Kusadikika wrote:This trust business was a bad idea. They should just sell everything, kila mtu apewe pesa yake. If you want to drink all of it shauri yako, if you want to invest, you invest, if you want to pay for cancer treatment you do that.
The reason why a trust is a bad idea is because the beneficiaries never actually see how much money is left so they always think there is an endless supply. The other thing is that some people have more needs than others. Like in this case of cancer, it would take just about 5 people in that family to get cancer and go for treatment in the US for all of Karume's money to be finished. US hospitals will never run out of ideas of how to spend money from cash paying patients even when they are dying.
https://www.newyorker.co...2010/08/02/letting-go-2 How fair is that to everyone else?
Karume was damned if he did, damned if he did not.
1. The trust was a good idea but unfortunately the trustees lacked something he had:
acumen and clout. This is why there was only one Njenga Karume. His acumen is hard to replicate, let alone in some peni mbili trustees who have never managed a kioski
in their own name let alone a billion shilling empire. A
career employee can never a successful businessperson make.
2. Watoto were even WORSE than the trustees when it came to acumen. Again, this is the curse of a successful businessman. 99% of the time his shadow is too huge for any talent under his wings to achieve its full potential. So mostly you will find the wife and children left behind ni walevi, wakora, lazy or simply career employees who never amount to much.
3. Debt and incompetent trustees/watoto are a powder keg. In no time this empire will be worth zero.
If I was Karume, knowing these facts, I would have gone about it differently. I would have started distributing assets to my kids very early. Kila mtu na yaghe. Hopefully out of all the kids at least one or two will survive and thrive. Wengine will just squander and revert to the mean, but that too is part of life. Trying to preserve everything intact when you are not there anymore to oversee things is a recipe for disaster.