Simmers Bar and Restaurant was demolished in 2020. PHOTO | COURTESY
Situated right in the middle of Nairobi’s bustling city centre on Kenyatta Avenue was a gem of an entertainment spot that gained fame for hosting live music concerts by local bands and some stylish Kenyan-based Congolese groups. Simmers Bar and Restaurant was for slightly over two decades also a place where one could get a quick delicious cheap meal of potato chips and sausages and the popular sizzling-hot nyama choma served with ugali or whatever else the patrons preferred, including chapati.
What many of the excited patrons did not know was that the entertainment joint was the subject of a bitter ownership fight between a politician and businessman and the former property owners. The man behind the simple joint that attracted hordes fans of the Congolese Lingala music and twilight girls eyeing prospective customers was a former MP for Kimilili in Bungoma County, Suleiman Kasuti Murunga.
The club was flattened in 2020 due to the bitter plot ownership dispute that had been raging for years. And four years later, the businessman and politician, who was better known for being the owner of the popular city club than for his 2013-17 stint in Parliament as a member of the Ford Kenya party, died in a hospital in Nairobi, on Wednesday, October 30, after a short illness.
Only last year, Murunga, sounding upbeat, had said that he was confident Simmers would soon be back in business. “It will be back, and we will play more music, serve the best nyama choma, and bring back life to the city centre,” he told his interviewer then.
But the last nail in Simmers’ coffin seems to have been driven by a burning desire of the owners of the nearby posh 680 Hotel, right opposite the club. The hotel management was reportedly seeking more parking space for its customers, and had been eyeing the plot on which the entertainment joint sat.
Simmers closed its doors in June 2020, bringing down the curtain on 21 years of enchanting musical entertainment and delicious affordable bitings. Bulldozers descended on the club on a Friday, flattening it and denying revellers their weekend fun venue.
It was a thriving location for fun, having been transformed from a small Chinese restaurant some years back into a popular 24-hour club and renamed Simmers.
Several Nairobi-based Congolese bands, including Mabe Zero Toujours, were a major attraction, with their performances drawing hordes of fans until the club was demolished.
Others included Bilenge Musica Du Congo, Bikassy Bijos of Orchestre Saka Saka Band, Generation Wenge, Viva Mosukusuku, and the evergreen Les Mangelepa. Maroon Commandos, the late Musa Juma’s Limpompo International, Mbali Mbali Sounds, and Luo benga star Igwe Prezda Bandason also did their thing on the Simmers’ stage.
The prime plot in the national capital’s central business district on which Simmers once sat has been at the centre of a protracted court tussle over its ownership involving several parties, including the widow of a former Cabinet minister. She had been engaged in 14-year battle with the former MP.
Murunga had since 1997 leased the plot from a company that had fought over its ownership with the late minister. He explained that though the company lease that expired in 2009 was not renewed by the Commissioner of Lands, in 2011, he himself applied for the acquisition of the property and it was allocated to him.
Before the rise of Simmers, the Garden Square on City Hall Way had for many years been the home of excellent live band entertainment, having hosted popular Kenyan-based Congolese bands Les Mangelepa and Les Kinois, and others. The Garden Square has in recent years been a popular spot for funeral arrangements and fund-raising meetings, with no indication that it was once the city’s hottest Lingala music entertainment club.
With Murunga gone forever, the curtain may have finally come down on Simmers’s fame as an entertainment joint that was often spoken of with nostalgic fondness by Lingala music fans as far as Dar es Salaam and Kampala, who had an opportunity to visit it in its heydays.
Thanks to his business prowess, Murunga and Simmers will remain firmly etched in the annals of the country’s entertainment history.
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