A brief history of the Surayas...[and a career ending tackle by the Nation]:
1/ Sue Muraya started out in the 1990s as a fashion designer and owner of Kenya Fashion Week, making clothes for a variety of clients, including the Kenya Airways cabin crew.
2/ Peter Muraya started a three-floor club in Hurlingham in the late 1990s, called Zig Zag, which failed. In 1998 he brought in American musicians Lost Boyz and Coolio and lost a tonne of money on the gate fees.
[Near-death twitter can recall multiple floors at club Zig-Zag]
3/ Suraya was one of Kenya’s most advertised off-plan developers. Its portfolio includes ~20 properties including Fourways Junction, currently in a court case with the Gatabaki family, the Spring Valley Business Park and apartment complexes off Msa Road & Ngong Road.
4/ People were paying site unseen
“In July 2013, I gathered I my girlfriends and decided to take a road trip,” she says. And off they went to Sucasa, which turned out to be very hard to find, deep inside Mlolongo. When they finally found it, there was no sign of construction."
5/ Overpromising then underdelivering
“Suraya did not deliver what they had promised,” Laurie says. Not only were there no street lights, but the swimming pool they promised was what Laurie alternately describes as “a pond” and “a mosquito breeding ground."
[Loneview render]
6/ The promise...
“I was attracted to the price — Sh14.5 million for a two-bedroom apartment. It sounded like a deal.” And indeed it was, given its extremely prime location. “I should have heeded that warning about ‘when the deal is too good…’” Muchiri chuckles."
7/ The reality...
"By late 2016, Muchiri realised something was very wrong. Construction had stalled completely and they would never be able to lay the foundation, build the structure and finish the apartments by the promised time. "
[The Falls at Riverside June 2019]
8/ Coming to terms...
"Muchiri tried to get the rest of his money back. The Murayas stopped talking to him, while staff would toss him back and forth among them. Muchiri would sit in the Suraya offices for hours on end, waiting for audience with Pete. "
9
Still living it up...
“By this point they had chase cars and mean-looking bodyguards. Pete would drive in in his Range Rover Autobiography, and Sue in a Porsche Cayenne, and neither of them would talk to me.” The starting price for a Range Rover Autobiography, is Sh34.4 mn.
10/
To date, Suraya’s most successful project has been the Spring Valley Business Park, which houses offices and sample show houses. Surayas claim to be the owner and developer of the business park, a mixed-use comprising shops, offices and a four-star hotel. But is it?
11/ But CS James Macharia:
“I have no stake in the Suraya Group of Companies. In 2011 together with two others, (I) acquired the Spring Valley Business Park on Lower Kabete Rd. The offices of Suraya are in that building. They tried buying it but I dont think they've paid for it.”
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Nelson Mandela once declared that Ethiopia held a special place in his imagination.
Indeed, the land of coffee, ancient architecture and a resilient people does carry a certain mystique… and a very long, torturous history.
1/ --Long Thread--
[Pic: Children of the Omo Valley]
2/ See, Mandela spent two weeks in July 1962 in Ethiopia where he learned the tricks of guerilla warfare from Col Fekadu Wakene, a corporal in the riot battalion of the Ethiopian police force at the time.
Mandela was in Ethiopia by invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie I.
3/ At 1.1mn km², a population of 110mn & 80 ethnic groups, Ethiopia is one of the oldest countries in the world, having come into existence circa 980 BCE.
Most intriguing is the nation’s ancient links to Islam, and Christianity, which was declared a state religion in 330 CE.
In 1899, Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness, described events in the Congo as “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience”
Little did he know.
1/ The story of the Congo is one of untold suffering and spectacular plunder.
---Long Thread---
2/ Home to the 2ⁿᵈ largest rainforest (65% forest cover) & 2ⁿᵈ largest river in the world, the DRC is roughly the size of Western Europe with a pop'n of 84mn and a GDP of $50bn.
The value of Congo’s natural resources is estimated at $24tn, greater than the US’ $20tn GDP.
3/ Africa’s 2ⁿᵈ largest country has 10% of the world’s copper, 30% of diamonds, 80% of Coltan, 50% of Cobalt and 12% of hydro-electric capacity.
Mining ($11.6bn) accounted for 95% of exports, 28% of revenue, 20% of GDP & 11% of the workforce in 2016.
1/ When Nairobi started under Ainsworth, the first municipal budget was 7,161 rupees (± Sh150K), which only paid for the uniforms and salaries of 6 Swahili and 8 Indian policemen, 2 sweepers, and oil for street lights.
2/ Called from Machakos to serve as a top civil servant at the swampy town populated more by wild animals than by European settlers, Ainsworth arrived in Nairobi in 1899 at age 25.
Born in 1864 in the UK he died in 1964, at 100 years old.
[Nairobi in 1898]
3/ Prior to his arrival, British land surveyors had already come to Kenya and identified much of the fertile land as “unpopulated” and ripe for colonial settlement.
There was no knowledge among the Europeans of African land ownership, such as the Kikuyu system of gethaka
2/ As soon as the project was approved, they quickly abandoned the PPP and started an international open tender.
The tenders were then crafted in such a way that a select number of local companies were looped in through the backdoor as subcontractors of original manufacturers.
3/ Cabinet Secretary James Macharia, who was in charge of the health docket when the contracts were awarded, and Dr Muraguri, disowned an inflated price list submitted by his successor Sicily Kariuki, according to the parliamentary report. The two gave their own price lists
The Postal Corporation of Kenya, PCK or Posta, is the oldest parastatal in Kenya having been founded in 1901 as the Postal Services of British EA (PSBEA).
Over the years however, Posta has faced unending troubles due to corruption and mismanagement.
1/
---A postal thread---
2/ In 1910, PSBEA offered savings accounts and later evolved into Postbank Credit.
In 1994, the bank collapsed with Sh3.8bn in deposits and Sh3.6bn in loans, due to bad debts owed by connected individuals like Cyrus Jirongo.
2/ Anpi Pharma would under-quote to win the tender then after winning, would come back and state:
“freight charges and cost of materials have gone up. I want to vary the tender.”
3/ Before Kemsa, there was the Central Medical Stores ran by a Zachariah Shimechero, a Deputy Commissioner of Police at independence and later the Commissioner of Settlement of Squatters.