This archive report was first published on 27 November 2019.
On March 9, 2018, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Opposition leader Raila Odinga shocked the nation with a surprise handshake deal. In a rare revelation, the two leaders have shared previously unknown details about the 19-hour meeting that brokered the deal.
Speaking at the launch of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) taskforce report at the Bomas of Kenya, Mr. Odinga revealed that they held talks for 19 hours to put an end to the tension and anxiety that had gripped the nation at the time.
President Kenyatta described the meeting as a highly tense moment, coming face-to-face with a man with whom he had traded all manner of insults in the run-up to the disputed 2017 elections.
Mr. Odinga recalled, “It took 19 hours and it was not easy, as the president will explain to you later because we had called each other names.”
President Kenyatta disclosed that the meeting began with only him and Mr. Odinga behind closed doors, with a tense moment of silence lasting an hour before the real conversation began.
He revealed, “When we met with Mr. Odinga, we took tea for almost 45 minutes without having any discussion. All we could ask each other was how is home… how is your wife… how are the kids? There was nothing else we could talk about because of the anger from the insults we had been hurling at each other.”
After hours of deliberations, the two leaders resolved to call for a ceasefire and invited lawyers to compile their views before making their unity deal public.
Mr. Odinga said, “Eventually after all that long deliberation, we agreed we have something we can put together. We invited lawyers to come and put our views together. We told them exactly what we thought was wrong with our society and what needed to be corrected and we gave them the responsibility of putting it together.”
Following the handshake on the steps of Harambee House, the political tension that had left the nation at the brink of anarchy was wiped away.
The Building Bridges Initiative taskforce was formed, collecting views on healing the nation, curing divisive politics, and fostering cohesion in the country for over a year.
