Spy who was killed in plane crash

Bruce Mackenzie, a South African who settled in Kenya, was the only white man in Jomo Kenyatta’s first Cabinet. He was the Minister for Agriculture.

Mackenzie was included by Kenyatta at the insistence of the British, who wanted somebody they could trust to take over the docket of agriculture at a time when they were transferring the White Highlands to Africans.

Mackenzie, widely believed to have been a spy for Britain and Israel, was killed in May 1978 when his personal small aircraft blew up over Ngong forest on his way back from Kampala, Uganda.

In 2011, declassified British intelligence documents confirmed the widely believed theory that Idi Amin’s agents had planted a bomb on the plane.

It was in revenge for his role in the 1976 Israeli Airforce raid on Entebbe to rescue hostages whose passenger aircraft had been hijacked by Palestinians.

Mackenzie had played a key role in providing the Mossad with information that helped them to rescue the hostages.

He had his own aircraft and knew Entebbe well. With his help, a Mossad pilot was able to fly over Entebbe and photograph the airport, obtaining photos that proved very helpful in the famous raid.

In the raid, the Israelis destroyed all the Ugandan Air Force Mig jets that were parked at the airport.

Amin waited patiently and got his chance when Mackenzie visited Uganda for business two years later.

Mackenzie was in the company of Paul Lennox, a businessman who dealt in communication gadgets.

At the end of the visit as they took off from the airport, they were offered a wooden curving as a present, but which turned out to be a bomb.
It was timed to blow up just before the plane landed in Nairobi.

The pilot and two other men identified as Keith Savage and Gavin Whitelaw were also killed in the crash.

Born in 1919, Mackenzie joined the South African Air force in 1939. He later migrated to Kenya and became a prominent farmer in Nakuru. He was nominated to the Legislative Council in 1957.

In 1963, he became a Specially Elected member in the House of Representatives.