How the rich and powerful took over prime city land

Joreth was the Promised Land — at least that is how its Israeli owner Jacob Hirschfeld perceived the land owning company.

This was before government and political interests started having an eye on it.

Part of that parcel of land was recently in the news after former President Moi was said to have sold a plot in Nairobi’s Muthaiga North twice; first to a private developer, DPS International (Mr Moi has since denied selling his land to DPS) – who later sold it to United States International University Africa (USIU) – and last month to Dr George Kiongera’s Maestro Connections Health Systems Ltd, a company he co-owns with his wife Elizabeth Njeri.

Dr Kiongera, the first Kenyan to hold a doctorate in nursing practice, says he bought the land for Sh500 million while USIU insists that they are the parcel’s legitimate owners. Both are now nursing the pains of land deals gone sour.

The story of Joreth is well known by Nairobi politicos and land speculators and they love speaking about it as they wine and dine after a round of good golf.

Joreth was founded by Hirschfeld, one of the first members of the Jewish family that had settled in Nairobi.

He had followed Abraham Block, the founder of Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel (he later bought The Stanley) who had arrived with his wife Sarah in 1913, shortly before the First World war broke out and threw their newly adopted country into economic turmoil.

It was also the year that Block decided to visit Israel for the first time and since he spoke only Yiddish and English (he could not speak Hebrew), he was asked to sit next to a Mr Tzvi Hirshfeld, a man who spoke perfect English.

Hirschfeld was one of the founders of Rishon Le-Zion in 1882, now the fourth-largest city in Israel, located on the central Israeli coastal plain 8km south of Tel Aviv.

In Rishon, Hirshfeld and Block struck a rapport and that is how Hirshfeld's son, Jacob, would later end up in Nairobi as a farmer – and later as Block’s son-in-law after he married Block’s eldest daughter Rachel Rita Block, the second Jewish baby to be born in Nairobi.

NO PUSH OVER

With the upheavals that faced the Jews in Europe, Block encouraged many to come and settle in East Africa and that is how Jacob Hirschfeld came to build an empire, Joreth Limited with a huge coffee estate – Karura Farm.

Jacob Hirschfeld’s land holding was expansive and covered parts of modern-day Ruaraka, the whole of GSU headquarters, Thome Estate, USIU, Garden Estate, NYS headquarters and touched on the land adjoining Windsor Golf Club.

It was the single largest block available north of Nairobi City after independence and as the dash to own property near the capital started in the mid-1960s and 1970s – many investors and land grabbers looked at Hirschfeld’s property with drooling interest.

Some thought that he held this land courtesy of his father-in-law who had built a formidable company, Block Hotels and a company that owned several farms branded Block Estates.

Together with Israel Somen – who later became the Mayor of Nairobi – Hirschfeld became a notable face in the Jewish community – and a common figure at the Nairobi synagogue where Mr Block was always given the first chance to read the neila service, a special Jewish prayer service that closes the Yom Kippur fast.

Joreth was a corruption of the Hebrew name “Koresh” which means a farmer, a digger or cultivator and he had enjoyed a smooth occupation of the land during the colonial period.

That changed at independence as the new Kenyatta government started scouting for land for industrial and real estate expansion.

While other settlers were easily scared into surrendering their property, the government mandarins found that Hirschfeld was no push-over.

He was a wheeler-dealer and knew how to work the system and tire the government through its own machinery.

So difficult was Hirschfeld that in 1972, the Commissioner of Land J.A. O’Loughlin was forced to write to the Permanent Secretary for Lands and Settlement seeking £600,000 to buy some 1,400 acres from Joreth which touched Thika and Kiambu Roads.

O’Loughlin thought it was wise to give the PS some background on Hirschfeld – just in case he didn’t know the kind of person they were dealing with:

“The owner of the farm is well known to the government because of the difficulty we experienced in the acquisition of land for the GSU camp site. There have been further requirements such as a German School (10 acres), a Commonwealth College (40 acres), City Council Primary School, and the latest being Technical Teachers College requiring 60 acres”.

HOW IT BEGAN
It is now known that Joreth had started surrendering some of the land the firm held in Nairobi through compulsory acquisition.

These included parcels identified as LR 4920/2, 4922/5/1, 4921/2 and LR 216/4/2. These were surrendered to the Commissioner of Land in May 1965.

More land was seized by the government from Joreth in October 1969 when it lost 73 acres of part of LR 216/4 and 59 acres of its LR 4922/5.

But it recently emerged that some of these takeovers happened after the land had been transferred to other parties by Hirschfeld – perhaps in an attempt to beat the system.

The most recent case was one where Nairobi tycoon Francis Mburu, a director of Afrison Export and Import Ltd, claimed to have been the owner of the 37.4-acre parcel where GSU headquarters stands before it was taken over by the government.

After a protracted battle in court, he was recently paid Sh1.8 billion of the Sh2.4 billion agreed following an out of court settlement from the original sum of Sh4.08 billion awarded by Judge Alfred Mabeya in 2013.

Beneficiaries of the settlement included Jimmy Kibaki – son of former President Mwai Kibaki – who was to receive Sh100 million for “services rendered”.

Two months ago, Mburu, through his lawyer Harit Seth, wrote a letter dated May 20, 2016 to Solicitor-General Njee Muturi seeking Sh600 million balance together with Sh150 million “being the sum due to the official receiver on behalf of Continental Credit Bank Ltd.”

The letter was copied to the AG, the Office of the President and the Treasury PS.

The story of the GSU land becomes more complex since Mr Muturi is the son of Harun Muturi – the man who inherited Joreth Limited from Hirschfeld and became its face.

Harun Muturi had become one of the most notable Kanu functionaries after independence and had earned Jomo Kenyatta’s confidence after he approached Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and got some money for Kanu.

What was never said in public was that Muturi’s influence might have emanated from his millionaire brother-in-law JM Kariuki.

The late Nyandarua MP’s first wife, Doris Nyambura, was Muturi’s sister and both Kariuki and Muturi were deeply involved in the thriving gemstones trade. That is where they made their money.

Because of his Israeli-connections, Kariuki had introduced his brother-in-law to Hirschfeld but it is not clear how he managed to later get to own part of the huge estate – or become its face.

JM was able to get the profitable Castle Inn at the edge of Hirschfeld’s farm and which was previously run on plot 4894/2 by Alan Arthur Coulson, who owned an aircraft company, Wilkenair.

RECKLESS MAN
There was something else about the elder Muturi, and Hirschfeld knew as much. Known by his agemates as Muturi meta-meta – meaning “Muturi of bling bling”, he was a Nairobi party-hopper and was known for his flashy lifestyle, a man who walked with a pistol under his leather jacket – the image of Kenya’s nouveau riche. (He would later start Mombasa’s Mamba Village).

When Muturi died in September 2010, he was eulogised by Duncan Ndegwa, the former CBK Governor, as a leftist with an attitude: “Either it happens or nothing else does.”

“Occasionally, Muturi, JM and others in the gemstones business and the leftist school of thought would gather in a show of strength... a weekend-long gathering of the fairly wealthy numbering 50, with Muturi footing the entire bill.

"Kenyatta’s iconic leather jacket was much preferred by this flashily-dressed, rough talking and generally truculent crowd,” Ndegwa says in his memoirs.

Interestingly, he doesn’t mention Joreth Farm where he and Muturi were directors – it is of course a deliberate omission since the sale of the Joreth farms informs part of the wealth possessed by many in Kenyatta and Moi era.

Even as he eulogised Muturi, there was no mention of the Joreth Farm or how it was acquired. That could be a story for another day.

But another man who has no kind words for Muturi is Jeremiah Kiereini who describes him as “careless with his talk” and as a “man who did not stop to weigh the consequences of his words”.

At one point, Kiereini got so enraged by a personal attack on him by Muturi that he ran to his car to get his pistol and shoot Muturi.

“I even considered shooting them all!” he says. This was after Muturi had told him: “You and your friend Njonjo should be kicked out of Kenya. You should go and live in Surrey. Go tell your ‘husband’ Njonjo I have said so!”.

The words in Gikuyu were: “Thii ukere murumeguo Njonjo niguo ndauga.”

Back to Joreth, what we know is that Hirschfeld had at some point started dividing his farm into plots and selling them to select Cabinet ministers in a bid to earn protection.

Among those who owned plots here included Paul Ngei (LR 4894/16, Lawrence Sagini (LR 4894/2), and Dr Julius Gikonyo Kiano’s American wife, Hammond (LR 4894/25).

Besides the GSU land, we now know that the government acquired the land in Ruaraka from Joreth for industrial purposes.

In order to get as much payment as possible and to avoid compulsory acquisition, Hirschfeld sold part of the land beyond today’s garden Estate to Messrs New Yasmar Limited.

LAND OWNERS
When the government managed to convince New Yasmar to sell it the land, it had evidence to fix Hirschfeld who had decided to argue in court for under-payment of his property.

In a confidential letter written by the Land Commissioner, Mr O’Loughlin, to the PS for Lands and Settlement, Mr Hirschfeld is dismissed as a “land speculator”.

“I think this (New Yasmar sale) is a good bargain and I am particularly anxious that we should close this deal at the earliest possible moment… We shall have I think sufficient evidence to enable us, even though Mr Hirschfeld - the owner of Joreth Limited - insists on going to court, in convincing the court that the price we shall place on his land… 1,444 acres, would be reasonable.

"I am convinced that Mr Hirschfeld who openly admits that in addition to being a farmer, he is a land speculator, will want to obtain an extremely high price from the government or anyone else to whom he sells. Furthermore, it is extremely unlikely that Hirschfeld will agree to negotiated purchase”.

The only option in that 1972 letter was compulsory acquisition. It was then that other curious interests converged and we see various personalities in the Kenyatta government enter the fray.

Recently, the family of the late former Cabinet minister Jeremiah Nyagah surprised many when they claimed they had a stake in USIU because their father sold them the land where the Nairobi-based university stands.

This was part of the former Joreth land and it looks like Nyagah became another name linked to the land parcel.

Others with known interest included Jomo Kenyatta, Arthur Magugu, a former Moi Cabinet minister, tycoon Njenga Karume – chairman of Gema and later a Cabinet minister; John Njoroge Michuki, and Daniel arap Moi, among others.

Other institutions that have bought the former Joreth land include the Judiciary, UN Sacco (which owns Balozi Estate), Postbank, NIS, and Kenya Pipeline.

What we also know is that Joreth used to own all that land which is part of Ruaraka Fire Station, which it surrendered to the government to build the station.

The only missing part of this story – and which we are yet to find – is how Muturi and Ndegwa took over Joreth Limited and its interests which sold the modern day Thome Estate in Nairobi and Safari Park.

No doubt that Joreth became the Promised Land and the tussle we are seeing at the moment between Moi and USIU is only a piece of the drama.

[email protected] @johnkamau1