Last Sunday, August 11, Rebecca Cheptegei fulfilled her dream of representing her country at the Paris Olympics. The Ugandan athlete, a national record holder, hoped to compete for a medal, but she ultimately lost out and finished in 44th position. Less than a month later, her ex-boyfriend, Kenyan Dickson Ndiema, broke into her home in Endebess, Kenya, poured a five-liter can of gasoline on her and set it on fire. Cheptegei arrived at the hospital with 80% burns on his body and did not survive the attack.
Two days earlier, her family had filed a complaint of gender-based violence against Ndiema with the Kenyan police. Her parents decided to take the step after learning that the man had followed their daughter from Kenya to Uganda and that they had a heated argument over ownership of the land on which they had built a house together, in a town in Kenya’s Trans-Nzoia County. The athlete, who hails from a region bordering Uganda, was staying at home to be closer to Kenya’s many sports training centres.
The complaint was in vain. “The government let us down because we informed them well in advance about their safety. It was obvious that his life was in danger,” his father, Joshua Cheptegei, told the media.
The murder of the Ugandan athlete has once again highlighted the serious problem of gender-based violence in professional athletics in Kenya. Cheptegei is not the first athlete to be murdered. The murder of young Kenyan athlete Agnes Tirop in October 2021 shocked the country and sparked a movement for women’s rights. At 25, Tirop had just broken the world record in the 10,000 metres and was Kenya’s great hope when her ex-partner stabbed her to death. Six months later, fellow Kenyan Damaris Muthee Mutua was murdered by her husband. He was 28.
A systemic problem
All have suffered a system of abuse rooted in Kenyan athletics. The control exerted by men over the professional and personal lives of African female athletes begins in childhood. “Agnes has been manipulated since she was little,” Violeta Cheptoo, an athlete and friend of Tirop, tells elDiario.es. The seventh of ten children from a destitute family in the Rift Valley, Tirop began to excel, like many athletes, by running to school. By the age of 11, she was already showing signs of progress and a few years later, she met Ibrahim Rotich, 15 years her senior, whom she began dating and who offered to be her coach.
“They start by saying they will support you, that they will find you an agent and that you will travel the world. You say yes because you want to escape poverty and the only way out for a young girl is to earn a living by running,” Cheptoo says. Rotich convinced Tirop to leave the institute and move in together. By the time she was 20, they had already married. “The man takes control of your life from a very young age. You can’t make any decisions without this person, everything depends on him,” the athlete says. “When women make money… men are the first to run to the bank.”
Control over finances is usually at the root of most cases of gender-based violence in Kenyan athletics. In Elgeyo Marakwet County, where the athletes train, the poverty rate is 57% and a single race can earn more than the average worker earns in a whole year. Rebecca Cheptegei earned €1,100 for her second place finish in the Madrid Half Marathon in 2011 and an athlete usually runs ten or twelve races a year.
In elite athletics, where Agnes Tirop’s career was destined, you can earn more than a million euros a year. “Ninety percent of the time, it’s about money,” Cheptoo says. “Agnes’ murder was a shock and this has opened the eyes of many women, especially young women who already know that they should not allow themselves to be exploited and who are already taking preventive measures, such as putting their properties in their mother’s name,” she adds.
Judicial inaction and delays
One of the main problems is the lack of action to prevent and prosecute gender-based violence. Kenya Athletics has no guidelines or courses to address this, nor does the world governing body, World Athletics.
At the national level, the penal code punishes rape with a minimum sentence of 10 years, but in cases of physical violence or murder, it does not distinguish between cases of gender violence. Added to this is the lack of effectiveness.
Cheptegei’s family reported the abuse but failed to prevent her murder, and Tirop’s ex-boyfriend remains free awaiting trial after spending two years in pretrial detention. Nearly half of all cases brought before Kenyan courts take more than three years to resolve. “Justice needs to be done and it needs to be done quickly. Some cases take up to eight years and many people who don’t have resources give up. This is not justice and it encourages rapists,” Cheptoo says.
The 2023 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey reported that over 11 million women, or 20% of the population, have experienced physical or sexual violence from their partner and four in 10 will experience it in their lifetime. However, 42% of women still believe it is acceptable for their husbands to hit them in a context where marital breakdown is associated with being judged as a woman. Reporting is complicated by lack of acceptance and legal protection.
In late January this year, thousands of people protested in Nairobi against a wave of gender-based violence that has reached 14 murders in less than a month. “In Kenya, gender-based violence is a pandemic. Society has allowed it to happen for so long that it has become part of our lives,” says Cheptoo.
Faced with the lack of official protection, after Agnes Tirop’s death, Cheptoo founded the NGO Tirop’s Angels with his family to honor her life and help victims of gender-based violence. The organization focuses on education and prevention in schools and institutes and, two years later, it has a center with two psychologists, in the city of Iten, capital of Elgeyo-Marakwet County, considered the Mecca of athletics because it is the city chosen by great athletes to train.
There, they train and provide therapy in four support groups based on their profile: women, retired athletes, girls with a vision of the future as professional athletes and a final group of men, whose founder believes it is essential to educate. “We started a program to teach them about gender violence, how to manage stress and misunderstandings in relationships,” explains the athlete, who claims to see a change between those who have been to his center and those who have not. On their board of directors, they have male athletes like Abel Kipchumba, Amos Kipruto and Lawrence Cherono who are involved in the cause.
The next goal is now to be able to build a safe house for the victims, who are currently temporarily housed in hotels, and to set up a secure telephone with 24-hour coverage. “We are just one organization, if everyone did what we do, we would make a big difference,” says the founder. “We can’t wait for someone to die.”
