Idi Amin

Dictator of Uganda (1971-1979)

• Born: c. 1925
• Birthplace: Koboko, West Nile Province, British East Africa (now in Uganda)
• Died: August 16, 2003
• Place of death: Jiddah, Saudi Arabia

From 1971 to 1979, Amin imposed his rule on Uganda, breeding violence, lawlessness, and economic chaos. His regime was dominated by human rights abuses, including ethnic persecution, and other crimes against humanity.

Early Life

Idi Amin (EE-dee ah-MEEN) was born in northwest Uganda and was of mixed ethnic and religious heritage. His father came from the Kakwa peoples of Uganda and was a follower of Islam. His mother was of the Lugbara peoples, a farming people of Uganda, and practiced traditional medicine and witchcraft. In the 1940’s, colonial officials considered Amin unintelligent and uneducated. However, it should be noted that Amin adopted his father’s religion and therefore may have received a religious education. British officers were quite enthusiastic about Amin’s physical proportions (he was six feet four inches in height and weighed 280 pounds) and athletic ability.

Like many African men of his time, Amin served in the colonial armed forces of Great Britain. He enlisted in the King’s African Rifles (KAR) in 1946 and served throughout the 1950’s. Formed in 1902, the KAR consisted of two to three thousand enlisted men of African descent, who were commanded by British officers. Although Amin spent the better part of three decades in uniform, he did not learn the lessons a soldier might receive in waging traditional war against clearly defined, uniformed enemies. Instead, Amin received on-the-job training in brutalizing civilians.

As the British Empire unraveled in the 1950’s, Amin and the regiment were frequently tasked with suppressing disturbances in East Africa. Perhaps the most familiar of these campaigns was the suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. In 1952, armed unrest broke out among Kenya’s Kikuyu tribe after decades of economic oppression; various acts ranging from civil disobedience to murder were committed against white settlers and native people loyal to the colonial regime. The colonial government with the help of KAR eventually defeated the movement with mass arrests, curfews, and shoot-on-sight orders.

Life’s Work

By 1961, on the cusp of Ugandan independence, Amin gained an important protector in Uganda’s first prime minister, Milton Obote. Sometimes considered the founder of Ugandan independence, Obote led Uganda from 1962 to 1971 and from 1980 to 1985. Obote saw Amin as someone who could be relied on to do the regime’s dirty work.

The tragic experience of Africa in the mid- to late-twentieth century demonstrates how independence was often followed by political chaos. Chaos paved the way for a generation of dictators who took power with a standard promise to bring order.

Uganda had been formed in 1914 as a protectorate from at least five ethnically unrelated chiefdoms. Its British administrators limited the economic, educational, and leadership opportunities for natives. The British also failed to build a new national identity to unify Ugandans of all backgrounds; instead, regional and ethnic loyalties were allowed to remain dominant. For Uganda, winning independence from Great Britain required political cooperation between the new political elite, like Obote, and regional nobility, including Edward Mutesa II, the traditional king of a dominant ethnic group. In the early years of the 1960’s, Obote served as prime minister, with Mutesa as president and commander in chief of the armed forces. This arrangement did not last.

In 1966, Obote declared a state of emergency, suspended civil rights and the constitution, stripped power from Mutesa, and ordered Amin to attack the king. There are suspicions that Ugandan agents assassinated Mutesa in London in 1969. Obote’s dictatorship drove a wedge between Obote and Amin. During January 24-25, 1971, while Obote was out of the country attending a conference of British Commonwealth leaders, Amin seized control of Uganda, and Obote fled to Tanzania. Obote’s government had been increasingly dictatorial and Amin promised a fresh start. After seizing power, Amin made a radio broadcast to the Ugandan people in which he struck a reassuring pose, representing himself as a simple, dutiful soldier who had been called to do an unpleasant duty for the good of the people. He proclaimed economic recovery, promised to free political prisoners, and promised free elections within three months.

Many psychologists have observed that situational pressures can create paranoia in normally healthy people. Amin’s background suggests to many that he would have been prone to delusional thinking, given his intellectual limitations and his lack of life experience outside the military. The cost of such hindsight was the lives of perhaps a half million Ugandans and untold misery for countless others. Amin was relentless in butchering those he suspected of disloyalty, including sections of the Ugandan army. While he boasted of Uganda’s military, Amin’s paranoia ensured weakness: To prevent rebellion, Amin denied ammunition to army units, preventing weapons practice.

Amin was a catastrophe for the Ugandan economy as well, as he relentlessly plundered the nation’s wealth. In 1972, Amin announced that God was advising him to expel the forty thousand to fifty thousand Indian businesspeople who lived in Uganda. Many had been in Uganda for decades and represented an enormous part of the Ugandan economy. Amin gave them a few months to get out of the country and seized all their fixed property and business assets. In Uganda, the decision was promoted as one that created instant millionaires through a mass transfer of wealth; in reality, the businesses were given to Amin’s cronies.

Amin was perceived internationally as a buffoon and a bully. In June, 1976, terrorists hijacked an Air France flight, which was permitted to land at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. The hijackers announced that unless their demands were met, all Jewish hostages on the plane would be killed. At the time, Amin had been trying to cement closer ties with the pan-Arab world (the hijackers were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, and the German Revolutionäre Zellen, or Revolutionary Cells). Although Amin promised the terrorists safe haven at the international airport, within a few days, Israeli special forces were able to rescue the more than one hundred hostages and fly them to safety. Enraged, Amin murdered the last hostage, an elderly Jewish woman who had been injured by the PFLP and was recovering in a Kampala, Uganda, hospital.

Throughout the 1970’s, Amin blustered menacingly. Relations between Uganda, under Amin, and Tanzania, under President Julius Nyerere, were never amicable; they hated each other. Nyerere, an intellectual, had a reputation for religious devotion and incorruptibility. Amin, in contrast, was a hypocrite, unabashedly corrupt, and a bully. On occasion, he would challenge Nyerere to a boxing match. In 1979, with chaos mounting, Amin decided to invade Tanzania. To Amin’s disbelief, Ugandan rebels and the Tanzanian army routed his forces.

After the failed invasion, Amin fled to Saudi Arabia, where he lived in exile for the next twenty-four years. In a few interviews, Amin claimed that he enjoyed a quiet life away from politics. At times, however, he revealed plans to foment unrest in Uganda. In 1989, he tried to return to Uganda but was turned back in Nigeria. Amin died in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2003, unrepentant and unpunished.

Significance

In the 1940’s, the American psychologist Hervey M. Cleckley observed that some mentally ill persons are able to wear a “mask of sanity,” a public pose of normalcy hiding a private pathology. Amin seems to have been such a person, at times appearing as a leader of the people. Several writers, for example, have mentioned incidents where Amin would abruptly join in the dancing at street festivals. At times, however, his mask slipped, revealing a leader who was, in the words of journalist Riccardo Orizio, both “sane and insane at the same time.”

When overwhelmed by pressures, it appears that Amin stripped away the mask of sanity entirely. He was accused of personally torturing and murdering Janani Luwum, the Anglican archbishop of Uganda. Amin purged ethnic groups he considered disloyal, murdered rivals and family members, and encouraged ethnic violence. It is impossible to estimate how many Ugandans were brutalized, raped, or suffered through other forms of severe trauma at the hands of Amin and his followers.

For a person whose military training focused on maintaining order, Amin’s legacy was disorder throughout Uganda. His legacy, too, has a positive side: His quarter century of exile without facing trial for his crimes has provoked international debate on how to ensure that those who perpetuate crimes against humanity are effectively punished. Although no solutions have been adopted, the international community continues to confront and address the issue.

Bibliography

Baker, Bruce. “Twilight of Impunity for Africa’s Presidential Criminals.” Quarterly 25, no. 8 (2004): 1487-1499. A scholarly account of international rationalizations for not trying Amin for his crimes.

Cleckley, Hervey M. The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality. St. Louis, Mo.: Mosby, 1941. A psychiatrist grapples with the question of whether some mentally disabled persons are able to appear sane.

Gwyn, David. Idi Amin: Death-Light of Africa. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977. One of the first books to document Amin’s crimes against humanity.

Kasfir, Nelson. “Uganda’s Uncertain Quest for Recovery.” Current History 84, no. 501 (April, 1985): 169-174. A scholarly study of the last years of the Amin regime and the years that followed.

Kyembra, Henry. A State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin. New York: Grossett, 1977. An account of Amin and his tactics, written by a former cabinet minister.

Orizio, Riccardo. Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators. Translated by Avril Braconi. New York: Walker, 2003. A set of short interviews with Amin during his exile in Saudi Arabia.

Tripp, Aili Mari. “The Changing Face of Authoritarianism in Africa: The Case of Uganda.” Africa Today 50, no. 3 (Spring, 2004): 1-26. The author notes that Amin’s style of government by personal fiat is no longer common in Africa, but that Uganda remains haunted by his legacy.