Cynics argue that post-mortems are unnecessary pursuits. What’s the point of wishing to know ‘how someone died?’ After all, they are dead.
Yet, it seems only human that people speak about the death of those close to them. As the cliché goes, no death is natural in Africa. Either the ancestors aren’t happy with someone, so they visit death on him or her or a member of their family, or it comes as
The death of Ms Julie Ward, however, a young British tourist in Kenya, in the second week of September 1988, became a haunting spectre on several Kenyans for decades, in ways that few would have imagined.
Julie Ward’s death — like many others in this country’s modern history — produced endless fables, especially about its cause. These tales all competed to offer the ‘truth’ about Julie’s death. Reports on the state of
her remains pointed to two theories: either she was mauled by wild animals — considering that she had been left alone in the Maasai Mara Game Reserve after a jeep which she was using for a game drive with Glen
This death is the subject of the book, A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder (James Currey, 2015) by Grace Musila, a Kenyan academic currently based at the University
of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
This is an academic book which examines the range of ‘stories’ that have surrounded the Julie Ward case to date. What is common to past, and this book is that Julie Ward was murdered and that the ‘truth’ about this murder will remain elastic.
It is this elasticity, the tendency of this horrible murder to produce and reproduce other versions of this same story, especially through rumours, that Death Retold in Truth and Rumour is all about.
Why are rumours important in understanding the Julie Ward case? And why would anyone wish to research on rumours? Rumours make the society tick. For instance, politicians use rumours to win votes such as
by planting false claims that an opponent has withdrawn from a race or that if the opposing group wins, the losers will be driven into political wilderness and poverty.
Yet in the Julie Ward case, one wonders why the government of Kenya wasn’t so forthcoming in helping resolve the case.
Many murder cases similar to Julie Ward’s remain unresolved. Who gained from the failure of the Kenya Police to properly and conclusively investigate the Julie Ward case? Why has the murder produced so many
extraordinary claims, including suggesting that the death was accidental, designed or self-inflicted? What Musila presents in A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour is the dynamic mix and range of interesting and
interested people, institutions, practices and ideas.
On the one hand, Musila sees Julie’s death as part of a larger history of assassinations, murders or disappearances of politicians or public figures who hold views different from those of the state.
There are several of such tragic figures in Kenya’s history, with the most prominent being Pio Gama Pinto, J. M. Kariuki and Robert Ouko. Like in the Julie Ward case, these deaths have never been resolved and
Thus, Musila paints this murder as part of a history whose origin is in the colonial conquest of the land that is known today as Kenya but which seems to have been perfected after Uhuru.
In another sense, Musila sees the murder as a family tragedy. John Ward, Julie’s father, first had to live with the fact of his daughter’s horrible death. He spent huge amounts of money privately trying to investigate
the death, during which he encountered non-cooperation from government officials and other parties who would have shed light on the case.
What went through Mr Ward’s mind as he met several Kenyans, some who were suspects in the case, others who he knew were intentionally obstructing his efforts to unravel the mystery surrounding the daughter’
The three men charged with the murder, at different times, were natives of Narok– Peter Kipeen, John Magiroi and Simon Makallah. The three were acquitted of the charges (there wasn’t evidence in the first
place), prompting many to suggest that their arrest and arraignment in court was probably another attempt to cover up the killing.
But who stood to benefit from this cover up? Was the charging of the three an attempt show that the country was serious about protecting the lives of tourists? Would this have been another ploy to drive interest away from the likely real murderers?
A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour is a mix of erudite critical analysis of the range of stories that emerged from the death of Julie Ward; examining the conduct and narratives of officialdom, the pain and search
efforts of Julie’s father; the seeming unwillingness of the Kenyan state to fully support Mr Ward’s quest for truth and justice, as well as the British government’s no-too-convincing involvement, among others.
