Silvano Melea Otieno

The Otieno case was a dispute between a widow and the brothers of the late Silvano Melea Otieno, who has held the 1986-1987 Kenya for months in breathing.

The well-known lawyer Silvano Melea Otieno, short SM Otieno, living in Nairobi, Kenya, by the people of the Luo arise and also born in its territory in Kisumu was deceased. His widow Wanjiru ( the people of the Kikuyu ) and his brothers in Kisumu fought until the highest court over who had to decide on the place of burial. Wanjiru, who was her husband formed well, claiming 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 Kenyans gave the Luo brothers on the formal ground right that the Constitution command that wherever no written law is fixed, have the traditional right to apply. And the Luo customary law prescribes that a dead man from his family in his " homeland " (home) and not by the wife in any " home " ( house) is to bury.

The dispute has demonstrated memorably about 20 years ago in Africa conflict between old traditions and new ideas of law and emancipation. S. M. Otieno was buried under the old Luo tribal rite of his family.

Parts of the female population in Kenya felt the defeat of Wanjiru also as a check specifically for the emancipation of women, as was allegedly given to men ultimately right and this would also be a feature of both old and new patriarchal ways of thinking.