Hundreds of Ugandans and many athletes paid their last respects at the funeral on Saturday 14 September for Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who was doused with petrol and set on fire by her teammate a few weeks after running the Paris Olympic marathon. The 33-year-old marathon runner died of her severe and multiple injuries on 5 September after being attacked four days earlier by her Kenyan teammate in Kenya, where she lived and trained. Her attacker, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, 32, doused her with petrol before setting her on fire. He himself, severely burned, died on Monday in a Kenyan hospital.
Rebecca Cheptegei’s death sparked an international wave of tributes and outrage. Human rights activists denounced this new femicide in Kenya, where two other athletes, Agnes Tirop and Damaris Mutua, were murdered and their respective partners accused of the murders since 2021.
“A heroine”
On Saturday morning, relatives of the Ugandan athlete, residents and officials gathered to pay their last respects in the village of Bukwa, where her family lives, some 380 kilometres northeast of Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The ceremony to honour the memory of the athlete, who was also a sergeant in the Ugandan army, began at 10:00 local time (9:00 in France) with a gathering of relatives and officials at a local town hall.
Her coffin, draped with the Ugandan flag, was saluted by army officers, who carried the remains to a community hall overlooking the remote hills of the young girl’s childhood. The coffin was then transported to a nearby stadium where hundreds of people turned out to pay their respects. Finally, Rebecca Cheptegei was buried in the afternoon among the trees of the hills. A burst of cannon fire accompanied the lowering of the coffin into the grave (a use usually reserved for senior Ugandan officers) followed by prayers from local clerics.
Rebecca Cheptegei was “a heroine”Bessie Modest Ajilong, a local representative of the Ugandan presidency, told Agence France-Presse, describing her as someone“exceptional”. Numerous athletes, including Kenyans Mary Keitany and Daniel Komen, traveled to this small town to pay their last respects to the young woman, who finished 44thmy in the marathon at the Paris Olympics on August 11.
According to police, Rebecca Cheptegei’s attacker broke into and hid in her home while she was at church with her children. The victim’s family claims the couple quarreled over the property where she lived with her sister and her daughters. This murder once again highlighted what human rights advocates describe as an epidemic of femicide in Kenya: according to the UN, the country reported 725 cases in 2022 alone.
