Court Upholds Tribal Law Over Kenya Widow’s Wish

Kenya’s highest court has upheld tribal law over Western life styles and ordered that a prominent lawyer’s body be buried by his brother and their clan over the objections of the lawyer’s widow.

Judge J.O. Nyarangi on Friday ended the five-month legal battle over the remains of Sylvano M. Otieno by dismissing Virginia Wambui Otieno’s arguments that she and her husband, who was a member of the Luo tribe, were Christians who lived a Western life style.

Otieno’s body has been at Nairobi’s mortuary since he died Dec. 20.

The legal battle began when Virginia Otieno, a member of the Kikuyu tribe, said she planned to bury him at their farm south of Nairobi.

His Luo clan relatives argued that they would be cursed for life if they did not bury him at his birthplace in Luoland.

“We are persuaded that there is nothing in the Luo customary law which a reasonable man in Kenya would find repugnant to justice or morality,” Nyarangi said in announcing the decision by the court.

An angry Virginia Otieno told reporters: “This is discrimination against women and it is against the United Nations’ charter on human rights that the Kenyan government signed.”

The case was seen as a test of traditional laws, which operate along with Western-style laws inherited from the former British colonial rulers.

Virginia Otieno’s lawyer, John Khaminwa, had argued it was her right as the wife of Otieno by a Christian marriage to bury her husband of 24 years. He said that Otieno and his wife had adopted a Western life style and found most traditional practices “primitive.”