Her kingdom, the power and the fury

Rub Bishop Dr Margaret Wanjiru up  the wrong way and face a wounded tiger. JOHN KOIGI talked to the evangelist, who will not let anybody stand in her way to marriage and determination to be a Member of ParliamentAt the Jesus Is Alive Ministries (Jiam) on Nairobi’s  Haile Selassie Avenue, Bishop Dr Margaret Wanjiru runs the show and there is no debate about it.

So when the Bishop, who a week ago, told Weekend that she had always wanted to be great and would let nothing stand in her way, she seemed to be  sounding a warning to real and imagined detractors of her political ambitions and marriage to South African Samuel Matjeke, to be held on February 10.

On Sunday, January 7, a buoyant Bishop Wanjiru kept her congregation in suspense by going through the normal church business before introducing Matjeke and their families to the congregation.

In the process she would say very interesting things. First, she forgave some men in the church who she said had talked ill of her and offended their wives, causing tension in their families. “They said I would marry somebody my son’s age but I forgive them…let God restore their marriages.”

Not the usual meek preacher, Bishop Wanjiru would reveal that several “brothers” had shown interest in her and “prevented” her from getting engaged through prayer. “Walinifunga kwa maombi, waambiwe Bishop anaenda,” (They restrained me through prayer, tell them the Bishop is going)” she said amid ululation and declared that their marriage had been signed and sealed in heaven.

After that, she introduced her shy fiancé and her children, Purity who is aged 19, Evans, 27, and Steven 26. Matjeke’s children Lebo and Sammy are aged 17 and 14 respectively.

Before James Kamangu Ndimu burst into the scene, Bishop Wanjiru had told Weekend that she met Matejke at a seminar “outside Kenya and not in South Africa” where they were the only Africans present. So not surprisingly, a chemistry developed between them. “He invited me to his church. That was many years ago,” recalled Wanjiru.

Curiously, when she introduced Matjeke to the congregation, she did not invite him even to greet them. Instead, Bishop Wanjiru invited a toothbrush-moustached man from South Africa, whom she addressed as “uncle” to greet the congregation.

“We cannot wait for the wedding. We are over moon,”  ‘Uncle’ told a cheering congregation.” 

It looked like nothing would ruin the show until a villager from Gachie, near Nairobi contacted the media and told the whole world, via the Sunday Nation and NTV, that Bishop Wanjiru was still his wife in accordance with Kikuyu customs. He said he had not only  paid a Sh3,000 dowry for her, but was in fact the father of her two sons, Steven and Evans Ndimu.

In the wake of Kamangu’s “revelation” humility, meekness and forgiveness were apparently forgotten  last Sunday at the JIAM temple as the furious bishop hit back.

“I will not take any nonsense from anybody. I can twist their neck like that of a chicken,” she threatened.

And holding nothing back, she described Kamangu as, “having hands which appear like they have been eaten by jiggers… He can look for a rope and hang himself somewhere and we shall do a funeral.” 

That sparked a torrent of outrage that forced to her to apologise to Kenyans on Tuesday in an interview with an FM radio station. Later, as we went to press, her bodyguard attacked a journalist after which an ungodly melee ensued in her church.

But even as she dismissed Kamangu’s claims on Sunday, the Bishop had told us on Friday that she had had previous issues with men. 

“Like any other woman who wants to explore the world before salvation, yes, I was involved with a couple of men but my children have the same father. But I’ve never been married.”

On Tuesday, she would not name the father but said four other men were making claims similar to Kamangu’s.

Kamangu had claimed that he was married to Wanjiru from 1978 to 1983. He said they they had met and fallen in love in Westlands, Nairobi, where their parents worked as domestic servants .    

Kamangu further said he paid a Sh3,000 bride price in line with Kikuyu customary laws. They lived together in a three-bedroom semi-permanent house in Gachie and even after the break-up, were romantically involved until 2003.

That year, Kamangu said, Wanjiru came calling with her sons Evans and Stephen, who wanted to see their father, and took away all their photos. Kamangu also says he contributed to raising, Steve, who works in the UK, and Evans, who works in the US.    

Bishop Wanjiru built JIAM from the Aga Khan Walk in  Nairobi, where she started off preaching in the hot sun in the 1990s, to a mega church with up to 20,000 members, and offices in Uganda, Stratford (London), Massachusetts in the US and Johannesburg, South Africa. 

The JIAM empire also consists of the numerous Abib Liners  matatus — which are financed by a transport offertory to ferry worshippers on Sunday so that they “don’t roam the city” The church also owns — Faith Digest and Faith Daily publications and The Glory Development Fund. The fund handles loans and saving accounts, shareholding, children and group accounts.

The spiritual empire consists of a Bible school, a video library, a recording studio and cassette shop.

Asked whether the ministry wasn’t overly involved in commercial matters she replied: “It depends on what the leaders of the church do with the resources. The church, like the government, must be development conscious. God doesn’t supply where there is no vision. The word provision is derived from vision, so where there is vision, there is provision. But you must also be faithful in how you channel these resources. If you say to the people we are raising money to buy a building, don’t use that money to buy a car. Your character must be beyond reproach, especially when it comes to finances.”

Wanjiru says that while growing up in Westlands, near St Marks Anglican Church in Nairobi in the 1970s, her goal was to become great someday.

“But I did not know in which area. There was that sense of greatness within me. It never seemed possible because I came from a very poor background and we could barely put food on the table. Going to school was a problem, so when I thought about it I could not see the possibility of greatness. But I was determined to become great one day.” 

Her mother was a domestic servant and had to scrimp and scrape to raise the six of them, she recalls. 

While a student at Muguga Green Primary School, which was  attended by children from poor families, she envied the children from the  classy Westlands Primary School and vowed that “My children would not go to a school for the poor, but one for the rich.”     

She later attended CGHU High School in Parklands, where she spent a lot of time dancing to Indian traditional tunes on the promise of scholarships.

“After our O levels, our parents had to pay any outstanding fees for us to get our results,” she recalls. 

The Bishop confesses to having had her first son in January after her final exams.  “That’s why my children are grown up.” 

However, this differs from a an interview she gave in 2001 which she said she was made pregnant twice in school by a man she hardly knew. 

After school, she studied marketing and management and sold gift items and handicrafts.

Kamangu, for his part, claims that his  sister Rachel Wamucii (now deceased) helped Wanjiru get a job at cigarette company, Philip Harrison and Crossfield, where she started off as a cleaner. 

To get her promoted, Kamangu claimed, they sought the services of a witchdoctor in Kawangware. “I had a curio shop on Wabera Street ...Our visits to the witchdoctor were to make my business flourish and for her to get promoted,” he told the Sunday Nation.

According to Kamangu, Wanjiru left the company four years later after quarrelling with her boss. 

They seem to agree on this score. “ In one instance I was the director’s darling and the next I was a devil, splashing him with tea,” Wanjiru said in the 2001 interview.  She also confessed that she had practised witchcraft  from the age of 10. 

Curiously, Wanjiru will not reveal when she got saved because,  she says, it might become an issue for members of her congregation who are “older in faith than me. I’ve not been saved for long but I have grown spiritually.”

But her road to ministry began when she was an usher in the mid-1990s in a church she would not name, where she would occasionally drive “the South-African pastor”.

When the South-Africans went back to their country, Wanjiru started her own ministry. She started by preaching at Aga Khan Walk during lunch hour before buying public address equipment and moving to the first floor of Mang Hotel on Haile Selassie Avenue. 

“We literally exploded. We were running up to 22 services a week,” she recalls.

And in 1998, the television broadcast, The Glory is Here, went on air and JIAM acquired two buildings on opposite sides of Haile Selassie Avenue, which now accommodate the church’s 62 departments. 

Is she rich? 

“The Bible says wealth and riches will be in your home, land, ministry, or in the work of your hands, so there is nothing wrong with individuals being rich. If anybody wants to remain poor they can remain poor but God has room for those who want to prosper, and prosper in a Godly manner.”

Then came the doctorate.

“I went to America in 2003 and was invited to preach to a group of leaders from Vineyard Harvesters. They didn’t know me well enough. They thought I just wanted to say something. But when I preached, they knew this was substance. Titled ‘The Blessings of the 12 tribes of Israel,’ it was one of my best sermons. They wanted to give me a gift that I would never forget, and that’s how I got my doctorate.”

And the Bishophood? She says she was ordained by a group of bishops in the country.

“There is one word I love called integrity. You cannot be ordained if your character is bad, she says, adding that among the ordaining clerics was Bishop Arthur Gitonga of the Redeemed Gospel Church.

Besides the wedding to Matjeke, Wanjiru’s other plan is to capture the Starehe parliamentary seat.   

How will she deal with the inevitable mudslinging? “They can use their mud, they can call me names. I don’t have time to call them names. I’m like Nehemiah. I’m rebuilding the walls of Starehe. I’m doing politics in a different way,” she says.