South-Africa based engineer-cum-poet Sankara Berhane Sellasie (real name Robert Moses Magotsi) during an interview at Nation Centre in Nairobi on October 12, 2023.
Victoria Wanjiku wants this to be a story of a grieving widow who is being unjustifiably blamed for the sudden death of her 54-year-old husband, Robert Moses Magotsi, and won’t even be allowed space to mourn him.
Ms Wanjiku, a globetrotter who travels and documents her journeys as she is also a writer, wants this to read as a story of a wife who executed her husband’s last wishes to the letter — which involved having him cremated.
In an interview with the Daily Nation, she repeatedly said that Mr Magotsi died of natural causes, citing the post-mortem report as her witness. She held a memorial for him in Nairobi on Friday.
On the other hand, Mr Magotsi’s cousin, Dr Joshua Amwayi, wants this to be a story about the questionable death of Mr Magotsi – an alumnus of Maseno School and the University of Nairobi who was an electrical engineer – who had a Sh50 million life insurance cover.
Ms Wanjiku is one of the beneficiaries in the policy Mr Magotsi had taken.
Dr Amwayi wants the narrative to question the circumstances under which Mr Magotsi died just moments after they had spoken on the phone. Mr Magotsi was in Mozambique while Dr Amwayi was in Kenya as they spoke. He is not convinced that Mr Magotsi died naturally, and some happenings after his death make him smell a rat.
The story unfolds on various dates this year.
Saturday, October 11. This is the day Mr Magotsi died in Mozambique. It was just nine days to his 55th birthday. The explanation given to Dr Amwayi and the rest of the family is that he collapsed and later died.
Ms Wanjiku, by an account she gave in a Facebook post on October 31, says that Mr Magotsi left the house for his usual runs but never returned.
“I heard him getting ready for his run but didn’t open my eyes [as I was in bed]. He was actually late and at some point I thought he’d cancelled the run,” she wrote. “The next time I saw him, six hours later, he looked as peaceful as ever, only this time, he was lying in the morgue.”
South-Africa based engineer-cum-poet Sankara Berhane Sellasie (real name Robert Moses Magotsi) during an interview at Nation Centre in Nairobi on October 12, 2023.
In her interview with the Daily Nation, she said: “He was not unwell. He just collapsed and died.”
Dr Amwayi said that on that very Saturday, he had spoken with Mr Magotsi on the phone regarding an investment they were to make.
“We were doing some investment with the SIB – Standard Investment Bank – the Mansa X. He had asked me to withdraw funds and deposit in that investment that we had opened,” Dr Amwayi told the Daily Nation.
By his call records, Dr Amwayi noted that they spoke at 11:04am. Such an investment wasn’t anything new to Mr Magotsi. He ran businesses across various sectors. By Dr Amwayi’s estimation, Mr Magotsi owned assets worth at least Sh300 million in South Africa.
“In South Africa, he had a total of 13 apartments,” he said, adding that one of the properties was occupied by his ex-wife, with whom they have three children aged between 18,16, and 12.
Mr Magotsi was going through divorce proceedings with his ex-wife, a Kenyan, at the time of his death.
After breaking up with his wife, Mr Magotsi had met Ms Wanjiku, who had equally been divorced from her husband with whom they had four children. Because both loved travel and writing, Ms Wanjiku posted in one of her recent Facebook posts, they found each other compatible. Theirs was a relationship characterised by spontaneous trips to exotic places.
Assets worth Sh341 million
“The activities he chose, especially the ones that pushed me beyond my comfort zone, echo his spirit. This year alone, I’ve bungee-jumped, paraglided, taken a helicopter ride, gone zip-lining, and embarked on spontaneous road trips to nowhere,” said Ms Wanjiku in a November 12 Facebook post.
Dr Amwayi added that Mr Magotsi was the major shareholder in a South Africa-incorporated company called Mwangaza, which he co-owned with other business partners, among them a South African. The last time they discussed the value of his 51 per cent stake, Dr Amwayi said, it was worth Sh341 million.
Just to offer a background, Mr Magotsi schooled in Kenya and worked briefly in the country before he relocated to South Africa, where he made a fortune by investing in the renewable energy sector. When he spoke with the Daily Nation in 2023, Mr Magotsi explained how he got himself there.
“First I went to South Africa as a student. I came back to Kenya for two or three years to get married,” he said. “Then I went back to SA as a lecturer. Then I moved on to working as a quality engineer with a parastatal. And I took many roles in that parastatal, from quality engineer to programme director or facilities management.”
South-Africa based engineer-cum-poet Sankara Berhane Sellasie (real name Robert Moses Magotsi) during an interview at Nation Centre in Nairobi on October 12, 2023.
Back to that Saturday. About an hour after Mr Magotsi spoke with Dr Amwayi on the phone, the latter received a call.
“At around midday, a Kenyan business partner called Engineer Andrew Karuga called me. He asked me, ‘How are you? When did you talk to Robert last?’ I told him, ‘I just talked to him a few minutes ago.’ He told me, ‘I have been called by his landlord that he had gone for a run. When he got back to his house, he collapsed. He’s been rushed to hospital, but he is not in a good condition.’ That was about midday. And then about 10 or 15 minutes later, his business partner in South Africa called me and told me, ‘Joshua, I have sad news that Robert has passed on.’ I asked, ‘How? I have just talked to Robert about an hour ago,’” Dr Amwayi narrated.
Monday, October 13. Ms Wanjiku was determined to honour Mr Magotsi’s wishes for a quick burial. In their talks, she wrote in a November 3 Facebook post, Mr Magotsi had wished to be aquamated when he died. Aquamation is the use of chemicals, heat and pressure to dissolve one’s flesh to remain with a fine ash.
“[He] always wanted aquamation. I didn’t even know what aquamation was until he explained it to me. He had clearly communicated his wishes to those he considered important. He wanted a very private and quick same-day ceremony, followed later by a public memorial,” Ms Wanjiku wrote.
Ms Wanjiku told the Daily Nation that if Mr Magotsi had died in Cape Town, his wish to be aquamated would have been honoured. However, they were staying far away.
“I’m not sure there’s any other country that has aquamation in Africa. [He said that] in case he doesn’t die in Cape Town where aquamation is done, he would have wanted to be cremated. This information is not just with me but with the people he valued around him. That’s a conversation he had with people,” she said.
And so, Ms Wanjiku ensured that Mr Magotsi’s body was cremated as fast as possible. She wrote on Facebook that it was not possible to do it that Saturday.
“Because he passed away on a Saturday afternoon, not much could happen until Monday. When Monday came, the pathologist wasn’t available for the autopsy. After much bargaining and pushing, the autopsy was finally done on Day 4, and the cremation on Day 5 [Wednesday]. Despite threats and sabotage at every step, the cremation happened, just as he wished,” Ms Wanjiku said in a November 3 post.
However, Dr Amwayi claims that the cremation was a hush-hush affair.
“How did she go ahead to cremate without even letting any family member get involved? When my brother, who had gone to Maputo, went to the crematorium, he was shown the ashes,” he told the Daily Nation.
The ashes have since been thrown in the Pacific Ocean.
Mock burial at his rural home
In a November 15 Facebook post, Ms Wanjiku wrote: “He has gone back to source. According to his wishes, his ashes now lie in the sea. The serene, endless waters of Bali received him with peace. He loved the ocean deeply, and its beauty was reflected in the life he lived. Goodbye, my beloved. Kwaheri mpenzi.”
Saturday, November 22. A mock burial for Mr Magotsi was held at his rural home in Kitale, in an event Dr Amwayi said was aimed at “releasing” people.
“We are Luhyas. So, we just did a mock burial,” he said.
The burial programme, seen by the Daily Nation, was a packed event that started with a procession and ended with the placement of flowers on the grave site.
With his ashes now one with the ocean, his kin are content that they have a semblance of a grave for him.
Ms Wanjiku opines that loved ones should be allowed to honour the wishes of those close to them.
“I don’t think people are ready to have the conversation about honouring a spouse’s last wishes — especially when those wishes clash with what relatives or deeply rooted cultural practices hold as sacred truth,” Ms Wanjiku stated in a November 2 Facebook post.
“When you love someone as deeply as I loved Fun Factory [her nickname for Mr Magotsi], you honour them the way they envisioned it.”
South-Africa based Kenyan engineer-cum-poet Sankara Berhane Sellasie (real name Robert Moses Magotsi) displays his poetry book titled ‘Troubled Heart’ during an interview at Nation Centre in Nairobi on October 12, 2023.
“Fun Factory’s death saw me get questioned by the DCI of Maputo. Yaani [I mean] nobody focused on my feelings as the spouse but suspicion beckoned [and] relatives called the police on me,” she added.
Mr Magotsi, the eulogy said, was an only child in his family. He was born on October 20, 1970 and was always top of his class in primary school.
Monday, October 27. On this day, the Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi’s office received a letter from Ashiruma and Company Advocates on behalf of Mr Magotsi’s family. The letter’s subject started with “mysterious death” in reference to Mr Magotsi’s demise.
It said that Mr Magotsi moved to South Africa in 2005 and became a permanent resident.
“While on a visit to the Republic of Mozambique in the capital city, Maputo, Mr Magotsi lost his life in mysterious circumstances on October 11, 2025 and was cremated without the knowledge of the family by a Kenyan lady by the name Ms Victoria Wanjik[u] Muraya at the time the family was arranging to repatriate the remains for burial in Kenya,” the letter said.
“Our instructions are that the Kenyan government through the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs do assist the family through the governments of South Africa and Mozambique to establish the cause of death of the deceased and the circumstances in which the deceased’s body was released to a stranger to conduct cremation of the deceased’s remains without the knowledge of the family and if possible to have the suspects involved arrested and arraigned in court for prosecution,” it added.
The Daily Nation reached out to Mr Philip Githiora, the Kenyan ambassador to Mozambique, for a comment on the matter. He had not responded by the time of filing this report.
South-Africa based Kenyan engineer-cum-poet Sankara Berhane Sellasie (real name Robert Moses Magotsi) displays his poetry book titled ‘Troubled Heart’ during an interview at Nation Centre in Nairobi on October 12, 2023.
Also, Ms Wanjiku rebuffed the “stranger” tag, saying the two were married.
“We lived as husband and wife. I lived with him to the point of his death. We were living together,” she said.
Friday, November 28. The Daily Nation had separate interviews with Ms Wanjiku and Dr Amwayi, where various accusations were traded. One of the main ones was the life insurance pay-out.
“That policy was not small money, it was 6.65 million Rand, which translates to about Sh50 million,” said Mr Amwayi.
Ms Wanjiku noted that the pay-out won’t be entirely hers because it will be divided equally among her and Mr Magotsi’ three biological children.
As such, she said, she is entitled to about Sh10 to 12 million.
“Why would I want someone dead for Sh10 million?” she posed. “It is good money, but it’s not money that is going to make me kill you. If you look at what we are doing in one given year, our travels and all, what is Sh10 million? What is Sh10 million, really? I stand to lose a lot by Robert being dead. I have lost a lot by him being dead. And now I feel so naked because, you know, a man is a protector. When the man is gone, that’s when you know that you are alone. All this drama wouldn’t have been there.”
Asked whether she had got the insurance payment, she said it is not possible because Mr Magotsi’s death certificate is still with Mozambican authorities.
“I didn’t get it [the certificate]. It’s me who would have gotten it, but I didn’t,” she told the Daily Nation.
The cover page of the book 'Troubled Heart' a collection of poems authored by Robert Moses Magotsi.
Regarding the claims that Mr Magotsi’s death is suspicious, she said: “I am the one he chose. I am the one who lived with him till the last minute, and because they are not satisfied with my story, I am glad the government did what the government should do: did an autopsy, did an investigation, and I was cleared.”
Besides being an engineer and businessman, Mr Magotsi was a poet, and in 2023 he launched his inaugural poetry book Troubled Heart. One of the poems in the collection is titled “More than a Wallet.”
“I am more than the holidays I afford you. I am more than a wallet. I am more than the little luxuries I afford you. I am more than the in-house ATM. I am more than the private in-house banker. I am more than a wallet,” the poem reads in part.
