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How Pheroze Nowrojee saved LSK from Moi mischief and fought trumped up Muge case charges
Senior Counsel Pheroze Nowrojee at a past function. He died on April 5, 2025.
By the time I joined the Faculty of Law at the University of Nairobi (UoN), Pheroze Nowrojee had ended his teaching career and moved into full-time legal practice. However, he had left behind his writing, thoughtfully articles in the UoN’s Law Journal, as well as the University of East African Law Journal.
His writing addressed the big issues of that time, including the emerging slide by East African countries into authoritarianism. Pheroze also grappled with the post-independence policy of the Africanisation of the Kenyan economy, arguing that its good intentions had been subverted by the incompetence and cronyism that characterised the implementation. In one article, the phrase “secrecy in ally of corruption”, which Pheroze used, has stayed with me since. Another of his articles was a review of a standard textbook on administrative law in East Africa that the author, a professor, had plagiarised heavily. Pheroze’s searing review demonstrated the extensive plagiarism and concluded with the advice: “do not read it”.
During the early years of my working life, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) employed me as deputy secretary and later as secretary (nowadays Chief Executive Officer) of the Society where I would go on to work for almost 11 years. At the time I joined the secretariat, LSK was recovering from years of externally instigated turmoil, a consequence of the political backlash against the Society because of its role as the de facto political opposition during Kenya’s one-party rule. The backlash often took the form of co-optation of its leaders, leaving LSK deeply divided down the middle, almost paralysing its work. The retribution against the Society was also extended to its individual leaders, who would face frequent harassment, raids by tax authorities and criminal cases on trumped up charges.
In those circumstances, Pheroze had emerged as part of a core group of LSK members who resisted Kanu’s attack on the Society and the independence of the legal profession. In 1996, a member of the Society filed a petition in the High Court seeking a declaration that provisions in the statute governing LSK were unconstitutional, requesting the court to restrain the Society from engaging in politics and confine its role to “matters germane to the practice of law”. If the suit had succeeded, it would have ended the role that LSK had historically played on the national stage and would have confined it to the regulation of the legal profession. Since the suit was seen as a revival of the one-party era Kanu attacks by President Daniel Moi’s regime against the profession, it drew massive interest in the media and rekindled the old internal tensions in LSK.
The Society appointed Pheroze to defend LSK in the suit, leading a former chair, GBM Kariuki, who later became a judge. I worked closely with the two lawyers and witnessed first-hand the meticulous preparation for which Pheroze was known. During the final submissions, Pheroze urged the court to dismiss the suit but added: “I would not touch a coin in costs from a fellow advocate.”
In 2000, the High Court dismissed the suit, finding that the orders sought were too broad to be granted and ordering each party to bear its own costs.
In those days, contempt of court was a favourite weapon against political dissent, with lawyers, priests, journalists and politicians frequently hauled into court on such charges. Pheroze’s turn came in September 1990. Mrs Herma Muge, the widow of Anglican bishop Alexander Muge, whose death in a road accident left speculation as to foul play, had instructed Pheroze to seek orders in the High Court suspending the trial, in a magistrate’s court, of the driver of the lorry that had been involved in the accident that killed Muge. The Muge family feared that the trial was a cover-up aimed at defeating a parallel inquest into the death of the prelate and wanted it stopped to allow the inquest to proceed to its logical conclusion.
After weeks passed without the High Court giving its decision to suspend the trial, Pheroze wrote a letter to the Registrar of the court, complaining about the delay, which he described as “most unusual” and as amounting to “a refusal to adjudicate”.
After contents of the letter were prominently covered in the media, Attorney-General Matthew Guy Muli, brought criminal charges against Pheroze that his letter was a “scurrilous and unjustified attack on the court”. More than 70 lawyers offered to defend Pheroze who opted for a modest team to avoid overwhelming the court. The case attracted international media, with observers from the International Bar Association and the International Commission of Jurists attending its hearing, which was seen as continuation of the trend of harassment of political dissidents. In the end, however, Justice Mango acquitted Pheroze of all the charges, finding that a healthy criticism could not amount to a scurrilous attack on the court.
It was during my time at the LSK that Pheroze was inducted to its Roll of Honour in 2005, for lifelong service to the legal profession in Kenya with his acceptance speech over dinner at the Carnivore Restaurant receiving a long ovation. Three years earlier I was in the room in a Johannesburg hotel, when the International Bar Association awarded to Pheroze the Bernard Simons Prize Human Rights. I was also in the room in Hyderabad, India, when Pheroze powerfully raised the matter of the detention of Kenyan human rights activist, Al Amin Kimathi, in a Ugandan jail. Together with lawyer, Mbugua Mureithi, Kimathi had been abducted while visiting Kampala, to follow up the cases of their client facing terrorism charges there. Pheroze’s speech in India shook the room with Uganda’s Chief Justice walking out and calling home to report what he considered as an attack on his country. Later, Pheroze led a team of Kenyan lawyers and activists into Uganda to seek the release of Al Amin, during which Samuel Mohochi, now a judge, was arrested and returned to Kenya.
While some of Pheroze’s many big cases — including as the lead counsel for the opposition National Super Alliance (NASA) in the petition in the Supreme Court that led to the historic annulment of the 2017 presidential election — are well known, a full list of the body of work to which Pheroze contributed during an unbelievably busy and productive professional life would be too long to discuss here and would take a voluminous book.
Outside of the courtroom, Pheroze was involved in, and contributed to, the establishment of organisations that have played an important role in the ecosystem of justice and human rights. Over the years, Pheroze became a favourite speaker at the massive annual conferences of the Law Society of Kenya. During the conference in Kwale last year, where he delivered the keynote address and also launched the last of many books he has written, Pheroze was treated like a rock star, receiving an unusually warm treatment. Although we did not know it then, the profession was saying its goodbye to one of the greatest lawyers to have signed Kenya’s roll of advocates. Pheroze was the co-founder, together with Dr. Lynn Kituyi, of the Independent Medico-Legal Unit, an organisation that pioneered medical forensics into the field of human rights in Kenya, playing an impactful role in accountability against torture, an ingrained practice during the one-party rule. Pheroze and his family gave a generous endowment to the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists, which enabled the organisation to construct its premises. A section of the building proudly bears the name of Pheroze.
What Pheroze did in public followed him home. In her tribute, Lynn Kituyi remarked that Pheroze and his wife Villo set up their home as a safe space for political progressives. Having visited Pheroze’s home over the years, I witnessed this characterisation in practice. In my last two visits which took place two months ago, Pheroze was meeting Gen Z activists from Mathare. Pheroze’s home hosted everyone, regardless of age, class, gender or race, and the famous lawyer would often serve the tea himself.
As a legal professional, Pheroze did not work alone but was part of a group of activist lawyers who, over three decades, have supported each other, developing strong personal friendships that are forged by the adversities that they have faced collectively and individually. His last book, Practising an Honourable Profession, was dedicated to, among others, Gitobu Imanyara, Florence Imanyara, (his wife), Mutuma Imanyara and Marangu Imanyara (their sons.) After Pheroze died, Imanyara emotionally eulogised him, calling him “the conscience of our Republic” and wished that Pheroze would “rest in peace, reunited with the ancestors that he so revered and the freedom fighters whose cause he so nobly carried forward”.
Responses to Pheroze’s death have noted his warmth, generosity and humility. For me, the best summary of Pheroze came from Njeru Kathangu, the former political prisoner whom Pheroze defended. According to Kathangu, this giant lawyer and once-in-life-time personality “lived simple and free”.
The writer is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya