MEET KENYA'S EARLY LEADERS.

ERIC EDWARD KHASAKHALA: THE LOYALIST WHO NEVER ROSE 

Eric Edward Khasakhala’s political life reads less like a triumphalist independence story and more like a quiet indictment of how power actually works in Kenya. He was present at the creation of the republic, sat in the rooms where the future was negotiated, and helped assemble the machinery of the postcolonial state. Yet when authority was finally distributed, he remained permanently adjacent to it—useful, visible, but never decisive.

He entered politics from education, not agitation. Where many of his contemporaries rose through confrontation and theatrical defiance, Khasakhala came armed with administration, discipline, and belief in institutions. He believed that independence would be secured not merely by removing colonial rulers but by building systems that could outlive personalities. That belief shaped his career and ultimately limited it. Kenya’s early political order did not reward builders; it rewarded consolidators.

As a senior KADU figure, Khasakhala backed federalism at a time when the momentum of history was moving in the opposite direction. The postcolonial elite wanted a strong center, not empowered regions. When KADU collapsed into KANU, Khasakhala crossed over, but the suspicion never lifted. Federalists were tolerated as a gesture of national unity, not embraced as equals. He survived politically, but survival came at the cost of influence.

His tenure in education revealed both his strengths and his fatal misreading of Kenyan politics. As Assistant Minister for Education, he pursued the unglamorous work of restructuring early education and expanding local capacity. While others courted donors and scholarships abroad, he focused on schools at home. It was sound policy but poor spectacle. In a political culture that rewarded visibility over durability, his achievements were too quiet to protect him.

For all his conciliatory instincts, Khasakhala was unyielding when it came to land and identity. His defense of Bunyore interests, particularly during the Maseno debates, exposed the limits of post-independence unity. Parliament was civil on the surface, but beneath it lay unresolved colonial boundaries and ethnic competition. When Khasakhala refused to retreat, he crossed an invisible line. The system can forgive ambition; it rarely forgives defiance without numbers.

His greatest political loyalty became his greatest vulnerability. His close association with Tom Mboya placed him on the wrong side of power after Mboya’s assassination. In a period defined by fear and consolidation, neutrality was impossible. Khasakhala did not renounce friendships or rewrite his past to please the regime. He attended the funeral. He remained visible. He was quietly marked. From then on, advancement ended. He would serve, but he would not rise.

The 1969 electoral defeat was less a personal failure than a warning shot. It demonstrated that seniority offered no protection in a system increasingly hostile to independent political bases. Courts provided no remedy, and the lesson was unmistakable: legitimacy now flowed from the center, not the electorate. Though he later returned to Parliament, the rules had changed. By the time of the mlolongo elections, his fate was administrative rather than democratic.

Under Moi, Khasakhala was managed with courtesy and containment. Assistant ministerial roles, cultural leadership, ceremonial respect—enough to honor his history, never enough to empower his future. Others with sharper elbows and looser loyalties rose past him. He remained faithful, even when faith brought no reward.

In the end, Khasakhala’s career exposes a hard truth about Kenyan politics: integrity may earn admiration, but it rarely earns power. He was too principled to conspire, too loyal to defect, too restrained to dominate. He believed politics could be ethical in a system built on calculation.

In death, the nation gathered to praise what it had sidelined in life. Unity was proclaimed, virtues celebrated, loyalty honored. But the applause came too late to alter the verdict of his career. Eric Edward Khasakhala did not fail in politics. Politics failed to find use for a man like him.