MOHAMED AMIN died in the highjacked Ethiopian Airlines plane which crashed in the Comoro’s on November 23 1996. ‘New Africa’ described him not only as a photographer of quality – he was named British cameraman of the year and built his East African ‘Camerapix’ into the foremost picture agency in Africa – but also as an entrepreneur and a fixer. New Africa wrote that ‘at the beginning of his career he had been thrown into jail and tortured in Zanzibar for photographing Russians training soldiers of the Zanzibar Liberation Front’ .
New Zealander GEORGE HART (86) who died in December 1995, worked from 1951 to 1985 with the Church Missionary Society and the International Leprosy Mission in the Dodoma region.
The death of former CCM Secretary General and cabinet minister HORACE KOLIMBA (57) on March 13 under extraordinary circumstances was mourned throughout the country. Mr Kolimba had earlier obtained massive publicity by criticising the CCM party for its lack of vision and clear guidelines and had then been attacked verbally by several party colleagues for making such remarks in public. Summoned to Dodoma to explain his views to the party’s Central Committee he collapsed during the meeting and then died three hours later. To avoid any allegations of foul play, President Mkapa ordered a post-mortem which found that he had died due to a rupture of the aorta, a natural cause of death.
MARY LEAKEY (83) the archaeologist who died on December 9 in Nairobi and who lived for many years at the famous Olduvai Gorge, was noted for the scrupulous scientific approach she always applied, which added veracity to the important discoveries of her husband, the anthropologist Louis Leakey and herself. After his death in 1972 she found three trails of fossilised hominid footprints 3.6 million years old at Laetoli which showed that man’s ancestors were walking upright at a much earlier period than most anthropologists had believed.
PHILIP LOUSADA (81) who died recently was a District Officer/District Commissioner in Tanganyika from 1959 until independence – (Thank you Liz Fennel/for this information – Editor)
ESTER NYAGALU (111), the mother of former Prime Minister John Malecela died on December 29 in Dodoma.
MICHAEL MACOUN CMG, OBE, QPM (82) who died on March 24 was in the Tanganyika Police for most of the time between 1939 and 1958 rising to the position of Acting Commissioner. His first job, as he was fluent in German, was the internment of German residents at the beginning of the second world war and evaluating the extent of Nazi influence in the country at that time (thank you Geoffrey Cotterell for this information – Editor).
CHIEF EDWARD WANZAGI (86), a former Chief of Butiama in Mara Region died on March 9. He was the half brother who brought up Mwalimu Nyerere in the latter’s early years.