Safari great Mehta stirred hearts of Kenyans, Ugandans

Readers have asked me to write Safari Rally stories of yore following the story I did last Saturday on the 1986 Safari , the last one to run during the Easter holidays.

So, here we go as we build up towards this year's event, due on June 23 to 26.

Rallying in Uganda is sacred. The country produced the first black men to finish the Coronation Safari in 1969 -- Sospeter Munyegera, navigated by Giga Noormohamed in a Saab 96, long before many Africans could own a car.

Ugandan have thus felt they were the more successful country in motorsport compared to their Kenyan neighbours.

Before President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni reclaimed Uganda's sovereignty and dignity in 1986 as the “Pearl of Africa”, as Britain’s war time Prime Minister Winston Churchill proclaimed many years earlier, sporting rivalry was healthy in the region.

Kenya had Kipchoge Keino and Uganda John Akii Bua, the 1972 Olympics 400 metres hurdles champion.

After Munyegera, Uganda proclaimed that it sired a rallying icon a year early, Shekhar Mehta.

Mehta is easily the best Kenyan driver of all time. He was born in Uganda before his family migrated to Kenya.

My generation including those over 35 and today's Microwave Generation question whether this is indeed true.

 It's a long story. The youth are also excited that McRae Kimathi, Jeremy Wahome, Hamza Anwar, Karan Patel and Maxine Wahome will be competing in the Pearl of Africa Championship Rally next month.

But this is not really news.

In the motion picture the “Rise and Fall of Idi Amin” produced by Sharad Patel, the African dictator, renowned for his barbarism, is captured inside a rally racing.

Though revered worldwide, even years later, as captured in the “Last King of Scotland”, Oscar Award winning movie, Amin gave Ugandans that zeal of rallying.

Motorsport was royal in Kenya, the crown on the jewel being the East African Safari Rally, run under the Competition Committee of the Automobile Association of Kenya.

Amin was instrumental in the demise of the East African Safari in 1973, followed by Tanzania for political reasons. This lead to the establishment of the Safari Rally Kenya the following year.

In reality, Amin, an accomplished boxer, was circling Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first president, spoiling for a fight.

Mehta won the 1973 Safari. This prompted Amin to arrogantly proclaim in a presser that as far as he was concerned Mehta was a Ugandan, but Kenya could have him.

This is the year Amin forced organisers to kill the East African Safari Rally from Nairobi.

“They want it? They get it,” Eric Cecil, the founder of the Coronation Safari, told me in 2002 at the exclusive Muthaiga Country Club.

The Sports Commission of the Automobile Association of Kenya called the bluff. Kenya cancelled the East African Safari, and the Kenya Safari Rally was born in 1974.

Mehta won the 1973 Safari, navigated by Lofty Drews in a Datsun 240Z.

There began the rise, and rise of Mehta, the most successful driver of the Safari Rally. He competed in 30 WRC events for Datsun, Peugeot and Lancia at a fee , never a favour.

He won the Safari a record five times. He is the only driver to have won the Safari Rally three years in a row. He, infact, won it four successive.

His 1981 victory is still a question of debate. His erstwhile team mate, turned bitter rival, Rauno Aaltonen of Finland, who tried for 23 years to win the Safari in vain was particularly aggrieved.

Aaltonen always had victory within his grasp, but it was never to be.

There were whispered rumours of cheating, gambling in East Asia that explained his inexplicable losses, It was even said that he was cursed for knocking “kithii cha mukamba” -- a Kamba medicine man’s gourd.

Whatever you believe, Mehta remains Africa's best rally driver. He died in 2006.

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