Eldoret, the town that South African Boers started

Let us celebrate 100 (plus) years of Eldoret.

If you look at the old Kenya Gazette Notices of 1912 (and they are now online) you will find that most of the locations in Uasin Gishu had no names on government records. They were simply: Farm 1, Farm 2, Farm 3…

What is today Eldoret Town fell on Farm No 64 and for many years the town was simply known by that number. One of the cheeky stories of Eldoret was about the trust that pioneers traders had in each other. There is of course the hard-to-verify tale of the unmanned pub where revellers would walk in, drink and leave the money at the counter.

Space to breed

It is also the story of how some two revellers one day found the door locked (by mistake) and they removed the door, drunk the beer, paid and left. For many years, some historical wags say, the bar remained without a door! But seriously, the story of Eldoret is worth a tome. It was built by Boer rogues who had decided that they had had enough of British rule in South Africa and trekked north to protest the annexation their Transvaal Republic and Orange Free State to South Africa after the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1988-1902.

It was in 1909 when a heavily-armed group of 280 Boers arrived in Kenya from South Africa. With them were prefabricated houses, wagons, ploughs, cattle and sheep. They wanted land, if not peacefully, by force. And they were willing to fight.

The Nandis were elbowed out of their farms around Uasin Gishu as they cut huge chunks for themselves and that had been surveyed by Royal Engineers. Their leader Meneer Van Rensberg had arrived in Mombasa with another group aboard a German vessel, Windhoek, and by July 1908 he was in Nakuru where he was directing the new farmers.

The families that set out for Uasin Gishu had heard stories of land that looked like the South African kopjes. Here, they spanned out with the single believe that “here is a land where our women can breed in space…”, according to Negley Farson in his 1947 book ‘The Last Chance in Africa’.

Colonial writer, Elspeth Huxley in her book ‘No Easy Way’ captured the drama too: “To get heavily-loaded wagons up this steep escarpment along the rough, narrow, treacherous track, with inexperienced oxen and in a wet year, was a truly remarkable feat, and only Afrikaners could have performed it...”

Heavy safe

Every time I look at the Standard Chattered Bank in Eldoret, it reminds me of the story of a heavy safe that had been brought in from South Africa by the boers and was full of cash.

It was at Farm 64, the story goes on, that the safe fell and the few boers present could not lift it back to the wagon.

To protect it, they built a bank around it — a branch of the South African Standard Bank! But the South African bank at first refused to have a branch in a mud house but later gave in. A historian, A.T Mason recalls the arrival of the instruments to operate a bank: “All the paraphernalia of city banking arrived, including a brass plate, which was quickly affixed to the mud and wattle wall.

On one occasion, its manager J.C Shaw told the office boy to patch the flaking mud but the Kiswahili of both the manager and worker was meagre with the result that when Shaw returned he found the wall had disintegrated under repeated onslaughts with buckets of water and the safe was outside in the mud!”

For a long time, Eldoret was the only town where the Boers used Kruger coins as currency, and for a long time – even after they were not in use in South Africa.

Also, they protested any sign of British control and got away with lots of murder and mayhem.

Today, the agricultural town they started has grown beyond Farm 64, just after 100 years. It is a lengthy story…

Nairobi was built in the wrong place

When Nairobi was hardly eight years, the administrators were warned that they had done a mistake by allowing the building of a town in a treeless windy plain where residents were constantly baked by the African sun.

Medical officers warned in 1906 that the grounds were soggy and urged Sir James Hayes Sadler, the then Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate, to plead with London and have the town moved. As usual, bureaucracy reigned and railway interests surpassed the wishes of the majority.

One has to look at the 1902 letter written by Sadler and which said in part: “Doctors are unanimous in condemning this site. They pointed out that it was a depression with a very thin layer of soil and the decomposition of animal matter was abnormally slow. It should be removed”.

The original city fathers wanted the place moved. Shortly after the swampy conditions induced a plague breakout out in 1901, colonial medical officer Dr. W.H. MacDonald worried that the city was in the wrong place. In May 1903 Dr. Moffat, principal medical officer of the East Africa and Uganda Protectorate, called Nairobi dangerous and defective. After another plague in 1904, he recommended relocating residents to modern-day Kikuyu Township. But Moffat left in April 1904, and his successors held the costs of relocation too high.

On 18 May 1906, Sir James Sadler, commissioner for the Protectorate, wrote to Churchill, Undersecretary of State for the Colonies, complaining about the emergence of Kenya's capital: "...at the commencement of the 1902 plague...the then-commissioner, Sir Charles Elliot, was strongly of the opinion that the site, which had been selected three years before by the manager of the Uganda Railway without consulting medical or sanitary authorities, was, with its inadequate drainage, unsuitable for a large and growing population. [It is a] depression with a very thin layer of soil or rock. The soil was water-logged during the greater part of the year."

Churchill was reminded that four years previously, it had been recommended that the town be moved "to some point on the hills." But railway engineers did not see Nairobi as becoming anything more than an Indian township—which, they argued, could "prosper in spite of unsanitary conditions and chronic plague."

Sadler told Churchill this was a critical point in Nairobi's history; that his predecessor had said: "...when the rainy season commenced, the whole town is practically transformed into a swamp." But the Board decided instead only to try to drain the swampy bazaar area.

Nairobi continued to develop quickly and Sadler finally threw in the towel: "It is, I admit, too late to consider the question of moving the town from the plains to the higher position along the line some miles to the north. We had a chance in 1902, and I think it was a pity that we did not do so then as advocated by Sir Charles Elliot." But even Sadler did not anticipate the growth, saying Nairobi would never become "a city like Johannesburg or a large commercial centre, for if there is a rapid development of industries or minerals in any of the new districts, the centres would spring up around them."

Churchill accepted this idea and made the final decision: "It is now too late to change, and thus lack of foresight and of a comprehensive view leaves its permanent imprint upon the countenance of a new country."

By the time the Nairobi Sanitary Commission was appointed in 1913, to enquire and report upon the sanitation and drainage of the township, the town had taken shape. It was now left to the engineers to build a city with the challenges that soggy ground presented. Many years later, failure to consult experts could make many buildings in the city uninhabitable in a few years' time - or we look for ways to manage mother nature.

Wilfred Karuga Koinange: Was this the Goldenberg Fall Guy?

By John Kamau

Sometime in January 2009, Goldenberg suspect Dr Wilfred Karuga Koinange, who died yesterday, walked us past his empty car yard in Kiambaa where two rotting tractors, a broken down lorry, and other vehicle shells lay. Apart from a water bottling plant – he bottles Broomhill Springs water brand – there was little other economic activity in this expansive farm.

Down the undulating hill lay a spring which Dr Koinange protected as his last source of income. “It is the only naturally carbonated spring in Kenya”, he says. From here, ever since he was accused of stealing Sh 5.8 billion via the Goldenberg scheme – a fictitious mineral compensation project that was hatched by Kamlesh Patni – the former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance had retreated into this farm with well-trimmed cypress hedges.

“I usually come to this house for solace,” he says without coaxing. [We walked on] The house, a colonial bungalow with aging terracotta tiles and polished wooden floor, has a backyard with a round hut. “I can spend my day there reading books and listening to music.”

Dr Koinange cut the image of a lonely man and this was no longer his family home. His well stocked library had many interesting biographies – including President Moi’s ironic biography “The Making of an African Statesman.” “Do I look like a person who swindled the country billions of shillings?” he asked as we sat at the backyard. We opened the backdoor to a tiny sitting room that had a well stocked fridge: Wines, spirits, sodas, beers and Broomhill water. “Take whatever you want,” he offered me and a senior Oxford University historian who was researching on the Koinange family.

Unknown to many, Koinange was a history buff. He has one of the best collections of history books and rare colonial documents. He was also a great collector of African music and plants that dot his farm. Each flower type, he told us, had a history, and each tree told a different story. “The next time you come, I will play for you the banned Muthirigu songs”, he promised. Muthirigu was a Kikuyu dance banned by the colonial government for ridiculing the settlers. Koinange loved to sing too – and would mellow when asked something historical: But not on Goldenberg scandal and the tribulations he was going through ever since he was first arrested over the Goldenberg scandal. “This case has exhausted me,” he tells us long before he pleaded to the courts to give him a defence lawyer.

Dr Koinange was angry that after all those years in government service, he was left fighting to clear his name over the theft of billions of shillings via a signature he had appended. In his court papers he does not deny that he authorized the three payments to Goldenberg International but told the Commission of Inquiry investigating the matter that he was commanded by President Moi to do so.

He told Bosire: "I telephoned the president and told him I have been informed by Prof Phillip Mbithi that I should pay out all the amount outstanding to Goldenberg International and the president said yes, I have spoken to Prof Mbithi." Koinange signed three letters: 19 April, 1993, 28th June, 1993 and 8th July 1993. They sealed his fate. Moi, through his lawyer Mr Mutula Kilonzo, denied ever ordering Koinange to make the payments which left him as the fall-guy in the unending drama.

Koinange’s letter were given to Mr T. K Werunga, an assistant Principal in the CBK’s banking division. Werunga, photocopied the letter and instructed a Mr Muraya (a clerical officer) to carry out Dr Koinange’s instructions. Although Dr Koinange’s specimen signature was not with the bank, since as the PS is not the accounting officer ( a position held by the financial secretary), the CBK went ahead and made the payments. “I am writing a book that will tell the story,” he told us. Fortunately, Dr Koinange died without telling his side of the story. During the Goldberg hearing, Dr Koinange acknowledged the illegality of his actions. Dr Koinange was at the Treasury at the wrong time. A man who had no knowledge of the workings of the Ministry of Finance, he had been catapulted from being Director of Medical Services (1979 – 1987) to PS ministry of research, science and technology. Here, he seemed to fit the professional bill, though this was far removed from his training as a medical doctor; a man who was proud to be a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburg. Because he could not understand the inside workings of Treasury, senior officials at the Treasury, including his co-accused, the late Eliphaz Riungu, a former Central Bank deputy governor, would cook figures on foreign exchange to impress both the World Bank and IMF on the government performance. When Riungu was asked by the Justice Bosire Commission why he did that he would simply say: "We were cornering the IMF, we were being cleverer than them." Was Dr Koinange part of this syndicate? Perhaps. During the Goldenberg hearing, it emerged that Dr Koinange had sought the CBK Governors word on the payments. He told the Commission that indeed it was the then CBK Governor. Eric Kotut who authored the infamous authorization letter. Mr Kotut denied this on oath.

The Justice Bosire Commission appeared to absolve President Moi from blame which left Dr Koinange holding the smoking gun: “There is no clear evidence that the President asked for money to be paid which was in fact due to Pattni or Goldenberg International., and it would certainly have been possible for Dr Koinange to tell the President that the money was not due.” [Justice Bosire was found unsuitable to be in the judiciary for failing to summon senior government officials, including President Moi who had been adversely mention during the sittings.] The death of Dr Koinange has left many unanswered questions on his role in this fictitious export compensation project that saw mandarins behind the Goldenberg scam penetrate CBK and milk Sh5.8 billion from the coffers. “There was no legal claim to the money, in the manner in which it was paid out….Dr Koinange purported to rely on a letter from Customs which cannot be interpreted to be a statement that any money was actually due,” said the Goldenberg report which recommended Dr Koinange’s prosecution.

“The PS Treasury Dr Koinange, the Governor and his Deputy Mr Riungu were personally responsible for this (loss). Dr Koinange’s assertion that he was ordered by the former President to pay out Sh 5.8 billion is doubtful. He and the Governor of CBK, among others both in Treasury and CBK, were the economic managers….if as he says a decision was reached to pay out in a discreet manner it is only fair that they bear the responsibility for the illegal payments.” That haunted dr Koinange for long. He hired good lawyers. Kept tabs on his case and never missed a mention. He looked weathered in court appearances as his co-accused succumbed to cancer. With his resources dwindling and his frantic efforts to clear his name coming a cropper, Dr Koinange died with a huge burden.

“My main worry is that my name will forever be tarnished…I am not a thief” I recall him saying. We went to his father’s grave, where the notables of the Chief Koinange wa Mbiyu’s family were buried: took photos and left. Only one man knows whether Dr Koinange was innocent: Former President Moi. Did he make the call that changed Dr Koinange’s life? john.kamau@gmail.com