A woman on Wednesday told a court that her son killed his father over a plate of ugali.
Christine Lumbukhu was testifying at the High Court in Kakamega against her biological son, Vincent Makhalasia, who is charged with the murder of his father, Atanas Matayos, on July 12, 2013 in Mundulu village. Lumbukhu testified that on the fateful day, she had gone to the shop in the morning to buy sugar, only to return to find her son beating up his father.
“He (Makhalasia) had spent the previous night in a funeral vigil. I had prepared him ugali for dinner but he did not return. He, however, turned up the following morning and found out that his father had eaten his share,” she said. “This seemed not to please my son, who demanded to know why his father ate his share. He then picked up a stick and hit him several times on the head, right hand and right leg, leaving him for dead.”
During cross-examination by Makhalasia through his advocate Kundu Wesutsa, Lumbukhu was asked whether she witnessed the murder. “Yes. I walked in and found my husband wailing ‘my son is killing me, my son is killing me!’ When he (Makhalasia) saw me, he walked away. My husband was bleeding from the head and I helped him to rest in the house. When I inquired from him what had caused the violence, he revealed that it had happened because he had eaten my son’s ugali,” she said.
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Another witness, Julius Angote, Makhalasia’s younger brother, told the court that he was away from home when the incident occurred. “I got information that my brother had grievously assaulted our father when I returned from my work in the evening. I found my father still alive but ailing. He told me he had been beaten by Makhalasia. He had a swollen head and complained of pain, then he passed on,” he said.
There was tension throughout the court session where the justice system demanded that the family members testify against their own. The two are the first to testify in the matter and were taken through the court proceedings in native Isukha, a Luhya dialect, by a court interpreter because they did not understand either Kiswahili or English.
