President Idi Amin Dada Oumee was the third president of Uganda, arguably the most popular or notorious president of Africa at his time as well the most well-known historic president of Uganda. Idi Amin as a six foot four and, at his peak, 20 stone, was the former heavyweight boxing champion of Uganda, skillful Rugby player, swimmer, soldier and a politician.
General Idi Amin Dada Oumee, being sworn in as a president of Uganda
Idi Amin styled himself 'His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular'.
General Idi Amin 1971. The Prime Minister Mr Edward Heath at No 10 Downing Street tonight with General Idi Amin, President of Uganda. The President, who seized power in January, is to have lunch with the Queen and to discuss ministers arms for Uganda, trade and financial aid
He was viewed in the West as a murderous buffoon, a jovial psychopath. In eight bloody years, from 1971 to 1978, his brutal regime has been blamed for the deaths of up to 500,000 people in mass executions and tribal purges.
Uganda’s President Idi Amin, center, and his wife, Sarah, leave the Grand Hotel in Rome, Italy, on their way to the papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo for their private audience with Pope Paul VI on Sept. 10, 1975. At right, wearing traditional African costume, is Bernadette Olowo, the Uganda envoy who is the first woman ambassador to the Vatican. (AP Photo)
Some political prisoners were forced to kill each other with sledgehammers. His extraordinary physical presence was legendary, as were his unnatural appetites. Rumours of cannibalism swirled around the despot and it was claimed he kept the heads of his most powerful enemies in his fridge. The West claimAmin's blood-lust was matched only by his craving for women simply because he fathered about 60 children - the exact number is unknown - none of whom has ever spoken publicly.
Idi Amin at the pool side
Before becoming president of Uganda by overthrowing president Milton Obote, Idi Amin was the darling of the West, particularly Britain. Once, as a Lance-Corporal in the King's African Rifles, he had embodied the British notion of the reliable native, fulfilling his superiors' prejudiced expectations. "Not much grey matter, but a splendid chap to have about," said one British officer. His willingness to obey without question, his ability at sport and his spotless boots brought him promotion.
He was popular with his English officers, who appreciated his skill on the rugby field, unquestioning obedience and touching devotion to all things British.
White diplomats bowing down to president Amin whilst reciting "Oath of Allegiance" to him as a ruler of Uganda
The serious question that has raged people`s mind about Idi Amin as cannibal, torturer, ruthless dictator and womanizer, was Amin without any good side at all? The answer could be found in professor Ali Mazrui academic piece "BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY: ANARCHY, TYRANNY AND PROGRESS UNDER IDI AMIN." Ali Mazrui writes on Amin`s positive side:
There is, however, a positive side to the saga of someone like Idi Amin. No one
who fired the imagination of so many millions of oppressed people in different
parts of the world could have been entirely evil. For at least the first few years of
his rule, Amin was a towering symbol of naive but heroic resistance to the mighty
nations of the world - a symbol of the semi-literate standing up to the pretensions
of sophistication, a symbol of the underprivileged standing up to the all powerful.
And yet, this same Amin was one of the most brutal rulers of the 1970s. On the one
hand, he was clearly a villain of Uganda; on the other, he seemed to have risen to
become a hero of the Third World.
What did this tell us about the 'New International Moral Order'? Was there
indeed a moral cleavage, as well as an economic gap, between the developed and
industrialised countries of Europe, North America and Japan on the one side,
and the developing countries of the rest of Asia, Africa, Latin America on the
other?
It would, of course, be quite untrue to suggest that the Third World approved of
Amin's brutalities against his own people. What needs more explaining is the
ambivalence of the Third World about Idi Amin, rather than any unqualified
approval of him. Much of the West was quite clear in its verdict - the man was evil
and should disappear from the scene as soon as possible. For much of the Third
World Idi Amin, at least for part of his period in office, was not a case of
unmitigated evil. He had that profoundly dialectical quality of heroic evil. And
whether one applauded the heroism or lamented or denounced the evil depended
upon one's priorities. In other words, Amin's significance in the 1970s was more
positively in international affairs than in domestic affairs. The degree to which
the Third World was ready at times to forgive his domestic excesses provided he
remained in resistance to the mighty, was indicative of a major moral cleavage
between the northern hemisphere of the affluent and the southern hemisphere of
the exploited and underprivileged."
WHITEHORSE INN 1978 - IDI AMIN DADA FAMILY INSTANT SNAP SHOT. Jaffar Amin
On why the African-Americans saw Idi Amin as a hero despite international portrayal of Amin as a despotic butcher of his people, Mazrui averred that:
The black American response to the phenomenon of Idi Amin arose partly out
of black enthusiasm for Amin as a black nationalist. Amin's expulsion of the
Asians in 1972, in the face of massive opposition from Britain, whose citizens the
majority of the expelled Asians were, was to many black Americans a stroke of
nationalistic genius. Amin seemed determined to put Uganda's destiny into black
hands. His dedication was not necessarily to the creation of a kinder or more
humane Ugandan society, but simply the creation of a situation where black
people of Uganda wrenched their economic destiny from the hands of non-black
people. Amin's economic war against foreign control of the Ugandan economy
aroused memories of black leaders in the western hemisphere like Marcus
Garvey, who had similarly been dedicated to black self-reliance.
But what about all that brutality which Amin committed against his own black
people within Uganda? Some black Americans simply did not believe the reports,
which were after all derived from the white-controlled media. On the other hand,
those who believed the stories about Amin's brutality-could always say, 'What is
the big deal? We have been experiencing brutality right here in America for 300
years, and continue to do so in ghettos and police cells. What does it matter if a
black ruler has to be brutal at times in order to be effective in his struggle against
white power?"
General Idi Amin, president of Uganda and "Conqueror of British Empire" being carried like a king by white diplomats in Kampala,Uganda
In an attempt to portray Idi Amin as not only an evil person as the West sought to do, a web page http://www.idiamindada.com/ has been dedicated to reveal the good side of Amin and also how the West connived "forcing him to be a president at a gun point."
Below are some of the issues raised in the webpage.
"Did you know that Idi Amin has two grown twin sons by a Former Female Israeli Secret Service Agent?
Did you know that there are people who think Idi Amin was framed for the murders he allegedly committed in Uganda?
Did you know that some people think Idi Amin was “set up” and “slandered” because he couldn’t be controlled by "super powers?"
Did you know that Idi Amin’s father was a Police Officer and not a peasant as told by many people and he served as a soldier in the First World War?
Did you know that Idi Amin was guarded by a snake as an infant while being subjected to an unusualpaternity test practiced by ancient Kakwa?
Did you know that Idi Amin wrestled a crocodile in Somalia during a tour of duty when he was in the Kings African Rifles?
Did you know that Idi Amin disobeyed orders from his British Superiors to shoot Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta on sight during colonialism and saved his life instead?
Did you know that Idi Amin’s superiors held him in high regard during his time in the Kings African Rifles?
Did you know that Idi Amin was forced to become the President of Uganda at gun point?
Did you know that Idi Amin had a “rock solid” relationship with Israel before he crossed over to the Palestinian side?
Did you know that Idi Amin gave a 10,000 dollar tip to a Black American cleaning lady while on an official trip to New York City, to ease her suffering from racism?
Did you know that the novel and film "The Last King of Scotland" is fictional?
Did you know that during the war that led to his ouster, Idi Amin travelled to the war frontline and waved to the opposing soldiers and they excitedly waved back instead of shooting him?
Idi Amin's Father Mzee Amin Dada Nyabira and 1st wife Sarah
Did you know that Idi Amin’s Presidential Guards “wrestled him to the ground” to get him out of harm’s way because he wanted to die in Uganda like a true soldier during the war to overthrow him?
Did you know that upon his release from decades of imprisonment on Roben Island, South Africa’s hero Nelson Mandela thanked Idi Amin for the role Idi Amin played in overthrowing Apartheid in South Africa?
Did you know that Idi Amin became a devout Muslim after fleeing Uganda and regularly denied that he committed the atrocities attributed to him?
Idi Amin holding his son in army uniform
BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY: ANARCHY, TYRANNY AND PROGRESS UNDER IDI AMIN
Ali A Mazrui
A major aspect of world history is the rise and fall of great heroes and great villains. The corridors of time echo the applause and denunciations of yester- years. Fused into the paradox of heroic evil was Idi Amin - at once a hero and a villain, at once a subject both of applause and denunciation. As a villain he was a
symbol of tyranny. Hundreds of thousands of his compatriots died under his rule.
As a hero, Amin has four meanings for Africa and the Third World. Economically he attempted to strike a blow against dependency and foreign control of his country's economy. Culturally, he signified a reaffirmation of cultural authenticity. He helped to foster cultural self-discovery among Africans - for better or for worse. Politically, Amin was often in rebellion against the northern- dominated power structure of the twentieth century. He made fun of the mighty and sometimes helped to inspire self-confidence in the ranks of the Third
World. Morally, Amin signified a basic leverage between the liberal values of the western world and the nationalistic concerns of much of the Third World. Let us first examine Amin the villain, before we explore the dialectical anomalies of his heroism.
White diplomats bowing down to president Amin whilst reciting "Oath of Allegiance" to him as a ruler of Uganda
Tyranny Versus Anarchy
It is important to remember the ancient distinction between tyranny and anarchy. How much of the anguish of Uganda between 1971 and April 1979 was due to the tyranny exercised by Idi Amin? How much of it was a consequence of sheer anarchy and normative collapse?
Tyranny involves centrally-directed force; anarchy entails decentralised violence. The two processes could reinforce each other. Governments scared of what appear to them to be anarchic trends could get more tyrannical. On the other hand, groups which are dissatisfied with the credentials of a government, and are unwilling to concede its legitimacy, could destabilise society as a whole. A third possibility is when groups take advantage of either governmental weakness or general erosion of public morality - and create even further arbitrariness and insecurity in society at large.
The precise balance between tyranny and anarchy in the Third World as a whole varies from country to country. In Amin's Uganda the tyrannical factor was by far the more publicised, partly because of the flamboyant personality of Idi Amin and his capacity to attract international notoriety. But in fact by 1977
Uganda had become as much a case of sheer decentralised violence as one of purposeful tyranny.
This is not to deny the argument that many of the more publicised murders were indeed centrally-directed, often instigated by Field Marshal Idi Amin himself. The murder of Chief Justice Kiwanuka in 1972, the murder of Vice- Chancellor Kalimuzo of Makerere University in the same year, and the murder of Archbishop Luwum in 1977 along with two cabinet ministers, were almost certainly ordered by Idi Amin himself.
Decentralised Brutality
But far less publicised were the far more numerous cases of wanton decentralised brutality - of individual soldiers 'executing' a man behind a dance hall in order to 'inherit' his girl friend for the night, or of civilian criminals wearing army uniforms on loan from real soldiers as a strategy of extorting money. On balance many more people must have died, or been mutilated in Uganda as a result of decentralised violence than in response to purposeful brutality by the regime.
Atocities of Idi Amin
This is not a defence of the regime. After all, a government which is incapable of preventing such lawlessness should long have abdicated and let others try their luck in restoring decency and order. But when we are trying to understand the real causes of violence in a society it is not enough to focus on the bizarre brutality of a simple individual, no matter how powerful. It is tempting to reduce all causation to the personality of Idi Amin. But just as it is simplistic to attribute the birth of Protestantism to the constipation of Martin Luther, so it is simplistic to attribute the collapse of decency and order in Uganda to the reported venereal difficulties
of Idi Amin. The personalistic approach to the study of Uganda's recent history has been aggravated by the fascination that Amin commanded in the international mass media - a bizarre symphony of shrieks of pain, sighs of despair and thuds of fatal finality.
IDI AMIN DADA COCKTAIL-HIGHCOMMAND 1970.Jaffar Amin
The Makerere 'Incident'
A related obstacle in the effort to understand what was going on in Uganda was the problem of assessing the reliability of the news which came out of Amin's Uganda. One item of news in 1976 illustrated this issue dramatically for this writer. This was a bad story about Uganda which became one more Amin headline item in the world press. In August 1976 it was reported that a massacre of students had taken place on the campus of Makerere University in Uganda. The report was detailed. It included the precise place where the massacre took place (on Freedom Square in front of the main Administration Building), the approximate number of casualties (at least 100 and conceivably up to 800), the details of other brutal atrocities (mutilation of breasts of girl students), the usual sexual assaults (soldiers raping girl students), et cetera.
I was in Kenya when this story broke in British newspapers. I flew to Dar es Salaam. I had dinner the same week with the former President of Uganda, Dr Milton Obote, at his residence-in-exile in Tanzania. Also at Obote's dinner was David Martin, the British journalist mainly responsible for the story of the 'massacre' on the Makerere campus. I expressed puzzlement at the dinner over the apparently exclusive nature of such a news 'scoop'. A massacre in front of the main building of the only university of a country, situated in its capital city, seemed unlikely to remain unnoticed to all but British observers. Even the Kenya newspapers, next door to Uganda, seemed to be citing only British sources. Obote and Martin assured me of the veracity of the story. The following week The Observer, London, carried another Martin story about the 'massacre' on the campus in Uganda. The story was carried worldwide by western networks. My wife first heard the story on her car radio in a local Canadian broadcast. She was so disturbed by the news and by its likely impact on me that she immediately put through a transatlantic telephone call to me in Dar es Salaam to find out how I was taking it. (We lived on the Makerere campus for about ten years.)
Dr. Milton Obote being welcomed by Idi Amin Dada back in the day. Then minister Wakholi learnt from radio that Amin had overthrown his boss, President Obote.
Since then I have checked out the story meticulously, receiving confidential evidence from about fifteen witnesses who were on the campus on that day. The witnesses were of six different nationalities - ranging from Ugandan to West German. I am now completely satisfied that there was no 'massacre' on the Makerere campus in the first week of August 1976. There was indeed an 'invasion' of soldiers, seemingly invited by the university authorities themselves in the face of student unrest. The soldiers did get out of hand and started beating up students, kicking them, injuring them with rifle butts. But nobody was killed. And apparently no girls were raped, let alone mutilated. In short, there was no massacre' in the sense of killings.
Idi Amin`s victims
David Martin probably sincerely believed his story. But his first story was datelined Lusaka in Zambia, and his second came from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. He had never been to Uganda since Amin took over power in 1971. Yet one bad story by a sincere but mistaken British journalist captured the attention of much of the world press. No retraction or correction has ever been made by The Observer.
Clearly there was enough brutality committed by Idi Amin without our inventing fictional instances as well. The man was guilty enough to qualify for the most torrid recesses of hell. Yet one lurid error by a British journalist was enough to misinform the world. The 'information gap' was playing games with both the
obscenities of an African tyrant and the credulousness of the rest of the world.
Kay Adroia Amin, wife of Idi Amin who disappeared
We are all caught up in the contradictions of 'the information gap' under a military tyranny. Was Amin as bad as the international press portrayed him? Precisely because Amin was a tyrant we may never know for certain. David Martin was reporting from Zambia about Uganda partly because he simply could not do it within Uganda. He would have been killed on Amin's orders anytime he chose to arrive in Uganda - not least because of his prior anti-Amin reports, let alone his book General Amin.
Amin's brutal control of the media in Uganda - including the execution of some editorial personnel of Uganda television and of the Luganda newspaper, Munno - denied the tyrant even the mitigation of some of his own offences. The 'information gap' did at times earn him worse publicity than he deserved, though he did deserve a lot of negative coverage all the same.
The Sacred and the Secular
In addition to the problems of distinguishing fact from fiction, and tyranny from anarchy, there was the third problem of distinguishing the religious from the secular in the Ugandan situation. How far was Islam a factor in the behaviour of Idi Amin? How salient was religion to our understanding of the wider social forces in Uganda? Many commentators have given religion high political salience. Some of those analysts seem to forget that only a small minority of Ugandan Muslims are indeed Nubi or Kakwa or from the Sudan, the three overlapping groups that were supposed to form the basis of Amin's power. The majority of Ugandan Muslims belong to none of these three categories. But are these analysts in any case correct in seeing religion as a major factor behind the tensions and brutalities of Amin's Uganda?
1977 Press Photo of Uganda Vice President under Idi Amin, General Mustafa Adrisi in Military Uniform
Here a comparative perspective is in order. What has been happening else- where in Africa on the religious front as Muslims and Christians in Uganda have been 'confronting' each other? The month of February 1977 witnessed two highly publicised acts of brutality reportedly committed by Africans against the clergy. First came the news that seven white Roman Catholic missionaries including four nuns, had been gunned down in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. The sole survivor, Father Dunston Myerescough, 65 years old, was convinced that the murderers were African nationalist guerillas. The second event less than two weeks later was indeed the murder of the Most Reverend Janani Luwum, Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, while in custody under the charge of plotting to overthrow the government of President Amin. The government claimed that the Archbishop and two of Amin's own Cabinet Ministers under a similar charge were killed in a car crash, but most of the world was understandably sceptical. In the case of the murder of the seven missionaries in Zimbabwe, it was assumed that they died as casualties of a racial war - rather than as martyrs in a religious crusade. But in the case of the Ugandan Archbishop, the worldjumped to the conclusion that he was a martyr to his faith as a Christian. Was the world justified in assuming that Archbishop Luwum died for religious reasons?
In contemporary Africa, tensions between religious groups are never purely religious. Religious tensions are usually an aspect of either ideological conflict between militants and moderates (as in parts of Ethiopia), racial conflict between white and black (as in Southern Africa), ethno-cultural conflict between different African tribes and communities (as in Uganda), or class conflict between the haves and have-nots (as illustrated in virtually all cases).
Three African Wars
At least three major civil wars in Africa within the last decade have had a religious dimension. For seventeen years (1955 to 1972) Southern Sudan waged war against the government in Khartoum for reasons which included religious differences between the Muslim North and the Christian-led South. (The southern leaders were indeed mainly Christian, but the majority of their followers were neither Christian nor Muslim. They were still adherents of local ancestral religions of their own communities.)
In the case of the Nigerian civil war (1967-70) the North was identified with Islam while 'Biafra' (or the East) was identified with Christianity. In reality the Nigerian civil war was mainly ethnic - but Biafra's public relations machinery successfully created the impression among many westerners that Ibo Christians were fighting a war in defence of Christianity. In spite of the fact that General Yakubu Gowon, the head of the Federal Government of Nigeria, was a Christian, and much of his support came from other non-Muslims, Biafra brilliantly managed to suggest that a jihad was being waged against the Ibo. Even the Vatican seemed for a while to have bought that version.
The third major civil war with a religious dimension is still under way. This is the struggle by Eritrea to break away from Ethiopia. The majority of Eritreans are Muslim. There are large numbers of Muslims in the rest of Ethiopia as well, but the country had many centuries of Christian theocracy. The military rulers of Ethiopia since the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie have gone further than their predecessors to concede that Ethiopia is not a purely Christian country. My last visit to Addis Ababa in December 1976 coincided with the Muslim Festival of Eid al Ha]]. It was being celebrated as a national holiday in the whole of Ethiopia.
That would have been inconceivable under the late Emperor. But while the new military rulers have made concessions to Islam, they have simultaneously cut the Coptic Christian Church of Ethiopia down to size. Indeed, the Marxist-Leninist orientation of the rulers has paradoxically been at once more tolerant of Muslims (outside Eritrea) and more suspicious of Christian church leaders as potential sources of 'ideological reaction'. Ethiopia is certainly one case where religious tensions are interwoven with the tensions of secular
ideology - as well as with the tensions of ethnic separatism in Eritrea.
The Class Dimension
The class dimension is also persistent all over Africa. Sometimes new military rulers are opposed to older church leaders partly because the religious leaders once belonged to the political establishment - whereas the soldiers were recruited from some of the poorest strata of the old society. This is certainly true of both
Ethiopia and Uganda. The soldiers in power in both countries are essentially 'lumpenmilitariat' disorganised recruits from sectors of society which were once disadvantaged and often uneducated, and have since become callous and insensitive.
The class dimension has also been relevant in race relations. In Southern Africa it has certainly not been easy to determine where race differences end and class distinctions begin. In the words of the late radical black thinker, Frantz Fanon, who is popular among many liberation fighters in Southern Africa, 'You are rich
because you are white - but you are also white because you are rich.' The Japanese after all are honorary whites in the Republic of South Africa; they are 'white because they are rich.
Blacks Against Blacks
But the most perennial problems in Africa may well turn out to be ethnic ones involving blacks against blacks. When we therefore hear of a black Archbishop killed, it would be important to investigate not only issues of religion, class and ideology - but also issues of ethnic affiliation. Certainly all four factors seemed to be present in the death of the Archbishop of the Congo (Brazzaville) in March 1976.
As for the Ugandan situation, certainly ethnic factors continue to be very strong. When the news of the Uganda Archbishop's death broke, it reminded me of a night in Kampala six years earlier when my wife and I gave refuge to girls who were running away from potential rape by Amin's soldiers. The girls were either
Langi or Acholi. The previous night some soldiers had broken into Mary Stuart Hall at the Makerere University and demanded to be taken to the Langi and Acholi girls. On that occasion they did take away two girls, one of whom was saved from a serious fate by the fact that she was in her monthly period. The next
night Langi and Acholi girls were of course terrified, and some of them came to our house for refuge. Vice-Chancellor Kalimuzo and I had urgent consultations about the other girls left in Mary Stuart Hall. President Amin agreed to send us his more reliable soldiers to patrol the campus, and keep the military rapists at bay. The situation was indeed eased - but periodic terror continued to be an aspect of the life of every Langi and every Acholi from then on.
When six years after that night of 'rape terror' Archbishop Luwum was killed, the question sprang to my mind, 'Did Luwum die because he was Acholi or because he was Anglican?' If those Roman Catholic missionaries were casualties of an unfolding racial war in Southern Africa, why could not Janani Luwum have been a casualty of continuing ethnic strife in Uganda?
After all, Cabinet Minister Oryema who was killed with the Archbishop was also an Acholi. Before long further news seemed to validate ethnic factors rather than religious ones as dominant behind the new atrocities in Uganda. Leading Langi and Acholi, including some at Makerere University, were either rounded
up, brutalised, or at least briefly harassed. Hundreds of refugees from Lango and Acholi were soon reported to be pouring intaTanzania and Kenya. As for Amin's own statements, they seemed to echo some of the accusations he levelled against the Langi and the Acholi way back in the first week of his assumption of power in Uganda in January 1971.
A Religious Crusade
Yet the All Africa Conference of Churches, and the World Council of Churches, preferred to turn the latest Ugandan calamity into a religious crusade. The same church organisations had been 'discreetly silent' for six years while Amin tortured and butchered other Langi, other Acholi, and indeed other Ugandans, both
Christian and Muslim. Yet it took the murder of a fellow churchman to arouse the conscience of organised Christianity. With all other professional groups, it might be understandable to sit back until a fellow professional is killed before being aroused, but with churches such a record is just not good enough. Canon Burgess Can, leader of the All African Council of Churches, should have taken a public stand against Idi Amin years before Archbishop Luwum met his fate.
Idi Amin and Archbishop Luwum
But once the churches were aroused, and were busy 'converting' ethnic strife into a religious crusade, there was a danger of their 'prophecy' becoming self-fulfilling. Indeed, more people in Uganda have died since the Archbishop. The strife in Uganda could indeed become increasingly religious, as well as ethnic. Christian has already turned against Muslim, Catholic against Protestant - as well as Kakwa against Acholi, Bantu against Nilote. The ominous clock of convulsion starts ticking as the pendulum of sectarian and tribal revenge is set
in motion. The history of Uganda both before and since Amin has enough religious, as well as ethnic tension, to provide a basis for further convulsion. It may be too late to stop the deepening linkages between 'tribalism' and sectarianism in Uganda.
But why did Amin turn against the Langi and the Acholi in the first place? Dr Milton Obote, the man Amin overthrew from power on 25 January 1971, was from Lango. The largest single group of soldiers in Obote's army was from Acholi. These two northern communities were indeed related linguistically and culturally - and under Obote's regime, they were relatively united. But there were also jealousies and rivalries between them which could have been exploited by Amin at the beginning had he been astute enough. Indeed, one of my first public criticisms of Amin after his takeover concerned his mishandling of the Acholi behind him and against Milton Obote. I still believe that Amin would have been less afraid of the Langi on their own than he was of an alliance between the Langi and the Acholi. Although the Langi were Obote's own people, they
were not as numerous in Obote's army as the Acholi had been. Nor had the Langi enjoyed the same reputation as the Acholi in terms of'warrior skill and military valour'.
In reality, the Langi were at least as valiant and skilful as anybody else, but the Acholi had more of a 'martial' reputation according to precisely the popular mythology which Idi Amin was likely to share. If I and other unofficial advisers had succeeded in time in persuading Amin to rally the Acholi behind him and against Obote, Amin would have felt less insecure about the Langi as well. Both groups might have suffered less precisely by being separated within Amin's fearful imagination. Amin had a phobia about the Acholi. Exactly one year to the day before Amin took over power, he had apparently engineered the murder of his own second-in-command within the army, Brigadier Ocoya. On 25 January 1970, Ocoya was murdered with his wife in Gulu, Acholiland, seemingly because he had aroused the ire and suspicion of his superior officer, Idi Amin. Ocoya's murder had disturbed both Langi and Acholi within Obote's army; and Obote was soon to suspect Amin of being implicated in the crime.
King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Idi Amin at the Source of the Nile,Jinja, Uganda. circa 1972
Obote began to reduce some of Amin's responsibilities - and Amin interpreted this as a prelude either to his own death or at the very least to losing his command and spending years in prison. Amin's homicidal suspicion of Ocoya, and the preponderance of the Acholi in Obote's army, combined with Obote's moves against Amin, all contributed to Amin's persecution complex in fear of a Langi-Acholi alliance. By being scared of their presumed alliance, he brutalised both communities. I still wish we had succeeded in breaking the obstinate linkage between the two groups in Amin's mind. The Most Rev Janani Luwum might still be alive today. Who knows? However, fearing the Langi-Acholi alliance with such desperation, Amin might well have brought it into being.
Idi Amin Dada at Fruitmarket Jebel Arafat Makkah Al Mukaramah 1983
Domestic and External Factors
But the problems of Uganda are not only a mixture of ethnic and religious factors. They are also a mixture of domestic and external factors, of national and regional variables. This is where the analogy between Uganda and Lebanon becomes striking. For both countries part of the problem concerns the issue of where the
imperial powers that ruled them decided to draw the boundaries. Lebanon was carved out of Greater Syria partly because the French wanted to create a separate Christian enclave - a kind of 'Christian Israel' even before the Jewish Israel came into being. But the carving out of a Christian enclave was somewhat messy - there were still far too many Muslims around in Lebanon. And although the Muslims were at the time a minority, their birth rate was higher than that of the Christians. Since then the Muslims of Lebanon have caught up with the Christians - and have begun to outnumber them. The boundaries which the French had so
carefully drawn for their Christian enclave served to provide a setting for a sectarian confrontation.
The boundaries which the British drew up in East Africa were similarly messy. The British split up Amin's tribe, the Kakwa, between Uganda and the Sudan - and helped the Belgians annex a third portion of Kakwaland into Zaire. Some commentators kept on referring to non-Ugandan recruits into Amin's army as
'black mercenaries'. But was this not an oversimplification? The Ugandan army under Amin reflected precisely the messiness of the colonial boundaries. Amin recruited into his army 'ethnic compatriots' (fellow tribesmen) even if they were not national compatriots, and were Sudanese or Zairean instead.
Similarly, while the Lebanese crisis was deepened by the presence of the Palestinians in Lebanon, so was the Ugandan crisis aggravated by the Nubian factor in Uganda. Lebanon has suffered because of two partitions - the partition of Greater Syria by the French in order to strengthen a Christian enclave and the partition of Palestine in order to create a Jewish state. Uganda has suffered because of ethnic partitions rather than denominational fragmentations. But both countries are now landed with a legacy of hate and recrimination which past imperialism and current militarism have bequeathed to their unhappy people. When hate is militarised, and sectionalism is armed partly as a result of cynical imperial frontiers, at least one entity is allowed to extend its ominous boundaries - the graveyard.
For eight years in Uganda Islam had a new status. Muslims rose from being among the most socially despised of the nation's people to being among the most powerful. Contrary to journalistic estimates, the Muslim population of Uganda was not 3 per cent but closer to 12 per cent. But even that was a minority. Until Amin came, the Muslims were an underprivileged minority. After Amin they became over-privileged. Now Islam in Uganda is on the defensive. A new cycle of religious reprisals is discernible. But while the politics of religious policy in Uganda is a familiar item in the world press, the politics of the language policy
has been far less publicised. Let us turn to this aspect.
Idi Amin, driving, and the late Mobutu Sese sseko, who was then president of Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.
Language Policy and Social Change
In his own limited and erratic way, Idi Amin was the innovator of a language policy in Uganda. He helped to edge the country a little closer to the rest of East Africa by giving Swahili a new and politically more significant status. In the cultural field Amin helped to forge deeper East African integration precisely by
creating conditions for the more rapid spread of Swahili in Uganda and for its rise in national standing. In 1967, in a lecture at Makerere, I predicted that the future of Swahili in Uganda depended on the decline of the Baganda and the rise of the military. The Baganda had been the greatest opponents of Swahili; the soldiers (mainly from northern Uganda) were the greatest champions of the language. It turned out to be true that one of the very few cultural gains brought about by Amin's rule was the greater use of Swahili in national affairs in Uganda.
President Milton Obote once described English as 'the political language' of Uganda. In his day no person could be a Member of Parliament who was unable to speak English. Why was English necessary for parliamentary life? In order to ensure that Members of Parliament from different linguistic groups could be
mutually intelligible to each other as they discussed national issues. Each back- bencher in Parliament before Amin's coup had at least two basic audiences. One audience consisted of his fellow parliamentarians, and the other audience was his constituents. For as long as the parliamentarian had only one constituency, he could rely on one local language in addressing his constituents, while retaining English for his fellow MPs.
Is Amin's rule so hated in the Uganda of today that the hatred will be extended to Swahili as the language of the soldiers? This is not very likely, but we should remember how the Afrikaans language in South Africa has come to be associated with apartheid. Will Swahili in Uganda become identified with militarism? The
children of Soweto in South Africa refused to learn Afrikaans because it-was the voice of apartheid. Will Ugandan kids now refuse to learn Swahili because it was once the language of the barracks? The analogy may be distant - but not entirely far fetched. Fortunately the liberators of Uganda have themselves been Swahili speakers. The liberators have been Tanzanians allied to precisely those Ugandan`s who have lived long enough in Tanzania to have improved their Swahili. Prospects for Swahili in Uganda are, therefore, still relatively good, and the Amin years were a major contribution to the consolidation of this language in the
country. The slow Swahilisation of Uganda is in turn a crucial process in the broad cultural integration of East Africa as a whole.
General Idi Amin eating a piece of roast chicken, while watching a parade, 1978
Amin's Positive Side
There is, however, a positive side to the saga of someone like Idi Amin. No one who fired the imagination of so many millions of oppressed people in different parts of the world could have been entirely evil. For at least the first few years of his rule, Amin was a towering symbol of naive but heroic resistance to the mighty nations of the world - a symbol of the semi-literate standing up to the pretensions of sophistication, a symbol of the underprivileged standing up to the all powerful. And yet, this same Amin was one of the most brutal rulers of the 1970s. On the one hand, he was clearly a villain of Uganda; on the other, he seemed to have risen to become a hero of the Third World.
What did this tell us about the 'New International Moral Order'? Was there indeed a moral cleavage, as well as an economic gap, between the developed and industrialised countries of Europe, North America and Japan on the one side, and the developing countries of the rest of Asia, Africa, Latin America on the other?
It would, of course, be quite untrue to suggest that the Third World approved of Amin's brutalities against his own people. What needs more explaining is the ambivalence of the Third World about Idi Amin, rather than any unqualified approval of him. Much of the West was quite clear in its verdict - the man was evil and should disappear from the scene as soon as possible. For much of the Third World Idi Amin, at least for part of his period in office, was not a case of unmitigated evil. He had that profoundly dialectical quality of heroic evil. And whether one applauded the heroism or lamented or denounced the evil depended upon one's priorities. In other words, Amin's significance in the 1970s was more positively in international affairs than in domestic affairs. The degree to which the Third World was ready at times to forgive his domestic excesses provided he remained in resistance to the mighty, was indicative of a major moral cleavage between the northern hemisphere of the affluent and the southern hemisphere of the exploited and underprivileged.
Almost six years after Amin took over power in Uganda, President Carter rose to power in the US. Carter decided to become a new moral voice of the North. His proclaimed crusade for human rights in different parts of the world was intended to be global. On the one side, it turned out to be a continuation of the ideological battle between the Soviet bloc and the West; but instead of simply proclaiming himself anti-communist - as the America of John Foster Dulles tended to do - Carter led the more positive, normative crusade of favouring civil liberties, the satisfaction of basic human needs, and the promotion of liberal values and compassion. The North-South implications of Carter's strategy clearly had a bearing on southern rulers like Idi Amin. Let us first take a closer comparative look at these two leaders before we derive wider conclusions about their significance for the 'New International Moral Order'.
Idi Amin`s family
Preacher Carter and Warror Amin
One of the first differences one noticed in a comparison between Carter and Amin was the huge difference between their respective bases of power. Carter was President of industrially the most powerful and perhaps militarily still the mightiest country in the world; Idi Amin was the ruler of a relatively small African country which had become under him one of the world's poorest countries. Carter came to power in a free competitive election; Idi Amin usurped power in a military coup. Once elected Carter was the political centre of one of the most stable political systems in the world; Idi Amin was for a while the political centre of one of the more chaotic and chronically unpredictable political arrangements of the 1970s. There was therefore a substantial difference in their power bases, as well as in the legitimacy of these bases.
The personal style of these two leaders is also at variance. It is possible to emphasise in Carter's style the metaphor of the preacher. With regard to Amin one could focus on the image of the warrior. In moral terms, Carter has been a preacher of human rights. To him and to most people, even among Amin's own admirers, the Ugandan ruler was one of the great violators of such human rights. And yet, even with these apparent differences there were areas of similarity.
From 1977 Carter headed a country which was at the centre of world politics, but he himself came from the periphery of that country, a little town in Georgia. From 1971 to 1979 Idi Amin headed a country which was peripheral in world politics, but in addition, he, like Carter, came from a peripheral part of his own society. Carter assumed power in a mood of moral righteousness after Watergate. Idi Amin also assumed power in a mood of moral righteousness after abuses of power and political excesses under President Milton Obote. Carter declared his readiness to purify the nation and restore its moral purpose. Idi Amin made similar proclamations in his own society, and moved in the direction of imposing a new national code of conduct, ranging from control of drinking hours to insistence on moral decorum in dress. Carter came to power, seemingly influenced by religious fervour; he is after all among the twice born. Idi Amin also came to power seemingly motivated by religious aspirations, ranging from the ambition to create a truly ecumenical state in Uganda to the apparent conviction that he was in communion with God and was His instrument for social and political reform. Carter aimed to lead a moral crusade in Washington DC itself and beyond. Idi Amin sought to lead a moral crusade within Uganda and then to link it to a political crusade against imperialism worldwide.
Idi Amin, seen here with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Col Gaddafi
Significance for Blacks
In comparing Carter and Amin, one should also examine the significance they held for black people within America. Black America is, after all, practically the second largest black nation in the world. It is second only to Nigeria in population, unless more reliable figures for Ethiopia than those we now have show a larger black population than that of America - assuming, that is, that Ethiopia as we know it today survives. Uganda, on the other hand, is one of the middle-range African countries in terms of population, and definitely one of the smaller ones in area. Both the ascent of Jimmy Carter to power and the activities of Idi Amin in
power raised the hopes and sometimes stimulated the imaginations of black Americans. In the case of Carter, the optimism was partly based on the role that black Americans had played to bring him into power at alL. Carter's margin of victory over Ford was narrow, and he would not have been elected if the vast
majority of black American voters had not chosen him.
The optimism of black America when Carter came into power was also based on his being a southerner who had dared to be liberal within the South, and so,it was presumed, understood black people and their aspirations much more than northern politicians tended to. Carter's commitment to a moral approach also
seemed to augur well for the underprivileged in the country, among whom blacks were the largest single section. The Carter appointments after he assumed power disappointed many blacks, but the eloquence of Andrew Young as US Ambassador to the UN partly compensated for major gaps elsewhere in Carter's
administration. The job which Andrew Young held was not especially powerful in policy-making within the US, but it tended to command considerable publicity. An Andrew Young highly visible but not very powerful went some way towards giving black Americans a sense of participation in global events.
The black American response to the phenomenon of Idi Amin arose partly out of black enthusiasm for Amin as a black nationalist. Amin's expulsion of the Asians in 1972, in the face of massive opposition from Britain, whose citizens the majority of the expelled Asians were, was to many black Americans a stroke of nationalistic genius. Amin seemed determined to put Uganda's destiny into black hands. His dedication was not necessarily to the creation of a kinder or more humane Ugandan society, but simply the creation of a situation where black people of Uganda wrenched their economic destiny from the hands of non-black people. Amin's economic war against foreign control of the Ugandan economy aroused memories of black leaders in the western he