Why children of Luo, Luhya tycoons never fight for property First, let us banish the thought that folks from Nyanza and Western Kenya have among them people who qualify to be called ‘tycoons’. You might find a pompous chap or two with three ‘big’ cars in various stages of disrepair parked outside his rented apartment in Nairobi. This fellow will purport to be rich. People in his village will swallow that lie, as will his in-laws and the handful of giggling mistresses he pays rent for. But his wife will know better. Oh, yes! If you ask him what his net worth is, he will not know. And if he does, that loot will not come anywhere close to the vast estates of men who are men, serious wazee like the late Gerishon Kirima and Njenga Karume. A so-called Luhya or Luo tycoon is the kind of fellow who owns a ‘fleet’ of matatus or fishing boats, a string of posho mills, several dukas, ten pieces of land, six wives, a bar and several hundred stale company shares here and there. That is not a rich fellow. Real talk. He cannot sit at the table of rich men. For you to qualify to be called a tycoon, you need to have so much money that you employ a whole firm of accountants to count it. Not your sixth wife sitting pretty behind the till and evacuating the cash to the Cayman Islands (read her mother). No proper tycoon You also must have a firm of auditors to help you with tax issues. In short, you must pay enough tax to sort out the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) to call yourself a tycoon.
