Zimpapers Logo

For the first time in Kenya’s history, a woman is in the lead to become chief justice of the republic. After rigorous vetting sessions were done on April 14, Justice Martha Koome Karambu emerged as the top candidate for the position out of ten candidates.

The Court of Appeal Judge’s name made waves in the country on Tuesday following the announcement of her historic unanimous nomination by the Judicial Service Commission. Her name has been forwarded to President Uhuru Kenyatta for appointment. President Kenyatta has accepted the nomination and will forward her name to parliament for approval, according to Kenyan media.

“This woman is a breath of fresh air. She answers questions the way they have been asked and actually puts her own professional stamp on them,” one person commented on YouTube about her performance.

During her interview she referenced her difficult experience growing up in Meru in rural eastern Kenya in a polygamous family — she was born in 1960, three years before the end of colonial rule.

“I am a villager in the truest sense. My parents were peasant farmers and we were 18 children from two mothers. So, for all of us, especially girls — it was a struggle to overcome the odds.”

And she has overcome more odds to reach chief justice as she was not favourite, with pundits putting their money on Fred Ngatia to be the winning candidate as he had represented President Uhuru Kenyatta in the dispute over the 2017 election.

The Supreme Court annulled Mr Kenyatta’s victory in August that year, citing irregularities. A new vote was ordered, which Mr Kenyatta went on to win amid an opposition boycott.

Mr Ngatia may not have wonthe president’s election case, but his fluency and elucidation of legal jurisprudence on the floor of the court at the time earned him top marks in the eyes of Kenyans across the divide.

However Justice Koome was calm, confident and measured during her four-hour grilling — and her record on children and gender rights as well as her role in drafting Kenya’s 2010 constitution, in particular the Bill of Rights, stood out.

She spoke with pride about how the constitution now outlaws gender discrimination unlike the old one which “outrightly discriminated against women”.

“They could not confer citizenship, it allowed customary practices to prevail… such as child marriage, and FGM. We’ve come a long way,” she told the interview panel.

During her vetting by the Judicial Service Commission, Koome was asked how she would tackle issues facing the judicial system if she makes it as its first female chief justice. She said the position requires top-notch managerial skills that could come from anyone with the right experience regardless of gender.

“I believe the challenges are similar whether a male or female CJ. It will be historic for the Commission to nominate a woman for the Office of [the] Chief Justice. Leadership is gender-neutral. It doesn’t require a man or woman.

“It is skills that will deal with the challenges we face. You need managerial skills because you will be overseeing various things. As a lady, I appreciate that everybody brings something to the table.”

According to the country’s constitution, the next stage will be for parliament to vet Koome and when she satisfies the panel, she moves on to be the first female chief justice of Kenya.

The 61-year-old Meru country native grew up in a polygamous family. She said it was tough from the start.

“I am a villager in the truest sense. My parents were peasant farmers and we were 18 children from two mothers. So, for all of us, especially girls — it was a struggle to overcome the odds,” she said.

Now married with three children, she obtained her law degree at the University of Nairobi in 1986 and holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Law from the Kenya School of Law. In 2010, she earned a Master of Laws in Public International Law from the University of London.

Koome was first appointed to the high court in 2003 where she served till 2011. The next year, she began work as a judge of the court of appeal, according to JSC’s website. With over 18 years experience in the judiciary, she is a fierce defender of the rights of women and children.

According to the Daily Monitor, her priority in her new office if confirmed will be to reduce the backlog of cases by making possible the appointment of additional judges and magistrates, help to make the Judiciary Fund functional in order to ensure and promote its independence, advocate the use of technology and build more courts in the country to ease congestion.

The tenure of the former chief justice, David Maraga, ended in January. The position was left vacant after his retirement. He is known to have been unpopular with President Kenyatta after he ruled for the nullification of the 2017 elections, the first time a court has given such orders in Kenya and in Africa. Fred Ngatia, who represented President Kenyatta during the election dispute, was said to have been the favorite person for the chief justice job. Koome gained the upper hand probably because she is a well-known face in the civil society movement, reports say. She has served as a commissioner on the African Union’s Committee on the Rights and Welfare of Children.

She helped to draft Kenya’s 2010 constitution, which now outlaws gender discrimination. In 2020, Koome was a runner-up for the UN’s Kenya Person of the Year Award “for her advocacy of the rights of children in the justice system”.

Last year, Justice Koome was a runner-up for the UN’s Kenya Person of the Year Award “for her advocacy of the rights of children in the justice system”.

She has also served as a commissioner on the African Union’s Committee on the Rights and Welfare of Children.

Married with three children, she has an impressive career spanning three decades after graduating in law from University of Nairobi in 1986 — and has earned various other degrees over the years.

The graduate started as a legal associate in 1988, before forming her own law firm as managing partner in 1993. During her private practice, she became famous for her defence of human rights, representing political detainees during the regime of President Daniel arap Moi.

She was among the lawyers involved in the clamour in the 1980s to repeal Section 2A of the constitution which made the country a one-party state.

Often her colleagues would not want to represent female clients, so she took on their cases and came to see how difficult to it was to get justice for women in the courts when it came to property rights within marriage and inheritance as the law was “dominated by the patriarchy”.

She has 33 years of experience in legal practice under her belt and a significant portion of those years has been in public service as a defender of human rights.

For this, she has earned international accolades for tremendous contribution to jurisprudence in the expansion of the rule of law and defence of the vulnerable.

She is an acclaimed expert in family law and she takes a keen interest in children which earned her a recent recognition by the United Nations where she was named the UN person of the year run-up in 2020.

Though she didn’t really make the choice of pursuing law as a career due to her humble background because there were no role models to inspire her from the village, she passed her exams with distinction and was admitted to study law and has grown fond of it.

“I grew up in rural areas in Meru in a village so I am a villager to the truest sense. My parents were peasant farmers and we were 18 children from two mothers. So, for all of us especially girls, it was a struggle to overcome the odds, but by grace of God, I was able to go to school and graduated from the University of Nairobi in 1986 with a Bachelor’s degree in Law, proceeded to the Kenya School of law and attained a Postgraduate diploma in law in 1987 being admitted to the Bar as an advocate the same year,” she said.

Judge Koome proceeded to do Masters in Law in the University of London graduating in 2010 with a master’s degree in Public International Law,

Before her appointment as a judge, Justice Koome practised law as an advocate pursuing ideals of a democratic society that respects rule of law.

Earlier in her career, as a private practitioner running her own law firm, she was elected as a council member of the Law Society of Kenya in 1993-1996.

It will be remembered those were the volatile period of the Moi regime when the democratic space had shrunk tremendously.

During her tenure at LSK, she took a leading role in constitutional and legal reforms.

That way Judge Koome joined the reform movement and was part of the constitutional review process as a delegate at the Bomas of Kenya where she partially chaired the thematic area on the Bill of Rights.

Her efforts with others eventually birthed the 2010 Constitution.

She was also elected Chairperson of FIDA one of the leading human rights organizations that is recognized nationally, regionally and internationally.

While at FIDA she provided strategic leadership during the reform period and the organization contributed to family law reforms and advocacy.

The soft-spoken judge has provided leadership in regional bodies such as the East Africa Law Society where she was the inaugural treasurer in 1994-1996.

She was appointed by the African Union meeting of heads of states in 1995 as a Commissioner to the African Committee on the Rights and welfare of children.

She is a certified trainer on human rights by the International Institute for justice in Malta, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the International Women Judges Association.

In this role, she has trained many including as a visiting lecturer at the Judicial Training Institute and Strathmore University. While working in the Family Division of the High Court Justice Koome came up with a tool to simplify the process of filing cases in the family division.

She also served as the Presiding Judge at the Nakuru Law Court where she introduced a case management strategy that considerably reduced the backlog of cases. — Agencies