Otieno case

The Otieno case was a legal battle between a widow and the brothers of the late Silvano Melea Otieno , who held Kenya in suspense for months in 1986 and 1987.

The well-known lawyer Silvano Melea Otieno, SM Otieno for short, living in Nairobi , Kenya, descended from the Luo people and was also born in their area near Kisumu , had died. His widow Wanjiru (from the Kikuyu people ) and his brothers in Kisumu argued before the highest court about who should decide on the place of burial. Wanjiru, who was well educated like her husband, claimed that her husband wanted to be buried on the outskirts of Nairobi on his farm in Ngong . The court, led by SEO Bosire and a white Kenyan, gave the Luo brothers the right on the formal grounds that the constitution stipulates that wherever there is no written law, traditional law must apply. Luo law stipulates that a dead man is to be buried by his family in his "home" and not by his wife in any "house".

The dispute at that time clearly demonstrated the conflicts in Africa between on the one hand (old) traditions and on the other hand modern legal concepts and women's emancipation. SM Otieno was then buried by his family according to the ancient Luo tribal rite.

Sections of the female population in Kenya also felt the defeat of Wanjiru as a setback, especially for women's emancipation, as allegedly, in the end, the men had been approved and this would also be a feature of both old and new patriarchal ways of thinking.

literature

• JW Ojwang, JNK Mugambi, GO Aduwo (eds.): The SM Otieno Case: Death and Burial in Modern Kenya . Nairobi University Press, Nairobi 1989, ISBN 9966-846-01-8 .