Appearing stung by the reports carried exclusively by NTV and the Sunday Nation yesterday, Bishop Wanjiru told a cheering congregation at her Jesus is Alive Ministries that she would not "take any nonsense from anybody. I can twist their necks like that of a chicken."
"We should ask exactly who this is. I raised my children myself and I'm going to win the Starehe seat whether they like it or not. And I am inviting all Kenyans to my wedding on February 10 at a venue to be announced later," she said.
She went on: "The man who is making those claims has hands which appear as though they have been eaten by jiggers. He looks miserable. He can go look for a rope and hang himself somewhere. We shall do a funeral."
Mr James Kamangu Ndimu, 51, made the claims just days after the tele-evangelist introduced to her congregation a South African, Mr Samuel Matjeke, as her fiancee.
During a live TV interview recently, Bishop Wanjiru confessed she had a boyfriend whom she left because he was a drunkard. She said she did not even know if the father of her sons was still alive.
But Mr Kamangu claimed he is Bishop Wanjiru's husband as per Gikuyu customs, having paid Sh3,000 dowry in the late 1970s. Mr Kamangu said the two lived together as man and wife between 1978 and 1983, when they separated following domestic rows.
Bishop Wanjiru declared that her mother would not have been so poor as to accept Sh3,000 as dowry.
Mr Kamangu also said he is the biological father of Bishop Wanjiru's two sons, Stephen Ndimu and Evans Kariuki. Mr Kamangu's parents, Mzee Stephen Ndimu, 95, and his wife Jedidah Wairimu, about 70, said Bishop Wanjiru was married to their son and that they still regarded her as their daughter-in-law.
But Bishop Wanjiru, who last year declared interest in the Starehe Parliamentary seat, was quick to dismiss the allegations. She read politics into the whole affair.
Speaking at his home in Gachie, Kiambu, Mr Kamangu, a cobbler and potter, told the Sunday Nation last week: "I am Wanjiru's husband. But she is free to marry if that is her wish. 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."
Yesterday, Mr Kamangu challenged the bishop to subject her two sons to a DNA test to prove he is not their father.
He asked her not to introduce politics into the issue.
"I am ready to go for DNA test. Let her subject her sons Stephen Ndimu and Evans Kariuki to the same test to prove whether I am their biological father," he said.
Mr Kamangu's younger sister Lucy Wanjiku said she took care of Bishop Wanjiru's first-born son Ndimu in 1979.
"I baby-sat the boy and would wash clothes and cook for Wanjiru when she gave birth to the child. I was her househelp,'' she said.
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