by Brian Tetley
‘Go in with all your options open and hope that luck is on your side,’ says Amin. ‘Certainly, it’s been on my side in many situations. I believe quite strongly that a lot of things happen because God wants them to happen.’
The first months of 1970 were routine enough, with coverage of an eye operation in Nairobi’s Kenyatta Hospital early in January, a royal visit by Denmark’s King Frederick and Queen Ingrid, a shantytown blaze started by Nairobi City Council workers to clear an illegal slum and, in February, a visit by US Secretary of State William Rogers.
Then he talked his way into filming a secret Palestinian Liberation Organisation—PLO—terrorist training camp in Jordan, and shooting stills for UPI. It became an acid test of his faith in destiny. The training camp in rocky hill country was close to Israel and, one day, he joined one of the PLO patrols that went across the border. ‘It was,’ he recalls, ‘one of the most frightening days of my life.’
Well into Israel, the patrol spotted a school bus on a hillside and opened fire. Israeli guards immediately returned the fire. ‘Those guys don’t miss,’ says Amin. ‘I thought: “This is where I’m going to buy it,” and I got down on my belly and crawled through the bush. I crawled like hell. I ripped all my clothes and bloodied all my hands but eventually, we were back in Jordan and they weren’t following.
‘That’s the only time I can remember being totally shit-scared.’ As usual, more or less the next day, it was back to the same kind of calculated risk that, in retrospect, he so enjoys.
The non-Muslim population of southern Sudan had been fighting a secessionist war for thirteen years. With veteran Nairobi-based reporter Henry Reuter and BBC Television reporter Peter Stewart, a ruthless veteran of Fleet Street tabloids like the Mirror, he planned a long trek through Uganda and Zaire and across the Sudanese border—into the Any’anya ‘freedom fighting’ group’s stronghold deep in the trackless wilderness.
His contacts in Nairobi arranged the visit. It involved a dangerous five-day trek in sweltering heat, with a column of newsmen and porters that stretched several hundred yards.
Friction arose between Stewart and the cameraman over the heavy equipment which Amin had to carry, and Stewart’s provocative sneer earned him a right-handed punch from Mohamed Amin. They never spoke again, addressing their remarks to each other through Henry Reuter.
‘I was particularly impressed,’ recalls Reuter. ‘Not only was he carrying a great deal more weight, with all those cameras around his neck, but he also never stopped hurrying from one end of the single-file caravan to the other end to film or take stills. He must have covered three times the distance that the rest of us did. I saw total and complete commitment and dedication.’
The march ended at Bungu. A collection of small, thatched huts, scattered about a clearing hacked out of the jungle, had become the ‘capital’ of the self-proclaimed Nile State, with its own parliament.
Amin’s film, edited into two news reports of around six minutes each, was unusually compelling. The first dealt with ‘Africa’s longest and most forgotten civil war’. The second drew comparisons with the widely reported Biafran conflict, and the fact that thousands were dying in the unreported strife between Black Christians and animists of the South and Arab Muslims. He showed the guerillas in training and the treatment of wounded soldiers. But the only real action Amin saw himself was his own uncharacteristic and unplanned contact with Stewart.
On his return to Kenya, however, he found compensation by covering
army training in Ngong Forest near Nairobi. He was drawn by the fact that the soldiers taking part used live bullets.
By way of total contrast, in May the reigning Miss World, Eva Reuber-Staier, visited Kenya. He covered the visit extensively. His working day rarely allowed him, or those associated with him, time to go home. Work frequently ended past midnight and he seemed not to have heard of weekends. To him, days off, if he thought of them at all, seemed to indicate lack of strength, purpose, or character—or all three.
Evidence of the momentous change in global communications was taking shape at this time in the form of Kenya’s new satellite ground station at Longonot, thirty-five miles northwest of Nairobi on the floor of the Great Rift Valley, one of the oldest and greatest geological wonders of the world.
He went to film progress on the ground station and persuaded a Maasai, spear in hand, and dressed in scant toga, to pose with the station in the background. Then, using his VW as a kind of motorised sheepdog, he herded up giraffes so that he could film them in front of the satellite dish, little knowing that one day, the station would transmit his own news coverage around the world.
The last line of the Visnews script to his film said, ‘All forms of international communications will be handled by the station—telephone calls, telegrams, telex messages, and radio pictures.’ No mention of television news. The most he hoped for then was to send his still pictures through space.
But if technology was swiftly changing the face of the world, old and unreasoning prejudices still prevailed.
Britain was beginning to renege on its commitment to certain groups, which claimed citizenship, and laws were passed which created a class of ‘stateless’ British citizens. Although holding British passports, they were not allowed to enter Britain. Amin was no exception. His passport was endorsed: Holder is subject to control under the Commonwealth immigrants act.
Britain underlined the point on the day his son Salim, also British by law, was born—June 6, 1970—by returning 34 Asian citizens from Heathrow to Nairobi. The minute they landed, the Kenya Government declared them Prohibited Immigrants. Amin’s footage showed the plight of these first victims, shuttlecocks in Britain’s sorry game of racial politics.
A few days later, he covered a similar story in Nairobi. The City Council cracked down on 3,000 Asian traders, who, the year before, had been ordered to sell their businesses to indigenous citizens. He filmed the inspectors checking shops, the shuttered windows of empty stores with ‘For Sale’ signs and headlines warning against non-citizen businesses.
Earlier in the year, while he was in Jordan, his brother-in-law Bahadur, who was looking after the Camerapix office in Dar es Salaam, was tragically killed in a road accident. To replace him, he hired Paul Toulmin-Rothe, the former British naval commander he had first met in Djibouti.
They had met again in October 1969 at the funeral of assassinated Somali President Abdirashid Ali Shirmarke. ‘Paul had been planning to go on leave at the time but Prime Minister Mohamed Egal asked him to stay on for the funeral. On the same day, soon after the funeral, Paul asked Egal if it was all right for him to go on leave. Paul caught the same flight as I to Nairobi.
‘Early next morning, he called to tell me that there had been a military coup in Somalia. Siyad Barre, the army chief, had seized power. Paul was not at all fond of Barre—he didn’t like or trust him one bit—and decided never to go back to Somalia.
‘So he stayed in Kenya and one morning about two years later walked into my office asking for a job.
‘I told him I could give him a job as a cameraman based in Dar es Salaam. And Paul said, “Well, if you’re willing to teach me, I’d be happy to go to Dar es Salaam.”
‘So I taught him how to load and film and sent him off.’
Three weeks later, on January 25, 1971, while Ugandan President Milton Obote was still in the air, en route home from Singapore and the Commonwealth summit, he was overthrown. The East African Airways Super VC-10 that was carrying him was diverted to Nairobi.
Kenyatta, who had already crossed ideological swords with the deposed politician, swiftly issued instructions: get him out of Kenya. Closeted secretly in Nairobi’s Panafric Hotel, where they occupied the entire top floor, Obote and his entourage were only in Nairobi for five hours, but Amin’s film showed the security network at the Panafric Hotel and Obote’s ‘ministers’. Because of heavy hotel security, however, he missed their ‘escape’ from the hotel through the kitchen. Hurrying to the air
port, he filmed the plane leaving. But what he did not film was the briefing given to EAA’s Captain Colin Skillett by Vice President Daniel arap Moi.
‘You will fly them to Dar es Salaam.’
‘And if Dar doesn’t want them, I bring them back here?’
‘No! Take them anywhere but don’t bring them back to Kenya.’
‘And if we run out of fuel?’
‘That’s your problem. Just be sure you don’t bring them back.’
In Dar es Salaam, Paul Toulmin-Rothe filmed Obote saying, ‘There’s no question of any takeover.’
Recalls Amin, ‘As soon as we did Obote’s departure, I dashed off to Wilson Airport to charter a plane. But the pilot wouldn’t take off without clearance from Kampala. Idi Amin’s troops had shelled Entebbe Airport, bringing down half the airport and killing two people, one of them a priest. Naturally, the pilot was quite nervous.
‘At the charter company, I booked a call to the Command Post in Kampala—hoping to talk to an officer who would give us permission to land. If I recall correctly, I was with John Osman of the BBC.
‘While we were waiting for the call to go through—it took at least thirty minutes or so—I tried to persuade the pilot to take off but he was adamant.
‘When the call came through, a soldier’s voice said, “This is the Command Post Kampala.”
‘I said, “This is Mohamed Amin. Can I speak with General Amin?”
‘There were a couple of clicks and then a voice came on the line, “This is General Amin.” I was surprised. You don’t usually get straight through to the top man—just like that—anywhere in the world. I was expecting to talk to an aide or secretary.
‘I had given the operator my name without really thinking about it. But I’m certain he took me to be a relative.
‘Anyway, I said, “Sir. My name is Mohamed Amin. I’m a cameraman and a newsman—and we’d like to come to Uganda to record the events of the last few hours.”
‘He said, “You’re welcome. Everything is fine here and people are very happy that I have taken over.”
‘I said, “That’s very good, sir. However, we need clearance from the control tower at Entebbe as our pilot won’t take off without it.”
‘He said, “Give me the registration number of your plane,” which I did. I think it was 5Y AKT, or something like that, and he obviously wrote it down and said, “There’ll be transport to meet you.”
‘When we landed at Entebbe the plane was immediately surrounded by troops. They searched us very thoroughly, including my equipment, and then took us to the presidential lounge. All the walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and bullet-ridden pictures of President Obote were lying on the ground.
‘Eventually, the transport arrived. In fact, it was an armoured personnel carrier which had been sent by Idi Amin. It was sweltering, almost unbearably hot. I’ll never know why he sent an armoured personnel carrier. The drive from Entebbe to Kampala normally takes about twenty-five minutes but it took us about ninety—by which time we were roasted.
‘We were taken straight to the Command Post on one of the hills on which the capital stands and up to a balcony on the first floor, where I put my camera on the tripod and lined it all up—waiting, I hoped, for Idi Amin to turn up.
‘Sure enough, after a little while, this huge figure walks out of a door and I start rolling the camera. Then he says, “I’m very sorry gentlemen. I’m not going to talk to you as Tanzania has just invaded me. Therefore, I have to go to the front line to command my troops.”
‘And he disappears. This story, of course, led the world’s television news bulletins because up to this point, nobody knew how much truth there was in this, but here was the new Head of State making a statement on camera which was accepted as a true story.
‘By now it was late evening, so we went to Entebbe to ship the film and then returned to spend the night in our hotel.
‘Next morning, I heard that Idi Amin was going to take the salute at a parade to honour the soldiers who had helped him take over the country, including the tank battalion, which had about half a dozen tanks.
‘In fact, the tanks wouldn’t start. They had to be pushed one at a time to get them started.
‘The parade took place in a dusty open field and as the tanks rolled past, we were all covered with dust, including Idi Amin. After the parade, I saw him get into the driver’s seat of his jeep and I walked over, introduced myself, and asked him where he was going.
‘He thought for a second and then said, “I’m going for a swim,” so I said, “Can I come along with you?”
‘I jumped in the back and filmed him as he drove to the Apollo Hotel, which soon afterwards he renamed the Hotel International. Obote’s middle name was Apollo.
‘I followed him to the swimming pool. When he came out of the changing room in his swimming trunks, I realised what an enormous, truly enormous, man he was.
‘There were lots of young girls around, and they were all very friendly with him. Obviously, he was a regular visitor. I took some pictures of him with the girls and then some film and pictures of him in the pool, which again made headline coverage around the world.’
But when he was having a shower, he called the Nairobi newsman over to say:
‘Look, I saw you taking pictures of me with a lot of prostitute girls but please don’t use them. I didn’t want to upset the girls which is why I didn’t stop you but please don’t use the pictures.’
After that, the two talked in general terms. ‘For some reason, he really took a liking to me and it was from this contact that I became one of the few people allowed in and out of Uganda freely.
‘In fact, during the last two years of Idi Amin’s rule, I was the only cameraman allowed in. I can’t explain why but I think initially it was probably because we had the same name.’
A macabre clown had entered the stage of world politics—and, at first, the world laughed, entertained by Mohamed Amin’s film and picture coverage of this seemingly benign gangster.
Perhaps as reprisal for his work in hustling through Kenya’s security network to film Obote’s departure, twelve days later, the photographer was punched and harassed at Nairobi Airport when Prince Charles and Princess Anne arrived in Kenya on February 6. The Visnews log notes laconically:
Cameraman Mohamed Amin, assigned to cover the arrival of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Anne at Nairobi Airport at the start of their two-week visit to Kenya on Saturday, reports that Kenya Police were “very rough with photographers”. It seems they manhandled cameramen and smashed the main set of lights. It would appear to have been a much tougher assignment than had been anticipated.
Nevertheless, Amin got his story.
One problem was the large press party that followed Charles’s progress. In particular, everybody wanted to go to far-off Lake Rudolf—500 miles from Nairobi in the far north, now called Turkana and known as a ‘Cradle of Mankind’.
But Charles was to pilot his own plane—one of the Queen’s Flight—from Nairobi, which meant that the news ‘pool’ system was invoked: out of the battery of the best of Britain’s press photographers and television cameramen, only one was allowed on the night. The work of the ‘pool’ man would be used by all the papers—and all the television networks. Alone among all this talent, only Mohamed Amin had the qualifications to meet both requirements. The unknown young Asian from the Eastleigh quarter of Nairobi had come a long way.
Prince Charles spent idyllic days in the remote wilderness studying its phenomenal bird life. With the birds and more than 2,000 square miles of storm-tossed water set in the centre of a 100,000-square-mile desert, this astonishing inland sea is a unique resort. Mohamed Amin truly became a Photographer Royal.
Within a week of the royal visit, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Michael Ramsey, visited Kenya, Mrs Miriam Obote and her children arrived to take up residence in exile, there was the State Opening of the Kenya Parliament—and then Amin was back in Uganda.
Still working on Search for the Nile, the producer wanted him to film the river itself for the titles and continuity sequences. As none of the episodes had yet been shot within sound or sight of the Nile, both felt the series would be incomplete without actual film of the world’s longest river.
I drove from Nairobi with Amin. At Jinja, after we turned left down a dirt road, seven soldiers suddenly ran out from an acacia tree at the side of the road and blocked our way. One jabbed his rifle barrel at the door, chipping the enamel just beneath the window of my Vauxhall Victor.
‘Get out, you pig.’
As I opened the door, he cracked me across the head with the rifle butt. When I stumbled, he jabbed me in the ribs, knocked me down, kicked my knee from under me, and put his foot on my chest. Then he placed the barrel against my neck and began squeezing the trigger.
Suddenly, he jumped to one side and cracked the butt against Amin’s chest. He had seen what was happening and had come out from the passenger side. His action saved my life. Drunk, the soldier now forgot all about me and started threatening him.
Hands up, Mo talked swiftly in Swahili, and slowly, the tension eased. The soldiers checked the car boot, taking no notice at all of the half-a-ton of film equipment inside, declared us worthless ‘Kenya pigs’, and waved us on.
Amin took over as driver and drove on down the dirt road. After a few minutes, I told him, ‘Okay. Let’s turn around and go back.’
‘Back where?’
‘Nairobi.’
‘You must be crazy.’
‘But surely, you can’t want to stay?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the bastards will kill us.’
‘Come on, Brian. These guys are just drunk.’ He pulled up overlooking a series of cataracts where he had filmed ‘Speke’s discovery’, got out, opened the boot, took out the tripod and his Arriflex, and began filming as if he were on a fishing holiday in the Scottish highlands. Much later, I learned that the blow on his chest had badly fractured two ribs.
Two days later, I stood with him and an Acholi game ranger at the top of Murchison Falls. When he went off to photograph and film the scenic falls, the ranger told me of massacres in northern Uganda by Idi Amin’s troops and pressed on me a handwritten list of hundreds who had gone to their deaths. Weeks later, I was able to verify it.