I have been writing obituaries so frequently in the past year that I am beginning to feel there are no more adjectives left to appreciate the lives of fallen comrades. But somehow one has to find the words, both as part of grieving and also in defiance of death, to remind us that the thief of all thieves, while it may rob us of loved ones, will not be able to rob us of their memories too.

On Saturday, 26 October, 2006 they buried a very dear comrade and friend: Dr Wanjiru Kihoro. Unfortunately I could not be at the funeral but did attend two public testimonials (one an evening of political tributes and the other a funral service on Heroe’s day, both in Nairobi) as part of the farewell to Wanjiru. She was buried in the land of her ancestors in the picturesque Kikiyu District of Nyeri, Kenya. Wanjiru had been in a coma for over three years and nine months since she suffered severe injuries in a plane crash early 2003. A number of prominent politicians, including MPs in the newly triumphant NARC-Kenya government, died in the accident.

For all these years, friends and relatives, but especially her incredibly optimistic husband and comrade, Wanyiri Kihoro, and her father took turns by her side at the National Hospital in Nairobi. They all hoped against hope and prayed for her recovery. Any small sign of attentiveness no matter how dim was interpreted as a sign of her ‘coming back to us’. Friends and relatives were encouraged to visit her and talk to her normally with the hope that one voice, or a cacophony of recognizable voices, might jolt her sensory nerves back to life.

I was one of those fearful friends who dreaded going to see Wanjiru while she lay in bed. A few times, I had synchronized my contact with Wanyiri to coincide with the closing hours for hospital visits so that I could be disallowed but could wait for Wanyiri to get out so that we could sit and chat. One such night on my way from Kla we ended up sitting up till after 2.00am. Instead of me giving him words of encouragement it was Wanyiri who was cheering me up, insisting that I must go and see Wanjiru, talk to her , even syndicate our political arguments, jokes, saying that maybe it would help.

About eight weeks ago, a mutual friend and comrade, Micheline, who had worked with Wanjiru at the Africa Centre, Akina Mama Wa Africa and Abantu, who is now
Africa Director of UNFIFEM in New York, came to Nairobi. She dragged me and her husband, James Oparo, who was as squeamish as me, to go and see Wanjiru instead of meeting up with Wanyiri after the closing hours.

And I am now glad I went again. We spent quite a long time with her, Mzee and Wanyiri chatting, being nostalgic and generally doing the usual exchange of hot political gossip that political activists are known for. Of course the Wanjiru on the bed was not the Wanjiru we had known. She was much smaller but the machines monitoring her heart beat became very agitated and Wanyiri explained to us that it meant she could hear us and was trying to respond.

After looking after a terminally ill person for a long time carers tend to become both medical doctors and believers in miracles. Wanyiri’s father in law and Wanyiri were virtually part of the hospital establishment. It was an act of spousal and parental devotion that is rarely seen these days.

Any African who was in the UK from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s would have known or heard about Wanjiru. She was very active in the Kenyan and Pan African struggles of those years. She was a pioneer African feminist working both for the liberation of Africa and the emancipation of African Women. At a time when many progressive groups paper over the gender dimension of struggles by declaring the revolution the only target, she and her fellow pioneering sisters formed AMWA and were insistent that the liberation of the African Woman should not be delayed until victory came. She was also an early mobilizer and organizer for what we called disdainfully in those days, ‘bourgeois democracy’. She believed in and worked for a democratic Kenya at a time when many of us thought we could use AK47 to shoot our way to State Lodges and rain down Socialism from above! She built solidarity with all kinds of progressive groups be they African, Latin American, Asian or European, believing and putting into practice the unity of progressive humanity in the face of national oppression and imperialism.

She was a mobiliser, organizer, agitator but also very enterprising. While she was ideologically and intellectually on the Nkrumah and WEB du Bois side of Pan Africanism, she was organizationally in the Garveyite tradition of creating independent economic bases for political struggle. She would organize Whip rounds, Harambe, individual taxation, fee paying get-togethers, sales of publications, auctions, and others all to support the struggle.

Most of the famous and not so famous Kenyan politicians that I know today were influenced by Wanjiru. The Kihoro’s little flat in Union Street, Clapham North, became both a haven and transit lounge for Kenyan activists running away from the authoritarian killer government of Moi and KANU. Wanjiru would organize for them to meet other Kenyans and Africans, members of the British establishment (Conservative or Labor), human rights groups, Diaspora lobbies, and others. She was capable of remaining in solidarity with comrades who had fallen out and even those fighting against governments like Jerry’s Ghana or the NRM in Uganda, with whom she had close personal and political associates.

When her husband, Wanyiri, was arrested in Kenya and detained without trial in the infamous Nyayo detention centre (a place built in the basement of a huge shopping complex without people suspecting for a long time that human beings were being tortured under their feet as they do their shopping) Wanjiru did not become a grieving exile widow but used his incarceration and torture to focus international attention on the deplorable human rights situation in Kenya. At that time Kenya was darling of the West. Moi was regarded as ‘moderate African leader’, provided military bases for the West and throughout the Cold War was on the right side of Washington and London. In return, his masters rewarded him with aid and loans. Western tourists and INGOs trooped to Kenya.

So close was the relationship with the British that throughout the 1980s the Thatcher government and later the Major government never allowed any big peaceful demonstration in front of the Kenyan High Commission. They used to allow only 12 demonstrators at a time. We used to organize 12 hour non-stop demos and the Kenyan security would film the 12 of us for those 12 hours! So complete was the hold of Moi/KANUon Kenyans that Wanjiru and her comrades could not raise 12 Kenyans for the demonstrations. The Kenyan regulars were usually Wanjiru and her comrades in the UKENYA and UMOJA external groupings for the Kenyan pro-Democracy Movement including Mwakenya. They included Yusuf Hassan, Wangui Wa Goro, Shiraz Duraini and Adulatif Abdallah. Ngugi wa Thiongo, after his release from detention without trial, became the titular leader of these groups. People like Irungu Houghton provided the back-stopping secretariat. Of course there were numerous other Africans, especially Nigerians and Ghanaians, allied to the Africa Research and Information Bureau (ARIB) and the journal, Africa World Review (AWR) and also those in the Solidarity movement on Kenya the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya ably led by the Trinidadian writer and publisher, John La Rose of New Beacon Books who, also sadly passed away early this year.

As Wanjiru is laid to rest I salute her courage in staying the course of the struggle and living to see a Kenya free of Moi and KANU rule. But I regret that she did not live long enough to enjoy the benefits of democracy for which she fought and sacrificed so much - ultimately her life, and am sadder still that many of the political leaders in Kenya today have forgotten so soon the pains and groans of the masses that brought them to power, and are behaving in a way that may make KANU seem electable again.

Since she died, there have been so many eulogies and praises from all kinds of people (many well meaning and deserving) but there are many from people shedding crocodile tears - especially politicians who betrayed the struggle – as well as those she helped bring to power who forgot about her as she lay wasting on the hospital bed I am sure Wanjiru would not have been surprised about this since she did not engage in the struggle because she wanted to be acknowledged. She was not without her own contradictions and weaknesses like all of us mortals. And for anyone engaged in struggle there were bound to be mistakes and misjudgments because the only person who does not make mistakes is the person who does nothing.

Sleep well Wanjiru, You did your best and your best was more than enough in one lifetime. Adieux Mama Pambana!

• Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

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