by Brian Tetley
Every Easter, Mohamed Amin’s spectacular film reports of the East African Safari Rally demonstrated his sense of commitment. They have become something of a legend. Amin enjoyed nothing more than to follow this classic test of endurance and speed through five gruelling days and nights without rest, and still does.
During the 1978 event, which was run over the Easter weekend of March 25, Amin parked his Land Cruiser close to a flooded dirt track and set up his tripod and camera on the roof. The leaders came speeding through this section like powerboats on a stormy sea, sending up a great wave of water on either side, drenching both Amin and Willetts, who was savouring the ‘delights’ of the Safari for the first time. The Nation caption story tells what happened next:
Disaster in the making
Japanese ace Yoshio Iwashita struggles with the wheel of his Datsun as it begins to broadside at eighty miles an hour on a flooded stretch of bush road near Emali.
Seconds later, the car leaves the road and rams into the Land Cruiser of Nairobi’s international news cameraman, Mohamed Amin. Amin and colleague Duncan Willetts are hurled through the air into a muddy ditch below.
And as Mo struggles out of the ditch, shaken, battered, with a suspected broken wrist, the camera is still whirring—bringing the reality of the Safari’s ever-present dangers and excitement to millions of viewers worldwide.
The crash damaged Mo’s cine camera and other expensive equipment. But he was back at work last night, out on the third and final leg of the route—still ready for the unexpected.
Said Mo, “I’ve covered 19 safaris without a break [he filmed some of the 1971 Rally when he returned from Pakistan] so far. My wrist hurts but I wouldn’t miss the finish for the world.”
The film brought Iwashita a frantic telephone call from his wife in Tokyo. He had chosen not to tell her about the crash, but Amin’s film, via Visnews, had shown it to the world.
In May, Amin was assigned to cover the Shaba war in Zaire. Shaba Province, formerly Katanga, is energy and mineral rich. Lying in the extreme southeast of Zaire, it provides much of that vast country’s wealth, mainly from copper exports. Its people had long sought secession. Now, once again, they were fighting to forge their own secessionist nation.
In Kinshasa, Amin again met his friend and former Visnews colleague, Neil Davis, a unique and universally admired Australian cameraman correspondent, who was working for NBC in Zaire. He was renowned for his incomparable frontline action reports from the bloodiest battles of Vietnam and other Indo-Chinese wars. After many years of service, he had quit Visnews when the management wanted him to take a desk job in London. Like Amin, Neil craved action and loathed the very idea of desk work. He signed up with NBC and remained in the Far East, where he was killed in action, along with his soundman Bill Latch, filming an abortive coup in Bangkok on September 9, 1985.
Shaba was the last time that he and Amin worked together.
Before they could get near to any action, however, Amin encountered what to him was a much greater trauma than any war. It was the Kinshasa hotel’s telephone system. Anxious to let Visnews in London know what was happening, he found he could not get through no matter how much he tried. Comparing notes with other reporters, he discovered the solution. He had to place calls ‘on the system’. Back in his room, he tried again. ‘On the system, please.’
Thirty seconds later, he was speaking to Visnews.
Then came the knock on the door. A waiter wanted 50 zaire (the national currency).
‘What’s this for?’
‘Your telephone call, sir.’
‘That’s okay. Just put it on my bill.’
There was a discreet cough.
‘But, sir, the call was “on the system”. It doesn’t go on the bill.’
‘The system’, however, did not apply to incoming calls. When London called him, the operator simply said he was out; and then told Amin so that he could call London to know what they wanted. ‘On the system’, of course.
Amin was in Zaire ten days, four of them at the front line. With other journalists, he and Davis flew down to Shaba, where they hired a bus to take them to the action. Nearing the front, the driver would go no further. Parking the bus, he urinated by the roadside, insisting that it was the end of the road. Immediately, Amin took his place at the wheel and, eager as Davis to get to the action, drove on.
‘That war was the last time I saw Neil. It’s like that with cameramen all around the world. Each of us has a beat and our paths don’t cross as often as we would like. Certainly for someone like Neil. He was special. A fantastic man,’ Amin says with a trace of sadness.
Asked once how he would want people to remember him, Amin said, ‘If I die tomorrow, I’ll be forgotten within a few months. It’s as if you didn’t exist—even to close friends. Possibly the family may remember a little bit longer because they might have a bit of grief. But colleagues that you work with? Memories are very short.
‘Neil Davis, for example, was one of the finest journalists I have ever come across and ever had the pleasure of working with. But very few people now mention his name. He’s gone. His name may come up from time to time—as a good solid operator, in terms of a newsman. But, in terms of people sitting there, discussing him over a beer or cup of tea, no, there’ll be very little.
‘As the days and the weeks go by, he’ll be forgotten. But I think that’s how life goes. I mean, John F. Kennedy. How many people talk about him?’
That same month, his organisational ability was recognised in Nairobi when he was unanimously elected chairman of the East Africa Foreign Correspondents Association, a position he filled with flair and success for five years. In that time, he achieved his personal ambition of housing the foreign press corps under a single roof, creating, in effect, the Press Centre in Chester House, Koinange Street, in the heart of Nairobi.
This year, too, he was about to complete the production of his book Pilgrimage to Mecca. Passionately striving to produce his own testament to his Islamic faith, he had told Visnews earlier of his enthusiasm for a book, and indeed he and the company had signed an agreement to produce one.
Nothing came of it.
Since then, he had come close to abandoning the project, but he persevered. Nobody had ever done a pictorial book on the forbidden city and the rites of the Muslim Pilgrimage. Now he produced a dummy and, with this in his briefcase, he flew to London to pound the pavements, knocking on publishers’ doors.
‘I never had any ambition to become an international publisher. But publishing always was, and is, the fun part of the organisation. I was driven into it by accident, purely by the fact that I was unable to persuade any publishers, and I saw most of the English publishers and several American publishers, to take Pilgrimage to Mecca when I walked up and down London and the gangways of the Frankfurt Book Fair,’ Amin says sanguinely.
‘Not having been able to place Mecca anywhere, I went round the printers to get prices for cost comparison. I got the addresses by going into a big book shop and looking at the printers of the best quality and writing to them. One of these was the Italian giant, Mondadori.
‘When I got Mondadori’s quotation, I spoke to Keith Lilley, who was then the managing director in London, and he asked if I could go and see him.
‘I was on my way to the airport, as I was leaving that day, but he persuaded me to call in and spend some minutes discussing the book with him. He was obviously very interested in the subject.
‘Keith soon discovered I knew little or nothing about printing or publishing, but I agreed prices with him for 30,000 copies and 120 days’ credit from delivery. To this day I have not been able to find out why he agreed. I was just a complete stranger from Africa asking for 30,000 books. He never even asked for a reference, never mind a guarantee.
‘The separations cost £18,000. But because the deal was to pay 120 days from delivery, I didn’t actually have to pay at that time. Obviously, I was very concerned. I had incurred what for me was a massive deb
t. I didn’t have £18,000.
‘So I went around looking at the dark side of life. I had my house valued and I figured out, without telling her, how much Dolly’s jewellery would bring in case the book was a disaster and I had to pay. To this day Dolly, does not know that was the deal I was thinking about.
‘The house and her jewellery would just have about paid for the books. What I would have done with the 30,000 copies, God alone knows. But it all worked out. Before we went to print, I was able to sell five different language editions to some of the top publishers in the business and in the event, I paid Mondadori in thirty days. From then on, Mondadori and I, and particularly Keith Lilley, have been the best of friends.’
He wanted to launch the book in style with an exhibition of larger-than-life full-colour photomurals at the Hilton, Nairobi. Dr Munyua Waiyaki, Kenya’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, agreed to be guest of honour.
In the middle of arranging it all, Amin flew to Khartoum to cover the annual OAU summit, when Brendan Farrow, then regional editor of Visnews, worked with him in the field for the first time.
Farrow recalls, ‘Our bus reached the hotel, only for us to find it surrounded by troops with fixed bayonets who wouldn’t let us in. The government protocol man was unable to persuade the Sudanese troops to let us into the hotel. So, with no idea what we might do, we gathered in groups waiting for somebody to do something.’
At this point Farrow noticed that Mohamed Amin was already inside the hotel—sitting in an armchair.
‘He turned, grinned and waved to us and went on with a telephone conversation he was having. How did he get in? I never found out. But the person he was talking to was the minister of information, and in no time at all the hotel doors were opened and we all checked in.’
Later, in the conference hall, he saw Amin in action …
‘We gained a perfect spot right up front, nicely angled across the stand from which President Nimeiri would make the opening address. ‘Mo left me guarding the tripod while he went off with the camera to film the delegates in the hall seated behind their country identification plates, and finally, the entry of the president and his progress to the rostrum.
‘He then had to barge his way through masses of press and TV cameramen to get his camera back onto the tripod for the start of the speech. ‘Just as he was ready for the start of Nimeiri’s address, an official placed two great pots of flowers, one on each side of the rostrum, totally blocking Mo’s view of the speaker.
‘“Get that fucking thing down!” yelled Mo. There was a solid mass of reporters and equipment between us and the stage and security all round. He barged back through the pack of cameramen, reporters, photographers, soundmen, and lightmen, over all the cables and camera bags, and the backs of crouching sound recordists, snatched the pot down on his side and was back filming the opening speech before anybody quite realised what had happened.
‘Nobody complained. And nobody tried to put the flowers back.’
Back in Nairobi, on Tuesday August 22S, Amin received a morning telephone call from Kinyanjui Kariuki, President Kenyatta’s press secretary. ‘He was very vague, but he told me I should stand by for a big story. He told me to listen to VOK.
‘I was intrigued. I knew Mzee was staying at State House, Mombasa, but Kinyanjui was ringing from State House, Nairobi. I telephoned State House, Mombasa. The switchboard operators were stunned. You could tell something was seriously wrong. I couldn’t raise any of Mzee’s aides. I rang Kinyanjui back but got no sense, so I decided to drive to State House, Nairobi.
‘I managed to get in, and when I found Kinyanjui, he confessed, “Mzee’s dead.”
‘They’d flown his body up from Mombasa and they still hadn’t announced anything. Kinyanjui prepared the announcement, but when he rang the director of broadcasting at VOK, the man told him there was no way he would broadcast the news unless he was given a signed order.’
Amin filmed Daniel arap Moi as he was sworn in as Mzee’s successor, in accordance with the constitution. ‘Then I filmed the new President and the cabinet filing past Mzee’s coffin.’
It was feared that Mzee’s death would trigger a political crisis in Kenya. For five days, Amin filmed the aftermath of the announcement, the lying-in-state at State House, and finally, after a statement to television by Jomo’s old adversary, Oginga Odinga, who was only too keen to capitalise on the death of a political foe, the impressive state funeral, which Voice of Kenya televised live around the world. To everybody’s relief, Kenya remained calm and stable.
On October 31, 1978, just seventy days after the new president took office, the Mecca exhibition opened at the Hilton. But as the crowds queued to see the pictures of Mecca, the Holy of Holies never before photographed comprehensively, Idi Amin ordered his troops on an inexplicable adventure into northwestern Tanzania.
In retaliation, President Nyerere sent his troops into Uganda on the western side of Lake Victoria to start the bloody six-month-long struggle that removed the dictator. It was the first time in Africa’s post-colonial history that one country had invaded another. Sensitive to criticism of his role, President Julius Nyerere likened Idi Amin to Hitler, and defended his military intervention by pointing out that Amin had brought it on by his own cross-border excursion into Tanzania territory. ‘People accuse me of breaking international law. But should a thief be allowed to get away with his crimes?’ Nyerere argued.
When Nyerere launched his counterattack, it seemed his objective was simply to teach Idi Amin a lesson. But as the Tanzanian army ground its way northward toward Kampala, it saw the chance to put an end to the regime once and for all. With the aid of 122-mm. artillery, the estimated 30,000-strong Tanzanian army and 3,000 Ugandan exiles pounded Amin’s army until it broke and ran.
The world saw most of this action through Mohamed Amin’s films and photographs as he flew in and out of the battle-torn Pearl of Africa with unflagging energy, while still finding time to hire freelance writer Angus Shaw to complete Lust to Kill: The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin.
The key towns of Masaka and Mbarara quickly fell to the invading forces even though Libyan leader Moamar al Gaddafi flew in a support force of 2,000 troops. But the Libyans had little stomach for a war that was not their concern. By early April, it was clear that neither Idi Amin nor his capital, Kampala, could hold out much longer.
‘The trouble was that nobody knew what was going on,’ Mohamed Amin recalls. ‘There were no communications with Kampala at all. The border was closed. I was fairly certain that Entebbe had been taken and the only way to go in was by air charter. Under that situation, you could only go in on the winning side. If you went in on the losing side, there was a very definite possibility of losing yourself.
‘Starting with Boskovic, my regular company, I went to all the charter companies in the hope that they would fly me in. There was no way we could get any permission. And nobody knew what was happening. Nobody was sure of the situation.
‘The charter companies flatly refused. But we persevered, and finally on April 13, I met Dick Knight, a veteran pilot who runs one of Kenya’s largest air charter companies, at the Dambusters Club at Wilson Airport. He was interested in taking us in. From my experience in the past, I told Dick that the problem was getting down. If he could get us down, we would have a reasonably good chance.
‘He asked what I thought they would do. I said that they might shoot us down before we landed. We knew that there had been a pitched battle at the airport between the Libyans on Idi Amin’s side and the Tanzanians.
‘Dick said he wasn’t worried about being shot down. “Tanzanians can’t shoot straight, so we’ll be all right.”
‘He was more worried about what would happen after we landed, and I said that once we had landed it would be all right, he should just leave everything to me.
‘I came back to my office, put my equipment together, called my contact at State House in Dar es Salaam to tell him what we were doing and asked for some help.
“Absolutely no. You’ll be shot out of the sky. We have no contact with Entebbe and the only way you can get in is if you come down here because we’re arranging a special charter to take in the press.” ‘That was the best they could offer. The fact that they were arranging a charter gave our mission a sense of urgency.
‘I went in with BBC correspondent Brian Barron and Eric Thirer, the BBC cameraman-soundman in Nairobi. We flew in total silence. Not a word was said on the plane. I think deep down, we were all completely shit-scared. It was one of the hairiest assignments I’ve ever gone on. It reminded me of the flights into Biafra at the height of the Nigerian civil war, but this felt much more dangerous. We had absolutely no control on the ground.’
They all knew the risks only too well. In the past few weeks, four European journalists had been killed by the Ugandan forces. ‘There were two Germans and two Scandinavians, Swedish, young guys,’ Amin recalls. ‘The Germans were working for Stern, which is a heavyweight magazine. They came to me and twice—once in the office, once on the border—said, “We’re going to go in by boat to Jinja and then walk our way to Kampala.”
‘I said I wouldn’t. There’s no way I’d go. Because a) you’re going in on the losing side, b) you’re going to see troops with no discipline whatsoever. The last thing they would want is to be filmed—or meet journalists—because when you’re running away, you don’t want to be filmed, particularly in a place like Uganda. For so many years the evidence out of Uganda was such that you knew that at the best of times, these people would chop you up. In a situation like this, you knew there was no question that they would leave you alone.
‘It was very sad that these guys decided to go. They must have taken advice from other people as well, but their principals, I think mostly Stern, sitting in Germany, were putting a lot of pressure on them. And they were young, trying to make their names, which really isn’t worth making if you’re going to get killed. They did something that was very foolish. Sadly, within hours of getting off the boat, all four were dead.’