It has been 30 years since one of the most sensational court cases in the history of modern Kenya took centre stage at the High Court in Nairobi.
The feud over Olympic Boxing gold medallist Robert Napunyi Wangila’s burial turned into a dramatic case, which had all the makings of a soap opera. The case turned a Nairobi City Council cleaner, Eunice Moraa Mabeche, into a household name and set several young lawyers on the trajectory for greater things.
Among the lawyers involved at different levels during the case were retired Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, former Deputy Chief Justice Nancy Baraza, current Court of Appeal Judge, Abida Ali-Aroni, Kenya’s oldest practising lawyer Dr John Khaminwa and constitutional lawyer and senior counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi.
Newly appointed Justice Andrew Hayanga presided over the case. Hayanga, now deceased, would become famous for breaking legal ground and fundamentally altering the country’s jurisprudence in the case Dominic Arony Amolo v AG (2003). Hayanga’s ruling in favour of the claimant in that case would become, as one reporter wrote in The Star after his death, “The genesis of the countless court decisions that awarded damages to former political prisoners who sued government for compensation citing past injustices, dating years and decades back.”
It all began with an incident in a boxing ring far away in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 24, 1994. This event would drag me, then a young, upcoming reporter, to a front-row seat in a long-drawn-out-court case in Nairobi.
Wangila was Kenya’s first, and so far, only Olympic boxing gold medallist. To get there he had leapfrogged Kenyan boxing greats such as Philip Waruinge, who won Kenya’s first boxing bronze medal at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, and Stephen Muchoki who punched his way to a gold medal at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada.
Wangila trumped both these greats in his quest for glory with his gold medal at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea, where he brought home the gold in the welterweight category. He thus became the only boxer from Africa south of the Sahara, and north of the Limpopo, to have won Olympic gold in boxing.
After this feat, Wangila set his sights on professional boxing in 1989. Wangila had a decent career until the night of his last fight. During the bout, Wangila, 28, was beaten so badly that the referee was forced to stop the match in favour of Gonzalez, even as a battered Wangila protested about the match being stopped.
Shortly after the abandoned bout, Wangila, who had by now returned to his dressing room, collapsed, fell into a coma, and was pronounced dead 36 hours later. Back in Kenya, people were shocked and saddened by the news. A glittering future had ended in a volley of blows, and a young person with a future was no more.
Just as a saddened nation prepared to move on, however, a drama about who would bury Wangila broke out and refocussed Kenya’s attention on the family, ancestry, ethnicity and faith dynamics of the departed hero. The first issue that emerged was a question about Wangila’s religion. According to evidence that would later be adduced in court, some time before his death and while living in the United States, Wangila had converted from Christianity to Islam. As a result of this conversion, his last will and testament requested that he be buried according to Muslim rites, a wish that his widow, Grace Akinyi, herself a non-Muslim, wanted to fulfil.
However, the boxer’s will was challenged by Wangila’s mother Moraa, and by two men from Kisii whom she had been married to, both of whom claimed to be the champ’s father. The trio, who would become known as the Kisii claimants, wanted to have a say in where and how the burial should take place.
There would soon emerge a claim raised by members of a clan from Samia, who said they were representing a dead person they professed to be Wangila’s father. This group would come to be known as the Luhya claimants.
In May that year, after a four-year stint at the Sunday Times, I began working at the Weekly Review, then the pinnacle of Kenyan print journalism. When the Wangila matter ended up in court in August 1994, I was assigned to cover the case. At that point I had little experience covering court cases, and hardly any interest in sport. However, I was determined to report the case and make my bones, as it were.
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The issues before the court
As I wrote in the Weekly Review of 19 August 1994, “Matters came to a head on August 5, when Wangila’s mother, Eunice Moraa Mabeche, Mr John Mabeche, the man Moraa alleges is the late boxer’s father, and Mr Karani Ang’ira Kanyimbo, who claims to be Wangila’s biological father, went to the High Court where Mr Justice Andrew Hayanga granted them a temporary injunction restraining Akinyi from burying the body.”
Moraa, her then husband Mabeche, and Kanyimbo, the man she said had been her husband when Wangila was born, wanted the boxer to be buried in Kisii with all the attendant Abagusii community funeral rites. Their lawyers were Paul Buti, Charles Nyachae, Abel Ogenche and Patrick Kiage.
At the same time three men from Busia, John Nandike Bwire, Washington Wafula and David Wandera, filed a plaint against Moraa seeking an injunction to stop the burial.
The three men said they represented, the late Daudi Magero Obuke, the man they claimed was Wangila’s “real” father, and wanted him buried in Busia according to the Samia community rites. This request was made through their lawyer, Dr John Khaminwa.
The two injunctions were later consolidated and the hearing date was set for 11 August 1994.
When the matter came to court, it was claimed in court papers that Wangila and Akinyi had been divorced two years before his death, in May 1992. It was also alleged that since the divorce from Wangila, Akinyi had been married twice.
There was also the matter concerning Akbar Muhammed, a boxing promoter and talent scout who had taken Wangila to the US in 1989. Muhammed said he had organised to bring the hero’s body back to Kenya from the US and was demanding US$25,000 (which at the time was about KSh 1 million).
He claimed that this is what it had cost him to have Wangila’s body embalmed and repatriated. In his claim he wanted to be paid by Akinyi and the officials of the Wangila national burial committee, which included lawyers Willy Mutunga and Memba Muriuki among others.
Mutunga would later become Kenya’s Chief Justice after the promulgation of the 2010 Constitution. He has since retired. Muriuki is currently chairperson of the International Pistol Shooting Confederation (IPSC) Kenya.
On the eve of the court hearing, a third party, the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem), was enjoined in the case. Their lawyer was Ahmednasir Abdullahi. As representatives of the Muslim community, this group wanted a burial at the Kariokor cemetery under Muslim rites.
Meanwhile, Mutunga, who had been named executor of Wangila’s will, was also enjoined in the case and he was represented by his lawyer Betty Murungi. Akinyi was represented by a battery of lawyers led by Murtaza Jaffer, Nancy Baraza, Abida Ali, Swaleh Kanyeki, Grace Githu, Memba Muriuki and Betty Mwenesi.
Highlights of the case
As the case began on 11 August, my initial observation of the case was that on the face of it, the tale of a dead hero and three “fathers” would have been almost too bizarrely strange for fiction, had it not been so serious and real. Judge Hayanga had to decide on a complex web of issues amid strong feelings from all sides.
The matters before him and how he ruled on them were: What was Wangila’s personal law, Muslim or Luhya? Did the plaintiffs Moraa, Mabeche and Kanyimbo, Bwire, Wafula and Wandera have locus standi? Did the widow, Grace Akinyi or the executor of the will Dr Willy Mutunga have the right to dispose of Wangila’s body? If Wangila was a Muslim, did the Muslim community have the right to bury him according to Muslim law and practice? Where would Wangila be buried? Had Wangila’s will taken effect and if so, what were the legal consequences? Who was going to pay the cost of the suit?
Court Room No. 4 of the High Court was packed to the rafters every day of the proceedings. What follows are some of the dramatic and memorable moments of the case.
Relative wealth and poverty
Although by Kenyan standards at the time Wangila was not a poor man, he was not exactly flush with cash either. His mother Moraa and the three men claiming him as their son, however, pleaded poverty when the question of money came up.
The money issue was dealt with during preliminary hearings, which were held in open court and came about when Dr Mutunga brought up the fact that Wangila only owned one asset, a house in Nairobi’s South ’C’ estate worth KSh 1.5 million. Mutunga feared that the property would not cover the costs of the suit.
Jaffer, appearing for Akinyi, suggested that Moraa and the three men claiming to be Wangila’s father, deposit between KSh 2 and 3 million with the court to cover incidental costs pending the determination of the matter. He argued that it would be unfair to expect the widow, Akinyi, to bear unnecessary expenses that would burden the estate. It was never quite clear to me how he expected Moraa, who held a menial job as a cleaner with the Nairobi City Council, to have access to such sums.
Meanwhile, Buti, for the Kisii claimants, retorted that an argument for costs did not constitute a preliminary objection because a ruling on it could not dispose of the issue of the case. He argued that it would be improper to remove parties from bringing suits just because they were poor.
Justice Hayanga agreed with Buti that it was improper to argue the issue of costs and damages as a preliminary objection. On the issue of the poverty of the plaintiffs, Hayanga said their poverty had not been proved and that, in any case, the obligation they were called on to meet was not definite and nor had they been asked to meet it.
The judge remarked that Mr Khaminwa, like Miss Murungi, had argued strongly that the plaintiffs were poor, even though there had been no evidence of their poverty. Hayanga caused laughter when he added, “If anything, they are competently and lavishly represented in these proceedings.”
A question of faith
During the first day of the case, the issue of Wangila’s faith came up. Akinyi’s lawyer Jaffer argued that his client had told interested parties that her husband was a Muslim, and could not therefore be buried by non-Muslims.
Referring to Wangila’s contentious 1990 will, Jaffer said the deceased made express wishes about where his remains were to be taken and by whom. He argued that Akinyi was neither from the Kisii nor the Luhya communities. He added that while as a non-Muslim she might have been expected to be hostile to the idea of a Muslim burial, all Akinyi wanted was to respect her late husband’s wishes to be buried with the dignity and honour he deserved.
Jaffer pointed out, however, that the Muslim community, which had been enjoined as defendants in the suit, could not decide where Wangila was to be buried. All they would be expected to do would be to conduct Islamic rights during the burial. He told the court that Wangila had converted to Islam in 1990 while in America, but that he had been advised not to change his name, so as not to confuse his fans and admirers. He produced a letter written by an imam in the US which detailed Wangila’s position as a faithful adherent of Islam and this caused the Muslims in the courtroom to erupt in shouts of Allahu Akbar (God is great).
Based on this argument Jaffer asked the court to advise the plaintiffs to withdraw their suits. “The Kisii claimants are technically out of these proceedings as they are not named in the will at all. The Busia claimants, though acknowledging that Wangila was a Muslim, cannot bury him in Sio Port, Busia District, because burial is the widow’s responsibility. They can only negotiate with the widow.”
The paternity issue
On behalf of the Busia claimants, Khaminwa argued that his clients had not made the application to the court for selfish reasons; they only wanted to make it clear to Akinyi that Wangila had connections in Samia. They wanted it known that Wangila’s children had a three-acre plot of land in Busia that they could claim as per Luhya customs. He said that the Busia claimants also wanted an expeditious burial and would not object to a Muslim burial.
Khaminwa claimed that there was an abundance of evidence that Wangila’s father came from Busia, saying that the late boxer’s names spoke for themselves. He praised Wangila for being the embodiment of a true Kenyan: Having a Kisii mother, a Luhya father and a Luo wife.
However, there was confusion that emerged during the case as to what the Luhya man whose relatives claimed was Wangila’s father, was actually called. The Busia claimants had given the name of the dead man they claimed was Wangila’s father as Daudi Magero Obuke.
Later in the case, however, Khaminwa referred to Charles Napunyi Bwire, at one point brandishing copies of newspaper interviews from 1988 following the Seoul Olympics in which Wangila, flanked by Moraa, told reporters that he knew his father to be Charles Napunyi Bwire of Sio Port, Busia District and that his father had died in 1972.
When Khaminwa put this to Moraa, she said Wangila had spoken in English to the reporters and as she did not speak or understand the language, she had not followed what her son was saying. She said that if it was true that he had said Bwire was his father, then he must have lied.
Meanwhile, Wangila’s birth certificate showed his father to be Bwire Napunyi. The boxer’s death certificate had the father’s name recorded as Obuke Wangila and during the case, the evidence of fellow boxer and friend, Modest Napunyi gave the name as Charles Bwire Obuke.
This confusion over the man’s actual name caused one of the lawyers in the matter to wonder out loud why “these other men had not come forward with their claims” of fatherhood.
Akinyi’s marital status
In his preliminary submissions, Buti, for the Kisii claimants, told the court that he would provide evidence to prove that the late boxer had divorced Akinyi in May 1992, and that she had since remarried twice – once to a Keith Green and then to a Walter Mungai.
When Buti attempted to read the contents of a letter purportedly sent from the US concerning the marriages, both Jaffer and Khaminwa protested to the judge saying that the piece of paper which Buti held in his hand was unsigned.
They argued that the letter had not been addressed to any parties in the case. Raising doubts of the letter’s provenance, Khaminwa said, “It could have come from anywhere in the Republic, including River Road in Nairobi.”
Ghosts and tribal curses
During the hearings there was stunning evidence from one of Kenya’s top cardiologists, Professor Hillary Ojiambo – who appeared in his capacity as chairman of the Ababukaki clan of Samia – telling the court of feared tribal curses.
Ojiambo, who was highly respected in his field of medicine, told the High Court that as head of the Ababukaki clan to which Wangila’s father, Obuke, belonged, he was expected to ensure that the late boxer was buried in Sio Port. He said that if this did not happen, his clansmen would curse him for abdicating his duties. “They will curse me for abdicating my duties as an elder. They may dethrone me from leadership. They may not give me land I intend to develop in my rural home, and I’d have to stay in Nairobi,” Ojiambo said.
The talk of ghosts came up during Moraa’s evidence in chief when she spoke of being haunted by her son’s ghost. She said the ghost had demanded a Gusii burial and that she was fearful of the wrath of the ancestors if she did not comply. Moraa also said that she was not aware that her son had written a will, and urged the judge to disregard it because it appointed a woman, Akinyi, to make decisions over a man’s burial, which she testified was contrary to Abagusii customs.
Eunice Moraa Mabeche
Until the Wangila saga began following the boxing hero’s death on 24 July 1984. Eunice Moraa was not a name that Kenyans recognised immediately. Those who knew the name and the person behind it were mainly her friends, relatives and workmates at the Nairobi City Council where she worked as a cleaner in the sanitation department. There may also have been people with long memories who recalled having seen her photograph in the newspapers in 1988, after her son won the Olympic gold medal.
However, during the period of the Wangila burial case, Moraa became a household name in Kenya. She became famous as the woman said to have three men in her life who all claimed to have sired the champion, Wangila. Moraa herself claimed that only two of the men had been her husbands. There was Kanyimbo, whom she claimed to have married in 1955 or 1959, depending on which affidavit one read. And there was John Mabeche with whom she had lived since 1973. At one point during the court proceedings, Moraa posed outside the high court hugging both Kanyimbo and Mabeche.
Moraa denied all knowledge of Obuke, whom the Busia claimants insisted she had also been married to and who had fathered Wangila during their time together.
With the death of her son, the diminutive Moraa achieved a measure of notoriety across the nation for stripping naked at the Lee Funeral home to express her anger at his burial plans, and eventually taking the issue to court.
The judgement
The Robert Wangila burial case was Judge Hayanga’s first ever case; he had been appointed to the bench just weeks before the case came to the High Court in Nairobi.
The judgement Hayanga made was truly Solomonic.
The tension in the courtroom could be cut with a knife as the judge read the three-and-a-half-hour-long, 103-page judgement.
The suspense was excruciating for many in the court who seemed to be literally holding their breath and the ruling that the hero be buried in Nairobi came as a pleasant relief for many.
However, the drama did not end with the judgement and before the import of the judgement could fully sink in, the lawyer for the Samia claimants, Khaminwa shot up and in an emotional outburst said that his clients would lodge an appeal and demanded a stay of execution.
Even as Khaminwa was on his feet, Moraa, having had the judgement explained to her, was screaming blue murder, throwing herself around the bench in a bout of hysterical anger and disappointment at the ruling. She had to be bundled out of the courtroom.
Moraa’s outburst unnerved the entire courtroom, but seconds later Khaminwa was back on his feet, explaining the reasons for wanting a stay of execution and his intentions to appeal against the judgement.
The chaos that erupted with the passing of the judgement was not totally unexpected. Many who had been following the case keenly had expected some sort of uproar whichever way the judgement went.
How the judge came to a verdict that might have tested the wisdom of biblical King Solomon was fascinating. Hayanga conducted the case with the demeanour of an ace poker player, giving not a single hint as to where his preferences lay. But as he read his judgement that Thursday morning, he began by virtually tearing apart the Kisii claimants’ case, punching holes in it where many thought none could be found.
Beginning with Moraa, Hayanga said her evidence was difficult to believe, and that she made too many contradictory claims. She claimed she had never seen her daughter-in-law, Grace Akinyi, until Wangila’s body arrived from the US but then went on to claim that she, Moraa, had attended Akinyi’s father’s funeral in early July that same year before Wangila died. She also testified that she had known of her existence from the very beginning of her relationship with Wangila. Moraa claimed she was baptised Eunice in 1978, yet a birth certificate acquired in 1975 showed that she went by the name Eunice.
Moraa claimed to have lived with her son constantly from 1981 to 1986 until she was confronted with evidence of his letters of employment and official documents that showed that he had worked in Mombasa in 1985. She denied having stripped naked at the Lee Funeral Home until she was confronted in court with the photographs showing her in the act.
At first Moraa claimed to have never met a Luhya person, despite having worked as a labourer in Nairobi, Naivasha and Kericho. She later admitted to meeting them at the City Council where she worked as a cleaner. She denied receiving a telephone call from Akinyi in the US telling her of Wangila’s death, but later admitted to it during cross-examination.
Hayanga then tore Kanyimbo’s evidence to shreds. The judge said he found no paternal responsibility in Kanyimbo who had done nothing to get either his wife or his children back after he separated from Moraa in 1973. The judge said that Kanyimbo’s evidence seemed to have been tailored to help Moraa blindly, and he was not an independent witness.
When the judge then began to dissect the evidence from the Busia claimants, it initially appeared as though he was going to make a judgement in their favour. So much so that Khaminwa seemed to be sitting back with a confident smile on his face, while the other lawyers seemed anxious. Hayanga said that although their testimonies had some discrepancies, these were not extensive. He said they seemed genuinely affected by the death of the boxer.
Then he came to the nitty-gritty of the case, as it were, and even here, it seemed as though he would favour the Busia claimants. The judge began his summation after quoting numerous legal authorities by saying he found the Busia claimants to have a good paternity claim and found that Wangila was the son of the late Obuke.
The burial
Almost four months to the day when Robert Wangila died, he received the decent, dignified hero’s burial that most Kenyans felt he deserved.
The November 22 burial was only marred by the fact that his mother Eunice Moraa did not attend the funeral, claiming she did not know about it.
There were threats of appeals from both the Busia and the Kisii claimants against Justice Hayanga’s 17 November judgement that Wangila should be buried in Nairobi’s Kariokor Muslim cemetery, according to Muslim rites.
In the end when it came to the crunch, neither of the parties lodged an appeal, leaving the way clear for the Muslims to bury Wangila. Muslim rites were performed at the Lee Funeral Home before a hearse took the body to the Jamia Mosque in central Nairobi where prayers were said and the body was viewed.
At about 1:30 p.m. the body was placed in a bier wrapped in a green and red velvet cloth for a procession through the streets of Nairobi to the Kariokor Muslim Cemetery where the boxing hero was finally laid to rest.
The aftermath
Although many members of the public felt sorry for Moraa in her bereavement, the reaction in the courtroom when the final judgement was passed showed that few wanted her to win the case.
When the judgement went against her, Moraa’s grief at the judge’s decision was obvious and dramatic as she screamed and threw herself about on the floor in hysterics.
Later, outside the court, Moraa appealed to President Daniel arap Moi to help stop her son’s burial in Nairobi. John Peter Nyakundi, a spokesperson for the family, said that Judge Hanyanga’s judgement would spark war.
The following day, Moraa called a press conference at her house in Nairobi’s Jericho estate, and while repeating her appeal to the president, threatened to commit suicide if she was not allowed to bury her son in Kisii District. “The Muslim group and Wangila’s widow Grace Akinyi will now have two bodies to bury,” she said.
Later that weekend she called yet another press conference to claim that KSh 10 million had been set aside by “an interested group” to ensure that she did not succeed in her intended appeal against Hayanga’s ruling. She did not name names, however.
In the event, for what appeared to be chiefly financial reasons, Moraa did not file an appeal and her son received the Muslim burial he was said to have wanted in line with his faith.
Moraa signalled her displeasure at the whole affair in the strongest possible way, by skipping the funeral at the Kariokor Muslim Cemetery.
