by Brian Tetley
‘We travelled the entire country using helicopters and planes. I remember landing in the Danakil Depression, when it must have been 140° Fahrenheit under the shade of the wing of the DC-3.
‘Nobody was there and we hung around for a while and then saw a mirage in the distance that gradually transformed into a truck.
‘There were half a dozen Danakils armed to the teeth in it. They didn’t know what we were doing there but they drove us through this fantastic landscape to a huge sulphur mine. When we got into an office, I was desperately thirsty. There were diesel barrels filled with water, but you could see the scum and it smelled so bad it was undrinkable.
‘I decided to have a shower instead. It was an open shower and I went under it fully clothed. It was so hot that as soon as I walked out of the shower, I was bone dry.
‘My soundman collapsed while we were filming. Our pilot also got very edgy. He was waiting at the plane and he finally took off and flew very low over us to tell us to get back to the airstrip. It was his way of saying, “Get the hell out of there.”
‘We were supposed to film at some other place but none of us was fit enough. Instead, we flew to the nearest city, which was Asmara. When we got to the hotel, I remember I drank twenty-six large Cokes one after the other and I was still thirsty. We were pretty well totally dehydrated. I think another hour and we would have passed the point of no return.
‘It was decided—despite our protests that it was not a good idea to have a two-hour-long documentary—that the commentary for the Amharic version would be done by the emperor himself.
‘We were to film the Emperor recording his commentary. We went to the palace and set up the mikes and cameras. I asked the staff if I could put a neck-mike on the emperor as that would produce a better sound quality, but they were horrified. “Absolutely not. That is totally forbidden. The Emperor has never been touched and it will not be allowed.”
‘There was not a lot I could do, so I set up the other mikes. But I kept the neck-mike handy because I was going to ask the emperor myself. Physically, he was short and skinny, but he radiated power.
‘When he was on his chair, looking all grand and ready to go, I approached him, bowed, and said, “Your Majesty. Can I please put a microphone around your neck as it will give a better quality of sound?”
‘He was a bit stunned but extremely friendly and said, “Would it give better sound?”
‘I said, “Yes it would” and he said, “Fine”.
‘So I undid the neck button of his shirt and fixed the microphone. The security guards were absolutely furious, but there was nothing that they could do as I was dealing with the king himself.’
Now, as the storm clouds gathered over Addis Ababa in 1974, Amin recorded a sadder occasion. They were in the emperor’s office on March 5, to film his nationwide address on television and his pledge to write a new civil rights constitution for his troubled kingdom. A few days after this, Amin filmed what was effectively the emperor’s last public appearance: it was an elegy for a deposed monarch more eloquent than words, the lone, frail, and tiny figure with his pet dog at his heels walking back to his palace to vanish forever from public sight.
By September, when the emperor’s whereabouts and health had become a mystery, the political situation in Ethiopia was a sad contrast to the ebullience in Kenya. There, in the second general elections since independence, in which opposition leader Oginga Odinga was again banned from standing by the ruling Kanu Party, three cabinet ministers, including Foreign Minister Dr Njoroge Mungai, were ousted by voters. Stomping through the country with his familiar limp, Amin recorded this demonstration of democracy on film throughout the month-long campaign leading up to the polls.
The limp is his most distinctive physical feature. Many people believe he was born with it but in fact, it was caused by one of his many car accidents.
‘The National Youth Service was building this major road all the way from Nanyuki to Moyale on the Ethiopian border with American equipment,’ Amin explains. ‘The embassy was interested in some pictures, so I borrowed one of their vehicles, a four-wheel drive Wagoneer.
‘Just as I was leaving, Paul Toulmin-Rothe, who was still in Dar es Salaam and had done a story on the diamond mines in upcountry Tanzania, arrived. He had hitched a lift on a plane to Nairobi.
‘I asked him to come along. We were also with the Der Spiegel correspondent, Peter Seidlitz, and his wife Janice.
‘When we got close to Isiolo, I wanted to do some tracking shots of the new road, so I asked Paul to drive while I sat on the bonnet. He did that, and then I took the wheel back. Paul kept insisting that he wanted to drive, but I’m a rather nervous passenger.
‘He was so insistent, however, that finally I gave in. He drove some distance overtaking a couple of other cars and then skidded. On slippery murram [red soil], the worst thing you can do is brake. But Paul just hit the brake very hard indeed and we rolled several times. I was thrown out of the car unconscious.’
The next thing he remembers was lying on the side of the road, looking up at Paul, who was very shaken.
‘Mohamed, Mohamed. Don’t worry, I’ll look after the office.’
‘Paul, where are we?’
‘Don’t worry Mo. I’ll look after the office.’
‘Yes, Paul but where are we?’
‘We were going to Moyale.’
‘But who was driving?’
‘Don’t worry about that. It’ll be all right. But please I have to tell you something. Please say you were driving.’ Slowly, the memory returned. ‘But Paul, it was you who was driving.’
‘I was driving. But please don’t tell anybody. I don’t have a licence and I’ve never driven before.’
Mo thought, ‘God, this is a nice time to tell me.’
Soon after, he was taken to the mission clinic at Laisamis. They radioed a doctor in Moyale, who drove four hours through the night to Laisamis as Paul sat next to Amin in the clinic, flicking mosquitoes away with a fly whisk.
‘The doctor thought I had a broken leg but couldn’t do very much without an X-ray. Next morning, the American Embassy sent a Flying Doctor plane to lift us out.
‘Apparently, one of the cars passing the crash saw the vehicle and because it had US diplomatic plates, they had called the embassy to say there had been a serious accident.
‘I was flown to Nairobi and taken straight to Aga Khan Hospital and they called Dr Yusuf Kodwavwala, who had been my surgeon when I last broke my leg. He was on his way by air to Nanyuki but they were able to contact his plane and he turned back.’
Mo asked to see his X-rays—unusual in Nairobi, but the nurses knew him. He took one look and almost passed out again. The bone was shattered.
‘Sister, these are not my X-rays. Can you bring my X-rays?’
‘These are your X-rays.’
‘No. They can’t be. It’s not that bad.’
‘I’m sorry. That’s your X-ray.’
At this point, Kodwavwala walked in and, after looking at the X-rays, he told Amin, ‘You have a problem.’
‘Yusuf, you’re going to have to do something about this.’
‘You have two options. One, we put you in traction with your leg all strapped up and leave you hanging there for six or seven months and hope the bone will join and heal.
‘The other option is to cut you up and do what we can. The chances are that if we cannot fix it, we’ll have to amputate your leg.’
Mo thought about it for a couple of seconds. ‘There’s no way I’m going to have my leg in traction for six months. The other option is fine, but please make sure you don’t remove my leg. Because if you do, there’s going to be a lot of trouble about it.’
‘I’ll obviously do my best.’ Next morning, he was wheeled into the operating theatre and Kodwavwala worked on him for several hours.
‘He put a rod rather like a shish kebab skewer through the bone and spliced all the pieces together with wires. I was in the hospital for two weeks. I
should have stayed for six weeks or so, but I got bored and left. I didn’t really give my leg a chance to heal. This is why it’s an inch or so shorter than the other one.
‘Kodwavwala did a terrific job. Since then, I’ve never had any problems with my leg. I’ve been on mountains up to 23,000 feet. I’ve done expeditions and many other things and everything has been fine.
‘I was out of the hospital but Paul, who suffered no visible injuries, stayed in for six weeks and Janice, who had no injuries whatsoever, was in for more than two months. She thought some fluid dripping out of her nose was her brains leaking away.
‘I visited them regularly on the second floor in a private wing where there was no lift.’
So far, Mohamed had never admitted professional defeat. But even the best err. It’s axiomatic, of course, for any international newsman to remain in touch with events. Out in the field, Amin tunes to the BBC World Service at least three times a day with almost religious fervour.
Yet in late November 1974, filming a story on the Flying Doctor pilot Dr Anne Spoerry, who tended the sick over an area of several thousand square miles, and collecting material for the book Peoples of Kenya, he did not for once tune in his shortwave radio at their camp at Alia Bay on the shores of Lake Turkana.
‘We arrived very late and we were very tired from hopping around various points on the lake shore, filming the Flying Doctor as well as the people. I just went straight to sleep and didn’t listen to the radio.
‘Next morning, we flew back to Nairobi, where we were met at Wilson Airport by the wife of one of the missionaries. [Most of the work around Lake Turkana was being done by the missionaries.]
‘She offered to give us a ride home. As we were driving along, she was saying how awful the accident was. So I said, “What accident?”
‘She said, “The crash of the Lufthansa 747 jumbo jet.”
‘I said, “Oh. Were there a lot of casualties?”
‘A number of people had died, but all along, I assumed that this must have happened somewhere else in the world.
‘It wasn’t until we were halfway to my house that she actually said the crash had happened at Nairobi Airport.
‘When I heard that, I asked her to drop me at my office. In fact, Paul was in the office having just done a second story on the aftermath, and he and I went back and did another story and then on to the hospital for survivor shots, and then the mortuary for bodies.
‘Because he just could not look at the dead and the wounded, especially children, still strapped in their chairs, he filmed quite a lot of the carnage looking away from the camera. Even so, Paul did a tremendous job.’
10. Idi Amin’s OAU Circus
MOHAMED AMIN’S ‘GIFT OF THE gab’ is spellbinding. People fall to his charm and, in retrospect, often contrary and contradictory logic, as swiftly as he captures them in film through his lens. Most times, however, his line of thought is direct, piercing all hyperbole and hypocrisy. He sets about resolving problems with a powerful will.
When new restrictions limiting his right to enter Britain were endorsed on his new passport, No. 463577, issued on May 20, 1974 by the British High Commission in Nairobi, he had just such a problem. In effect, these 1968 laws created first, second, third, and ultimately fourth-class citizens. For him, however, the regulations were yet another challenge to be overcome.
‘I had what they call a D passport, basically a useless piece of paper. Because it gave no right of entry to Britain, it was not accepted by many other countries. You had to get visas for countries which did not normally require them for British passport holders.
‘It wasn’t just frustrating. It was very difficult to work. Once, for example, I was a guest of British Airways on an inaugural flight to Japan. The Japanese Embassy in Nairobi said that if I had a British passport, I didn’t need a visa.
‘But when we landed in Tokyo, all my other colleagues went through and I was held. Apart from the fact that it was embarrassing for me, it was also embarrassing for British Airways. I was their guest in Tokyo.
‘I was taken into a little room and the immigration officers got to work with lots of little papers and finally, these were handed to me and I was told I had been declared a Prohibited Immigrant for arriving in Tokyo without a passport.
‘Since I was only on what we call a “jolly,” it didn’t really matter, so I said, “What next?”
‘They said, “We have to tell you your rights. And your rights are that you can make an appeal. The appeal will be taken to court tomorrow morning and the decision will be conveyed to you.”
‘They filled in more forms, which they finally asked me to sign and I was told by this jolly little Japanese man, “You have now appealed and the result of your appeal will be given to you tomorrow.”
‘I asked what I should do in the meantime and they said, “We will allow you to go the hotel with the rest of your party, but you are not allowed to leave the hotel until your appeal has been heard.”‘
Next morning, while the others went to Kyota, Amin waited for the result of his appeal. About the middle of the day, he got a call from the airport to say it had been successful. He could stay in Tokyo—or indeed Japan—for three months.
‘I don’t want to stay in Tokyo for three months. I only want to stay for two weeks.’
‘Well, the judge said you should stay for three months, so we’ll give you a three months’ visa.’
Because of that passport, he was thrown out of Egypt. Travelling on a document which, in effect, had no value, he had problems in a number of other countries, too.
‘I even had to have a visitor’s pass to enter Britain. It was absolutely absurd. I made a lot of noises and lots of protests but didn’t get very far.
‘Then my wife’s passport ran out. As she was a Tanzanian, it meant that she had to go to Dar es Salaam and wait there two months to get it renewed, which didn’t sound like a very good idea. I suggested the best option was that I should try to get her a British passport.
‘I told the British High Commission I would like my wife to get a British passport. They said, “Of course. You’re British and you’re wife is entitled to be British.”
A week later, he collected Dolly’s new passport, a proper one with the right of abode in UK. He went back and saw the immigration officer.
‘Look, you must have made a mistake. My wife can’t have the right of abode in the UK because I have no rights at all and she’s only getting this passport because of my nationality.’
‘Well, that’s true, but the law is that your dependant, in this case your wife, has the right of abode in the UK.’ It all sounded absurd and he made more protests, but the counsellor said,
‘I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do. That’s the law.’
Amin protested. He had been British all his life with a useless passport, and here was his wife with the right of abode in the UK. It was ridiculous. ‘What about my passport? Don’t I get some sort of rights?’
‘Look, the only one way you can get permanent residence in Britain is by accompanying your wife. If you are landed unconditionally at London Airport, then you will have the right of readmission into Britain, which means you can go back there any time and even live there.’
‘This is ridiculous. I don’t wish to go to Britain to live. I’m quite comfortable in Kenya and I would be cheating if I said that’s what I really want to do.’
‘I don’t really wish to hear that. That’s the only way around this problem.’
‘But if I fill in a form saying all this, you know that it’s not true.’
‘That’s not my concern. That’s the way it is.’
Amin filled in the form and they put a stamp in his passport which said, ‘Accompanying wife for permanent settlement.’
‘Salim and Dolly were allowed through without any problems,’ Amin remembers, ‘but I was marched off to the Heathrow Airport hospital or clinic, where they took chest X-rays and passed me as medically fit.’
Anoth
er Asian in the waiting room was having problems: nobody could understand him. In Punjabi, he told Amin that he had come to live in England permanently but didn’t understand a word of English. All he had was a note which he had been told to hand to officials. It read simply: ‘I am going to Bradford. Please show me the way.’ In Urdu.
‘I think,’ says Amin, ‘that about summed up the tragedy of the whole situation.’
Two hours later, he was allowed into Britain, an unconditional right of readmission stamp in his passport. ‘And that was that. Now my passport reads, “Holder has the right of readmission,” which means I can go in and out of Britain as I like. The only difference between mine and a British passport is that theirs is not stamped—while mine is.’
That night in his London hotel room he watched Ludovic Kennedy interview Idi Amin’s runaway Foreign Minister Wanume Kibedi on television. Asked how Idi Amin would behave during the forthcoming OAU summit in Kampala, Kibedi replied:
‘Well, I think that would be anybody’s guess, but being an eccentric he will obviously do anything … I can say that as far as his mental strain is concerned, he’s got this letter which he calls MC and he says this represents Metal Cross, which is a rich honour.’
Kennedy: ‘Does he have it?’
Kibedi: ‘Oh! He just ordered it himself, but as far as the people of Uganda are concerned, MC stands not for Metal Cross but for Mental Case. That’s what he is.’
Watching Kibedi, Mo recalled the conversation he had filmed two weeks before between Idi Amin and Canadian TV journalist Martyn Burke. It provided some revealing passages.
A lot of people say, ‘Uganda’s a very dangerous place to go. You shouldn’t go, a lot of strange things happen there.’ This is a feeling that a lot of people have. How do you think this has happened?
Amin: They got these facts from the people whose business was taken away, and some of these people are in Nairobi. Also, most of the headquarters of the British news media, who are against Uganda, are in Kenya. So, those people who are reporting about East Africa are in Nairobi and they are against the Republic of Uganda. They are also very jealous about Uganda’s natural resources. We have got the best climate in the world, very good natural resources, and good national parks for tourists. Our people have got enough food and yet people say there is fear to come to Uganda because Uganda is insecure! But now Uganda is going to attract more tourists and I am sure that you find the situation is different. I am supposed to drive with over a thousand guards to guard me, but actually I drive alone. You do not find in Uganda even a single roadblock on the roads except at the customs at the border. You will be with me in the town and you can tell me where to go and I will drive you. And you will find that everybody likes me and I can eat and drink with the people all because of Watergate. And President Ford has got a lot of problems. It is too early for me to tell you now, because I am still studying his problems, but I have been briefed by American people.