Idi Amin
Idi Amin (c. 1924 –
August 16,
2003) was an
army officer and
President of Uganda (1971 to 1979).
Amin's tenure witnessed much sectarian violence, including the persecution of the
Acholi,
Lango, and other ethnic groups as well as Christians in
Uganda. Reports of the
torture and
murder of 300,000 to 500,000 Ugandans during Amin's presidency have been widespread since the 1970s.
He gave himself the title: His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Alhaji Doctor Idi Amin Dada,
VC,
DSO, MC, Conqueror of the British Empire.
["Idi Amin", The Guardian, August 18 2003]Idi Amin never wrote his biography nor authorized one to be written. There is some disagreement as to when and where he was born. Biographical sources usually hold that he was born in
Koboko town,
West Nile Province, in 1924 or 1925
[Encyclopædia Britannica: Idi Amin]. According to the Ugandan researcher Fred Guweddeko of
Makerere University, Idi Amin was born as
Idi Awo-Ongo Angoo in
Kampala on
May 17 1928 to his father Andreas Nyabire (1889 – 1976) – an ethnic
Kakwa and
Catholic who converted to
Islam in 1910 and changed his name to Amin Dada
["Rejected then taken in by dad; a timeline", The Monitor, March 1 2004]. Other sources say that Dada was not his father's name, but a nickname Amin acquired later
["'Dada' always rubbed Kenya the wrong way", Sunday Nation, August 17 2003].
Abandoned by his father, Idi Amin grew up with his maternal family. His mother, according to Guweddeko, was called Assa Aatte (1904 – 1970), an ethnic
Lugbara and a traditional herbalist who among others treated members of
Buganda royalty. He joined an Islamic school in
Bombo in 1941, where he excelled in reciting the
Qur'an. After a few years he left the school, and did odd jobs before being recruited to the army by a British colonial army officer.
Amin joined the
King's African Rifles (KAR) of the British colonial army as a private in 1946. He served in the 21st KAR infantry brigade in Kenya and Somalia. In 1952 his battalion was deployed against the
Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. Amin was considered a skilled soldier; however, he also had a reputation for cruelty. He was promoted to corporal in 1952, to sergeant in 1953, and to sergeant-major and platoon commander in 1958. The following year, he was made
effendi (warrant officer), the highest rank possible for a
Black African in the colonial British army. Disputably, his nickname "Dada" was acquired while serving in Kenya. Every time he was caught with a woman in his tent, he pleaded that she was his
"dada" (sister), in order to be let off the hook by his commanders.
Amin returned to Uganda in 1954. In 1961, with Ugandan independence two years away, he became one of the first two Ugandans to become commissioned officers with the rank of
Lieutenant. He was then assigned to quell the cattle rustling between Uganda's
Karamojong and Kenya's
Turkana nomads. It is alleged that in order to disarm the Karamojong and Turkana, Idi Amin's platoon threatened to cut off their penises unless they revealed where they had hidden the spears.
During his time in the army, Amin was an accomplished
sportsman. Besides being a champion
swimmer he held Uganda's
light heavyweight boxing championship from 1951 to 1960.
After independence in October, 1962,
Milton Obote, Uganda's first
prime minister, rewarded Idi Amin for his loyalty by promoting him to captain in 1963 and deputy commander of the army in 1964. In 1965 Obote and Amin were implicated in a deal to smuggle gold, coffee, and ivory out of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. A parliamentary investigation demanded by President
Mutesa (also the
Kabaka (King) of
Buganda), put Obote on the defensive; he promoted Amin to general and made him chief-of-staff, had five ministers arrested, suspended the 1962 constitution, and declared himself as the new president. In 1966 Mutesa was forced into exile in Britain where he died in 1969.
Amin began recruiting members of his own tribe into the army as well as many
Muslims from his West Nile area to the northwest of Uganda near the
Sudanese border. Relations with Obote began to sour. Obote first responded by putting Amin under house arrest, and when this failed to undermine his support, Amin was given a non-executive position in the army.
After hearing that Obote was planning to arrest him for misappropriating army funds, he seized power in a
coup on
January 25,
1971, when Obote was attending a
Commonwealth summit meeting in
Singapore.
Idi Amin was initially welcomed both within Uganda and by the international community. In an internal memo, the
British Foreign Office described him as "A splendid type and a good
football player". He gave former king and president Mutesa, who had died in exile, a state burial in April, 1971, freed many political prisoners, and disbanded the secret police, the General Service Unit.
He promised to hold elections within months. Shortly after taking power, however, Amin established the so-called "State Research Bureau," which were actually his own brand of
death squads to hunt down and murder Obote's supporters as well as much of the intelligentsia, whom he distrusted. Military leaders who had not supported the coup were executed, many by beheading.
Obote took refuge in
Tanzania, from where he attempted to regain the country through a military invasion in September, 1972, without success. Obote supporters within the Ugandan army, mainly from the
Acholi and
Lango tribes, were also involved in the invasion. Amin retaliated by bombing Tanzanian towns, and purging the army of Acholi and Lango officers. The ethnic violence grew to include the whole of the army, and then Ugandan civilians. As the violence increased, Amin became more and more paranoid, fearing a coup within his own government. The Nile Mansions Hotel in Kampala became infamous as Amin's interrogation and torture centre.
On
August 4,
1972, Amin gave Uganda's 50,000
Asians (mainly of
Indian origin) 90 days to leave the country, following an alleged dream in which, he claimed, God told him to expel them. Their expulsion resulted in a significant decline in Uganda's Muslim population.[
1] Many
Asians owned big businesses in Uganda and many
Indians were born in the country, their ancestors having come from India to Uganda when the country was still a
British colony. Those who remained were deported from the cities to the countryside, although most Asians were granted asylum in
Great Britain.[
2] Ugandan soldiers during this period engaged in theft and violence against the Asians with impunity. The same year, Amin severed diplomatic relations with
Israel while turning to
Muammar al-Qaddafi of
Libya as well as the
Soviet Union for support. In 1973 the
United States closed its embassy in
Kampala and in 1976 the
United Kingdom closed its
High Commission in Uganda.
|
In 1975 Amin staged a photo op of four British businessmen carrying him in a palanquin while a Swedish businessman shaded him from the sun[3]. The event was a [[satirical |
inversion of colonial stereotypes[
4] ]]
Uganda under Amin had embarked on a large military buildup, which raised concerns in
Nairobi. Early in June 1975, Kenyan officials impounded a large convoy of
Soviet-made arms en route to Uganda at
Mombasa port.
The tension reached climax in February of 1976 when President Amin suddenly announced that he would investigate the possibility that large parts of
southern Sudan and western and central Kenya, up to within 32 km of Nairobi, were historically a part of colonial Uganda. The Kenyan government response came two days later in a stern statement that said Kenya would not part with "a single inch of territory". Amin finally backed down after the Kenyan army deployed troops and armoured personnel carriers in defensive positions along the Kenya-Uganda border.
Amin also had strong ties to the
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The Israeli embassy was offered to them as headquarters; and Flight 139, the
Air France Airbus hijacked from
Athens on
June 27,
1976, was invited by Amin to stop at
Entebbe International Airport in the city of
Entebbe, 32 km from
Kampala. The hijackers demanded the release of 53 PLO and
Red Army Faction prisoners in return for the 256 hostages and were assisted by Amin's troops. Amin visited the hostages more than once. At midnight on
July 3,
1976, Israeli commandos attacked the airport and freed all but two of the hostages. (One was killed by the Israeli forces, while another, 75-year-old Dora Bloch, who had been taken to a hospital before the rescue, was killed under Amin's direct orders by two army officers after the hostage rescue.) In the operation, Uganda's air force was badly crippled as its
fighter jets were destroyed (
see also Operation Entebbe).
The success of the Israeli operation largely contributed to his downfall, while increased resistance and sabotage operations crippled the nation during his final years. Partly on the basis of his "visions" and erratic behaviour, Idi Amin is often believed to have suffered from
neurosyphilis: Deborah Hayden makes the case for this hypothesis in her
Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis.
Among the most prominent people killed by Idi Amin were:
Benedicto Kiwanuka, the former Prime Minister and later Chief Justice;
Janani Luwum, the
Anglican Archbishop;
Joseph Mubiru, the former Governor of
the Central Bank; Frank Kalimuzo, the Vice Chancellor of
Makerere University; and Byron Kawadwa, a prominent playwright. It is also rumoured that an Irish missionary was killed.
As the years went on, Amin became increasingly erratic and outspoken. He had his tunics specially lengthened so that he could wear many
World War II medals, including the
Military Cross and
Victoria Cross. He granted himself a number of titles, including "King of
Scotland". In 1977, after Britain broke diplomatic relations with his regime, Amin declared he had beaten the British and conferred on himself the decoration of CBE (Conqueror of the British Empire). Radio Uganda then read out the whole of his new title: "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Alhaji Dr Idi Amin Dada,
VC,
DSO, MC,
CBE"
["Idi Amin", The Guardian, August 18 2003].
Amin was fond of racing cars (of which he owned several),
boxing, and
Disney cartoons. Many foreign journalists considered him a somewhat comical and
eccentric figure; he was widely
caricatured in
the west as a murderous buffoon. There were also rumours that he was a
cannibal, though this has never been proven.
In October, 1978, Amin ordered the invasion of
Tanzania while at the same time attempting to cover up an army
mutiny. With help of Libyan troops, Amin tried to annex the northern Tanzanian province of
Kagera. Tanzania, under
President Julius Nyerere, declared war on Uganda, then began a counterattack, enlisting the country's population of Ugandan exiles.
On
April 11,
1979, Amin was forced to flee the capital,
Kampala. The Tanzanian army took the city with the help of the Ugandan and
Rwandan
guerrillas. Amin fled to exile, first in
Libya, where sources are divided on whether he remained until December 1979 or early 1980, before finding final asylum in
Saudi Arabia. He opened a bank account in
Jeddah and resided there, subsisting on a government stipend. The new Ugandan government chose to keep him exiled, saying that Amin would face war crimes charges if he ever returned.
On
July 20,
2003, one of his wives, Madina, reported that he was near death in a coma at the King Faisal specialist hospital in Jeddah. She pleaded with Uganda's president
Yoweri Museveni that he might return to die in Uganda. The reply was that if he returned, he would have to "answer for his sins".
Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia on
August 16,
2003, aged 79, and was buried in Jeddah. On
August 17,
David Owen told an interviewer for
BBC Radio 4 that while he was the United Kingdom's
Foreign Secretary (1977 – 1979), he had suggested to have Amin
assassinated. His idea was directly rejected. Owen said, "Amin's regime was the worst of all. It's a shame that we allowed him to keep in power for so long."
He is buried in Ruwais cemetery in
Jeddah.
*
Idi Amin Dada - A documentary directed by French filmmaker
Barbet Schroeder *
Raid on Entebbe (film) (1977) - Film depicting the events of Operation Entebbe
*
Rise and Fall of Idi Amin (1980) - An
exploitation film recreating Idi Amin's atrocities
*
The Last King of Scotland - Upcoming
Hollywood movie directed by
Kevin Macdonald and based on the
novel of the same name by Giles Foden.
Forest Whitaker will star as Amin alongside
Kerry Washington and
Gillian Anderson.
*
List of converts to Islam *
List of Dictators *
Political parties of Uganda *
Politics of Uganda *
President for Life *
President of Uganda *
Uganda *
Uganda under Amin, part of the
History of Uganda series
*
Tanzania People's Defence Force*
Idi Amin Cabinet Meeting Video *
BBC Article and Video - 25 January 1971: Idi Amin ousts Uganda president (BBC)
*
Separate fact from fiction in Amin stories. Originally published in
The Monitor *
Another biography of Amin *
Film about Idi Amin - Uganda
