She should go ahead and marry if that will make her happy. But she should not go around tarnishing my name, saying that she left me because I am a drunkard."
He added: "I love Wanjiru. I love my children. I have always thought we would reconcile and she would return to me. Although I am bitter that she is marrying another man, there is nothing I can do about it if that is her wish and if the children have approved of it. But Wanjiru cannot run away from the truth that she is my common-law wife and that I am the real father of her two sons."
So, is he planning to spoil the party for his allegedly estranged wife?
"I cannot stand in her way to what she believes will be a happy marriage. In 1990 and thereafter she vowed never to return to me. I told her I wanted to remarry. I introduced my fiancée Beatrice Mbaire from Banana to her. She said it was fine. I have a 14-year-old son, Stephen, with Mbaire. But she, too, left me in 1993. I have never remarried."
Mr Kamangu said though he and Bishop Wanjiru were separated, the two used to meet occasionally until 2003, "when things started changing".
And Mr Kamangu's father, Mzee Ndimu, who falters in his speech, said: "I heard on radio that Wanjiru is getting married and I wondered: Why would she marry again yet she has a husband and grown-up children? Her first-born son, Ndimu, is named after me. I can only pray that they will recognise Kamangu as their real father. We took dowry to Wanjiru's late father in Westlands. It's true."
So, are father and son willing to demand back dowry now that Wanjiru is remarrying? "Why go for it? Her children belong to this home," Mzee Ndimu said. His son added: "I am not interested in that. I don't want any money back."
Mr Kamangu's mother, Wairimu, said: "I still regard Wanjiru as my daughter-in-law. The last time she was here (in 2003) she brought the two children to see their father. They hugged him in joy."
But Bishop Wanjiru, speaking on the phone from her Nairobi's Jiam offices, claimed she did not know either Mr Kamangu or his parents. She first sought to know the man's name, then: "Who is he? Is he a Kenyan? I have never been married to any man. May be you are talking about the man I am to marry soon."
She dismissed the need to see Mr Kamangu and her alleged parents-in-law's pictures off hand. Instead, she asked: "Did you talk to images or real people? I doubt, the names do not sound familiar."
She added: "If people are out to make money out of you, please be careful. Many people will now come up with all sorts of claims. I am very happy. I don't care about anyone even if they have been sent from Starehe by my enemies."
She laughed off Mr Kamangu's claim that his family paid Sh3,000 as dowry for her hand in marriage.
"You mean my mother was so poor that she could accept only Sh,3,000 as my dowry? In 1978 I was in high school."
But Mr Kamangu insisted that he married her that year, "immediately she left CGHU Girls' Secondary School in Parklands." While answering questions during a live TV interview recently, Bishop Wanjiru claimed she did not know if the father of her children was still alive. She also gave reasons for her impending marriage as security and to gain the image of a family woman.
But, in an earlier interview with the Sunday Nation in 2001, she said the man who made her pregnant twice, first while she was in high school, was hardly known to her. That she got the two sons "in very desperate circumstances".
Our parents were cooks
Bishop Wanjiru said she was initiated into witchcraft at the tender age of 10, when she lived in a servant's quarters at Westlands, Nairobi, together with her mother and five siblings.
"I didn't even finish high school before I was made pregnant by a man whom I hardly knew. But before I could figure out what was eating me, I was pregnant again - despite counselling and cautioning by my mother. I got my two boys, Steven and Evans, in very desperate circumstances. Then their father ducked. The false promises of witchcraft were striking back."
Now Mr Kamangu says: "Both our parents were cooks for white people at Westlands. I was also a cook there. Our families knew each other very well. I loved that girl and she loved me throughout her secondary school education. Then she became pregnant while still in school.
"We married in 1978 and moved to Gachie. First we had a small house at my parents' home. My father gave me a plot (about 400 metres away) and Wanjiru and I built a three bedroom semi-permanent house."
Talking about her former experiences as a witch, Bishop Wanjiru once said: "My wardrobe was full of evil concoctions and I had built altars for the devil in my home, office, and business premises. I had graduated from Black Witchcraft to White Witchcraft to Red Witchcraft and my business fortunes multiplied as I went up the ranks of Satanism.
"I even started associating with masonics. One woman tried to play poker with my business enterprise, the same woman who actually introduced me to Black Magic. I bewitched her and she went bonkers. She was roaming the streets of Nairobi in rags, picking up dirt and eating takakata (waste) from dustbins.
"She had tried to use Black Witchcraft on me, unaware that I had moved on into White and Red witchcraft. I had reached a level at which I could, through the evil medium of occult charms, see in the spiritual realm anyone who was trying to harm me. "I found God on March 18, 1990. I gave my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a total transformation, a Holy Ghost baptism of fire."
Now Mr Kamangu claims he and Wanjiru used to visit a witchdoctor. "We used to visit a witchdoctor at Kawangware (in Nairobi). I had a curio shop on Wabera Street and she had a job. Our visits to the witchdoctor were to make my business flourish and for her to get promoted. I soon did away with the practice. In fact, I suspect, the visits adversely affected my mental faculty."
Bishop Wanjiru had, after leaving school, according to an interview with the Sunday Nation in 2001, became a house servant - like her mother. Then, she would go for anything - satanic or holy - that would promise her a materially brighter future, she said.
She said, in the interview, that she was a toilet cleaner at Philips Harrison and Crossfield, but left four years into the job following a scuffle with her boss. Bishop Wanjiru had enrolled for a sales and marketing course. She passed and got promoted to a sales and marketing executive. Her duties included promoting Marlboro cigarettes. But one morning she splashed her boss with hot tea after he allegedly used unkind words on her.
"I reeled in anger because the director was less than courteous to me in his language. Something seized my mind and I heard an invisible voice saying: 'Margaret, we've come for you again.' I was holding a cup of tea and, don't ask me how it landed on the director's shirt. I flashed it at him in a way I still can't explain. One instance I was the director's darling and the next I was a devil, scorching him with tea," she had said in the interview.
She quit the job on a Tuesday and by Thursday of the same week she was a senior manager with an NGO, she claimed. But she would soon go back to witchcraft. "Soon I graduated into Red Witchcraft and I was riding the crest. My business flourished. I was making curios for export with a big office in Westlands, a factory for making curios and jewellery and a retail outlet."
Mr Kamangu claimed his late sister, Ms Rachel Wamucii, helped Bishop Wanjiru get the job at Philips and Harrison. And Wairimu says: "She used to work together with Wamucii." Mzee Ndimu adds: "Yes. At Industrial Area."
Mr Kamangu picks it up from there: "Wanjiru did a course in sales and she was promoted. In 1983 she rented a house in Ngei estate and told me to move in with her. I refused. She took our children and left. She never returned home. I would visit her in Ngei, and later Ngumo, but she refused to come back home. But we continued to meet and we would be intimate. But the intimacy ended in 1986 and she vowed never to come back to me.
"The last time we were together was in 2003 when she brought my children, saying they wanted to see me. She took all the photos that we took together. I never suspected anything.
Since we separated, I have always thought about her every time I go to bed. But, after she declared that she was marrying that man, I feel relieved," said Mr Kamangu.
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