Dr. Wanjiru Kihoro tribute site

My Dear Wanjiru,

It was lovely knowing you for the past almost four years you laid in bed speechless yet saying alot.

The day I learnt of your passing on, I felt like some part of me was reaped off, and in the real sense, some part of me has been reaped off without you. I grow so fond of you while I visited you at the hospital. Many are the times I would come at the hospital and you were there laying so peacefully, and I felt it was wrong for me to disturb you when I thought of waking you up so that we could talk. I know you knew I was there because the minute I whispered I was leaving, you would wake up, look at me straight in the eye and ask why I wanted to leave before saying a word to you. You were and still is a real encouragement and inspiration to me.

I thank God for my sweetheart George Morara for introducing me to a great person like you. I thank God for your entire family for the strength and love that he bestowed on them for you.

There is definately a big big void left but I thank God for your life because you did what many did not and you still are doing it through us that have been left behind for a short while before we join you.

I will personally miss you.

With love,
Karimi

The history of the struggles of African peoples to promote freedom, democracy and equality cannot be written without the name of Dr. Wanjiru Kihoro, economist, feminist, human rights activist, politician and social commentator. In the sixties and seventies, she joined other Africanists in the civil rights movement in the U.S to support liberation struggles in Eritrea, Angola, Mozambique and South Africa. In her own country Kenya, she is noted to have actively supported her husband, Wanyeri Kihoro, (former MP Nyeri constituency-) who defied the arap Moi dictatorship and was imprisoned without charge or trial. During the period of his imprisonment, his wife Wanjiru, fled the country to avoid persecution and continued her campaigns to get her husband released from prison. She also traveled to America and other countries to mobilise support against the dictatorship of Moi and to facilitate the release of many innocent Kenyans who had been incarcerated without charge or trial.

She settled in the U.K, where she joined other activists to promote issues of concern to African refugees. It was at this time that she and other African women founded Akina Mama wa Africa to develop the capacities of Africa women to articulate their own issues of concern. Her vision was that of a world in which African peoples themselves defined their own priorities and harnessed the resources available to them on the continent to develop themselves. A key feature of this vision was for women and men to progressively move on a path towards equality of access to resources, participation in decision making and the execution of tasks and responsibilities and relationships. It was this vision which pushed her to again found ABANTU for Development along with renowned researchers and activists such as Amina Mama of the University of Cape Town and Ida Brako of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Founded in 1991 ABANTU for Development has developed to a point where today it is an organisation that is at the forefront for the promotion of women’s rights and gender equality at all levels of the development process.

ABANTU has been able to do this because its founder, Wanjiru Kihoro, believed in the capacity of African women to determine their status and place in society. She transformed her political commitment to women, by promoting the highest standards of professionalism, organisational development principles and values. Her determination to push the boundaries of hard work to its utmost limits sometimes placed her in conflict with her colleagues and subordinates who today, can tell many stories of how they quarreled but benefited from learning through the rigour of Wanjiru. Many people disagreed with some of her methods, but no one can fault her on her commitment to women and Africa and her capacity to express compassion and care for the poor and underprivileged. Her sense of professionalism and attention to detail was phenomenal as was her thoroughness in planning and execution of tasks and responsibilities.

My personal relationship with Wanjiru started in the early 1980s when she came to Ghana to research into issues of Structural Adjustment Programme (SAPs) and its impacts on women. She made the almost prophetic statement of, “One day we will work together”. We all went our separate ways until 1997 when she urged me to initiate a process that would lead to the establishment of ABANTU’s West African Regional Office, here in Accra. Earlier, she had succeeded in collaborating with the Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP) in Kumasi to mobilise women and organise a workshop on gender and policy advocacy. That initiative was later followed up with the organisation of a similar workshop in Accra to extend the reach of the benefits of the programme. This second workshop was organised by three gender activists namely, Dr. Dzodzi Tsikata of ISSER; Hon. Hajia Alima Mahama, the Minister of Women and Children’ Affairs (MOWAC) (who was then with NORRIP) and myself. The success of the workshop confirmed that there was a real need in Ghana to deepen discussions around gender and policy advocacy issues.

Wanjiru’s confidence in Ghanaian women was phenomenal. She involved personalities such as Madam Hawa Yakubu (former Member of Parliament for Bawku) and current 2nd vice chairperson of NPP as well as Col. Festus Aboagye formally of Ghana Army in high level African regional meetings to discuss issues of peacekeeping and their gender implications.

Regional commitment to gender issues was seen by Wanjiru as a strategic requirement for addressing issues of concern to women. She therefore worked very hard to foster very close relationships with the UN Economic Commission for Africa, especially in the organisation of Africa regional preparatory meetings to global women conferences. She was instrumental in the development of an Action Plan for the Implementation of Beijing Platform Commitments. She followed up after the production of the Plan, to organise sub-regional meetings to train gender focal points on how to utilise the framework, taking their own socio-economic contexts into account. In the West African sub-region, this initiative was achieved as a collaboration between ABANTU and ECOWAS.

Wanjiru was extremely political and strategic. She had the firm belief that politics and economics were inextricably linked and that the well-being of ordinary citizens of Africa, especially women could be guaranteed only with a self-reliant economy fostered on democratic principles of broad-participation in decision-making.

She has left a legacy for African women. That legacy says to women that they should struggle hard to increase their voices in policy spaces; they should challenge existing systems, structures and relationships that create inequalities between them and men; they should also claim their rights as equal citizens and demand that policy decisions are made to enhance their well-being.

ABANTU for Development is her legacy. The organisation has lost its visionary founder. But the vision lives on, as the organisation continues to intervene in critical issues of gender and policy in strategic areas and spaces. There can be no befitting memorial to her than this.

The would have wished nothing less of us, that is to sustain ABANTU and the cause of women and gender equality.

May Her Soul Rest IN Eternal Peace.