by Brian Tetley
But his success had become an embarrassment to his Nairobi rivals and, one more such incident, they started to think, would surely compel even Kenya, his birthplace, to evict him.
They had reason for jealousy. By now, he had made his mark not just in television but in the offices of such prestige news magazines as Time and Newsweek. One of his strengths is that he is as sensitive to the good ‘soft’ picture story as he is ruthless in hard news gathering.
In January 1968, for instance, there were protests in Tanzania about the indecency of the Maasai dress. The warriors were told, ‘Wear trousers or go to jail.’ Newsweek noted that the Maasai warrior’s normal garb—’a skimpy robe elegantly draped to leave the left buttock bare’—struck the somewhat puritanical Tanzanian Government as ‘a positive disgrace to the image of the 20th-century African.’
His picture of dancing, semi-naked Maasai warriors illustrated the story, together with a wry footnote by the late Kenya Maasai leader Stanley Oloitipitip, who said the Tanzanian order was ‘psychological castration.’
Around this time, he was contracted as cameraman for the Paradise Films production of the Swahili movie Mrembo, a saga which ended months later with sparks flying between producers and stars, and eventually, in litigation. Despite this, with his highly developed sense of publicity, he thoroughly enjoyed all the fireworks. In my daily column in the Nation at that time, I wrote that the producers should consider themselves lucky to have him as ‘he completes films under gunfire if necessary.’
More important than Mrembo, however, was his film for America’s National Educational TV network, The Brave Boys, a 90-minute story showing the adventures of two American youngsters on safari in Kenya. It won critical and professional acclaim.
Ronnie Robson was a great admirer of his versatility. ‘Add to his ability, his news sense, cheerfulness, and generosity and his peculiar “luck,” and it’s not hard to see why he’s always been a favourite for any correspondent to team up with.
‘It was in 1968, I think, that the Channel Two service of the BBC was first transmitted in colour. Men already in the field were asked in advance to prepare news film “specials” in colour to act as a kind of “stockpot” or reserve of items to see the colour news service through its early days.
‘We did have one long running “news” story in Kenya at the time. It was the Presidential Commission on Marriage and Divorce, which ploughed on doggedly, holding hearings in the capital and all over the provinces. The main interest, in tribal society, centred on two main topics: the desirability or otherwise of female circumcision and the desirability or otherwise of polygamy.
‘As the commission would still be running when the colour service opened, I decided to use it as a peg for a “stockpot” contribution. Female circumcision, I divined, might not exactly make family viewing—but polygamy? Maybe something could be done on this—its social effects, economics, statistics, and so on.
‘Mo came up with a “contact” in Senior Chief Njiri, then 105 years old. I won’t pretend to remember the exact numbers involved, but the old chief had over the years taken something like 55 wives who had borne him something like 95 sons and well over 100 daughters.
‘These, in turn, had married and produced countless grandchildren, and there were great-grandchildren—in fact, the old man had populated a whole area around Fort Hall [Murang’a]. The old boy wasn’t finished yet, either, by the look of it. His youngest son was only two-and-a-half years old.
‘The senior chief was a well-known character anyway. He’d been appointed a Commander of the British Empire for his services during the Mau Mau campaign before Independence, and proudly wore this and other medals on his monkey skin cloak.
‘Mo managed to gather together most of the surviving wives, and sons and daughters and their offspring from far and wide, on one day in the old chief’s kraal.
‘Of course, the film was anchored on an interview with the old patriarch, still very lucid and sensible. It turned out that he was against polygamy. When asked why, he simply looked at me with pity and then with his hand indicated the mass of humanity around him.
‘Mo filmed it beautifully. We couldn’t have covered it without him because he set up the meetings and the arrangements and had the necessary personal contacts.
‘It was a winner—but it never got into the start of the colour film news service. It was rated so good that BBC’s Channel One used it immediately—in black and white.’
The year before, when filming the referendum in Djibouti, Robson realised the extent of Amin’s talent with film. ‘We were in a remote stony desert region, where the nomads had to leave their weapons in one room before marking their ballot papers in another room, and I had the chance, undistracted, to see how he set about capturing the atmosphere quickly and economically for the purposes of a news film report. From this first time out with him, I felt that I was on a “winner” and resolved to benefit from his services as often as possible.
‘Some cameramen with whom I was expected to work failed to produce useable material. There were various reasons, ranging from being too slow, to making basic technical mistakes, perhaps under pressure of events, to using completely inadequate or unsatisfactory or faulty equipment. Mo used the best equipment he could get hold of, kept it in working order, and seemed to use it as swiftly and as naturally as he used his eyes.’
His photographs demonstrate his ability to extend his visual narratives from the moving picture to the still picture. Almost unique among television cameramen, he learnt his craft as a stills photographer, an apprenticeship that gave him additional grounding for the challenge of filming subjects and stories that move across the frame and through time on the screen.
‘When the Kenya Government implemented laws to “Africanise” jobs in the late 1960s, the majority affected were Asians,’ Robson continues. ‘This led to an extraordinary exodus of people in two separate waves. Mo was invaluable with his contacts in the Asian community and as a team, we “scooped the pool” in coverage.
‘It required hard and fast work. Mo himself was not affected by the order, but he had that degree of empathy which resulted in telling footage.’
He also filmed the Asian exodus for a World in Action documentary for Britain’s Granada Television, screened on March 4, 1968 to an audience of more than eight million viewers. Producer Mike Murphy wrote, ‘Thank you for some magnificent pictures, especially the airport material. We ran one piece—the men who had overbooked seats—for about three minutes without having to make a single cut. You had more or less edited it in the camera.
‘I certainly would be delighted to work with you personally again, and everyone here at Granada who has seen the quality of your work says the same. So I think, if you are available, you are likely to become our regular in Africa—but God knows when we’ll be back.’
Not long afterwards, he flew with Robson to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius for the independence celebrations to make a news feature film on the island’s political makeup and economy, as well as cover the celebrations.
The BBC man remembers a ‘particular manifestation—small in itself—of “Mo’s Luck” or sixth sense, call it what you will.’ One item on the programme was a display by motor cyclists. Most of the international camera crews either ignored it completely or took just a token shot or two.
‘Then,’ says Robson, ‘as the cyclists were carrying out the “crossover” manoeuvre—when fast-moving riders dash along the diagonals from corner to corner of the field, missing each other apparently by inches—Mo suddenly put up his camera for one pair who hit each other with dramatic results in the centre of the field.
‘As far as I know, nobody else got the shot (or cared much). But what was it in Mo that caused him to know it would happen? Similarly, spectators had crowded onto a certain roof. Mo focused and filmed just as some of them fell off.
‘I’m convinced that some cameramen have a special faculty. It’s not purely luck. It has something to do with instinct
, probability, and a very special power of all-round observation and deduction.
‘I don’t believe that cameramen have to be born cameramen. They can be made into good cameramen. But a few have something extra. Mo has always had that bit extra.’
Certainly, Amin is only too well aware of mortal danger. He’s been close to death many times, mainly in Africa. ‘And that’s how I’ve gone on for years,’ he says. ‘If there were bodies lying in the street, I just filmed them. If people were being beaten up, I just filmed them. There were all sorts of officials performing these acts, beating up people or shooting them. In many of these situations—and I can think of lots of them—I should long have been dead.
‘But what I say to myself is, “Well, I’m in this situation and I will cover the story as best I can.” At the same time, I’m looking around to find out how I’m going to get out of there. There’s no point in getting shot in your back while running. You just cope the best you can.
‘In many situations—and I’ve been shot at and arrested many times—you can actually negotiate your way out. That’s quite important. If you run, you’re more suspect.
‘Sometimes you change sides. I’ve changed from one side to the other when it looks as if there is a better chance of getting out alive from the other side.
‘A number of times in Aden in 1968, I changed sides—either from the British to the Arabs or the Arabs to the British. When I was on the wrong side, I just worked my way to the other side, and got away with it. Sometimes, it has come to my mind that if I get out of this alive I just don’t want to know these things again. Fortunately—or unfortunately—memories are short. You get out. You’ve got a good story. Everyone’s happy. You get a few hero-grams. The story’s well used. You forget about it.
‘When I spent 27 days in jail in Zanzibar, the only thing that was going through my head was:
“I’m not going to get out of here alive;” and
“If I do, there’s no way I’m going to do this job again.”
‘But the day after I was released, I was actually shooting a story. So memory’s short. Once I was out, I was quite happy to go back to what I was doing before. This is not something you develop. You either have it or you haven’t. If I were to stop doing news, I think I should probably feel miserable.’
Calculating the risk was uppermost in his mind in the late 1960s, when he made several trips to cover the Biafra war in Nigeria, West Africa. Few internecine struggles in history equal the horrific violence of this conflict, which ran its course from 1967 to 1970.
In the autumn of 1968, he had just returned to Nairobi from filming the battles taking place on the Nigerian front line, when he met his close friend Priya Ramrakha, a gifted photojournalist working for Time magazine, who had been in the Biafran jungle strongholds.
Priya said he was going back, this time on the Nigerian side. Amin suggested they travel together—first to Biafra, where he had never been and Priya knew the score, then to Nigeria, where Amin had the experience. They flew to Sao Tome, the little island off the West African coast where the arms planes supplying the Biafran secessionists were based.
But hanging around for transport, impatient to be back in action, Priya could wait no longer. He flew to Nigeria.
Amin, however, continued to wait in Sao Tome until the night he boarded one of the Biafran DC-3s and, with all lights extinguished, flew at tree-clipping height over the West African jungles. Coming in to land, the Biafran forces of Odumegwu Ojukwu lit paraffin torches lining the landing strip, which was just a clearing in the jungle. He went forward to the frontline areas with the supplies and shot several news films and many photographs.
When he returned home to Nairobi that Saturday in October 1968, he was just hours ahead of Priya, who arrived in a Pan Am jet. But his friend was in a coffin. He had been caught in the crossfire of a Nigerian ambush, which trapped the Central Government’s own forces.
‘I could have been with him,’ Amin says today. ‘Like any newsman, I think the important thing when you take a story on is that you’ve got to be first—whatever situation you’re in. It’s a tremendous achievement to actually come out with the first pictures. That really is the satisfaction you get. ‘To come out with other people at the same time is a kind of second best. To come out a day later, you might as well not go. Because who cares?
‘In many ways, it’s getting more difficult to get the top story. In the early 1960s, you could actually drive into countries, go across without a lot of hassle, and cover a war and come out with your story. In the Congo, you either locked in with the rebels or went in with the mercenaries, did the story, and came out.
‘Now with the kind of wars that are going on in Africa, it’s more and more difficult and a bloody sight more dangerous to calculate your risk of coming out. And when you put yourself in a position like that, it needs a helluva lot more planning and thought. But when you come back with the first pictures, I think that gives you a lot more satisfaction now than it did 10 or 15 years ago.’
Yet despite his immensely high professional profile—he believes in publicity with all the fervour of a Hollywood mogul—Mo has always kept his private life to himself. When he married Dolly on October 16, 1968, however, it was more than a desire for privacy. He didn’t want his parents, strict, orthodox Sunni Muslims, to find out.
‘I married somebody outside the religion. But somebody I loved. It was immaterial what religion she was—it made no difference whatsoever.
‘Dolly had come up to see me from Dar es Salaam and we decided it was time to get married. But my parents wouldn’t allow it. I knew that. So I told her, “It’s got to be done quietly.”
‘I had to find an Imam, a priest, who didn’t know any of my relatives. The only one I could find was an African from one of the Nairobi mosques. We were married at my flat in Mfang’ano Street, in the centre of Nairobi, on a Saturday afternoon. All we needed were two witnesses. Photographers Afzal Awan and Azhar Chaudrey, then chief photographer of the Nation, were my witnesses.
‘It didn’t take long but the Imam wanted to know why there was no party. I hadn’t planned one but I sent David, my house servant, down the road to buy some sweetmeats. Then I left. I didn’t have time for a party. I had a news assignment that afternoon.’
He was determined to make his freelance news, feature, and television picture agency the best in Africa and was prepared to achieve this, as I would discover, with a fair amount of ruthlessness.
His rivals did their best to forestall him, generally without much luck. But they came close to bringing him down when, on October 26, 1968, he was sent by CBS on an urgent assignment to Uganda. Several people knew about it, among them his closest friends and rivals.
As he boarded the Uganda-bound plane, two of them made telephone calls to Bob Astles, then Uganda’s director of information. As soon as the cameraman landed, he was escorted into the Immigration Office by a Mr Oyengo, who wrote on page 17 of his passport: ‘Refused facilities in Uganda.’ He was put on the next flight back to Nairobi.
He had no notion that it was his rivals who had shopped him. Indeed, his mind was busy working out which one of them would be able to take on his assignment. Never one to leave anything to chance, however, and realising that the inscription on page 17 would be damaging evidence at Nairobi Airport, he carefully tore the offending page out along the seam, and passed uneventfully back into Kenya—the missing page unnoticed by the Kenya immigration officers, now accustomed to his frequent trips.
Telephoning around from his office, he was puzzled when his colleagues refused to undertake the Uganda assignment. He finally passed the job on to another cameraman, whose office was just round the corner.
That evening, one of the senior editors on the East African Standard rang to question him about his ‘deportation’. Amin denied it.
‘Why did you come back from Uganda then?’
Thinking fast, he replied, ‘Because I was pulled off that story to do another in Ethiopia.’
It didn’t satisfy the journalist. The story—a small three-paragraph item: Cameraman told to leave Uganda—appeared on October 28. A bigger story—Nairobi man told to quit Uganda—appeared in the Uganda Argus on October 29.
By then, Amin knew what had happened. One of the Standard’s photographers told him that while the senior editor was on the phone talking to him, two of his rivals were in the Standard office, insisting that he had been deported.
When he confronted them, they reluctantly confessed. He was furious. ‘I’ll take every job from you if I have to do it for free, until you come crawling on your knees for forgiveness.’
For the next 10 years, they had nothing to do with each other. And he was busier than ever. But then, as others also learned, he was not a man to cross.
6. Assassination of Tom Mboya
THERE WERE NO DAFFODILS—THE Welsh national flower—for the 1969 investiture of Prince Charles at Caernarvon Castle as Prince of Wales.
And as Kenya is a land of flowers, one reporter, with a Fleet Street man’s guile, thought what a nice tabloid story it would make for the London Daily Mirror—one of the world’s largest selling newspapers—if the prince were to receive a gift of his national flowers from a young African girl in Kenya, which is a Commonwealth country.
Buying four dozen daffodils at Nairobi’s city market, he drove to a friend’s suburban home, where the Kikuyu house servant had a pretty five-year-old daughter. Replanting the cut daffodil stems in the friend’s lawn, he photographed the little girl plucking them out again. The girl’s mother then got her daughter to write a simple note to Prince Charles. It said she had been so upset to hear about the shortage of daffodils that she was sending him some from Kenya.