In the working life of a ‘senior’ journalist, the perspective of the years enables one to write better about those who have passed on. Over the past twenty I have written obituaries for The Guardian here in London, In fifty years of experience, the many I met and interviewed provided much raw material. I know that I have on occasion reflected on this subject before, as well as on the importance of biographies and autobiographies in the writing of history, The trigger for this torrent of reminiscing is the passing of two people –Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a leading West African political figure, and Raph Uwechue a media giant, a fellow combatant in journalistic battlegrounds, and a personal friend.
I first met Kabbah in Sierra Leone’s High Commission here in 1992. It was a period of uncertainty back home, when rebellion had not long broken out, followed by Strasser’s coup. The High Commissioner, the late Cyril Foray called me at West Africa to suggest there was an interesting personality that I should meet – a recently-retired civil servant with the United Nations on his way back home. It turned out to be Kabbah, who seemed to be seeking to find a place for himself in the far-reaching changes that were perhaps in prospect in Freetown. I found him a personable, if low-key interview subject, demonstrating real concern at the depth of crisis into which his country had been plunged. From early he had connections with the Sierra Leone Peoples’ Party (SLPP), the party in power after independence, and was relieved that the period of national decline experienced under the other main party, the All Peoples’ Congress (APC) was at an end, but concerned that the twin problems of rebellion and military rule should somehow be phased out.
It was no surprise that, probably under pressure from political movers and fixers, he should have taken on the Chairmanship of a National Advisory Council which had been set up by the military to facilitate a promised return to civilian rule, It put him in a strategic position, as the country’s situation under the youthful and inexperienced Captain Strasser worsened, to be nominated as his party’s candidates in the elections. These were pressed on the country early in 1996, following the overthrow of Strasser by the junta’s number two Maadu Bio, because the country’s thirst for proper democratic rule was by now very strong indeed.
I interviewed Kabbah again during the OAU Summit in Yaoundé in 1966, not long after he became President. Not surprisingly, he was extremely disturbed at the problems he found piled up in front of him. But even he could not have been aware of the shocks he was to have in 1997-8, with the coup that put Johnny Paul Koroma in power, and Kabbah’s own exile in Conakry. His restoration early in 1998 after the Abacha-inspired recapture of Freetown by ECOMOG forces, was followed by another three years of turbulence, of abortive peace deals with the viciously erratic rebel leader Foday Sankoh, who seemed to be coming nearer to taking power. It was the UN presence, backed up by Tony Blair’s April 2000 intervention, with the ensuing fightback and disarmament that finally permitted Kabbah to say, in January 2002, prior to his comfortable re-election, that the war had been won. On occasions when I met him, at CHOGMs in Edinburgh (1997), Durban (1999) and Abuja (2003) his level-headed equanimity always impressed me, even though few African leaders had a rockier road to power.
Raph Uwechue, when I first met him in 1966, was a rising diplomat in the Nigerian embassy in Paris, and I was actually in his company when news came through of the July 29 coup in his country. The crisis and civil war affected him profoundly, as he had a peculiarly important minor role as Biafra representative in Paris, a story already well-documented. I was there when he launched his book justifying his abandonment of his cause, and had many discussions with him both then, and after the end of the war, by which time he had established himself as publisher of the monthly magazine Africa.
Initially under Jeune Afrique, his big breakthrough came when he and established himself on his own in London. It was a great success story of the 1970s, much more than a product of Nigeria’s oil boom – and was the model for many others. Maybe the lure of Nigerian politics eventually killed his publication, but I know from my own experience the African economic crisis of the 1980s hammered all in the African publishing scene outside Africa. The only real survivor in London has been International Communications (New African, African Business), even as new technology has transformed the whole news publishing scene. Raph returned to Nigeria after 1999, subsequently engaging in further political activities, including creditable diplomatic initiatives. But his pioneering role as publisher, complemented by his impressive African reference books, will go down as Raph’s real achievement.
Kaye Whiteman
