OBITUARIES

Veteran journalist AIDAN CHECHE (64) died at Muheza on August 10 after a long illness. He was News Editor of Radio Tanzania at the time of independence and later worked for the BBC, Reuters and Radio Deutschewelle. In his final months he participated in translating the Bible into modem Swahili.

In January 1964 there was a mutiny among troops of the Tanganyika Defence Force at Colito Barracks, Dar es Salaam and the government called for help. Britain’s 45 Commando embarked in haste in the carrier Centour and 2 Troop, led by MAJOR DAVID SCOTT LANGLEY, who has died at the age of 74, flew ashore in Wessex helicopters. Using a loud-hailer, Langley called on the mutineers to surrender. When they refused a 3.5 inch rocket was fired over the closed gates to the guardroom. It hit an overhead wire and rebounded, narrowly missing Langley. The mutiny was quelled in less than two hours. Langley accepted surrender from a Tanzanian Lieutenant Colonel who had been one of his cadets at Aldershot. Langley received a C-in-C’s commendation. The commander of the operation, COLONEL PATRICK STEVENS, (76) also died in August 1998 -from the Times Obituaries.

MICHAEL WISE who died recently has been Reviews Editor of ‘Tanzanian Affairs’ (ably assisted by John Budge) for the last two years. His wife, Angela, has kindly sent us the following words: ‘Michael first went to Africa in 1957, to a post in the library of the Royal Technical College in Nairobi, later to become the University of Nairobi. He moved in January 1962 to a similar post at the new University of Dar es Salaam. This started off in a building in Lumumba Street and Michael was closely involved with the Chief Librarian in the planning and development of the new university library on Observation Hill. Seven happy and productive years followed, the later ones as Deputy Librarian. He made the most of every opportunity to see more of the country and its people, climbed to the crater of Kilimanjaro and formed enduring friendships. Links with Africa and Tanzania were not broken when he moved to a post in Wales in 1969. Many Tanzanian students were entertained at his home near Aberystwyth; he drew on Tanzanian contacts for contributions to the books and journals he edited on international librarianship; and this year it gave him great pleasure to meet again many old Tanzanian friends on a return visit to Dar es Salaam.

GUY YEOMAN (78), described in the Times as ‘veterinary surgeon and explorer’, died on August 3, having developed a lifelong passion for the sources of the Nile and the people of the Rwenzori mountain ranges. He had become fluent in Swahili while recruiting troops for the war in Burma in 1942 and was devastated when the troopship Khedive Ismail was sunk while on passage from Mombasa to Ceylon on February 12, 1944 with the loss of 1,511 lives, almost all African troops of his own regiment. His work on the cattle disease East Coast Fever in Tanzania was the basis of the thesis which won him his fellowship of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. His book The Ioxid Ticks of Tanzania (jointly written with Jane Walker) was published in 1967 and his successful disease control schemes are still largely in place in Tanzania.

Nigel Durdant Hollamby has informed us of the recent deaths of DENIS THORNE MABEY BENNETT (73) who was DC Kilwa when he retired in 1961, ARTHUR PHILIP HUGH LOUSADA (81), who was DC in Kwimba and Bagamoyo and ERIC LOVELOCK (81) who achieved a reputation as a rainmaker in Tanganyika and retired from the Colonial Service to begin a teaching career in Britain.

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