A legacy of resistance to oppression

When history’s tides shall silt in the books, they shall in no doubt eulogise the legend of Wambui Otieno-Mbugua. I too here walk on egg shells at the fall of a giant, an empress who renounced her dynasty for a popular nationalistic cause. Yet what shall history write when she has already cast her name on stone with blood and sacrifice? Etched in blood and sweat deep in the blood-spattered Aberdares of the 1950s are accounts that extol Wambui’s virtues as a defiant teenage girl from an elite household (the dynasty of Waiyaki wa Hinga), educated at the best African girls school in colonial Kenya, a practicing Christian, uncircumcised (she refused to), daughter of a police inspector who gave up the comforts of complacency to join the Mau Mau.

This daughter of a Kikuyu and an Ogiek (her mother) took oath as a Mau Mau. She stole guns, fought alongside the men in the forest and traversed long distances by foot conducting espionage missions and gathering intelligence from British troops while coordinating a network of female agents who funneled information to the Mau Mau high command. An ancient legend of Kenyans for Kenya.

So effective and notorious was Wambui that she was arrested by the British in 1955 but later released thanks to her sassy mouth. In the coming years she would be rearrested and ordered to report for weekly interrogations in her home village. Detentions and weekly interrogations only made her stouter in the the Mau Mau cause. In her nationalism, she joined the Kenya African National Union and was elected head of the women's wing.

The British government would have none of it, Wambui was arrested and detained at Lamu Island where she was brutally raped by Chief Inspector Rudolph Speed and tortured. She surprised Kenyan women when upon her release in 1961 she demanded the prosecution of her rapist. Such was unheard of: some lowly creature, some woman, some native savage going against a white aristocrat? But trust Wambui to fight like a lioness, like a Mau Mau veteran until Inspector Rudolph resigned and fled jurisdiction to avoid charges.

A reasonable man would think that the torture and detention would deter her. But the plucky daughter of Waiyaki still hid guns for the Mau Mau between her legs as she took them for repair. Worse still, at the height of colonialism when black natives were not allowed to step inside the Thorn Tree Restaurant, now Stanley Hotel, Wambui did the unthinkable that would eventually lead to the opening of the hotel to all races. With a fellow female activist, she matched right into the hotel amidst security protests and proceeded to stand on a table!. As was expected, the white manager in rage slapped her. The incident was the subject of national and international media coverage which exposed the evil of colonial racism.

In the crowded streets of pre-independence downtown Nairobi, Wambui joined in the frenzied demonstrations, choral and dramatic productions choreographed by Luo activists who Wambui had nothing but love for. So much was her transethnic strength that Wambui brushed aside public ethnic biases and married a fine Luo criminal lawyer, SM Otieno.

Any student of law must encounter Wambui’s court case, which threw light on the problems and position of women in the Kenya. Law has often been either ambivalent about traditional beliefs or allowed gender discrimination. That is why Wambui lost the fight to bury her husband at their home in Ngong. She refused to attend the funeral in Siaya but later immortalized her husband with a mausoleum in Ngong’.

After years of helping shape the women’s movement in Kenya and at the international level, years of trashing Moi’s perpetuation of gender discrimination, Wambui found comfort and boundless love in the arms of Samuel Mbugua, more than 42 years younger than herself. By marrying Mbugua, Wambui opened up a vast space for the Kenyan woman’s freedoms and rights. In particular, she debunked the myth and affirmed that women just like men have a right to choose their own happiness; that they too should enjoy rights and freedoms just like any other person by virtue of being human. This feminist, nationalist and progressive Christian will be sung for reconstructing masculinity. She has unsuccessfully ran for political office, unbowed by dirty patriarchal politics.

When history is written, the SM Otieno’s brothers from the Umira Kager clan will find nothing but ignominy for sticking to an era long gone. As if the infamous SM Otieno case was not enough, one Mr Ougo, a brother to Otieno, demanded that Wambui be buried in Nyalgunga in Siaya according to custom. Such men, such words, such clans represent nothing but what Wambui called in her autobiography ‘men who back a conveniently divisive tribal, patriarchal "tradition"’.

The life and times of Wambui represent a courageous struggle in the turbulence of modern Kenya. My dirge for this legendary daughter of Kenya affirms her positive legacy on issues of gender and ethnicity. She was robustly nationalist, progressive and feminist in groundbreaking ways beyond her times.

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