Smith Hempstone

'Rogue ambassador' to Kenya

Smith Hempstone Jnr, diplomat and journalist: born Washington, DC 1 February 1929; US ambassador to Kenya 1989-93; married 1954 Kathaleen Fishback (one daughter); died Bethesda, Maryland 19 November 2006.

The story goes that Smith Hempstone first acquired a taste for Africa during his honeymoon in Venice in 1954, when he turned up uninvited at the hotel suite occupied by Ernest Hemingway.

The great man invited him in, and the two talked for a while, before Hemingway asked his young guest whether he had been to Africa. "You should," he advised, "Africa is man's country - fish, hunt, write. The best." Hempstone took the recommendation to heart.

One way and another, Africa dominated most of the rest of his life. He worked there on and off for a decade as a foreign correspondent, and wrote two books about the continent (Africa, Angry Young Giant, 1961 and Rebels, Mercenaries and Dividends, 1962). After turning his hand to writing novels, he held top editorial posts at the now defunct Washington Star and then at The Washington Times, before becoming America's ambassador to Kenya. He took up the post in 1989.

Hempstone was born into a newspaper-owning family in Washington, DC, where he was educated before serving with the Marines in Korea. Whether or not he deliberately modelled himself on Hemingway, the similarities were notable; from the ruddy complexion and white beard to a fondness for alcohol, tobacco and hunting.

Hempstone first gained the idea that he would make America's perfect man in Nairobi while sitting on a beach in Maine in 1987, and made the point in person with the then Vice-President George H.W. Bush. The latter duly won the White House, and named Hempstone to the Kenya post in 1989 - with little idea, surely, of the turbulence ahead.

As ambassador, Hempstone behaved exactly as he did as a correspondent and editor: he was fearless and frank, combative and absolutely no respecter of persons - least of all if that person happened to be a senior member of the government of President Daniel arap Moi, that Hempstone deemed corrupt and undemocratic.

The state-controlled press attacked him bitterly as he campaigned for multi-party elections and an end to persecution of dissidents: "Shut Up, Mr Ambassador," was a typical headline of the day. Hempstone gave as good as he got. Asked by a US reporter to comment when he was attacked by a prominent Kenyan politician he replied, "Tell the Minister to stop telling lies about me, or I'll start telling the truth about him."

Ndolo Ayah, a former Kenyan Foreign Affairs minister, once dubbed Hempstone a "racist with a slave-owner mentality," to which the ambassador retorted that "most of the people I help are black". The Kenyan opposition, however, hailed him as a "second hero of the liberation".

Hempstone did take some precautions. Twice threatened with assassination, he regularly carried a gun. He also had a habit of taking canapés from the back of the tray at diplomatic receptions, on the grounds they were less likely to have been poisoned.

In the end, Hempstone's (and Washington's) pressure prevailed. Kenya, too, was unable to resist the international tide that had swept away Communism in Europe, and was promoting democracy around the world. In 1992, the country held its first genuine multi-party elections, which arap Moi's Kanu party won with a bare plurality.

The following year he left Kenya, and in 1997 recounted his experiences in the splendid Rogue Ambassador: an African memoir. Most satisfying of all perhaps, he lived to see the opposition National Rainbow Coalition rout Kanu to take power in 2002.

Rupert Cornwell