How we rose from the Westgate Mall ashes

A year ago, four terrorists shocked the world with a brazen gun-and-grenade attack on shoppers and workers at Nairobi’s Westgate mall.

The assault was meant to break Kenya’s economic spirit by targeting affluent locals and foreigners at one of the country’s thriving retail outlets.

And while it changed many facets of Kenyan life and damaged parts of the economy, it also revealed the resilience of a defiant business community.

There were 67 dead and more than 200 injured when the guns fell silent four days after the killing began. The mall, gutted by a fire started during the siege, suffered more than Sh2 billion in damage. The aftermath continues to be felt across the nation but recovery is not far off.

Symbol

There are hints the mall, now a global symbol of the nation’s growing middle class, may be re-opened in the next 10 to 12 months. Tenants who spoke to the Business Daily said they are only waiting to be told when to move back in.

Atul Shah, the managing director of anchor tenant Nakumatt Holdings, said the supermarket chain expects to return to what was their flagship outlet in the near future.

“Westgate was a very prime location for us. It is coming back again. We are happy to see that renovations have started,” he said. “Yes, it will wake up again in five, six… ten months and we will serve Kenyans there again.”

Mimosa Pharmacy managing director Chris Getonga also said that he expects to be back at the firm’s Westgate store in about 10 months. Other former tenants also look forward to going back, but some have unresolved issues.

They say the goodwill from the government, suppliers, banks and insurers seen in the initial days after the attack disappeared fairly quickly. There are no kind words for the government, which conducted an inquiry into the attack and shelved the report with no one privy to its contents.

Some are calling for government soft loans for businesses that had no terror insurance and lost everything in the attack. Ms Olga Ercolano, who ran a crafts kiosk, Artwork from Africa, said that the Ministry of East African Affairs, Commerce and Tourism made them fill out forms on what they had lost then went silent.

“One day we had a business, the next we did not,” she said. “We lost everything in one day and nobody cared.”

Insurers have also come under fire for abandoning their clients at their time of need even without goodwill or ex-gratia payments. Most of the businesses at the mall had no terrorism cover or believed their comprehensive insurance covered the risk.

Mr Getonga said that despite losing about Sh1.9 million in stock and Sh2 million in monthly profit, their insurance company only wrote to them nine months later saying that they would give them an ex-gratia payment of Sh90,000 if they took up terror insurance with them.

“I told them they can keep the cheque,” he said. “We’ve already moved on to another insurance company and taken that cover.” Other insurers, however, were more accommodating: Ms Terry Mungai of beauty company Ashleys Kenya says Heritage Insurance paid a token Sh1 million.

While chain stores like Nakumatt and Mimosa had other stores to cushion the blow, standalone outlets are only beginning to find their feet.

Ms Ercolano said that she has not found another mall outlet and now only has a workshop at her home where sales mostly are on referral.

It has also been a double tragedy for Madeleine Ambrosino and her husband who ran African Lily, a leather goods outlet.

After the loss of the Westgate outlet, which accounted for 85 per cent of her sales, she secured a shop at City Mall in Mombasa in December. It took off well, but has since seen sales take a nose-dive following insecurity at the Coast.

“But now, customers from Westgate are coming to this little shop in ABC Place and it has picked up. Another shop we opened at Galleria has also helped,” said Mrs Ambrosino, who lost Sh750,000 worth of stock.

Mr Shah and Mr Getonga said that employees in the stores were distributed among their other stores to avoid layoffs.

Ms Mungai said that she, too, had chosen to keep her workers on, even though this exerted great pressure on the business with no income from the Westgate store. The store, with 44 workers, was the best performing for Ashleys with an annual income of Sh50 million.

“For the first six months, before we knew where to take our people, we were still paying them,” she says. “We’ve had to invest again in a new place at Lavington Mall (to justify this).”

Banks have been more accommodating than insurers and, in most cases, agreed to restructure the loans for their customers.

“We didn’t ask for a restructuring (of our loan repayments) because they gave us money to start another branch at Lavington,” said Ms Mungai.

Curiously, the mall owners, Sony Holdings, have kept the tenants in the dark since September last year, with some now keen to have their deposits back.

Ms Ercolani said that her contract had run out in October 2013 but it was only last month that she managed to get her deposit back.

“The management… made us go there a week afterwards and take out the goods that were left,” said Ms Ambrosino. “From that day we’ve not heard anything. They have our deposit and have never told us ‘wait a few months, we are going to rebuild’.”

At the end of 12 months, Mr Shah reckons that consumer confidence, the loss of which had threatened to cripple mall culture, is returning.

Lives

He, however, regrets that while business can be recovered, lives lost or shattered cannot be so easily repaired.

“Loss is part of business. Money, business, property… that will one day be recovered. The sad thing is the loss of lives,” he said. The supermarket chain lost three workers in the attack.

The wounds remain deep, with Ms Mungai saying that one of her workers has only resumed duty recently while another, to this day, does not speak. Most have had to undergo intensive counselling after the event.

Even the killing of Al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane a few weeks ago, as President Uhuru Kenyatta observed, can only give “a small measure of closure” to Westgate attack victims.

“We owe the United States and its soldiers our heartfelt thanks for bringing an end to Godane’s career of death and destruction and finally allowing us to begin our healing process,” he said.