 "Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei dies after being set on fire. Her murder exposes Kenya's gender violence")
The brutal death of Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei at the hands of her former boyfriend has rocked Kenya. The 33-year-old Ugandan long-distance runner was doused in petrol and set on fire at her home in western Kenya on Sunday (September 1).
Four days later, Cheptegei, who had suffered extensive burns, passed away reportedly due to multiple organ failure. She was the third female athlete to be killed in Kenya since 2021.
Cheptegei’s murder has shed a spotlight on the rampant gender-based violence in the East African country. Kenya has a femicide problem and women’s groups are demanding the government to do something about it.
Let’s take a closer look.
Rebecca Cheptegei killed by ex
Cheptegei was returning home from church with her two daughters on Sunday afternoon in Endebess town, Trans-Nzoia county when her ex-partner attacked her.
Dickson Marangach allegedly set her ablaze, causing over 80 per cent burns. He also suffered burns although less severe and both were admitted to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret city, as per The Guardian report.
On Thursday, Dr Kimani Mbugua, a consultant at the hospital, told local media that the athlete “had a severe percentage of burns, which unfortunately led to multi-organ failure, which ultimately led to her passing this morning at 05:30 [8 am IST]”, reported BBC.
Cheptegei, who participated in the 2024 Paris Olympics, was reportedly embroiled in a dispute with her ex-boyfriend over a piece of land.
Her murder has evoked memories of two similar horrific incidents in Kenya . In October 2021, 25-year-old Kenyan runner Agnes Tirop was stabbed to death at her home in Iten town in Elgeyo-Marakwet county allegedly by her husband, Ibrahim Rotich.
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After Tirop’s murder, Kenya’s committee on gender welfare in sports carried out a survey and found that 11 per cent of sportswomen in Kenya had faced physical, sexual and emotional abuse.
Reactions to Rebecca Cheptegei’s death
The marathon runner’s shocking death has been condemned in both her home country, Uganda, and in Kenya, where she trained.
Uganda’s first lady, Janet Museveni, termed the news as “deeply disturbing”. “My heartfelt condolences go out to the athletics community, her family, friends, and the entire nation on the loss of our Olympian,” she said.
The country’s sports minister, Peter Ogwang, called the athlete’s demise “tragic”. He said the Kenyan authorities are conducting a probe.
As per BBC, Kenya’s sports minister Kipchumba Murkomen said, “This tragedy is a stark reminder of the urgent need to combat gender-based violence, which has increasingly affected even elite sports.”
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, has called for justice. “I have a lot of grief because I’ve lost my daughter. I seek your help so that this person who has killed my daughter can be prosecuted,” he was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
Remembering Cheptegei, fellow Ugandan athlete James Kirwa told BBC how she supported other runners financially. She “was a very affable person. [She] helped us all even financially and she brought me training shoes when she came back from the Olympics. She was like an older sister to me”.
Njeri Migwi, the founder of Usikimye, an organisation that fights gender-based violence in Kenya, wrote on X after Cheptegei’s death, “This is Femicide”.
Speaking to AFP, she called on the government to take action. “First and foremost, the government needs to take a stance because the government doesn’t really do anything about it,” Migwi said.
“Most of this violence, gender-based violence, is not viewed as a crime,” she added. “The patriarchal attitudes that we have in this country are abhorrent.”
Kenya’s femicide crisis
Before delving into it, let’s understand what is femicide . It is broadly defined as the killing of a woman or girl primarily because of her gender. The intentional murder is often committed by her partner or other family members.
Kenya is plagued by increasing rates of femicide.
There is no official figure maintained by the Kenyan government on murders of women. However, investigative platforms Africa Uncensored and Africa Data Hub estimate about 500 women were killed in Kenya between 2017 and 2024, reported Al Jazeera.
According to Femicide Count Kenya, 58 femicides took place in the East African nation between January and October 2022. At least 152 such killings were reported by the organisation in 2023 – the highest in the past five years.
In 2022, as many as 725 Kenyan women died in gender-related killings, the highest since 2015, as per the data collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Violence against women is a major problem in Kenya. In 2022, a national survey revealed that at least 34 per cent of girls and women had experienced physical violence since they were 15 years of age, as per The Guardian.
Over 40 per cent of married Kenyan women and 20 per cent of unmarried women have been subjected to physical violence, reported OkayAfrica.
Earlier this year, thousands of women took to the streets in the capital Nairobi to protest against the pervasive gender-based violence in the country and demand more measures from the government to protect women. They called on the authorities to treat such deaths as a “national disaster”, reported AFP.
At least 10 women were murdered in Kenya this January alone, as per BBC. One of the victims was dismembered in a short-term rental apartment in Nairobi.
Gender-based violence is a big crisis in Africa. A 2022 UN Women report said that the highest number of killings of females by ‘intimate partner and family’ were reported in Africa — 20,000. Asia was second with 18,400 victims, followed by “7,900 in the Americas, 2,300 in Europe and 200 in Oceania”.
Reacting to Cheptegie’s murder, Valerie Aura, a Nguvu Collective leader, who is urging the government to set up safehouses for women fleeing violence, said, “This must stop”.
“We are seeing this happen again because there are no heavy penalties for the perpetrators,” she told AFP.
Despite laws, Kenya has failed to tackle violence against women. Many women also blame the country’s deep-rooted “misogynistic” culture that views women as possessions and shames them for being victims, rather than their male perpetrators, as per the Al Jazeera report.
Activists want the government to recognise femicide as a crime and create stricter punishments for such offences.
Speaking to The Guardian, Usikimye’s co-founder, Migwi, said gender-based violence is common in Kenya as many cases do not get proper attention in court, which creates the impression that people can get away. She said there is a need in society to treat violence against women as a crime and not an “accepted social ill”.
“In all honour of the death of Rebecca Cheptegei, this should not have happened. This should not continue to happen,” she emphasised.
With inputs from agencies
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