Outlaws and in-laws: Women, wives and money

May 25 is Africa Day. Why should this matter to me, an African woman?

About 24 years ago Richard Otieno Kwach is quoted in the New York Times published on 16 May 1987 to have remarked the following: ‘This is a very fantastic ruling by the court. This goes a long way to confirm the fact that a woman cannot be the head of an African family. Customary law must prevail.’

What was the context of such remarks? Mr Otieno Kwach was commenting on the verdict passed by the highest court in Kenya over a suit brought by Virginia Wambui Otieno following the death of her famous lawyer husband, Silvanio M. Otieno. She, the widow and mother of his children wanted to bury her late husband on the farm they shared together since they married in 1963; the place where he had expressed a desire to be laid to rest. Sadly, her in-laws felt they knew better and fought to have his body extradited to his birthplace to be buried as a Luo.

While denying Mrs Otieno’s wish to bury her husband the Kenya’s Highest Court, the Court of Appeals, declared that his tribe had a stronger claim to Otieno's body than his widow. The legal battle was messy and few in Kenya (openly) supported her stance. By defying her in-laws and the clan, Mrs Otieno had done the unthinkable and had caused herself to fall in disrepute in what remained a conservative and deeply parochial society that refused to acknowledged the revolutionary inclinations of Mrs Otieno and her husband from the time they decided to wed at the dawn of Kenya’s Independence.

Ms Virginia Wambui Otieno did, however, not just melt in the background as her in-laws expected. Following the verdict she issued her own statement and she is quoted in the same NY Times piece to have declared, ‘There is discrimination in Kenya, contrary to the United Nations convention for the elimination of discrimination against women, which Kenya ratified in 1984.’

While many refer to Wambui Otieno as the wife of a big lawyer, many forget she is a personality in her own right. Ironically that fact that she was a prominent personality in her own right and treasurer of the Third UN Conference held in Nairobi in 1985 did not mean she was immune to the very issues the ‘Nairobi Looking Strategies’ sought to address, chief among them being the debilitating gender bias and gender discrimination women faced institutionally and in their constitutional and legal frameworks – and the lack of political will to address the anomaly.

Since Ms Virginia Wambui Otieno uttered these words, little has changed for women in Kenya or Africa. In a press conference in Nairobi on 12 January 1987, she is quoted to have said about her ordeal, ‘Every woman in Kenya should look at this case keenly. There is no need of getting married if this is the way women will be treated when their husbands die’. In protest to the court’s ruling, she boycotted the burial and the rest is history.

Well, almost – until the ghosts the Luos thought they had buried came back to haunt us all. The ongoing row between Teresia Njeri, the widow of marathon runner the late Samuel Wanjiru, and his mother, Anna Wanjiru has for some time been headline news. It is also déjà vu. Indeed this is not the first time Kenya has experienced anguish of this nature after the death of one of their very famous and powerful personalities.

Other than the case involving Ms Wambui Otieno, we can also point to the trauma the wife of the then Kenyan vice president, Michael Kijana Walmalwa, Yvonne, was put through immediately after he died in London where a decision over his burial place also became centre stage.

Of course, there were other aspects of the Wamalwa’s case that I, a non-Kenyan, but a woman of African descent found troubling. It was, for example, particularly shocking, that a nation would sit idly by as their potential first lady (her runner-up status being undone by the demise of her husband) was publicly disrespected in the most humiliating of ways by the trivia of greedy relatives. This was unfathomable even in my ‘backward’ country (as our Nairobi ndugu tend to categorise most of us from Tanzania). After all, Yvonne would be considered Mama wa Taifa (Mother of the Nation) to be accorded her maternal due.

Also, disturbing and deafening was the silence from the feminist, women’s and human rights circles on her assault. Let us remember that this also happened at a time when Kenya had embarked in its Bomas process, and spirits about a new Kenya were high. It seems that most were then preoccupied with scoring political points in the fragile Kenyan’s political reality rather than upsetting the status quo. Yvonne the widow was crucified, while the man who put her in her predicament was absolved of whatever shortcomings he had and declared in countless eulogies a national saint and hero.

After writing a strong rebuke about this experience, I had thought that Kenyans had learnt from their shameful past. At least I expected that the much hyped New Constitution would address some of the anomalies in the legal status of couples to at least minimise the unnecessary legal wrangles that sought to make dead men better Luos than they were in life – or better Muslims for that matter, in the case of my own country, where religion is often used to deny a wife or partner influence over the affairs of her other half upon his demise, irrespective of how they may have chosen to live previously.

Of course the battle presently being waged is between two women in the late Samuel Wanjiru’s life, his mother and partner for about six years. To discredit Njeri, the mother claims another woman is the wife of her son. In the Wamalwa’s case countless women also claimed to be his wives or mothers of his ever-expanding colony of children raising questions about the motivation of such women to suddenly show up and expect recognition and a share of someone else’s inheritance.

I, however, do not see it as solely a problem between two women. Rather, one way we can understand the ongoing saga between the mother of the later Sam Wanjiru and his wife is to approach it as a manifestation of the outcome of having legal and social systems that reduce women to perpetual dependants – as wives or as daughters.

The fact that women are constantly kept in the background and have to prove their entitlement to their spouse/partners wealth even when they acquired the same jointly confirms that, by and large, sexist attitudes still prevail. In Wanjiru’s case this has been amplified because there is BIG money at stake and the mother risks loosing out to the wife under the laws of Kenya. Let us remember that she did get lucky with her son’s success and not while in her matrimonial relationship, which if anything left her struggling.

Thus in order to reduce the possibility of all the money going to the wife, it is strategic to accuse her of killing her husband. But if this seems flimsy she can bring in other women who can also contest for what there is and, maybe through them, as the ‘protective mother-in-law’, she is in a stronger position to negotiate a handsome share for herself.

But why should she resort to such measures? Shouldn’t a grieving mother be more interested in the welfare of his offspring? I am reluctant to blame the mother-in-law directly, even though I am disgusted by her behaviour. I understand that it is the system of inequality that has prompted her to lash for survival the way she has. If the laws on matrimonial property were fairer, mothers and daughters-in-law would not have to fight one another for the scraps, which commonly men control with little consideration of what becomes of their wives and children when they are dead

Had the legal system fully recognised the status of a wife, as it does of a husband, then other relatives would have no locus to meddle in matrimonial affairs they played little part in while the marriage lasted, but who, when it ends, feel a great urge to play financial adviser or managers, so that they can access hard-won wealth to the exclusion of those to whom it should really belong.

Incidentally, the death of Samuel Wanjiru from a tragic fall happened a few hours after the former International Monetary Fund Chief, Mr Strauss-Kahn also fell from grace after being charged of sexually assaulting an immigrant woman of African descent in a New York hotel near Times Square on 14 May. The coincidence of the two men falling tragically led me to ponder whether African women have to traverse great oceans to get some semblance of justice?

Why does justice at home remain elusive for the majority of women in Africa? Why is personal security such a struggle for women in Africa living in conflict zones, as well as in countries that are relatively stable and peaceful? In the DRC, for example, there are massive allegations of rape instigated by different power bases- be they government, militia, or rebels. Although the use of rape as a weapon of war has been condemned, we are yet to hear of women from affected communities winning legal victories over their rapists or violators even though the physical and emotional scars are still too evident to ignore.

In the Sudan, Northern Uganda and most recently North African women face countless sexual violations in political reprisals between opposing political factions. In South Africa, it is now just dangerous to be a woman – period. The risk of being violated is too high, whether straight or gay. In fact women who have expressed their sexual identity have been gang-raped or killed for not making themselves accessible exclusively for the male organ. These crimes are largely silenced and by so being they are normalised, regularised and condoned.

Alas, the mental and institutional psyche in the continent remains sexist and as such violence against women is not just normalised but is upheld as a symbol of the dominant patriarchal institution. It is also an institution that Africans purport to support unreservedly, although one wonders what would have happened if men were the ones on the receiving end and women were entitled to all the unquestioned privileges men currently enjoy.

Again, I ask, will African women have to traverse great oceans to get justice? Or some respect? I do not say this naively but intentionally. Surely it is telling that on the other side of the Atlantic, a yet unnamed African woman has so far managed to do the impossible: Her allegations of sexual assault have managed to put one of the most powerful figures representing capitalist hegemony behind bars. He has subsequently resigned his post resulting in a flurry of political activity both in his native France and in the IMF.

Already there are numerous theories about a set up, against Mr Strauss Kahn. That is not what interests me here. What I wish to focus on is how an insignificant immigrant woman was able first to get her own establishment/employer to take her seriously about her complaint; then to act on an allegation of an assault from a ‘powerful’ client; and they in turn were able to get the law enforcement system in motion to act and get this important man off his plane to answer the charges before him all in a matter of hours.

I wonder how many victims and survivors of sexual and other types of gender based violence are able to get the system to respond this quickly, especially when they are the ones without the money to trigger money happy forms of justice. Certainly, it is in sharp contrast to my own experience with the law enforcement and justice system even when the assault is not a mere allegation but happens in plain sight and thus not in dispute as to whether it happened or not.

Largely in Africa, the legal and judicial systems continue to fail womenfolk as they uphold the status quo through their pronouncements as well as their lived practice. Cases such as those of Wanjiru are but a reflection of the state in which our realities as women are predicated. Sadly, it is a reality that most of our leaders, officially or unofficially, conform to making the prospect of tying the bell on the cat’s neck a hard prospect. Fidelity? Monogamy? Will-writing? Joint ownership? These are concepts alien even to the most highly educated of the ruling class. Wamalwa was no exception nor was Wanjiru and possibly countless others ‘bright, brilliant, exceptional and talented’ men.

I ask again how can Africa women celebrate Africa Day if African women fail to be celebrated in the most intimate of spaces such as in the family or their communities? How can future Africa Days commemorated in the midst of the Women’s Decade signal Africa Women’s emancipation?

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