Row persists after fall of the hammer on Desai House

One chapter in the story of Kenya’s independence struggle has closed with the recent auctioning of a house where people involved in the push to end colonial rule held strategy meetings.

On November 25, the house—located along Parklands Second Avenue on 1.7 acres—went under the hammer for Sh413 million with the blessings of a Nairobi court.

A last-ditch effort by the government to save the house – which has been declared a national monument at least two times – failed in court days before the auction happened.

John Keen, one of the pioneering politicians of independent Kenya, once recalled being questioned by the colonial authorities for visiting the house. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga once spent the night there after making utterances in Parliament that made him fear the colonial government would kill him. Njoroge Mungai, another of the leaders of the nascent Kenya, also once recalled visiting the house many times for advice.

The visitors’ book inside the house has the names and short remarks from renowned African independence leaders like Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, Joshua Nkomo (Zimbabwe) and Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia).

Jomo Kenyatta, Paul Ngei, Kung’u Karumba, and Achieng’ Oneko are among the other leaders who visited the house at one point or another in the years leading up to Independence in 1963. The owner of the house was Jashbhai Motibhai (JM) Desai, a man who has been celebrated in various ways for the role he played in securing Kenya her Independence. That is why the building is often called Desai House.

JM came to Kenya from Gujarat, India, at the age of 16. In tributes we have seen, many describe him as a man who refused to buy into the racial prejudice of his times. He considered black Kenyans his equals. He died on July 11, 1991, aged 86.

Why did the house have to be auctioned? It was due to a dispute between those who inherited the property from him. In his will, which has been presented in court cases regarding the property, JM left the house to two of his children (Niranjan Desai and Dipa Pulling) and two of his grandchildren (Sandeep Desai and Kevit Desai).  Kevit was, until Monday, the principal secretary for the East African Community. “[They will have] undivided equal shares absolutely. The house and the contents will not be sold unless it is unanimously decided by all the parties concerned,” says the will, which he signed four months before his death.

Developments

The inheritors would later change the ownership to become tenants in common in undivided shares. Court proceedings indicate they were living in different countries across the globe, with varying passions for the heritage value of the property. Later, two of the four agreed to sell their shares to a private company and a dispute arose. It was taken to court where it is ongoing with twists and turns that have put three generations after JM at loggerheads.

One landmark moment in the case happened in November 2019 when Justice Samson Okong’o of the Environment and Land Court ordered the inheritors to agree on how to share the property within 90 days. Should they not agree, the judge ordered, the property had to be sold and the proceeds shared equally.

“[If they don’t agree], a registered valuer appointed by the chairman of the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya at the instance of any of the parties with notice to the other parties shall carry out a valuation of the suit property for the purposes of ascertaining its current market value and a reserve price in the event of a forced sale,” said the judge.

That was the spark that led to an auction that was scheduled for July 12 this year but was halted by a court. Eventually, the auction happened on November 25 and M/S Turbisalam Company Limited was declared the buyer for Sh413 million.

On June 6, the Attorney-General had filed an application seeking stoppage of the auction, but Justice Okong’o, in his ruling of September 27, rubbished his pleas. “I am of the view that the application is an abuse of the process of the court,” said the judge, bashing the AG for taking too long to act on the case, yet he was aware of the decision years earlier.

The sale of the house will mean demolition of the building and erection of new premises. Court documents say a valuer’s opinion placed its price at Sh550 million. The valuer, Lekker Consult, stated that at the property stands a main house occupying 723 square metres and servant’s quarters occupying 119.8 square metres. At the auction, the reserve price for the property was Sh412.5 million.

Ongoing case

The dispute is set for further hearing at the Land court on February 7, 2023. But the court has not issued any orders stopping sale of the property. On November 24, the day before the auction, Sandeep wrote to the Court of Appeal president asking the court to urgently intervene on the matter. He is challenging Justice Okong’o’s handling of the case and the orders he issued. But it was too little too late as the auction went on.

“The purchasers have since deposited Sh103.2 million being 25 per cent of the purchase price in the [lawyers’ account],” reads part of a November 25 letter from Keysian Auctioneers, who carried out the sale, to the deputy registrar of the Land court.

What did leaders say about JM? A transcript of a memorial event for JM held on August 1, 1991, 21 days after his death, shows that Mama Ngina Kenyatta, Jaramogi, Mwai Kibaki, Njoroge Mungai (minister representing the government at the event) were among those in attendance.

Source of inspiration

Jaramogi said JM is the person who encouraged Africans to take an interest in politics during the colonial era.

“When somebody told us that we can also send away a mzungu from Kenya, we did not believe it. And we did not when he spoke, when he spoke with a very clear and loud voice, we were very frightened and we were trembling because we said ‘mzungu will hear us’. And when he hears us we don’t know what will happen. The man who instilled in us the bravery, the heart of a person, was JM Desai,” said Jaramogi.

“The second man who came and put more force into us was Kenyatta, when he came in 1948 from London and came to preach to us is when we actually knew that this man can also be faced and you tell him the truth that you have. It was first JM Desai, second it was Kenyatta,” he added.

John Keen, who died in 2016, said: “JM had not got an iota of racialism in him, he was a true freedom fighter. At Kenya’s darkest hour when the African was nothing but a pariah in his own country, JM absolutely sided and identified himself with the downtrodden native of Africa and his aspiration. It can truly be said that JM was more native or more African than many Africans, black Africans, themselves. But JM was not just a true African. He was more than that. He was a great freedom fighter.

 Emergency

“At the height of the emergency, he invited two prominent British Labour MPs Fenner Brockway and Leslie Hale to visit Kenya and assess for themselves the state of emergency at that time and the way the black man was being treated under the emergency rules. He invited them as his own guests. I happened to be at the house of JM Desai at that time and when I came out, I was bundled into a police car and questioned for nearly two hours as to what was going on in the house.”

Independence hero Oneko was equally full of praise in his speech that was read by Sri SM Patel.

“It was this great man, Desai, who played host to the numerous Kenyan African Union (KAU) foreign guests when white settlers, hotel owners, adopted a hostile attitude and would not accept such friends of KAU to their hotels.

Many freedom fighters shared with JM his at times spared to come. I remember the late freedom fighter spending his valuable time with the leaders of KAU like Jomo Kenyatta working on political strategy. The late Pinto was always at his doorstep. However, on the attainment of Independence, this illustrious and devoted man did not go shopping around for favours.”

UK’s The Independent newspaper, in its August 15, 1991 issue, had a story on JM and it described him as a “freedom fighter extraordinary”.

“When leaders of Kenya’s rival organisations met in his house before the London conference to map their country’s political future, he sensibly advised them to leave their differences at home and present a united front,” wrote the paper.

The government, through the Heritage ministry, told the court that it wanted the house to remain intact because of its historical value. It argued that Kenya stood to lose a piece of its heritage if the sale of the house was sanctioned. “The heritage value for which it was gazetted stands to be exposed and lost to destruction by the potential buyer,” the ministry argued through State Counsel Oscar Eredi.

Mr Dennis Milewa, a cartographer with the National Museums of Kenya, said in an affidavit that the house was gazetted in 2016 as a national monument and has not been degazetted. However, Justice Okong’o noted that the government had not executed any encumbrance on the property to protect it.

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