The Story of Mohamed Amin

by Brian Tetley

  There was a cable which you sent to President Nixon wishing him a ‘speedy recovery’ from the Watergate situation. (Amin laughs.) A lot of people were not really sure whether you were joking or not. What was the reason for that cable?

  Amin: Because he was very sick, he had to be taken to hospital and the people were very worried he was going to die and he might not give the answers on the case of Watergate for the whole world to know. Because nobody knows, the only person who can answer is Nixon. He is the person who started this Watergate affair and if he dies, I am sure the whole blame will be pushed on to him. That is the reason why I wished him a very quick recovery, so that he may be in a position to answer all those questions even now.

  Often, people are not sure if you are joking or not. For instance, did you really want Scottish bodyguards?

  Amin: The officers who promoted me up to the rank of major were all Scottish. General Blair is, I think, now commander-in-chief in Scotland, and I would be happy if anybody came from there to be an escort to me or a bodyguard … and I will be talking to them about their traditions, because I have been with them for a very long time and they are very brave people in the battlefield. I remember very well that when they were going to war at night, they played their pipes and they were very brave. I am very happy to remember what we had with them during the Second World War.

  (At Mo’s suggestion, and to give a practical demonstration of his popularity and confidence in the midst of large crowds, Idi Amin took his questioner and the cameraman for a ride around Kampala in his Citroen Maserati.)

  Don’t you usually drive around in an open jeep?

  Amin: I drive the jeep, especially when I go to visit the army barracks or when I go to military parades—and also sometimes to get the fresh air.

  Most other leaders have security guards. Why don’t you have them along with you?

  Amin: Because my people love me. They consider me one of their heroes. And I don’t fear anybody. (At this point, the car stopped at traffic lights, and the dictator talked briefly with passersby through the car window. Mo was still filming.)

  All the stores up and down this street, were they all Asian-owned until two years ago?

  Amin: All were Asian stores. Now the owners are Africans. And you find that the town is more beautiful than before and the shops are more full of commodities than before. This is the extension to the post office and this is the Uganda Commercial Bank and that is a shopping centre … Down this street also, down Bokassa Street, there are many shops. One of them belongs to my former wife; she is very rich.

  By the way, how many children have you?

  Amin: Twenty—and I like them very much.

  Is there any place you’d like to stop?

  Amin: Anywhere, you tell me. I suggest we go where it is very crowded. You would not think that any Head of State could come here because of security. I want to take you where there are private people, because some of the restaurants here are owned by the government and I don’t want that. I want to take you to the ordinary local people.

  Are all these stalls owned by Africans?

  Amin: Yes, all. They were given to them free of charge.

  Idi Amin got out of the car and Mo filmed the large crowd of people pushing forward to shake the dictator’s hand. There was no sign of bodyguards or any other security. Idi Amin was completely unprotected in the jostling crowd.

  Mo had already established a solid working relationship with Idi Amin but was always careful to remain detached. It was part of his commitment to what management consultant Sean Hawkins calls ‘Mo’s own standards’.

  ‘Two major qualities stand out for me in Mohamed Amin’s life,’ says Hawkins. ‘Firstly, he has always been a true artist, in that he has always set his own standards of excellence, and unless he himself considers something to be “really great,” all the honours and cheering of the world around him wouldn’t convince him otherwise.

  ‘“They think it’s great stuff,” he has often said in his own blunt manner, “But I know it’s crap!”

  ‘Yet each time he has achieved a “great” in his own eyes, rather than inflate his ego in any way, it always seemed only to spark his creativity and determination to embark on the next project—always to be better and more ambitious than the last.’

  This insistence brought him into conflict with publisher John Nottingham of the East African Publishing House over the book One Man, One Vote, a photo-record of the October 14, 1974 Kenya general elections. It was supposed to appear within weeks of the polls but suffered from one protracted delay after another and was not published until a year later. The argument was about delays, not money. ‘Money is not so important for me’, says Amin, ‘as far as my way of life is concerned. Obviously, you can’t run a business if you’re losing money all the time. You have to be realistic from time to time about certain projects that you take on.

  ‘I don’t think I would consciously take another party for a ride knowing I was taking him for a ride. But if you just sold something for fifty pence that you should have sold for a pound, you try to make it up on other projects. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t …’

  At this time, his interest in books was certainly not financial. Amin received the princely sum of 250 shillings for his work. For him, books were fun affairs—and still are.

  It was Nottingham of East African Publishing House who approached him to do a book after the murder of J. M. Kariuki, a prominent left-wing Kikuyu politician, as a photo-tribute. Not such a fun book, but he tackled it with his usual enthusiasm and diligence.

  A bomb blast at a Nairobi bus depot on March 1, 1975 had left 27 people dead and 90 injured, many seriously. It was the third explosion in Nairobi in two weeks. Minutes after the bomb went off, Mo filmed the devastation and then the victims being treated in hospital.

  Only days later, the bullet-riddled body of Kariuki was discovered. He had disappeared the day after the bus bomb. Amin filmed the scenes outside the mortuary, and the arrest of students demonstrating against his murder.

  The riots got worse. Two days later, police had to use tear gas to disperse them. As the riot squad swept through the campus, he was in the middle of the action. He accompanied the cortege home to Gilgil, where Kariuki was buried on Sunday March 16.

  ‘I was given old pictures by two of his wives and collected a lot of my own pictures and we were actually in the process of putting it together when, one day, my office door was flung open and in walked two CID guys: Sokhi Singh accompanied by a European.

  Sokhi produced his identity card but Mo told him his face was good enough. Sokhi was heavyweight stuff, an assistant commissioner of police.

  ‘Well, can we get to the point? Are you doing a book on J. M. Kariuki?’

  ‘Well, yes, there was some suggestion of doing a book.’

  ‘Are you doing a book?’

  ‘Yes, there’s some thought about it. But I haven’t done it yet.’

  ‘Well, hand over all the material to us or we will search your office.’

  ‘Have you got a search warrant?’

  ‘That’s no problem. We can get one in the next five minutes.’

  ‘Oh well, I just have a few pictures. Can I get them for you from the next office?’

  ‘No, we’ll come with you.’ The two counted them and put them in their briefcases. ‘We’re taking these pictures. You know how to get in touch with us.’ Amin goes on, ‘I called John Nottingham immediately to find out how the hell they could have learned about it since only two or three people knew about this project anyway.

  ‘But while I was talking, John said, “They’re here,” and put the telephone down. Obviously, they went straight from my office to his. I never saw the pictures again, nor was the book ever finished.’

  Amin was filming stories almost daily: the Easter weekend Safari Rally, which started on March 27; a story on an orphaned rhino in the Nairobi National Park animal orphanage; a track and field meet, starring Kenya’s new generation of
track stars; and more big game trapping on the million-acre Galana cattle and wildlife ranch in the arid wastes of Tsavo East National Park.

  Then, another distressing preview of the tragedy which was to strike Ethiopia in 1984. Famine again cast its shadow across that country on a scale even greater than in 1973. Half a million people were reported starving to death. It marked, in fact, the beginning of the ten-year-long drought that ended in the calamity that shook the world in 1984. Amin flew to the war-stricken Ogaden region of Ethiopia with the SBC’s John Osman, who had taken over in Nairobi from Ronnie Robson.

  Once again, his shot-list reads all too much like the 1984 famine: ‘Emaciated children sitting on mat; mother holds emaciated child; German nurse holding starving child; English nurse holding starving child and handing it to mother; young starving child in nurse’s arms; child drinking from mug; children receiving food; young children being given food by nurse; mother and child; mothers waiting for food handout; young child covered in sores and flies; mothers and children.’

  The Ogaden, Osman reported, ‘is one of the world’s vast scrublands. At this particular relief camp, children are dying every day of sheer starvation.’

  The English nurse Amin filmed holding a dying child was Ruth Thomas, future wife of the BBC radio reporter Mike Wooldridge, with whom he planned his 1984 Ethiopian famine coverage. Ruth, working with Oxfam, was particularly struck by Amin’s sensitive approach to filming the story.

  But it was the antics of Idi Amin, rather than the thousands dying of hunger in Ethiopia, which occupied the television screens of the so-called developed world throughout this year. In June and early July, the dictator was busy preparing the colourful but bizarre annual OAU Heads of State summit in Kampala.

  ‘It was a big event from the news point of view. We took over a house, installed our own darkroom, and moved staff from Nairobi to Kampala. We had a great number of assignments,’ recalls Mo.

  During this conference, the Ugandan leader exploited Mohamed Amin’s work to boost his own alter ego. ‘Idi Amin used two of my pictures. One of them on a very colourful OAU T-shirt, showing Idi Amin in full dress uniform with all his medals.

  ‘He actually pointed it out to me. He was waiting in the VIP lounge at the airport for Heads of State to arrive. I had already seen the T-shirt. Many people were wearing it. It was also on dress material and various other fabrics. I felt I should ask for a royalty.

  ‘When he called me over, he introduced me to one of the Heads of State and said, “This is Idi Amin Junior—and this [he thrust out his chest] is his picture.”

  ‘At this point, I almost said, “Yes, and I haven’t been paid for it.” But I had second thoughts. I think if I had asked for a royalty, it would have been a disaster. For me.’

  During the fortnight-long prelude and actual summit, which opened in Kampala on July 18, 1975, his cameras barely stopped turning. A great deal of money had been spent to spruce-up Kampala, and starring in this burlesque mounted on the refurbished stage were a fashion spectacular; a Miss OAU Bathing Beauty contest; an OAU 2,500-mile car rally; the opening of Uganda’s new colour television system; the dramatic and unrehearsed overthrow of General Gowon as President of Nigeria; and a stand-up drama turned into macabre farce, the ‘Battle for Capetown’, involving the strafing and bombing of an uninhabited Lake Victoria Island. As final titillation, there was Idi Amin’s unannounced wedding to a fifth wife.

  Tanzania, Botswana, and Zambia added to the theatre by boycotting the event, with Tanzania accusing the OAU of remaining silent when it should be naming Idi Amin a ‘murderer, an oppressor, a black fascist, and a self-confessed admirer of fascism’.

  ‘This was one of the few conferences that the Libyan leader Gaddafi attended. On the opening day as he entered the conference hall, where the name Libya was written in English on the delegate’s nameplate, I filmed him as he crossed out the English and wrote the Arabic script for Libya over it,’ recalls Mohamed Amin.

  Some Britons emerged without credit from this carnival-style conference. On the eve of the summit, at a reception for the foreign ministers, Idi Amin was carried into the reception on a litter by a group of British expatriates.

  ‘Apparently, this was meant to be a bit of a joke,’ says Mohamed Amin. ‘But in fact, Idi Amin outsmarted the Brits. He planned it very well. He had it filmed and photographs were given to every Head of State and every delegate to show that there had been a turnaround in Africa: that it was now the white man who carried Africans.’

  The group, which also prostrated itself in front of the tyrant before carrying him, afterwards accused Mo of rigging the pictures that appeared in newspapers around the world: an accusation reported in the British Daily Telegraph and on BBC radio.

  Independent examination of the pictures provided definite evidence that Wing Commander James Cobb and his cronies did kneel at the feet of Idi Amin and carry him on a litter.

  Idi Amin was a newsman’s joy. Once switched on, he was hard to silence. At an informal press conference after being named OAU chairman, he rambled on about his brothers and sisters in Tanzania and the need for Arab investment to prop up Africa’s economy.

  Barely literate sentences, such as ‘the most important is the economic … I am now the current chairman of the OAU, I have already won my economic revolution in Uganda … I am no longer slave, even my people no longer slaves’ ran on like a river in flood. Yet Idi Amin was no lovable clown. Observer and reporter, Mo kept his distance.

  On the second day of the conference, he picked up a Reuters flash on the Press Room telex—Nigerian President General Gowon had been overthrown in a coup. ‘I was upstairs just watching the Reuters wire machine. I ripped off the story, went straight downstairs, picked up my cameras and started filming Gowan, who was sitting with lots of other Heads of State. I filmed from every angle.’

  Pressmen enduring a boring speech from a United Nations envoy watched and wondered as the Nairobi newsman filmed the Nigerian Head of State, close-up, front, profile, back view. ‘Then Gowan’s foreign minister came over and whispered in his ear. This I filmed, too. Gowan’s face dropped and he got up and left.’

  Still filming, Mo followed Gowan leaving the conference hall. The cameraman asked if he could have a statement. ‘Statement about what?’ asked the still stunned leader and walked on.

  ‘I had the television and stills as an exclusive,’ Amin recalls fondly.

  Next day, Gowan held a Press conference. ‘There was a lot of drama about who would be allowed to cover it but eventually we were all allowed in. Gowan’s dignity was absolute. He was one of my favourite leaders. There he sat, quoting Shakespeare:

  All the world’s a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players,

  They have their exits and their entrances

  And one man in his time plays many parts

  ‘He said he would not answer any questions but wished the new leaders of Nigeria and its people well. This was the most dignified exit I’ve seen. Most deposed leaders moan and bitch and threaten what they will do when they come back. Compared to all of them, he was great.’

  With Gowan’s overthrow came a hurried exodus of OAU leaders, many fearful for their own positions, returning to their countries.

  As an added attraction, the flabby dictator celebrated his fifth wedding to nineteen-year-old Sarah, a member of his ‘Revolutionary Suicide Mechanised Units’, his co-driver in the OAU car rally. ‘Idi’s wedding was actually held on the quiet at his house. It was only when we approached him and pointed out that most of the people had missed the wedding that he decided to restage it in a big hall and invite all the media.’

  The second wedding had western razzmatazz. Sarah, decked out in a white gown and veil, cut a three-tier wedding cake. Guests included President Siyad Barre of Somalia, President Nimeiri of the Sudan, and other African leaders. Best man was PLO leader Yasser Arafat, complete with six-gun and holster.

  The strategic ‘Capetown’ exercise ended
in pantomime—and murder. The Ugandan Air Force’s bomb aiming was so adrift that they missed not only the South African flag, which denoted the heart of the city, but the island itself.

  ‘Some of the VIP guests began to worry they might hit the spectators too,’ remembers Mo. Idi Amin grew angrier and angrier. Then the Ugandan invasion force ‘hit the beaches of Capetown’. The climax of the landing was the uprooting of the hated South African flag, which Idi’s bombers had missed. Even that was farcical. So firmly was it embedded on Ugandan soil, the soldiers couldn’t budge it.

  The enraged Idi Amin issued his orders. That night, Brigadier Smurts Guweddeko, Commander of the Uganda Air Force, was relieved of his command. His corpse was found a few weeks later.

  Now Mohamed Amin’s thoughts turned to the wilderness he loved. His mind was already occupied with plans for an expedition around his favourite stamping ground, Lake Turkana, formerly Lake Rudolf. It had never been circumnavigated by motorised vehicle: the house magazine of Total, the oil company, which sponsored the expedition, explained why: