What did Sheila Lumumba want? - Minority Africa
Elizabeth Okwach
May 18, 2024
Alone, Sheila Adhiambo Lumumba, a 25-year old non-binary lesbian lay dead in their one-bedroom apartment in a small town, north of Nairobi, for three days before finally being discovered.
Lumumba was sexually assaulted, hit on the head with a blunt object and stabbed in the chest, face, neck, and one of their eyes was partially gorged out. Their death on the 17th of April 2022 sparked calls for justice in Kenya where homosexuality remains illegal.
But who was Sheila Lumumba and what did they want? To be happy, but also to love and take care of family.
Brenda Akinyi, Lumumba’s cousin who knew them their entire life, described them as someone with a bubbly personality, a people’s person who loved partying.
“Sheila was just a normal young person who loved to party and go out with friends in their own free time. They were an independent, strong and ambitious person, loved people, was funny and a great friend to everyone,” says Akinyi.
Another of Lumumba’s cousins and friend Stacy Ogola testifies to Lumumba’s love for the party. “One day my mom went to work and left me some money for food. So I called Sheila. I told [them] we got money to drink but I don’t know what mom will eat when she gets back home.”
“So we went to celebrate [their] birthday and we celebrated mine too because I knew I would be grounded.. [their] birthday is 1st August and mine is on the 14th,” Ogola reveals fondly.
According to Akinyi, Lumumba was also “harsh and not easily swayed.”
“When Sheila would make up their mind no one could convince them otherwise, even if one will get hurt and they know that they are standing for the truth, they won’t back out,” she tells Minority Africa.
Born and raised partly in Nairobi’s Umoja Estate before relocating to Naivasha, a town in the Rift Valley region where their father had been transferred to from Samburu, Lumumba stood out for being more adventurous than their peers.
Lumumba came from a family of four. To their close knit family, they were fondly called “Leila.” They attended Milimani Primary in Naivasha before relocating to Nairobi at the height of post-election violence in 2008 when Naivasha town was worst hit by clashes in the country.
In Nairobi, Lumumba’s family lived with Akinyi where Lumumba joined Kileleshwa primary. Later the family became more financially stable and they again moved to Umoja estate where Lumumba completed their primary education at Busara Primary.
They then proceeded to join Parkland Girls Secondary school in the heart of the city.
“When Sheila was in high school, their teacher called the dad to school and informed him that there were speculations that his ‘daughter was a lesbian.’ He refuted the claims strongly. He could not believe it then.” Akinyi disclosed.
When school would close for mid and end-term breaks, Lumumba’s first destination was mostly Akinyi’s place in Nairobi’s Kileleshwa suburbs. At one time in their routine work at the kindergarten that Akinyi owns, Lumumba confided in her that they were gay.
Lumumba also shared their secret with Ogola. “I was the first person [they] told [they were] a lesbian. We didn’t know how the family would take it. So we kept it to ourselves. That was when [Lumumba] was in high school,” Ogola recalls.
When Lumumba finally shared their identity with their parents, it was a big blow creating a distance with their father with whom they had a very cordial relationship.
“‘Sheila is telling me that she is a man. What is that?’” Lumumba’s dad would ask Akinyi every other time they had a telephone conversation.
Their blossoming father-child relationship, although it didn’t break completely, suffered due to Lumbumba’s identity and a whole year passed without father and child seeing or even talking to each other, Akinyi reveals.
“[Lumumba] changed the way they were talking, dressing, looking and even their walking style. People were not accepting them. It was the darkest moment of [Lumumba’s] life but they had to soldier on,” says Akinyi.
Speaking to local media in June 2022 after their death, Lumumba’s mother refuted their sexual orientation and gender identity and maintained that Lumumba was “purely a girl.”
“Sheila was a girl and there is nothing again about that. Even if my daughter was like that, I loved my daughter so much and I was not aware. I am the one who is in pain and I loved my daughter so much,” Millicent explained.
When contacted for this story in 2022, Lumumba’s mother was too emotional and declined to speak and their father requested that we speak to Akinyi instead. Although not being fully there, Akinyi admits that their attitude to Lumumba changed over the course of the years making them more accepting.
However, the rejection from close family members at the time as well as having no job made the 23 year old very sad. Lumumba felt alone and slid into depression.
Further complicating things, Akinyi who had for long been their support system within the family and Lumumba also had a quarrel of their own. The cousins did not speak to one another from 2019 to 2021. Akinyi explains that the rift was attributed to the fact that she wanted them to reduce their drinking, and stop hanging out with friends she considered bad for Lumumba.
“Sheila sometimes would not listen to anyone. There was this time I was guiding them and they felt offended. So, we stopped talking,” Akinyi says.
“In fact, I changed my cellphone number and they couldn’t reach me. But they used to talk to my mum more often and requested that I unblock them. Sheila would tell my mum that now they understand what life was,” Akinyi adds.
Part of that understanding involved Lumumba beginning to fend for themselves. In 2019, Lumumba moved to Naivasha to work as a bouncer in a nightclub. It was there that they met Edel Kimani who would become their best friend. Kimani used to frequent the night club Lumumba was working at.
Kimani, like Lumumba, is also non-binary and lesbian and was one of the last two people to speak to Lumumba on the phone before they were found dead. Of their friendship, Kimani describes Lumumba as originally shy but notes that they immediately “hit it off and our friendship bond became stronger.”
Later in 2019, Kimani got a job in Nairobi and a few months later, in January 2020, Lumumba also moved to Nairobi, working as a housekeeper in an inn in Westlands and then in July 2020, working as a hotelier in Karatina, the town where they would be murdered less than two years later.
In Karatina, Lumumba worked at FK Resort & Spa. Lumumba had big dreams even in the small town and received a promotion twice for their hard work.
“Their desire was to be self-sufficient besides supporting their family,” Akinyi says.
One of their biggest dreams was to support their mother and give her the money to build a house upcountry.
“Very soon, nitakutumia doo uanze kujenga,” Lumumba would say to their mother in Kiswahili which translates to “I will send you money soon you start building.”
They were never able to fulfill that dream.
Meanwhile, in their social and professional life, Lumumba had battles of their own. According to Akinyi, they were receiving threats from a colleague via SMS.
Lumumba confided in their mother about the threats and she asked them to report it to the authorities.
“She reported the matter to the police and they were called in for questioning. However, the authorities let them go,” Akinyi says, an account corroborated by Lumumba’s father.
All of this, however, was news to their best friend Kimani.
“Sheila never revealed to me that they were unsafe or they were being threatened. I came to learn about them being threatened by a former colleague through their girlfriend,” Kimani tells Minority Africa.
“I think it was not a big deal to them that is why they never bothered to mention it to me,” Kimani says about Lumumba never telling them about the threats.
They had also planned to meet Lumumba around that same time.
“Sheila would visit me in Nairobi, so would I,” They say. “This time around, it was my turn to visit them. But since they did not communicate, I assumed [Lumumba] was busy and I didn’t try to check on them.”
When they didn’t show up to work on both Friday and Saturday, colleagues at the resort raised an alarm which led to Lumumba’s house being broken into where they were found dead.
Following this, investigators stepped in. However, Lumumba’s family and friends, alongside activists across the country, decried the snail’s pace with which they said the police approached the case. This led to a wave of online campaigning with the hashtag #JusticeForSheila that trended on Kenyan Twitter from late April 2022 to early in May. A fundraiser for their funeral costs also raised nearly $4000.
Subsequently, Lumumba’s family took up pursuing the case and were able to make some findings missed by investigators. For example, Human Rights Watch reported that family members found a knife and razor blade in Lumumba’s bedroom and additionally, a family friend found CCTV footage of Lumumba leaving a bar with three men on the last night they were seen alive.
One of the men in the CCTV footage, Billington Wambui Mwathi, was Lumumba’s former co-worker. He was arrested on the 19th of July, arraigned in Karatina law courts and charged with aggravated assault and murder on Tuesday 21st July, 94 days after Lumumba was brutally murdered.
In December 2023, Mwathi who was 23 at the time of his arrest, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. However, Lumumba’s family is not satisfied with the penalty which is far from their proposed 50 year sentence. It is a disposition echoed by activists in the country who describe it as “lenient” and not “addressing the gravity of Mwathi’s actions.”
A joint statement by the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, galck+, and the Initiative for Equality and Non Discrimination (INEND) following the judgment expressed profound disappointment at the sentencing, adding that it fell “tragically short of the justice Sheila deserves and the severity of the crimes committed.”
The statement also noted that the sentence sent a disconcerting message about the value of LGBTQ+ lives in the country.
Kenya’s laws and regulations against sexual and gender-based violence don’t name LGBTQ individuals, and the National Policy on Prevention and Response doesn’t reference murder. According to Human Rights Watch, the brutality and specific targeting that Lumumba faced as a lesbian and non-binary person are rendered invisible under Kenya’s current policies as a result.
53% of LGBTQ+ people in Kenya have also reported being physically assaulted and only 29% of LGBTQ+ persons report an assault to the police because they are often revictimized if they report crimes committed against them.
In recent years, there have been multiple deaths of LGBTQ+ persons in Kenya under circumstances right groups have described as “hate crimes” motivated by homophobia.
Joash Mosoti, a peer educator at Pema Kenya and a security focal person at Hapa Kenya was found dead in his apartment in 2021 under what was termed as suspicious circumstance in Mombasa, the coast of Kenya. A few months before his death, Mosoti had reported concerns about his safety to his close family members and friends, according to GALCK.
That same year, in what activists suspect to be a transphobic attack, a transgender woman, Erica Chandra Kitula was mudered and their body dumped in a ditch along General Mathenge Drive in Westlands, Nairobi.
March 2021 saw Chriton Atuhwera, a Ugandan refugee in Kenya’s Kakuma camp die from burn injuries associated with an attack on a group of queer refugees. Atuhwera was one of two gay men who suffered second-degree burns at the camp.
On their Facebook profile, Lumumba’s bio reads “Trust the vibe you get, energy don’t lie. Mind over matter.” They are remembered very fondly by people who knew them for their own energy and equally their ‘silent activism.’
“Sheila was not fighting for the queer representation or rights in Kenya. But what I can say is that they were proud and bold to be who they were,” says Riziki Lenga, who is also queer and got to know Lumumba through one of their daughters who schooled with them.
“Through Sheila, I have learnt not to shy away from who I am but to love and accept myself,” they added.
In a 2022 piece on Mamba Online titled I Knew Sheila Lumumba: Here Is My Story, activist and Lumumba’s friend Dennis Nzioka describes them in a similar way.
Echoing their love for Vodka and cigarettes, Nzioka goes ahead to write; “Sheila was not an activist, but their death has energised the cause for so many queer people who connected with them in life and in death.”
Today, Ogola still mourns the death of her cousin. She vividly remembers the last conversation with Lumumba before they met their untimely death.
“We had planned that [Lumumba] comes to Muranga because I stay in Muranga for the Easter festivities on the eve of Thursday 14th April,” Ogola narrates.
Beyond sharing the same birthday month, Ogola and Lumumba also shared a second name.
“What I hold close to my heart is the fact that [they] trusted me and when [they] were distressed, [they] could always confide in me; when [they] found love it was me [they] would tell…I feel like I lost my soulmate, my person,” she continues.
“Sometimes I wish that I was in a long dream and that I would wake up at some point.”
This story was reported between 2022 and 2024.
Edited and Reviewed by: Caleb Okereke, PK Cross, and Samuel Banjoko.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Elizabeth Okwach is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. She writes mostly on culture, women, business, technology, climate among other topics. Her work has appeared in Zonk News, Zenger News, Techub, and OkayAfrica.