This is taken from the Glasgow Herald:

The ‘Voice of Africa’ fades away - Israel Wamala (1932-2006)
by Trevor Grundy

Saturday 11 March 2006

THE DEATH of Israel Wamala, the Ugandan-born lawyer and journalist at his home in Kampala last weekend, marks the end of one of the truly amazing periods of journalism at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

At the peak of his powers in the mid-1970s, this founding editor of the long lasting and massively influential Focus on Africa was known as the “Voice of Africa.”

Dr Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia from 1964 to 1991 told me that he never had his supper at State House in Lusaka before listening to it.

The joke was that had he not, Dr Kaunda might not have known what was going on in his own country.

“He was one of the truly great journalists of our age,” said the respected BBC producer Mike Popham.

“He was my mentor, my guide, my hero,” said Robin White who took over from Mr Wamala in 1988.

“There was no-one quite like Israel, “recalled Julian Marshall of the BBC’s World Service

“He was the perfect interviewer," added Neville Harms, one of Wamala’s colleagues. “Israel was always polite but he’d never let a politician off the hook or be intimidated by the Big Man he was talking to."

He covered a span of events from the Independence of Ghana in 1957, the Wind of Change speech by Macmillan in 1960, the arrival of Uhuru (Freedom) throughout Eastern and Central Africa in the 1960s and then the escalating war between black freedom fighters and Ian Smith’s white officered army in the 1970s, the birth of Zimbabwe in 1980 and then the biggest one of them all, the arrival of one man, one vote elections and the installation of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa in 1994.

Israel Wamala and his small, dynamic team at Bush House in London also kept watchful eyes on events in West Africa, the “Arab/Islam” countries of North Africa, and the explosive Horn of Africa states.

When he died in Kampala last Saturday, e-mails circled the globe and Africanists of a certain age recalled their own often thrilling younger days on the world’s largest, and sadly hungriest continent.

Israel Wamala was born in Buganda on Christmas Day 1932, the son of a chief who was close to the King of Buganda (now Uganda) known as the Kabaka.

A bright child, Israel did well at school, excelled at the famous Makerere University and travelled to London where he rented a flat in Notting Hill Gate which, in the mid and late 1950s, was a pinless racial handgrenade.

Having studied law at London University and qualified as a barrister at Middle Temple, he would return home to his small flat near North Kensington in 1959 to find that Oswald Mosley’s supporters had pushed leaflets under his door advising all "coloured folk" to leave Britain as fast as they’d arrived.

“Like so many brilliant people from the former Empire, Israel found a job at the BBC,” recalls Mike Popham.

In those days, there were very few black faces at the corporation.

People soon found out what a treasure they’d stumbled across.

“The man was brilliant, hard working, original and always so balanced. Focus on Africa became, almost overnight, one of the most listened to progarmme in the world,” said Mike Popham.

In 1975, shortly after the Lisbon coup that led to the creation of an MPLA- dominated Angola and a FRELIMO- led Mozambique, Israel Wamala went to South Africa and interviewed the South African Prime Minister, John Vorster.

At the end of a probing interview (that probably broke sanctions, some now say) the world’s most unpopular white man said to one of Britain's best respected black men:  

"Mr Wamala. If all Africans were like you, there’d be no problems in my country.”

In 1985, Israel met and fell in love with a much younger reporter at the BBC, Fiona Sax Ledger.

In 1988 the couple had a daughter, Rebecca and one of Fiona's most precious possessions is a tape recording of her four year old interviewing her father in Kampala

Israel left the BBC in 1988 – bitter and angry that he had not risen to head up the corporation’s Africa Service (the job was given instead to a white English woman) and he returned to Africa.

He worked briefly with the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation and then with Action Aid, an NGO helping the homeless.

“He never lost faith in humanity or in himself but at the end he was very frail, extremely thin but still full of humour and wit,” said Fiona.

Israel Wamala was a Christian with deep roots in the soil of Uganda.

He was the Keeper of the Kabaka’s Royal Drums and stayed a Bugandan monarchist all his life playing a proud and important role at the coronation of King Ronnie in July 1993

The generation that listened with such avid attention to the words of Israel Wamala is now also slipping away: but whoever, one day, writes this great journalist’s biography will not be short of material.  It will tell of the adventures and achievements of a warm, open, very human, highly educated and loving man who was, is and always shall be a legend at the BBC and throughout Africa.

(Israel Wamala b. 25 December,1932 – d. March 4, 2006. He is survived by his daughter Rebecca and her mother, Fiona.)

This is taken from The Times, March 23, 2006:

Israel Wamala
December 25, 1932 - March 4, 2006
BBC broadcaster whose insightful coverage of turbulent African politics was listened to by millions

ISRAEL WAMALA may be little known in the United Kingdom but at the height of his career at the BBC World Service he was a household name to millions in Africa. The programme he edited, Focus on Africa, was obligatory listening for anyone who was interested in the intricacies of African politics. The rich, the poor, the powerful and the dispossessed all tuned into Focus daily to catch up on the turbulent events sweeping the continent: independence, civil wars, coups, assassinations and famines.

Wamala was born on Christmas Day in 1932, the son of an influential chief who was close to the Kabaka (king) of Buganda. He was small in stature but, by all accounts, tough. He was a flyweight boxing champion while still at school and considered a career as a boxer, much to his parents’ dismay. He was educated at King’s School Buddo and at Makerere University where so many of the East African political elite rubbed shoulders. He was sent to London to study law at the Middle Temple but, apart from a brief spell in chambers suffering at the hands of a hostile clerk and informally giving legal advice to the notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman, he never practised.

His BBC career started while he was a law student. He dropped by Bush House to do freelance work during the holidays, and his talents were quickly spotted. He had a fine broadcasting voice. He was bright, lively and fluent — just the kind of person the World Service was looking for to front its programmes for Africa.

By 1967 Wamala was already well established. He was an extraordinary boss. For ever engulfed in a haze of tobacco smoke, he wrote scripts on the back of the packets. He could not type and was hopeless at editing tape. The Focus office was a cauldron of noise and chaos as guests popped in from Africa, and producers shouted on bad telephone lines to correspondents all over the continent. Wamala was always serene and unfazed. He never panicked, never lost his cool, and the programmes, somehow, went on air without too many hitches.

He had the good sense to employ ambitious young producers who came to learn the trade and then moved on to the brighter lights of television. They were aggressive and hardworking. Wamala knew how to harness their energy and the programme flourished. Every day was exciting; civil wars raged in Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique and GuineaBissau, as governments were toppled in Ghana, Ethiopia and his own Uganda, and as the liberation nooses tightened round Zimbabwe and South Africa. Wamala insisted that the facts were right but otherwise let his staff get on with it.

He was a wonderful interviewer — polite but insistent. Politicians could not lie to Wamala and get away with it. He was also even handed — he may have hated the racism of minority right-wing regimes but he was equally tough on the purveyors of left-wing liberation cant.

Wamala never intended to stay in England. For many years he refused to buy an overcoat or a jumper, insisting that he was about to go home to Uganda and would not need them. But the years slipped by and eventually he compromised and bought a mackintosh and a white umpire’s cap. He was fiercely patriotic and a Buganda royalist, but Uganda was not a politically attractive place for him to return to. The Kabaka, Sir Edward Mutesa, had been driven into exile by Milton Obote, the President, in 1966. Mutesa, or King Freddie as he was known by the gossip columnists, lived in London, and Wamala was a frequent visitor to his house. He claimed to be the last person to see him alive. Then came Idi Amin, whom the Buganda first supported, but soon came to realise was a murderous thug, deeply suspicious of anyone with an education. Wamala followed events back home with deep sadness but covered them professionally. The Focus office had a constant stream of Ugandan visitors with stories of the horrors back home, but Wamala would not let them on air unless he was convinced their stories were true.

Wamala liked to spend his evenings in the BBC club. He drank Bell’s whisky with soda and nothing else. Surrounded by friends, he would discuss politics late into the evening.

Outside work Wamala was a very private man. He loved to go on long solitary walks on Hampstead Heath. He appreciated English literature. His favourite book as a child was Wuthering Heights and he could quote at length from Macbeth and Hamlet. His favourite television program was One Man and his Dog.

Although he never married, he had two daughters: the first, from a relationship in his youth, died of hepatitis in Kampala; the second, by the radio producer and writer, Fiona Ledger.

He returned to Uganda in December 1988, disappointed that he had been passed over as head of the African service. He did some work for the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation and Action Aid. But by 1999 he was not a well man. At a meeting two years ago in Kampala his faithful driver delivered him in his beat-up car for a drink at a bar. He was no longer drinking whisky — “just a very small beer before bedtime”. He was still talking politics and was still very good company.

He is survived by his mother, Grace Serwaniko, his daughter and a large family in Uganda and abroad.

Israel Wamala, BBC broadcaster, was born on December 25, 1932. He died on March 4, 2006, aged 73.

The Memorial Service took place  at St Mary le Strand, opposite Bush House. It was an excellent, inspirational and sometimes-amusing event, attended by a good cross-section of current and former World Service people. Also present was a representative of the Kabaka (King) of Bunganda, that part of Uganda that includes Kampala.

Among the eulogies were an informal recollection from George Bennett, former head of the African Service, and this tribute from Robin White, former Editor of Focus on Africa:

I was rather frightened of Israel when I first worked for him. Although he was small (indeed often almost invisible behind the clouds of cigarette smoke that enveloped him) he was tough. There was talk that he had once been a fearsome boxer, and he was totally unafraid of bosses, African politicians or the British weather. He never wore a jumper or an overcoat even on the coldest of days. He used to say, “I won't be staying long in the UK. I'll be going home to Uganda very soon. No need to waste money on warm clothing”.

He also seemed to be able to conjure programmes out of nothing at the last minute without panicking. There was plenty of news; this was the early 1970s, a time of liberation wars, civil wars, one party states and military coups. But to cover it -that was the problem.

Telephone connections to Africa were terrible, there was no email, and just one telex in Bush House operated in a tiny room in the SE wing by a Mr Aziz. But material somehow got through. Israel (who couldn't type and never wanted to) wrote his scripts on the back of cigarette packets, politicians and journalists turned up from nowhere to be interviewed and Focus on Africa by hook or by crook got on the air, day after day after day.

But what was most frightening about Israel was that he knew so much, or at least an awful lot more than the fresh faced youths like me who worked under him. The politics of Africa was like a religion to him. He absorbed news like blotting paper. No story that was too small for him, and no visitor from Africa who was not worth talking to. All day he followed the news from Africa, and every evening, a glass of whisky in hand, he discussed it. As soon as Focus ended for the day we would rush to the BBC Club and sit at his feet arguing about the days events and absorbing his knowledge.

We all wanted to impress him, but it was jolly hard to impress Israel. We were excited by the liberation wars in Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and of course South Africa. We arrived at work dedicated to the overthrow of minority regimes. Israel was dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. OK -Apartheid was ghastly and should be destroyed, but

Israel was also interested in why people could believe in anything so stupid and doomed to failure as apartheid. And Portugal -why did such an impoverished country disparately hang on to its colonies in Africa. Why?

Israel also knew that freedom and independence in Africa were not the end of the story. They were just a beginning and that black African leaders could become just as tyrannical and Smith or Vorster .

His own Uganda was falling apart. Milton Obote, whom he couldn't abide, was replaced by Idi Amin, who turned out to be even worse. The Focus office saw a constant stream of Ugandans who had fled for their lives or had a story to tell.

It was about then that Israel bought a jumper, and shortly afterwards an umbrella ...and then a very distinctive white mackintosh.

And then he was promoted. Hardly surprising -that's the way of the BBC. Find a man who's good at something and ask him to do something else he's not quite so good at -like sums, like meetings, like human resources, typewriters, computers.

Editing Focus had been his golden period. Because he had been obsessed with Africa, then Africa became obsessed with Focus. Its audience grew and grew. Millions turned to it every day to hear something rather nearer to the truth than they could get from their own domestic radios.

Many of the young Turks who worked under him, moved on to successful careers in television. I alone remained. But I'm sure all of us would agree that Israel taught us one thing: to ask why.

Why do stupid people do stupid things? And perhaps more importantly:
why do intelligent people do such stupid things. Why?

Israel Why mala!