuland last month, Jomo's ardent KANU party youth-wingers chanted a 20-verse warning against the abhorrent turncoats of the "chameleon party," punctuating each stanza with guttural cries of "moto, moto, moto!"-meaning...
Take the problem of Oginga Odinga, the powerful leftist who last month resigned as Vice President, bolted the ruling Kenya African National Union, and took 27 other members of Parliament with him to form his own opposition party. Although Jomo still had a clear majority in the 130-member House, Odinga's revolt was the first serious challenge to the political unity on which the Mzee (Old Man) has based his rule. Kenyatta's answer was to cut Odinga down to size, and his slices were as quick, neat and deadly as those of a Mau Mau panga...
...constitutional amendment forcing the rebels to resign their seats and run for office again, this time against KANU's powerful opposition instead of with its support. Then, before a mass rally in Nairobi last week, he produced four former Mau Mau leaders who told the shocked crowd that Odinga had offered them nearly $500,000 to return to the forests to fight Kenyatta. "If you play around with me," warned the Mzee, "you'll be playing around with a lion." So saying, he reshuffled his Cabinet, putting pro-West moderates into all posts formerly held by Odinga...
Last week Odinga got his comeup pance. In a series of finely tuned politi cal maneuvers, Kenyatta expelled elev en of his Iron Curtain friends, stage-managed a reorganization of the KANU party that abolished Odinga's job as deputy president and elected eight regional vice presidents in his place -all of them anti-Odinga. A small group of Odinga fanatics resigned to form their own opposition party, but it was a ges ture so hopeless that Odinga himself refused to join them...
...purge against left-wing elements as such," explained one of Kenyatta's new vice presidents."It was a purge against those left-wing elements who were receiving advice and cash from Communists outside the country." That, to Kenyatta's mind, had been the main trouble with Odinga...