Kenya’s Catholic Marriage Dilemma: Polygamy Accepted, But Divorce Rejected
NAIROBI, Kenya — In May 2024, a Catholic parish in Kiambu County, near the Kenyan capital Nairobi, made national headlines when it allowed a polygamous man to marry one of his wives in a church ceremony. The ceremony happened while the other wife sat in the congregation.
Patrick Ndachu had been married to Margaret Nyokabi since the 1970s, in a customary union conducted under the Kikuyu rites outside the church. Ndachu later married Diana and, over the years, he fathered children with both women. As reported by the local press, he had long wanted to have a church ceremony to formalize his marriage to Margaret.
The church agreed, after what local TV station Citizen TV reported was a five-year clearance process, with the agreement that Ndachu had to write a will dividing his estate equitably between both families.
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And thus, Margaret walked the aisle as Diana watched from the pews.
Speaking after the ceremony, Ndachu said: “The church doesn't allow one to wed two wives, but outside here, I will embrace my polygamous status, and I will tell the world that the two are my wives, and that I love them.”
The ceremony drew a set of mixed responses. For critics, it looked like a subtle concession to something the church has always opposed.
“This is double standards by my church,” quipped one commentator by the name Toloba Lingala on social media. “They just set a precedent.”
For others, particularly those familiar with how many Kenyan families actually live, the development looked more like the church acknowledging a reality it has always known was there. In debates that ensued in the media and on social media, some people were even suggesting that Ndachu’s polygamous marriage aligns with the biblical position.
“These are the true teachings of the bible. The latter-day imposition of having only one wife was a lie,” another commenter, named Abubakar Kombo, suggested.
Notably, the church did not expressly sanction the polygamous arrangement. Speaking to the media outside the church after the ceremony, the priest officiating the wedding acknowledged that the first wife had been there all along, and that Ndachu had gone “around” and “got another one” and had children with her.
“But now he came back to the first one, and they have all agreed that he picks one,” he said.
Elsewhere, another issue this year citing Catholic marriage was taking shape in a courtroom in nearby Machakos County. A woman had been opposing her husband's divorce petition since he filed it in 2021.
The petitioner — a Catholic woman identified in court papers as E.W.K. — was opposed to the divorce on religious grounds, stating that her faith does not recognize divorce. She also denied her husband's allegations of cruelty, desertion and adultery, instead counter-accusing him of cruelty. She sought judicial separation, basically a legal arrangement that would give the couple time apart while leaving the door open for reconciliation.
The trial magistrate, Judge M. A. Otindo, agreed with her in 2023, dismissed the petition and granted separation. The husband appealed. High Court Justice Noel Adagi reviewed the case and found that the marriage had irretrievably broken down, with the couple having lived separately since 2020. The judge faulted the lower court for trying to preserve a union that had already ceased to function.
“The law does not require spouses to endure emotional, psychological, or social imprisonment under the guise of marriage,” he ruled.
Adagi granted the divorce, bringing to an end a marriage that had been solemnized in 2003.
E.W.K.’s religious objection was heard and set aside. Lawyer Danstan Omari, commenting on the ruling, said: “The law is saying (that) any marriage that is not functional, the court will dissolve that marriage. If a marriage has broken irreversibly, that marriage will be dissolved.”
The two situations pull in different directions but seem to converge at some point with a fresh understanding of Catholic standpoints on marriage against the evolving context of contemporary Kenya. One is about the church finding a path around its own rules on monogamy, while the other is about the state declining to make space for a Catholic's sincere doctrinal objection to divorce.
In both cases, the church's teaching on marriage as permanent, exclusive and sacramental ran into entirely new headwinds.
Kenya’s Marriage Act of 2014 allows dissolution where a marriage has irretrievably broken down. There is a separate petition currently before the High Court, filed by a Catholic man identified as PKG, who argues that the Act should not apply to Catholics whose vows were made before God.
Polygamy, meanwhile, is present in many communities and generations in Kenya, including among regular churchgoers. It was practiced particularly among older Kenyans who had been married through the customary process, before deepening their Christian practice. In this regard, the Kiambu wedding only served to bring to the fore an already existing phenomenon.
Notably, former president Uhuru Kenyatta signed the Marriage Act 2014, which effectively recognizes polygamous marriages under customary law.
Joseph Maina is a Kenyan journalist. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and media studies from the University of Nairobi. For the past decade, he has served as a correspondent for various print and digital publications in his native Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa.