The Story of Mohamed Amin

by Brian Tetley

  There are no roads around the lake and the terrain is daunting—tracks across lava flows, dry river beds, rock fields, and mountains such as Teleki’s Volcano, Mount Kulal and Mount Lapur. Only four-wheel drive vehicles can negotiate this sort of country. [Lake] Rudolf was ‘discovered’ by Teleki and von Hohnel in the 1880s. Two other journeys were undertaken by Sir George Dyson and Vivian Fuchs in this century, but none of these explorers went all the way round.

  Apart from chalking up a ‘first’ for circumnavigating Rudolf, the expedition expects to collect useful geographical and scientific data and to stimulate interest in the area—and in Kenya—through a well-planned publicity campaign.

  In the event, it was another five years before the expedition got underway. But, early in 1976, Amin was already at work with Peter Moll on both a book—People of the Lake—and a television documentary, to be called Hunters of the Jade Sea, both based on the lake and the el-Molo people who live around Loiyangalani. The book was to have been published by the East African Literature Bureau, founded before independence by bestselling writer Elspeth Huxley.

  There was another instance of ‘Mo’s Luck’ when Amin and Peter Moll went to Loiyangalani to research the el-Molo community. The In Town This Week column in the Standard reported:

  To get the most out of his busman’s holiday, he carried along half-a-ton of movie equipment, cameras, and sound gear together with a fibre-glass dinghy. He was paddling around in this while Peter and another friend were wading along the shore, neck-deep in the Turkana waters.

  Mo paddled in and invited them to join him aboard. The minute the two had pulled themselves from the water, the dinghy settled with hippo-like dignity on the bottom—putting a twist in the outboard motor, ruining Peter’s camera, and causing something of a giggle among the watching el-Molo …

  A little later, after the outboard had dried out, in the quickly descending dusk of a Turkana evening, Mo was out once more, when the engine failed. A brisk wind began to take him out beyond the spit at Loiyangalani and into the deep waters of the lake—abundant with crocodile—nicely whipped up into a brisk chop. Only Peter’s quick thinking in hailing a fisheries whaler, providentially close, saved Mo from a certainly most dangerous night out in the wave-whipped, stormy waters of the remote lake. He was towed ashore.

  Amin was serenely unconcerned. For years, the el-Molo have hunted crocodile, with harpoons tied to long strands of rope. Throughout the filming of Hunters of the Jade Sea, Mo stood within four or five feet of these dangerous reptiles.

  The biggest news drama of 1976 was, however, the Israeli raid on Entebbe, Uganda, to free hostages taken by Palestinian terrorists when they hijacked an Air France jet. The Airbus, carrying 246 passengers and a crew of twelve, had departed for Paris via Athens from Tel Aviv on Saturday June 27, 1976, piloted by Michael Bacos, 52. At Entebbe Airport, outside Kampala, there was a full complement of hostages, 258, including 75-year-old Dora Bloch, who had been persuaded to fly to New York for her son’s wedding.

  Once again, Idi Amin starred. The story kept him on the world’s front pages, but it meant that he had to curtail his usual voluble visit to the annual OAU Summit, in Mauritius, or forfeit the limelight he craved. As outgoing chairman, however, he had to hand over office to his successor: so temporarily forsaking the stage he was strutting at Entebbe, the dictator flew to the Indian Ocean island in his personal jet.

  Mo, already in Mauritius, was eager to get to Entebbe. When the presidential jet landed, he buttonholed two of the men closest to Idi Amin. One was Farouk Malik, Pakistani by origin, who was head of broadcasting in Uganda; the other, Juma Oris, foreign minister. He told them that the world’s eyes were on Entebbe and he wanted to get there quickly before the OAU meeting ended.

  Could he join the flight? Idi Amin agreed.

  Next morning, he checked out of his hotel, took a car to the conference hall, where he filmed some of the proceedings, and then went to the airport. But he felt uneasy. ‘I’d been worrying all day from the moment I woke up. I knew the Israelis were too smart and tough to take this lying down and must be planning some kind of reprisal,’ Mohamed Amin mused.

  ‘I have to calculate my chances right from the actual start to the end of a story. You have to study the odds. No story is worth getting killed for. You can never be absolutely sure about situations but you can cut down the risk by doing the right sort of planning beforehand.

  ‘There are times that I have not gone into a situation but waited instead for a day, two days, maybe even a week because I knew it was too dangerous and the chances of going in and coming out with the story were pretty much zero.

  ‘I decided on the way to the airport that Idi Amin’s movements were no secret and it would be very easy for an Israeli jet to bring down his plane. I reckoned it was an unreasonable risk.

  ‘By the time I reached the airport, I’d changed my mind about going but I filmed the president’s departure, following him as he walked out to the plane. He was news.

  ‘Just before he climbed the steps, he called me over and said, “You’re coming with me?” I apologised and told him that I had been asked to stay on for the rest of the conference. He said it was OK and that we’d meet again soon anyway.’

  Next morning, Mo heard on the BBC’s world service of the Israeli attack on Entebbe only hours after Idi Amin’s jet had touched down. ‘If I’d stayed on that flight, I would have certainly gone to Entebbe after the raid, and just as certainly I would have been killed. Neither Idi Amin, nor anybody around him, would have hesitated. That loss of face was his biggest humiliation. Anybody trying to film it for the world to witness would have been dead.’

  Danger was at hand, too, in his next assignment. Danish television commissioned him to film an hour-long documentary on the freedom war being waged in Rhodesia from Mozambique. With producer Peter Dhollof and soundman Saif Awan, Amin first went to Mozambique to film refugees and Rhodesian raids on rebel camps.

  ‘I also felt that it was important we should get film of their activities in Rhodesia as it was this that was really the cause of the problem. Peter was unhappy about this.

  ‘He didn’t think we would get clearance, so I said, “Well, it’s on our way. The only way we can get back to Nairobi from Maputo is through Johannesburg. Why don’t we just go from Johannesburg to Salisbury [now Harare] and then on to Nairobi?”

  ‘At Johannesburg, the South Africans refused us entry and we had to stay overnight at Jan Smuts Airport in what they call a hotel. In fact, it’s a cell. It has one door and no windows—and they charged us US$50 each for it. Next morning we flew to Salisbury.’

  Amin and Saif separated from Dhollof as they passed through immigration and customs. He felt it better that Dhollof should not be identified with the camera crew. ‘He was Danish, Scandinavian, and bad news in Rhodesia, as there was a lot of Nordic money behind the liberation fronts. We couldn’t pretend we were anything else but a camera crew. The Rhodesians had good security and I thought it better we weren’t linked together. There was no way we could hide our equipment so it was best to go in officially,’ recollects Amin.

  ‘Peter went straight through and got a two-week visitor’s visa, but Saif and I were held back because we were journalists. However, when Peter saw we had been asked to wait he came dashing back to ask if we had any problems. To which we said no. The immigration officer asked, “Is he something to do with you?”

  ‘I said no, but I felt the Rhodesians were very smart. Their security was impeccable. We waited for thirty minutes or so and then were given a 24-hour visa, which was the normal practice for arriving journalists. You then had to report to the Ministry of Information. We checked in at Meikles Hotel and I went straight on to the information department.

  ‘Bill Ferris was the information director and he sent us off to see a colonel in charge of army public relations and also told us he’d get immigration to give us another week.

  ‘The colonel, I forget his name, was full of charm and “No p
roblem, old boy” shit. We told him we wanted to visit one of the protected villages [euphemism for concentration camps] and frontline operational areas.

  ‘He replied, “No problem, old boy. Come back at four this afternoon and I’ll have everything organised”.’

  The crew went to the Quill Club, Salisbury’s version of a press club, to see the rest of the media pack. They asked Amin what he was doing. He told them, ‘We’re going to film protected villages and the front line. It’s all arranged.’

  Newsmen laughed. ‘They told us the same—and we’ve been here for months.’

  ‘I knew then we were being taken for a ride,’ Amin recalls, ‘and sure enough, when we saw the colonel, he said, “Sorry, old boy. Didn’t have enough notice that you were coming, but never mind. Next time you’re here, we’ll arrange everything.”’

  Ignoring the military bureaucracy, the crew drove to Mount Darwin, a frontline area. ‘We couldn’t work there without someone knowing, so we went to see the commissioner [military commander].’

  The commissioner had served in Kenya and was charming and helpful. They spoke a few words in Swahili and he asked where they wanted to go. Mo told him.

  ‘I assume you’ve got permission?’

  ‘We’ve seen Bill Ferris in the Ministry of Information and a colonel and they’ve been extremely helpful.’

  ‘Fine then. I’ll organise everything. What do you want?’

  ‘We’d like a Rhino or a Leopard.’

  These were mine-proof trucks, designed to roll if they detonated a land mine. The crew were sitting in the commissioner’s office but Dhollof was clearly nervous. ‘After a while,’ says Amin, ‘the chief began to suspect something was wrong. He rang the Ministry of Information in Salisbury. You could see the expression on his face change rapidly. Then he asked us to wait outside, downstairs, where I filmed whatever was going on around. Then he came down and said, “I’m sorry. All the mine-protected vehicles are busy.”’

  He refused them permission to go in with their own car. It was too dangerous, he said, because of land mines. They filmed an interview with him and left, apparently to return to Salisbury.

  Amin, however, took the first turning off the main road and came to a European farmer’s house, where they stopped and did another interview. ‘He had everything—dogs, guns, electric fences. The whites were living under siege.’ As the crew were leaving, he asked the farmer if there were any protected villages in the area. ‘Sure, just down the road,’ he told them.

  They drove down a dirt track similar to many in the area that had been mined and finally came to ‘Keep Seven’, the ‘village’ run by a 20-year-old South African called Mr James who, he says, ‘was as thick as a pole and very hairy’. The African guards let the crew enter the camp and James asked if they had permission.

  ‘We told him we had, and he said he couldn’t check anyway as his radio wasn’t working.’

  They filmed everywhere and everything, including African mothers and girls who were stripped to their panties and searched when entering the ‘village’. ‘They must have thought their knockers were booby traps,’ he jokes, adding, ‘It was really degrading.

  ‘James told us that the night before, the Ministry of Information had sent a film van to show movies. But he couldn’t understand why they’d stoned the van. He was that thick.’

  The crew stayed too long. ‘We got greedy as usual. It was all great material but just as we were packing up our equipment a Leopard rolled in and out comes a guy very different from James—loaded with rows of medals and says, “Good morning, gentlemen. How are you? Have you got all the pictures you want?”

  ‘We nodded and he smiled as sweet as apple pie and said, “Have a good day—and a good journey back.”

  ‘I thought, “This is bloody simple.” But it was too good to be true. Sure enough, down the track, we found our way blocked by two Land Rovers and we were arrested. They said it wasn’t arrest, but we didn’t have any options. We were taken to Joint Operational Command headquarters at Bindura, where I was asked to surrender my film.

  ‘I refused on the grounds that we had done nothing illegal. Then one of the soldiers shouted for the “keys to the dungeon”.’ Mo had never heard the word before and didn’t know what it meant, but Dhollof turned white and started shaking.

  ‘Now we’re in trouble.’

  ‘When I asked him why, he said that we would be locked up in the cell. But they didn’t do that.’

  The cameraman steadfastly refused to part with his films and finally the officer ordered the crew to report to the Ministry of Information in Salisbury and leave the films there. Amin agreed only that he’d go and talk to them.

  They left unescorted and during the drive, he unloaded the film he had shot and hid it away. Then he took two 400-foot rolls of unexposed film and marked the cans Roll 1 and Roll 2 in large letters and wrote down his ‘dope’ sheet on the outside.

  In Salisbury, he stormed into Bill Ferris’s office and told him he was disgusted at the crew’s treatment. He threw the two reels on the table. ‘I don’t think you have any right to it, but there’s the film.’

  Ferris, who didn’t know what to say, mumbled an apology. ‘Once we’ve seen the film and found nothing objectionable, we’ll give it to the Visnews man in Salisbury, and you’ll get it in London.’

  Seething outwardly, smiling inwardly, Amin charged back out of the office and the crew drove quickly to Meikles, settled their bill, and caught the next plane out. Ten days later, Visnews were told by Salisbury that Peter Dhollof, Saif Awan, and Mohamed Amin would never again enter Rhodesia.

  The reason it took the Rhodesians so long to discover they had been duped was that the film had to go to Johannesburg for processing. This involved a ten-day delay, by which time the documentary had already been shown on Danish television.

  By contrast, a deeply moving experience for Mohamed Amin this year was his assignment as producer-cameraman to film the first full television documentary of the Hajj, the pilgrimage that each Muslim is enjoined to make at least once. This astonishing and inspiring spectacle of faith, called Journey of a Lifetime, was made into 500 copies in twenty-seven languages.

  ‘Since you have to be a Muslim to visit the holy places like Mecca and Medinah, it had to be an entirely Muslim crew. I was asked if I would like to be involved in it and since there isn’t a Muslim who would not like to go to Mecca, I said yes. I went with Saif Awan, who is also a Muslim, and a number of other Muslims including two Egyptians.

  ‘My father and my mother are very devout in their religious convictions. My brothers, sisters, and I were punished if we did not pray. There were no two ways about it. It was something to be taken seriously. The fact that I’m a Muslim is definitely family influence.

  ‘I’m not a fanatic. I’m just a great believer. I pray, for example, whenever I take off in a plane, and when landing. It’s not that I get on my knees and pray. You can pray sitting down. You don’t recite anything but you just say it in your own heart.’

  The Hajj was a significant moment in Amin’s life. Over the years he would often return but could recapture neither that first feeling of euphoria nor his hard-nosed newsman’s astonishment at seeing some three million people all gathered in one place, as the pilgrims did that year, on the plains of Arafat. He wrote of his feelings in a series in the Nation.

  The Muslim pilgrimage of the Hajj, which takes place every year, is the most staggering act of logistics the world has seen, an unparalleled movement of three million people by air, sea, and land, who live together for a night and a day in a massive tented city on the barren plains of Arafat, a few miles from the walls of Mecca … yet despite this incredible army of followers, despite the hustle and bustle of the hawkers and vendors, government officials and police who control the crowds, the overriding atmosphere during the Hajj is of peace, a oneness with all these different disciples, of every race imaginable, from more than seventy nations.

  But neither that nor the fi
lm was enough. In his mind, he conceived a book, with perhaps 200 to 300 colour illustrations. It was the only way he felt it possible to convey the sense of the Hajj as both a physical and a spiritual experience.

  ‘This was my first visit to Mecca and I was totally awed by what I saw. It was the finest experience of my life and it was during this trip that I felt that I should do a book on the Hajj.

  ‘When I investigated the market, there was very little available. Certainly nothing on the scale I envisaged, which was a large-format, high-quality illustrated book. So I decided I would go back and photograph the Hajj over the next two years.

  ‘Getting permission to work on the Hajj was near impossible, but because I had been involved on the film, I had made the contacts. We had backing for the film from the king and the crown prince, so it was much easier. I went back for the next two years to collect the material for the book.’

  11. Lust to Kill: The Fall of Idi Amin

  DESPITE HIS LOVE OF CREATIVE photography, Mohamed Amin hates any form of imposed discipline, either as studio work or any kind of filming and photography not closely related to action. ‘If it moves, shoot it,’ might well be his credo.

  His picture collection, which began with black and white prints of the 1958 Safari Rally, has grown to more than a million colour transparencies and black and white negatives. It is the single most comprehensive picture library on Africa in existence. Many were taken in circumstances most people would find impossible. Bruised and battered by crowds or angry mobs, threatened and intimidated, or under fire on a battlefield, Amin’s sure hands and eyes have an innate instinct for the picture that says it all.

  Sometime in 1976, he made a journey to Juba, capital of southern Sudan, to film a story covering the integration of the two armies after the peace treaty between the south and the north. There he met British photographer Duncan Willetts. They talked. ‘He indicated an interest in coming to work in Nairobi,’ recalls Amin. ‘A job was always a possiblity, but unless you get a work permit, it’s very difficult.