Botswana tycoon Gulaam Abdoola's Turnstar fights on over Tanzanian shopping mall

Turnstar Holdings, Botswana's largest listed property company, has lodged a counterclaim in a legal dispute over Mlimani City, the Dar es Salaam shopping mall that is the single most valuable asset in its portfolio.

The move, reported this week, keeps the company on the offensive in a fight over the property it has owned since 2012. Turnstar did not disclose the full terms of the counterclaim publicly, and the specific figures and relief it is seeking could not be independently confirmed.

Mlimani City is the crown jewel of the group. The mall sits on the western edge of Dar es Salaam, on land along Sam Nujoma Road in Ubungo, and has grown into the property that anchors Turnstar's earnings. In its most recent annual report, the company credited Mlimani City as the key stabiliser for group profits, saying its performance helps cushion the business against country-specific economic pressures. It is Turnstar's largest revenue contributor.

The land underneath it is the source of the complexity. Mlimani City was built on roughly 40 hectares held under a 50-year lease that GH Group, the developer led by Turnstar's founder Gulaam Abdoola, entered into with the University of Dar es Salaam in 2004. The university owns the land. The mall was developed on top of that leasehold, which means ownership of the buildings and the underlying ground has always run through separate parties, a structure that has periodically raised questions about who controls what.

The ownership chain is layered. Turnstar holds Mlimani City through Tanzanian holding companies in which its interests sit alongside those linked to Abdoola, the arrangement that carried the asset from GH Group's development books into the listed company's income-producing portfolio.

That transfer is central to Turnstar's story. Abdoola built the group on a model in which GH Group develops a property through the risky construction phase, then sells the finished, tenanted asset into the listed vehicle once it is producing income. Mlimani City followed that pattern precisely. GH developed it at a cost of about $80 million and opened it in 2006 as Tanzania's first indoor air-conditioned shopping mall, anchored by Game and Shoprite, and Turnstar acquired it for about $77 million in 2012.

The mall has only grown since. A subsequent expansion of about $100 million added villas, banking halls, a children's area and hotel components, extending the complex to roughly 30,000 square metres and cementing its place as one of Dar es Salaam's premier retail destinations.

The company behind it spans three continents. Turnstar has been listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange since 2002 and holds a portfolio of eight properties in Botswana, four in Tanzania and one in Dubai, covering shopping malls, offices, industrial space and residential estates. Its Botswana crown jewel is Game City Mall in Gaborone, the largest shopping centre in the country by lettable area, and its Botswana holdings alone carry 265 tenants across almost 97,000 square metres valued at about 1.3 billion pula.

Abdoola is the figure at the centre of it. He built Turnstar from nothing into a property group worth around $115 million, making him one of southern Africa's quieter real estate heavyweights, and he financed the original Mlimani City project through the Botswana International Financial Services Centre. He has recently been stepping back from the managing director's chair, handing over day-to-day control after decades running both GH Group and the listed company.

Tanzania has become the growth engine of the whole enterprise. The country now accounts for the largest share of Turnstar's income, which is precisely why any legal cloud over Mlimani City matters to shareholders far beyond Dar es Salaam. A protracted dispute over the mall, its lease or its ownership structure could unsettle the asset that underpins group earnings.

What the counterclaim signals is that Turnstar intends to fight rather than settle quietly. The details will emerge as the case proceeds, but the stakes are already clear. Mlimani City is not just another property in the portfolio. It is the one the rest of the business leans on, and the company is moving to protect it.