Last Friday, a grieving widow was assaulted and humiliated at a graveside in Kisii.
In a video that went viral in hours, the widow can be seen being manhandled by a bunch of men who were ostensibly forcing her to grab a handful of soil to dribble into the grave, an age-old tradition in many parts of the world.
Only that the point of contention in the case was that Mellen Mogaka was unwilling to carry out the age-old tradition.
The men who had taken it among themselves to force Mellen to perform the burial ritual then took the law into their own hands and decided they would use force and intimidation to achieve their objective.
Granted that burials in large swathes of western Kenya demand a strict observation of cultural practices, the manner in which Mogaka was treated must be condemned and the police must gather evidence and prosecute the brutes who forced the poor woman down and attempted to force her to take part in a ritual she was against.
To make matters even worse, and as a sign that the family of the dead man had long discussed the ghoulish drama, even Mogaka’s father, who had accompanied his bereaved daughter, was assaulted and soil and mud splashed all over his suit.
Cultural beliefs define a people and encompass shared beliefs, values, customs and behaviour of a group and are at the core of group cohesion and identity.
But they cannot be practised in the fashion that the burial organisers enforced it. What the men did was a criminal endeavour.
They must be prosecuted as a way of stopping such overzealous cultural advocates in their tracks.
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Quote of the day: “Never be bullied into
silence. Never allow yourself to be made a
victim. Accept no one’s definition of your
life; define yourself.”—American poet Robert
Frost was born on March 26, 1874.
