African public figures should not be cremated as doing so is against cultural beliefs, a human rights activist has said.
Ujamaa Centre founding director Patrick Ochieng on Saturday said local public figures are increasingly denying Kenyans their group rights when they are cremated.
“Someone needs to justify to me why they would choose cremation. Those of us who bury have not complained,” Ochieng said.
He spoke to the Star in Mombasa after Kibra MP Ken Okoth was cremated.
Okoth died of colorectal cancer on July 26 and was cremated on Saturday.
Ochieng said cremation is selfish adding that dead people should not decide what the living should do with their remains.
“When you are dead you’ve left this earth and you’ve left us alive. And it is our business, culturally, for us to at least bury the dead. We’ve not said there is no land, neither have we said we cannot foot the cost of burying,” he said.
Several Kenyan leaders have been cremated after expressing the same in their death wishes.
They include former head of Civil Service Jeremiah Kiereini, former Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organisation chairperson Jane Kiano, pro-democracy icon Kenneth Matiba and Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai.
The others are former sports administrator Joshua Okuthe, former Anglican Archbishop Manasses Kuria, his wife Mary Kuria and Kanu-era Cabinet minister Peter Okondo.
The activist said cremation denies opportunities to the communal groups the deceased belonged to.
He said Okoth recognised his Africanness by recognising his mother and a village in Kasipul Kabondo as his origin.
“Now, Okoth in death cannot become somebody with a different identity because in life, he chose to be a Kenyan and a Luo in identity.”
He added: “Granted, his mother and wife were comfortable with the fact that he could be cremated. But that does not discount that fact that it flies in the face of our Luo culture.”
The director said Kibra people would have wished to sometimes visit his grave and pay homage or at least give him a warm send-off on his final day.
“First, they made it(cremation) a private ceremony. Second, there is nothing of visibility, as an African would want, that you can go back to and commune with," Ochieng said.
“There are moments when at night we are disturbed and we think it is Okoth who is disturbing us; so we need to know where we can go to commune with him and tell him to calm down."
He said those who have embraced ‘modernity’ must ask themselves if they still consider themselves members of a group "that shapes people into their future".
“It’s like slapping all these people in the face to then make a personal decision with his wife that the best honour that he can give these people is to have his body cremated."
Edited by R.Wamochie
