Mwangi Mathai: Lived, died in the shadow of Prof Wangari Maathai

When he was accused of impregnating his half-sister, Mathai left the
matrimonial home for residency at the Hilton Hotel

By Undercover Reporter

Whenever Mwangi Mathai chanced on a business idea, he did not hesitate
to cash in on it.  Sizing up the near virgin market for bar soaps in
Kenya, he was shortly on a plane to India searching for soap
making machinery. He would set up Matraco International Ltd and oversee operations, distributing bar soaps countrywide before venturing in tea packaging, growing wheat in Njoro, where he was born in 1935.
But it was not his business acumen for which he became famous, rather, his immortality rested on being the estranged husband of environmentalist and former Tetu MP, the late Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari Maathai.
Mwangi, author of the 2016 book, Beyond Poverty and Vulnerability in Kenya, died this month, but his life would be embalmed on the backdrop
of his marital tiffs, short lived political career as MP for Lang’ata Constituency and living in the shadow of his famous wife, a formidable intellectual, Kenya’s first woman PhD holder with her dissertation centred on ‘gonads in bovines.’

Mwangi Mathai:  Lived, died in the shadow of Prof Wangari Maathai

When he was accused of impregnating his half-sister, Mathai left the
matrimonial home for residency at the Hilton Hotel

Whenever Mwangi Mathai chanced on a business idea, he did not hesitate
to cash in on it.  Sizing up the near virgin market for bar soaps in
Kenya, he was shortly on a plane to India searching for soap
making machinery. He would set up Matraco International Ltd and oversee operations, distributing bar soaps countrywide before venturing in tea packaging, growing wheat in Njoro, where he was born in 1935.
But it was not his business acumen for which he became famous, rather, his immortality rested on being the estranged husband of environmentalist and former Tetu MP, the late Nobel Laureate Prof Wangari Maathai.
Mwangi, author of the 2016 book, Beyond Poverty and Vulnerability in Kenya, died this month, but his life would be embalmed on the backdrop
of his marital tiffs, short lived political career as MP for Lang’ata Constituency and living in the shadow of his famous wife, a formidable intellectual, Kenya’s first woman PhD holder with her dissertation centred on ‘gonads in bovines.’

Kenyans got a glimpse of Mathai and their three children- Muta, Wanjira and Waweru Mathai-during the State Funeral of Prof Maathai in 2011, the first for a civilian. The other State Funerals had been of founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in 1978 and Vice President Kijana Wamalwa in 2003. Her death came 32 years after they had divorced in one of the most publicized cases when there were no tabloids press, nosy blogs were not even a rumour and a 24 hour live television was to be launched in America three years later.

After their divorce which was messy and noisy, Mathai, always calm and collected, retreated to a private life that included bonding with friends at Nairobi Club, where the children came to see daddy. After all, they did a splendid job co-parenting and Wanjira once recalled he was “a committed father… my parents have never tried to keep us away from the other one. So I grew up literally between both houses and you almost feel, and I tell this honestly, I don’t remember feeling deficient. I would either be in his house or my mum’s.”

Despite the strenuous domestic life, the children went to school. Wanjira, for instance attended Hobart & William Smith College (where her mother received an Honorary Doctor of Science in 1994) and Emory University while Waweru, an advocate attended to Morgan State University, Drexel University and New York Law School. 

 The star of his wife shone brightest too in academia, environmental conservation, politics, writing four books and on to winning the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize- a first for Kenya and Africa.

The other issue in the marriage was the apparent hard headedness of his wife

This was the same woman Mwangi met in 1966, marrying her three years later on March 31, 1969. A power couple, both were educated abroad, with Wangari being a beneficiary of the American Airlift to America in the late 1950s. Mwangi started his professional life as a sales representative for Colgate-Palmolive before his entry into politics, hobnobbing with players in the inner circles of government. He was appointed and served for many years as a board member of what later became Kenya-Re, a successful state corporation.

Wangari, on the other hand, was a senior lecturer in veterinary medicine at the University of Nairobi.

But their marriage ended three children and 10 years later. One reason was Mwangi’s entry into elective politics, first losing to Yunis Ali in 1969 before trying his hand again and winning in 1974. After all, he was a decent public speaker, he loved the art of speech. But to win votes Kenyan politicians promise the moon, but deliver Blue Moon. Prof Maathai wondered how he would deliver, jobs improve living conditions as an MP.

To make up, Prof Maathai opened Envirocare, an environmental business, growing and planting trees. It fell flat on its roots.
The other issue in the marriage was the apparent hard headedness of his wife. She was too outspoken unlike other behind-the-scenes wives of politicians and which was incongruent with the paternal mores of the time.

Mwangi pegged their divorce on the premise that Wangari was “too strong willed and difficult to control” but since those are not grounds for divorce in Kenya there were then allegations of cruelty and adultery with a fellow politician, Nyeri Town MP, the late Waruru Kanja. 
The court heard that Kanja was a frequent visitor to the Mathais home, first along Lenana Road beginning 1975 and even when they moved houses to Kabarnet Road in 1978. Kanja sneaked to visit mostly when Mwangi was not around. Both denied ever having had an adulterous affair with Kanja explaining that “I used to visit Mr Mathai’s house even when he was not there, but I never used to stay till late hours of the morning.”
Said Wangari: “When my husband felt that he could pick on somebody he had to pick on Mr Kanja because there was no closer family friend than Mr Kanja” while Kanja told the court that Mwangi dragged him in to “satisfy his own ego.”
Mwangi had also accused Wangari of having an affair with Charles Rubia, then Starehe MP and later famous as one of the Second Liberation heroes alongside Kenneth Matiba.

The bile Mwangi had with Kanja even spilled in Parliament when during the 1975 probe on the murder of Nyandarua North MP, JM Kariuki, they voted on opposing camps and “the discussion and split continued even at home.”

The straw that broke the back of their matrimonial camel

Mwangi hired Private Eye Ltd, an investigation firm, to monitor the two and from evidence tabled by watchmen the court ruled that “several adulterous activities at
sundry times had taken place between the respondent and co-respondent.”
The straw that broke the back of their matrimonial camel were accusations
that Mwangi had impregnated his half-sister. The court was told that it was then that “Mathai left the matrimonial home and took up residence at the Hilton Hotel.”
Prof Maathai recalls in her 2006 memoirs, Unbowed: One Woman’s Story that when the house help told her hubby had packed and left “I was stunned,” she recalls. “This was real: Mwangi had made a decision to leave me” because among other things “Mwangi accused me of adultery, of causing his high blood pressure and of being cruel.”

During the proceedings, Wangari termed the presiding judge, the late Zaccheaus Chesoni as “either incompetent or corrupt.” Her six month jail sentence for contempt of court was later reduced to three days. She was served with summons to drop the name Mathai. She circumvented that by adding an ‘a’ hence Wangari Maathai.

She writes: “With every court proceeding, I felt stripped naked before my children,
family and friends. It was cruel, cruel punishment.”
Prof Wangari appealed the adultery ground of the divorce, but Appellant Judge the late Judge Cecil Miller dismissed it.

Mwangi served as Lang’ata MP for one term. He lost to Philip Leakey in 1979, the year he became the first post-independence White Kenyan elected in Parliament. In retirement, Mwangi served as chair of Kenya Transporters Association  (KTA) and the Automobile Association (AA) in between forays in real estate through Lang’ata Development Company.
Waruru Kanja died in 2013 at 83. Wangari Maathai succumbed to ovarian cancer
in 2011 aged 71. Mwangi Mathai was 84 when he closed his gate in September 2019.

All three are reminders of English Essayist Joseph Eddison’s take on the battles we fight on earth:

“When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.”