Freedom fighter Wambui Otieno dies aged 75

By Moses Njagih

Former freedom fighter Virginia Wambui Otieno-Mbugua died at Nairobi Hospital where she had been admitted for the past one month.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who received the news from her daughter Gladwell Otieno, when he had gone to pay her a visit at the hospital, communicated the information to the Press.

Raila was devastated to have missed by a few minutes reaching the bedside of Wambui before she passed away on Tuesday afternoon. 

Wambui Otieno during the launch of her autobiography

“She was rightly one of the most renowned Kenyans, from one of Kenya’s great families, which contributed so much to make our freedom possible,” the PM said at Nairobi Hospital.

Having received news of Wambui’s critical illness at 5pm on Tuesday, the PM rushed from his office to see her at the ICU.

Legal battles

He was at the hospital’s gate at 5.35pm when her daughter Gladwell Otieno called to say their mother had passed on.

Raila was among the people who took her body to the mortuary.

Wambui, who died aged 75, has lived a life of controversy, rising from a freedom fighter to a politician, before eventually waging one of the longest legal battles that for years dictated the jurisprudence of the matrimonial property law in Kenya.

Wambui Otieno, as she was commonly known since her marriage to prominent criminal lawyer Silvanus Melea (SM) Otieno, came to the limelight during the struggle for the country’s independence when she was arrested by the colonial forces for mobilising the women’s wing of Mau Mau riots.

Right to bury

A younger sister to freedom fighter, politician and former Foreign Affairs Minister Munyua Waiyaki, Wambui was sent to a detention camp in Lamu Island for her involvement in the activities of the outlawed group.

The controversial life of the late Wambui as a freedom fighter is well captured in her autobiography Mau Mau Daughter: A Life History.

While the struggle for independence shaped Wambui, it was the battle that she put up, claiming the right to bury her husband SM Otieno, when the prominent lawyer died on December 20, 1986, that propelled her to the limelight.

After her husband’s death, drama began pitting Wambui against her in-laws, led by SM’s brother

Wambui marries Peter Mbugua in 2003. Photo: File/Standard

Joash Ochieng Ougo and members of Umira Kager clan.

They stood against Wambui’s claim to have the right to bury her deceased husband.

The case gripped public attention with full transcripts of the court’s proceedings reported daily in newspapers. The importance and high stakes in the case were evident in the large crowds that awaited the court’s outcome.

As the case swayed from side to side, demonstrations were held in the streets, both to protest and appreciation of the line the case was taking.

Wambui relied on a claim she had made to the court that her deceased husband wanted to be buried at their farm in Ngong in the outskirts of Nairobi where they were living, while his clan claimed the body on the grounds of long-standing customs.

Six months

As tension increased between customary law, dictated by ethnic and traditional backing, versus the statutory law, largely borrowed from former colonial powers, Wambui remained pensive for about six months awaiting the outcome of the case.

But the court dealt her a blow after it ordered that Otieno’s remains be handed to the Umira Kager clan for burial at his Nyalgunga village in Siaya County.

Otieno was buried on May 23, 1987.

But it is not only the case that shaped the controversies of the Mau Mau hero.

She briefly rose to prominence in July 2003, when she controversially married stonemason Peter Mbugua, who, age 25, was 42 years younger than Wambui.

Unsuccessful

Many of their relatives attacked the marriage since Wambui was viewed to be old enough to be her husband’s grandmother. The two, however, defended their union despite the raging debate.

During the 1997 elections, she unsuccessfully vied for the Kamukunji Constituency parliamentary seat on NDP ticket, while in 2007, she founded a new political party, Kenya People’s Convention Party, on which she fruitlessly vied for the Kajiado North Constituency parliamentary seat.