When family, staff, friends and relatives gathered at the Oserian Stadium in Naivasha on December 20, 2016 it was not to mourn but to celebrate Johannes Ewaldus Maria Zwager.
Popularly known as Hans Zwager, the pioneer who has passed on at the age of 90, brought to life the Kenya flower industry.
Hans Zwager founded Oserian Development Company in the early 80s marking the beginning of a business which would drive an industry to grow into one of the top export earners for Kenya.
The key employer and driver of a major social-economic transformation in the region has an estimated two million people who depend on the flower industry today directly and indirectly.
To celebrate the legacy left behind by Hans Zwager, those gathered had an afternoon and evening of entertainment organised by the Oserian family to give their hero a befitting send-off.
Speaking at the event, a former worker and sitting Narok East MP Lemaken Aramat, said Oserian gave him the foundation he needed to be a lawmaker.
The legislator served as the farm’s Maasai Community Liaison Officer, a position that enabled him create a useful grassroots connection with people who voted him to Parliament in 2013.
Hans was born in the Netherlands in 1926 but arrived in Kenya to start up ABN Bank in Nairobi in the early 1950s. Here he met June Patricia Ashworth and then shortly after married.
The pioneer purchased Oserian Farm in 1969, which was a cattle ranch with 16 employees. He established a new concept – flowers for export and later he started developing geothermal energy at Oserian, which now provides electric power to the entire farm.
In 1978 he built a factory that produced the first locally manufactured knapsack sprayers in Kenya.
Hans started the TFA (Tele Flower Auction) in the Netherlands, the first electronic flower auction in the world, designed to promote and support the Kenyan flower exporters. He also saw the opportunity to trade flowers directly to the UK supermarkets and established World Flowers in 1989.
He was committed not only to business but also a sustainable harmony between agriculture and the environment. In 1995 he created an 18,000-acre sanctuary to protect the local wildlife and ecosystem.
Today, Oserian Farm and its greenhouses are surrounded by wildlife.
In 1998, former President Daniel Arap Moi presented Hans Zwager with the ‘Moran of the Burning Spear’ in recognition for his role in directly developing what had by then become a cornerstone of the Kenyan economy.
He was also presented with The Order of Orange-Nassau by His Royal Highness King William Alexander of the Netherlands for his services to society.