24 July 2026

 

WHEN SHARON OTIENO BECAME A REFERENDUM ON ELITE IMPUNITY

 

“The people’s tribunal sat first. The High Court merely recorded its verdict.”

 

Reflections of the General Secretary, Communist Party Marxist Kenya

By Booker Ngesa Omole

 

For readers unfamiliar with the case, Sharon Otieno was a university student whose murder in September 2018 shocked the nation. She was abducted alongside journalist Barrack Oduor and another companion after leaving a hotel in Rongo, Migori County. Oduor escaped after being assaulted and left for dead, but Sharon was forcibly driven away by her captors to a remote thicket in Homa Bay County. There, she pleaded for her life before she was repeatedly stabbed with such ferocity that she succumbed to her injuries and was abandoned where she fell. She was several months pregnant, and the brutal attack claimed the lives of both Sharon and her unborn child. The prosecution alleged that the killing was orchestrated to silence her because of her relationship with then Migori Governor Okoth Obado and the political implications of the pregnancy.

 

The sheer brutality of the murder provoked an unprecedented wave of public grief, anger and outrage. Newspapers, television stations and radio programmes carried the story relentlessly for weeks. Social media was inundated with demands for justice under the slogan #JusticeForSharon. Public demonstrations and solidarity marches were organised in several parts of the country, with women’s organisations, students, human rights defenders, journalists and ordinary Kenyans demanding that those responsible, regardless of their political status, be brought to justice. The outrage was fuelled not only by the horrific nature of the killing but also by the widespread belief that powerful political figures could once again use wealth and influence to escape accountability. For nearly eight years, the Kenyan people closely followed every court appearance, every adjournment and every legal development, refusing to allow Sharon Otieno and her unborn child to become yet another forgotten statistic of elite impunity.

 

What began as the murder of a young woman quickly ceased to be a private tragedy. It became a national political question, transforming Sharon Otieno into a symbol of the struggle against elite impunity.

 

After nearly eight years of investigation and trial, the High Court found Obado and his co-accused guilty, concluding that the murder had been planned and executed as a joint criminal enterprise. Sentencing remains pending.

 

It is this conviction, and the broader political and class contradictions it exposes, that these reflections seek to examine.

 

These reflections therefore proceed not from the standpoint of liberal jurisprudence but from the standpoint of historical materialism, locating this case within the broader contradictions of class power, the neo colonial state and the struggle of the Kenyan masses.

 

The conviction of former Migori Governor Okoth Obado for the murder of Sharon Otieno should not be understood as a simple legal victory. To understand it merely as a successful prosecution is to misunderstand both the nature of the neo colonial state and the historical process that produced this outcome.

 

The first and most important question that must be asked is this: who delivered justice?

 

The liberal commentator will answer that it was the courts. The constitutional lawyer will point to judicial independence. The politician will praise the rule of law. Yet all these answers conceal the most fundamental truth.

 

The masses delivered justice.

 

The Kenyan people prosecuted this case long before the judiciary delivered its judgment. Sharon Otieno was vindicated politically before she was vindicated legally. The people’s tribunal sat before the High Court sat. The masses remembered before the state remembered.

 

This case was subjected to what I would call a double prosecution. The first prosecution took place in the most powerful court in any society, namely the court of public opinion, and in the streets, where millions of Kenyans transformed grief into organised political pressure through demonstrations, solidarity marches and sustained public agitation. The second prosecution took place within the institutions of the neo colonial state.

 

The first prosecution was conducted relentlessly for almost eight years by ordinary Kenyans who refused to forget Sharon Otieno. It was conducted by mothers who saw their daughters in Sharon. It was conducted by workers, peasants, youth, journalists, progressive lawyers, women’s movements and millions of Kenyans who refused to allow her name to disappear into the archives of forgotten injustices.

 

The second prosecution merely formalised what the masses had already concluded.

 

The courtroom therefore became the final arena of a struggle that had already been politically decided outside it.

 

One of the greatest weaknesses of liberal legal analysis is its failure to understand that courts do not exist outside society. Judges are not dropped from heaven. They are products of social relations. Institutions do not float above class struggle. The law itself develops within definite historical and political circumstances.

 

The neo colonial state possesses no morality independent of the prevailing balance of class forces. Its conduct is shaped not by abstract notions of justice but by the correlation of political forces in society. Where the organised masses become sufficiently powerful, even institutions designed to reproduce class domination may be compelled to concede democratic demands.

 

Had Sharon Otieno been murdered quietly in a remote village without attracting national attention, would justice have been delivered? History teaches us to be sceptical. The neo colonial state has buried countless crimes committed against the poor and the powerless. The cemeteries of our history are full of unnamed victims of state violence, political violence and class violence.

 

What made Sharon Otieno’s case different was not merely the strength of the evidence. It was the political impossibility of burying her story.

 

The masses transformed an individual tragedy into a national political contradiction.

 

Sharon Otieno’s murder became more than a criminal case. It became a referendum on elite impunity.

 

The contradiction was simple. Could a powerful politician mobilise money, networks and influence to dispose of an ordinary Kenyan woman and escape accountability?

 

The Kenyan masses answered that question with a resounding no, making elite impunity politically unsustainable and compelling the institutions of the state to respond.

 

The judiciary merely arrived at the destination that the masses had reached years earlier.

 

There is yet another contradiction that must not be ignored. The verdict was not only about Sharon Otieno. It was also about the legitimacy of the judiciary itself.

 

The neo colonial judicial system in Kenya is experiencing a profound crisis of legitimacy. For the overwhelming majority of Kenyans, justice remains inaccessible, prohibitively expensive and painfully slow. The poor languish in remand prisons for petty offences while the politically connected and economically powerful routinely deploy the law as a commodity to be purchased, delayed or negotiated. Justice, in practice, is too often reserved for the highest bidder.

 

The masses know this reality because they live it every day.

 

The Obado case therefore became a trial not only of the accused but of the judiciary itself. The Kenyan people were asking a fundamental question. Can the courts deliver justice when confronted by political power, wealth and influence?

 

Had the courts failed in this case, it would not merely have been Sharon Otieno who was betrayed. The institutional legitimacy of the judiciary itself would have suffered an even deeper crisis. Public confidence in an already fragile judicial system would have been further eroded.

 

The verdict therefore served a dual political function. It delivered a measure of justice to Sharon Otieno and simultaneously restored, albeit partially and temporarily, public confidence in the judicial process. The neo colonial courts understood that they were not simply determining criminal liability. They were also defending their own political and institutional legitimacy before the masses.

 

In dialectical terms, the judiciary was compelled by circumstances to preserve itself through the administration of justice. To fail to convict where the evidence was overwhelming and where public consciousness had been consolidated for almost eight years would have deepened the perception that the courts exist merely as instruments for protecting the wealthy and politically connected.

 

The masses had already delivered their political verdict. The judiciary had only two choices. Either align itself with truth and preserve its legitimacy or align itself with impunity and further expose its class character before the people.

 

The courts therefore had very little political room to manoeuvre.

 

This should not lead us into liberal celebrations of judicial heroism. Institutions do not become revolutionary merely because they occasionally act correctly. One swallow does not make a summer. One just verdict does not transform a judicial system whose contradictions remain deeply embedded within the neo colonial order.

 

The true lesson is that even institutions that ordinarily reproduce class domination may, under sufficient political pressure from the masses, be compelled to act in accordance with the democratic aspirations of the people.

 

Marxists have long understood that the state is not a mechanical instrument that acts identically under all circumstances. While fundamentally serving the interests of the ruling classes, its institutions possess a limited relative autonomy, allowing them, under exceptional pressure from organised social forces, to make concessions necessary for preserving the broader system of class rule.

 

More fundamentally, this case demonstrates an important Marxist truth about the state and the ruling classes. The interests of capital as a whole subordinate the interests of capital in part.

 

The conviction of Okoth Obado is not a negation of this principle. It is its confirmation.

 

The neo colonial state exists not to defend every individual member of the ruling class under all circumstances. It exists to reproduce and preserve the conditions necessary for the continued domination of the ruling classes as a whole. Whenever the interests of an individual member of the ruling class come into contradiction with the legitimacy and stability of the entire system of class rule, the individual may become expendable.

 

Sharon Otieno’s murder generated contradictions that threatened more than the political future of one governor. It threatened public confidence in the judiciary, confidence in bourgeois legality and confidence in the institutions through which the neo colonial state reproduces its domination. The system was therefore compelled to subordinate the interests of one section of the ruling class to the broader interests of the ruling classes collectively.

 

This is not justice triumphing over class interests. It is class interests expressing themselves at a higher level.

 

Capital occasionally sacrifices one of its own in order to preserve the entire edifice of capital. The system occasionally prosecutes one member of the ruling class in order to preserve the political and ideological legitimacy of the system itself.

 

The exception exists to preserve the rule.

 

In dialectical terms, the sacrifice of capital in part becomes necessary for the preservation of capital as a whole.

 

It is also necessary to reject the dangerous liberal illusion that this conviction demonstrates that the Kenyan state has fundamentally defeated impunity.

 

Systems are not judged by their exceptions.

 

The conviction of one member of the ruling class must never be mistaken for the defeat of ruling class impunity itself. One rich man has gone to prison. The system that produced him remains intact.

 

The overwhelming majority of rich criminals in Kenya never see the inside of a prison cell. Those who steal public wealth amounting to billions continue to occupy positions of political and economic influence. Those responsible for land grabbing, economic crimes, political violence and corruption remain celebrated members of respectable society.

 

Yet, from time to time, one rich and powerful individual is convicted. This is necessary for the system itself. The neo colonial state must occasionally demonstrate that justice is blind in order to conceal the reality that it usually sees class.

 

Sometimes the rich are convicted because the masses have mobilised sufficient political pressure to make impunity politically impossible. Sometimes they are convicted because they have fallen out with powerful sections of the ruling class itself.

 

Yet even when the rich are convicted, class privilege does not disappear at the prison gates.

 

There are effectively two prison systems in Kenya. One for the poor and another for the rich.

 

The poor prisoner serves his sentence in its most brutal form. He is forgotten by society and abandoned by the political class.

 

The rich prisoner enters prison carrying his class position with him. He enjoys privileged treatment, superior legal representation, preferential conditions and continued political relevance. In some instances, convicted politicians continue exercising de facto political leadership from prison through money, patronage and political networks.

 

Nor does the story ordinarily end with conviction or imprisonment.

 

Yet the struggle is not over. The sentencing of Okoth Obado and his co-accused is still pending, and the masses must therefore remain vigilant and politically conscious throughout the remainder of this process.

 

The history of the neo colonial state teaches us that justice is often most vulnerable to manipulation precisely when public attention begins to wane. Convictions may be celebrated today only to be diluted tomorrow through mitigation, preferential treatment, appellate manoeuvres, political intervention or the gradual erosion of public memory.

 

The struggle for justice did not end when the verdict was read. It has merely entered a new phase.

 

The sentencing process remains susceptible to the same class and political pressures that characterise the broader judicial system. Wealth, political influence and elite networks do not disappear upon conviction. They continue to operate before, during and after sentencing.

 

This is why public vigilance remains indispensable. The people’s tribunal must remain politically in session until justice has been fully and transparently administered. The masses must refuse to surrender their historical role simply because the courts have delivered a conviction.

 

The people’s memory secured this victory. It is the people’s vigilance that must now defend it.

 

Justice must not only be done. It must not be negotiated, diluted or quietly reversed once the public spotlight fades. The struggle continues until the final chapter of this case is written.

 

The neo colonial state possesses many mechanisms through which members of the ruling class are eventually restored to public life. Appeals overturn convictions when public anger has subsided. Executive clemency and political settlements become available. Historical revisionism rehabilitates former villains into political victims or elder statesmen.

 

The masses are expected to celebrate justice while the ruling class patiently prepares rehabilitation.

 

This is precisely why revolutionaries must refuse to confuse episodic victories with systemic transformation.

 

The Obado conviction is politically significant because it demonstrates the immense power of organised public opinion and the capacity of the masses to compel concessions from the neo colonial state. It is a victory worth celebrating. But it is not a victory that should produce political illusions.

 

The system remains a system of class justice. It remains a system in which the poor overwhelmingly fill the prisons while the wealthy overwhelmingly occupy the boardrooms, Parliament, State House and political parties. It remains a system in which justice is too often purchased, negotiated, delayed or selectively administered.

 

The masses compelled the conviction of one powerful individual. They have not yet dismantled the system that continually reproduces powerful individuals who believe themselves to be beyond the reach of justice.

 

Our task, therefore, is not merely to celebrate when one member of the ruling class falls. Our task is to organise for the complete democratisation of political and economic power in society itself.

 

The Sharon Otieno case teaches us a profound historical lesson. The masses are the makers of history. When organised and politically conscious, they possess the power to compel even the most entrenched institutions of class rule to make concessions.

 

The people’s tribunal sat before the courts sat. The people’s memory sustained the struggle for justice. The people’s pressure compelled the neo colonial judiciary to act.

 

The judiciary did not gift justice to the Kenyan people. It merely formalised what the masses had already demanded and what history had already decreed.

 

And when the people refuse to forget, even the most powerful among the ruling classes can be compelled to answer before history.

 

The masses sat in judgment before the courts did. The people prosecuted before the Republic prosecuted. The masses remembered before the institutions remembered.

 

It is the masses who are the true authors of this verdict, and it is the masses alone who shall determine whether justice remains an occasional concession extracted from the ruling classes or becomes the permanent property of the people.

 

History has not reached its conclusion. The conviction of one representative of the ruling class cannot substitute for the abolition of a social order that continually reproduces impunity. Until class justice is replaced by the justice of a genuinely democratic and emancipated society, the struggle continues. The organised masses must therefore remain vigilant, for only they can ensure that this victory is neither diluted nor reversed, and only they possess the power to transform justice from an occasional concession wrested from the ruling classes into the permanent possession of the people.

 

The conviction of Okoth Obado has illuminated the contradictions of class justice in neo colonial Kenya. It is now the historic responsibility of the organised masses not merely to expose those contradictions, but to abolish the social order that reproduces them through the revolutionary transformation of society itself.