For William Osewe Guda and Stella Mutheu, that pain of separation has festered into angst, boiling into a bruising court battle for control of their former joint ventures.
It's best illustrated by what Ohangla maestro Prince Indah sings in Dholuo, “Hera lit karumo adieraaah” (truly, love is painful when it ends).
The latest twist in the shareholder wrangle is hotelier Osewe’s claim that his ex-wife, Ms Mutheu, orchestrated his ouster from one of their businesses by forging minutes and a share transfer document, transferring his 250 shares in Ranalo Foods Dala Limited to herself. The two divorced in 2022.
The Sunday Nation has obtained documents showing that on September 3, 2025, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) approved the Directorate of Criminal Investigations’ (DCI) request to charge Ms Mutheu with forgery. Mr Osewe first filed the complaint at Central Police Station under OB No. 43/13/09/2024.
K’Osewe Ronalo Foods proprietor William Guda Osewe leaves the Milimani Law Courts on September 27, 2021.
Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo | Nation Media Group
Mr Osewe wants Ms Mutheu charged for illegally and unlawfully removing him as a director and shareholder of the Kisumu-based restaurant through forgery. This is likely to add to the string of court battles between the former lovebirds.
According to Mr Osewe, it started when he asked his lawyers, Osiemo Wanyonyi Advocates, to conduct a search on Ranalo Foods Dala Limited. All along, he believed his 25 percent shareholding in the company was intact.
“To his shock, the advocate later informed him that he is no longer a director in the company since, from the documents deposited at the Business Registration Service, it is alleged that the complainant resigned and transferred his 25 percent shares to his ex-wife, Miss Stella Anne Mutheu Osewe; that the changes were made by the said complainant’s ex-wife,” said Osewe’s lawyer in a complaint to the DCI dated June 23, 2025.
Documents had been deposited with the registrar showing that he attended a meeting on August 1, 2022, where he agreed to resign and transfer all his 250 shares to his ex-wife.
The city businessman is also alleged to have signed an affidavit before a commissioner for oaths to resign and transfer his shares, leading to his removal from the CR-12, a legal document that shows the ownership of a company at a particular time.
Since their separation, the two have waged a protracted battle for control of the money-minting Ranalo Foods, which trades under the popular brand K’Osewe.
Besides the businesses, Ms Mutheu has also laid claim to several of Mr Osewe’s parcels of land, asking the High Court to divide them equally as matrimonial property.
She lost at the High Court, which held that the parcels—most of them in Mr Osewe’s ancestral home of Uyoma, Siaya County—belong to him because she failed to demonstrate any improvements. She has since appealed to the Court of Appeal.
Ms Mutheu—said to have relocated to Kisumu after the separation, where she ran Ranalo Foods Dala—also seeks involvement in managing the Kimathi Street outlet, telling the court that Mr Osewe has blocked her from accessing critical business information.
Ironically, in the same application, Ms Mutheu expressed fears that Mr Osewe would remove her as a shareholder of the company that runs the Kimathi Street restaurant and sought orders restraining him from removing her as a director or shareholder.
“The Plaintiff (Mutheu) is therefore reasonably and justifiably apprehensive that…the 1st Defendant (Osewe) may, with the help of unscrupulous staff working at the Registrar of Companies, alter and/or interfere with the 2nd Defendant’s records at the office of the Registrar of Companies to remove and/or exclude the Plaintiff from the said records,” said Ms Mutheu in an affidavit dated April 2025.
Mr Osewe’s response: “I have never removed the applicant as a director of the company as compared to her fraudulent involvement in my removal as a director and shareholder of Ranalo Foods Dala Limited.”
Ms Mutheu’s claim that she made significant investments in Ranalo Foods Limited prompted Mr Osewe to rewind to his humble beginnings, reminding the court that he built the business single-handedly.
Cord leaders Kalonzo Musyoka (second left), Raila Odinga (third left) and Moses Wetang'ula (right) share a 'peace meal' with Jubilee coalition MP Moses Kuria (second right) at a popular restaurant in Nairobi, Ranalo Foods, on June 21, 2016. Mr Odinga agreed to meet with seven MPs who had been arrested for alleged hate speech and detained in police cells for several days. The leaders vowed to work together to unite all Kenyans.
Photo credit: File | Nation
The journey to what became K’Osewe—serving authentic African cuisine, including Luo dishes such as brown ugali and tilapia—“began with me hawking meat and meatballs in Kaloleni Estate and along Jogoo Road way back in 1977 when I was only 19 years old,” said Mr Osewe.
Kaloleni Estate, today a run-down neighbourhood with a colonial feel, was once the cradle of Nairobi’s African middle class.
In the 1950s, its Social Hall was the only venue reserved for Africans; there, Tom Mboya and Mwai Kibaki received news of independence—photos show them leaping in jubilation outside the hall.
After independence, the bar remained a hub for the wealthy, especially prominent Luos from Nairobi and beyond. In the 1980s, it attracted senior officials, including Barack Obama Sr., who reportedly drank Scotch whisky there before dying in a car crash on 24 November 1982. A young Osewe charmed this clientele.
“This business was my daily bread and butter and it helped me manage and support my family,” said Mr Osewe.
It was around this time that he met Ms Mutheu, then still a student at Huruma Girls. He told the court that he partly paid her secondary school fees and also paid for her sisters’ schooling.
“All from this hawking business — a fact that is undisputed,” said Mr Osewe.
After she completed high school, Mr Osewe says he helped Ms Mutheu to enrol in a legal secretarial course and thereafter ensured that her transition to employment was seamless by helping her secure a job with the Kenyan Government in the Department of Marketing, now known as the Ministry of Trade.
They later began cohabiting as husband and wife in December 1983 and were blessed with three children—a daughter and two sons.
He told the court that by then he had already been engaged in hawking meat and meatballs, a business he named “Ranalo,” after his village in Uyoma, Siaya County, and “K’Osewe” from his name, Osewe. “The name gave me traction and I was known by this name since I hail from the village Ranalo, hence Ranalo K’Osewe,” said Mr Osewe.
It was not until 20 years later that Ms Mutheu opted for early retirement and joined Mr Osewe in running the business. He says he agreed to include her in the business and registered a limited liability company where they both held equal shares.
Ranalo Foods, or simply K’Osewe, one of Kenya’s biggest success stories is now swimming in debt.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
As the business grew, they opened another outlet in Kisumu in 2018, known as Ranalo Foods Dala Limited.
Besides the couple, their children were also shareholders of this business.
The wrangle between the once lovebirds comes as auctioneers invite bids for another of their assets, Blue Waters Hotel, an incomplete development in Kisumu’s Milimani area.
An apartment in South C, also linked to the Osewes, has already been auctioned over an unpaid Sh300 million loan to Guaranty Trust Bank.
Meanwhile, the battle for control of their other properties, especially the popular Kimathi Street restaurant, continues.
Ms Mutheu insists she has been actively involved in the operation of the restaurant along Kimathi Street, helping it grow to its current stature as a go-to for enthusiasts of African cuisine.
However, Mr Osewe told the court that her role was largely perfunctory, arguing that although she has 50 percent of the shares, she has not given evidence that she injected any money into the business.
Restaurateur and businessman William Osewe Guda leaves the Milimani Law Courts on September 27, 2021.
Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo | Nation Media Group
Mr Osewe’s active engagement in the business was disrupted by a near-fatal gunshot on December 1, 2016, after which he was diagnosed with a permanent disability by Mbagathi Hospital.
He stayed out of the active running of the business for three years, leaving the Nairobi outlet to his two children while Ms Mutheu, with whom he had already separated, retired to Kisumu—an arrangement he says they both agreed to, and which remained in place for eight years.
