Idi Amin, the former president of Uganda, had a dream in August 1972. “I have dreamt,” he told a gathering in Karamoja, northeastern Uganda, “that unless I take action, our economy will be taken over. The people who are not Ugandans should leave.”

He left Karamoja by helicopter and stopped at the Tororo airstrip in eastern Uganda. He had sent word that he wanted to address the army. There, he announced the dream again to a hurriedly organised parade by the Rubongi military unit. Some Asians were thrown into a panic. Others thought Amin was bluffing.

P. K. Kuruvilla had just bought a building in Kimathi Avenue in downtown Kampala, the capital. It was a home for his insurance company, United Assurance. He says: “We invested all the money into buying the building. We took a loan from the bank, I had a house in Kololo and I mortgaged it to raise money for the building.”

Then President Amin announced the expulsion. “I thought he was not serious,” says Kuruvilla. “I had put all my money plus a loan into the United Assurance property. We had confidence that we were going into a new era.”

Idi Amin hugging a lady





But Idi Amin meant every word. Ugandan-Asians had to leave in 90 days. Kuruvilla first sent off his family and lingered around just in case Amin changed his mind. But Amin’s “economic war” was real.

The Asians had to make arrangements and hand over their business interests to their nominees. The arrangement among most Asian families was that one would be a Ugandan, another Indian, another British. So the non-Ugandans transferred their businesses to the Ugandans.

The British High Commission became a camp. Many of those with Indian passports wanted to go to the UK. The three months’ deadline was fast approaching.

Meanwhile many Ugandans celebrated and lined the streets daily to chant, “Go home Bangladeshi! Go home Bangladeshi!”

Colonial Uganda had strongly favoured Asians. Many arrived with the British colonialists to do clerical work or semi-skilled manual labour in farming and construction. They had a salary, which became the capital to start businesses.

Aspiring Ugandan entrepreneurs on the other hand faced many odds. The British colonial government forbade Africans to gin and market cotton. In 1932 when the Uganda Cotton Society tried to obtain high prices by ginning and marketing its own cotton and “eliminate the Indian middleman,” it was not allowed.

Deported Ugandan Asians

The banks – Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, and Standard Bank of South Africa – did not lend to many Africans. As such, the Africans could not participate in wholesale trade because the colonial government issued wholesale licenses only to traders with permanent buildings of stone or concrete. Very few African traders had such buildings. It was clear that the colonial wanted native Ugandans to remain hewers of wood and drawers of water.

By 1959, when a trade boycott of all foreign-owned stores was pronounced by Augustine Kamya of the Uganda National Movement, Africans handled less than 10% of national trade. Ambassador Paul Etiang served as Amin’s minister for five years. He was the permanent secretary at the ministry of foreign affairs in 1972. In an interview with New African, he explained that the expulsion came about partly because of the racial segregation inherited from Uganda’s past.





British apartheid

Up till independence in 1962, there was an unwritten but trusted social order in the colonial administration where Europeans were regarded as first class, Asians as second class, and Africans as third class.

For example, in trains there was a first class coach for Europeans and a few Asians, and there were coaches for Asians, and coaches for Africans. Apartheid did not start in South Africa or the US; it started with the “mother country”, Great Britain.

The same order prevailed with other facilities such as toilets. The segregation was not supported by law but it was observed in practice. Africans were not expected to go to the Imperial Hotel (The Grand Imperial Hotel in downtown Kampala). There was a sign outside the hotel that stayed there until 1952. It read: “Africans and dogs not allowed”. The waiters were Asians.

“Come independence in 1962,” Ambassador Etiang explains, “one significant provision in the independence constitution was an article which stated that those people who were not Ugandans as at Uganda’s independence on 9 October 1962, had two years to make up their minds, whether to become citizens of the new Uganda or adopt the status of British-protected persons, in which case the latter would have a British passport.”

Many Asians at the time applied for British citizenship but because business was good in Uganda with no competition from the locals, many did not leave.

In 1969, Britain tabled a revised version of its Immigration Act, the Patriot’s Act. Commonwealth passport holders would need a visa to enter Britain. Britain was compelled to pass that Act as a condition for its entry into the European Economic Commission (EEC). Now, it was only citizens of member states of the EEC that had the right to travel to Britain without a visa.

“Commonwealth members reacted to it very strongly,” Ambassador Etiang recalls. “This is what brought about the immigration discussion in Uganda.”

The Ugandan government, then under President Milton Obote, started asking: “How do we deal with all these Asians? If Britain was making rules barring us from opportunities in Britain, then we also have the right to have our own rules to regulate those who are coming here.”

That was when Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania realised that they needed their own Immigration Acts, and the first Immigration Acts were subsequent passed that year in reaction to the British Patriot’s Act. By 1971, the issue of Asians being Ugandans or not, remained unaddressed beyond the provision in the 1962 Constitution. “But this is what I believe triggered the expulsion under Amin,” says Ambassador Etiang.

The spark

The head of the Religious Services at the time, Col Khamis Safi, was from the Nubian tribe and a Muslim like Amin. Safi was the son of a man believed to have walked to Mecca, on pilgrimage, in 1917. It is a popular Nubian story. Because he survived the treacherous journey by land, he was deemed to have been a holy man. And because he was holy even his children must be holy. Khamis Safi was therefore an obvious choice to be head of Religious Services.

“By 1972,” Ambassador Etiang recalls, “Khamis Safi was usually the last person to visit Amin every day at State House. On 4 July 1972, I happened to be among the last three to leave. There was Khamis Safi and Mustafa Ramathan, who was the minister for cooperatives. We were having a light chat when Amin came in.

“Khamis posed a question to Amin: ‘Afande, have you ever asked yourself why God made you a president?’ Amin replied by asking Khamis: ‘What do you mean?’

“‘God appointed you president,’ Khamis repeated. ‘There are many injustices in this country. Each tribe has a place they call home. Even Etiang here, the Itesots have a place. But have you ever asked yourself, where do the Nubians come from? As far as I know God made you president to rectify the wrongs that have been handed to Nubians in this country. We are the ones who brought Captain Baker here, we are the ones who founded Kampala. Kampala is Nubian territory.’

“Amin was listening. You should have been there when this supposedly holy man was talking to Amin, he would be docile,” said Etiang.

Amin said, maybe it is true. But Mustafa Ramathan challenged the argument that Kampala was Nubian territory.

But Khamis insisted that Nubians too needed a place. “We brought the Muzungu (white man) here on our backs. He set up camp at Old Kampala. This place is ours.”

Amin said, “OK, we’ll think about it.”

Three weeks later, Amin left for Karamoja by helicopter. There, he revealed that he had had a dream that what Khamis had said was true. That God had revealed to him that unless he obeyed the advice of the holy son, Uganda risked being taken over by the imperialists.

“I believe that was the origin of the expulsion,” Ambassador Etiang says. “Once you told Amin something and he liked it, he would keep it to himself and then later put it in his own way like it was his idea.”

When Amin told the cabinet about the expulsion, it was greeted with scepticism. The civil service received the implementation orders as a cabinet directive. The attorney general was directed to draft an expulsion order. Amin was later told he could not expel all the Asians because some were Ugandans.

“I met Khamis at State House again,” Ambassador Etiang remembers. “He told Amin in Kiswahili that what you have done is very good but if you want to remove this tree from here, you don’t just cut off the branches. The idea of only non-citizens leaving is like a branch. Remove the whole tree. An Indian is an Indian. He can have three passports at a time. All of them could be with two or more passports. Amin said okay.

“The Asians who suffered a lot are those who professed to be Ugandan because while the other ones had three months’ notice, the Ugandan-Asians had less than a month to leave.”

They had to abandon the property given to them by their departing relatives and friends. Says Etiang: “This man Khamis Safi is the single individual who brought all this up.”

The British foreign secretary at the time, James Callaghan, came to plead for the Asians, but Amin refused to change his mind. The harsh impact was felt by the native Africans. The Asians were importers, and most of the imported goods they had imported got stuck in Mombasa, the Kenyan seaport. Nobody claimed the goods and Kenyans got them for peanuts.

Uganda was hit by an acute shortage of essential goods. What saved the country was that coffee had the highest value ever at the time. One wagon of coffee was $1.8m.

“I remember 22 August 1977,” recalls Etiang, “that time we were acutely short of paraffin. Iraq gave us paraffin – from one Muslim brother to another – but Kenyans refused to allow it to transit. ‘This is very bad indeed,’ said Amin. Then he told me: ‘Go to your boss and see if he can allow it to transit through Dar es Salaam [Tanzania]’.”

Etiang, now the foreign minister, went to see President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania who agreed that the paraffin should transit through Mutukula – all two million litres. Amin’s government distributed the Asian businesses to Ugandans. Many of them collapsed in no time. One lucky recipient was the former Kampala City mayor, Hajj Nasser Ntege Ssebagala, who believes that Ugandans failed to run the shops because of lack of experience. Some sold the shirts by collar size where size seven would be sold at seven shillings.

“The point was to get Africans to start doing business,” says Ssebagala. “Out of the many failures, there were a handful of success stories. That’s how a middle class is created. Amin wanted people to get used to money, to learn to run a business. The idea was to give a chance to Africans to come up,”

Ssebagala says Amin demonstrated that he cared about Ugandans. “I don’t think we shall get another Ugandan with the kind of nationalism like Amin’s,” Ssebagala says, without blinking an eyelid.

In 1973, Amin’s government issued the Properties and Businesses (Acquisition) Decree. Under it, Asian properties were expropriated by the government and sold.

Amin agreed to pay the Asians who lost their property, and indeed set up a fund at the central bank, the Bank of Uganda.

The Asians who left for Canada and England were paid through the Uganda High Commission for the value of their properties and 30% as disturbance allowance. However, in 1983, under a new president, Milton Obote, the Expropriated Properties Act was instituted to provide for the transfer of expropriated properties to their former owners. Then long after President Yoweri Museveni had taken power (he came into office in January 1986 after chasing out Obote’s second government), he returned the properties to their original Asian owners.

“That’s how some Asians came back and repossessed their properties, for which they had already been compensated,” explains Ssebagala.

LR Gen Mustafa Adrisi, Feild Marshal Idi Amin Dada, Abdul-Nasser Mwanga Amin, Lt.Colonel Isaac Maliyamungu and Moses Kenyi Amin, 1975 OAU Summit Kampala.

IDI AMIN

Idi Amin, the former dictator of Uganda and self-styled "Conqueror of the British Empire" who died on Friday aged around 78, was one of the most reviled individuals in recent history.

Six foot four and, at his peak, 20 stone, the former heavyweight boxing champion of Uganda appeared to relish his monstrous reputation. Subject to "visitations from God", and reputedly boasting a collection of human heads extensive enough to require its own deep-freeze, Amin was popularly considered to be deranged.

This impression was reinforced by claims from one of his surviving physicians that he had at various times administered treatment for hypomania, schizophrenia, tertiary syphilis and general paralysis of the insane. Idi Amin and his wife, Sarah

Amin, however, survived too long, exhibiting too shrewd an instinct for manipulation and too ruthless a capacity for cruelty to be dismissed as a mere madman.

Throughout his disastrous reign, he encouraged the West to cultivate a dangerous ambivalence towards him. His genial grin, penchant for grandiose self-publicity and ludicrous public statements on international affairs led to his adoption as a comic figure. He was easily parodied, and was granted his own fictional weekly commentary in Punch. Amin was also a national light heavyweight boxing champion from 1951 to 1960, besides being an excellent rugby player and swimmer.

However, this fascination, verging on affection, for the grotesqueness of the individual occluded the singular plight of his nation. As many as half a million Ugandans died under his regime, in well-documented ways ranging from mass executions to enforced self-cannibalism. In one of the most ugly incidents in post-war history, the majority of Uganda's Asian population was expelled. Uganda, the "Pearl of Africa", a "fairytale world" in the eyes of the young Winston Churchill, was pillaged and bankrupted. Amin's famous summation of his attitude towards opponents - "I ate them before they ate me" - was later given an unholy twist. His exiled Health Minister, Henry Kyemba, confessed that "on several occasions he told me quite proudly that he had eaten the organs or flesh of his human victims". 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. As dictator, the stereotype mercilessly mocked its former masters. Although he inspired laughter in the West, the joke was a savage one, and it was not at Amin's expense, but at the expense of those who laughed. Idi Amin Dada Oumee was born around 1925 at Koboko, in the impoverished north-western part of Uganda, into a poor farming family of the small Kakwa tribe. A large child with a reputation as a playground bully, Amin received little formal education and, attracted by the mystique and power of the British military, joined the KAR aged 18. He was attached first to the 11th East Africa Division, in which he fought as a rifleman in Burma during the closing days of the Second World War, and then to the 4th Uganda Battalion, in which he was dispatched to quell tribal marauders in northern Uganda. Subsequently, he was involved in operations against the Mau Mau in Kenya. Amin was a sergeant-major by 1957, which represented solid progress within a regiment where intelligence was not necessarily considered a virtue. He was popular with his English officers, who appreciated his skill on the rugby field, unquestioning obedience and touching devotion to all things British. Furthermore, he made them laugh. Once, persuaded by his commanding officer to open a bank account in which he deposited £10, he had within a few hours written nearly £2,000 worth of cheques, a prophetic indication of his future skill with figures. In 1959, faced with the problem of finding potential officers among the African troops, the British Army established the rank of "effendi" for non-commissioned African officers who were potential officer material. Amin was one of the first. Despite failing to complete courses of training in both England and Israel, he was a major by 1963, and by 1964 a colonel and deputy-commander of Uganda's Army and Air Force. Amin's rise was greatly assisted by the patronage of Dr Milton Obote, a leader in the struggle for independence who became Prime Minister in 1962. Obote had consolidated his position by forming an allegiance with the royalist party of the Baganda tribe, the largest and most influential of Uganda's many, semi-autonomous, tribal kingdoms. The Baganda King, Sir Edward William Walugembe Luwangula Mutesa III, otherwise known as King Freddie, was made President of Uganda. But the various strands of Uganda's constitution were soon in conflict, following allegations that Obote and Amin had misappropriated large sums intended to support Congelese rebels. The National Assembly demanded Amin's resignation, and Obote, facing a Parliamentary defeat, used force to suppress the opposition. Instead of dismissal, Amin was rewarded for his steely support by being given full command of the army and air force. In 1966, Obote sought to secure his authority by abolishing the old tribal kingdoms. The Baganda rebelled, and Amin again proved his loyalty by personally assaulting King Freddie's Palace with a heavy gun mounted on his own jeep. The uprising was brutally curtailed, and King Freddie fled to England, where he died three years later. In an atmosphere of growing corruption and discontent, Obote came increasingly to rely on Amin's forthright attitude towards political problem solving. Inevitably, Obote grew suspicious of Amin's ambitions. Having supped with the devil until 1970, Obote decided the spoon was not long enough. He sent Amin to Nasser's funeral in Egypt and whilst he was out of the country, purged the army leadership in order to re-establish his personal control. On his return, Amin realised that his power and life were threatened, and was compelled to show his hand. On January 25 1971, when Obote was absent attending a Commonwealth conference, key units of the army and police loyal to Amin staged a traditional coup, with Amin presiding over affairs from his imposing and heavily fortified residence on Prince Charles Drive, overlooking Kampala. In the aftermath, Amin declared himself a populist devoid of personal ambition. He would provide free and fair elections and then return the army to barracks. He took to the streets and countryside, stopping looting and dispensing personal cheques to the people, propagating an eccentric but paternal public image. The corrupt Obote regime had been particularly unpopular among the larger tribes he had discriminated against, and crowds chanting their approval of Amin thronged Kampala. Obote's political prisoners were freed, and the body of King Freddie returned for burial. One British observer wrote: "I have never encountered a more benevolent and apparently popular leader than General Amin." Upon reflection, however, Amin added that it would be at least five years before the population were ready for free elections. In the meantime, a military government would be necessary. He promptly abolished Parliament and announced he would rule by decree. The fall of Obote was greeted with delight by many outside Uganda. The country had a huge budget deficit, and the interminable tribal disputes were a constant threat to stability. Britain recognised Amin's government, though several African nations, including neighbouring Tanzania, were openly critical or hostile. Many international commentators were prepared to give Amin the benefit of the doubt. The New York Times commented on his "gentle political deftness" and talked sympathetically of the problems now facing him. In short, he was taken seriously. Whilst the West believed that Amin's priority would be to tackle Uganda's sinking economy, he devoted his energies exclusively to consolidating his grasp on power. His first objective was to ensure loyalty within the army.

Kampela, Uganda: Field-Marshal Idi Amin Dada seated at the opening of OAU Foreign Ministers meeting. 07-07-1975. In secrecy, large-scale purges began. The initial targets were members of the Acholi and Langi tribes, from which Obote and other potential rivals sprang. Killer squads and a range of security departments with names of a chilling ambiguity sprang up: "The Public Safety Unit"; "The State Research Bureau". When in doubt of whom to arrest, Amin's supporters simply picked up those whose names began with "O", a common feature of Acholi and Langi surnames. Thousands were massacred. There were stories of soldiers being herded into rooms into which hand-grenades were hurled, of senior officers locked in cells and bayoneted at leisure, of a whole officer corps at Mbarara and Jinja barracks being summoned to parade and then being crushed by tanks. In the prison cells of Mackindye, Naguru and Nakasero, prisoners were compelled to kill each other with 16 lb sledgehammers in the vain hope that they would be spared. Then the hammers were given to other prisoners, who were told the same, and so on, ad infinitum. Nor was the killing restricted to the military. By early 1972, some 5,000 Acholi and Langi soldiers, and at least twice that number of civilians had disappeared. Two American journalists, Nicholas Stroh and Robert Siedle, vanished while attempting to investigate reports of massacres. The rivers, lakes and forest around Kampala overflowed with human debris. From time to time the Owen Falls hydro-electric Dam on Lake Victoria became clogged with bodies, precipitating power-cuts in Kampala. The killing, for tribal, political and financial reasons, continued unabated throughout Amin's reign. Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia where seek asylum Amin launched himself upon the international circuit with the charming naivety of a debutante. In Britain, he was received by Edward Heath and the Queen. He made a visit to Scotland which had a lasting impression on him. Some years later, he was to declare that he would be happy to accept the Scots' secret wish to have him as a monarch. One of his long-standing projects became the creation of a personal bodyguard of 6 ft 4 in Scotsmen all able to play the bagpipes. He also made a request that he be provided with Harrier Jets to bomb South Africa, Tanzania and the Sudan, all of which he perceived to be on the verge of invading Uganda. Relations with the mother country rapidly disintegrated. Israel, where Amin had once received training, was delighted to find an approachable Muslim leader of an African nation, and Uganda was strategically of interest. They provided several hundred technicians, military instructors and engineers. Amin, however, doggedly pursued his demands for aircraft to bomb Tanzania. When the hardware was not forthcoming, he switched allegiance to Libya, which offered extensive economic and military aid. Colonel Gaddafi was apparently under the mistaken impression, encouraged by Amin, that Uganda was a wholly Muslim nation, when only around a fifth were actually followers of Islam. In return, Amin expelled the Israeli workers, and after terrorists murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, he sent an extraordinary telegram to Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister. "Germany is the right place," it read, "where when Hitler was Prime Minister and Supreme Commander, he burnt over six million Jews. This is because Hitler and all the German people know that the Israelis are not people working in the interest of the people of the world." It was just one of an increasingly erratic and shocking series of telegrams and public statements issuing from Kampala. Sometimes Amin gave world leaders advice on their personal and political problems, sometimes he simply taunted them. Britain was naturally the favourite butt of his individual humour. Among the more reasonable jibes was telling Ted Heath that Britain's economic crisis was a disgrace to the rest of the Commonwealth. He started the "Save Britain Fund", offering to send cargoes of vegetables to relieve suffering, and that he would organise a whip-round of Uganda's friends, "if you will let me know the exact position of the mess". In 1975, he had himself inaugurated as President-for Life, and was borne aloft by 14 indigent whites, to symbolise the "white man's burden". He revelled in the acute embarrassment he caused. President Julius Nyrere of Tanzania, whom Amin constantly provoked to the brink of conflict, was another unlucky object of Amin's attentions. "I love you very much," Amin wrote to him. "And if you were a woman, I would consider marrying you." Later, when a Tanzanian invasion brought him down, he urged Nyrere to settle the matter with a boxing match, to be refereed by Mohammed Ali. Economically, Amin's shameless incompetence was soon evident. He had no policies, bar extortion. Whilst he raised military spending by about 500 pc, inflation rose to 700 pc, fuelled by Amin's demand that, if the nation was poor, more money be printed. The cabinet was subject to violent fluctuations in its size, presaged by radio announcements publicising the latest unfortunate motor accident to involve a civil servant. Such frantic activity led to the occasional hiccup. One former Amin employee, Frank Kalimazo, was attending his daughter's wedding when he was informed that his demise had been announced on the radio. He was part of an administrative backlog. On another occasion, Amin telephoned the wife of Robert Astles, an English emigre who became infamous for his intimacy with the dictator, to offer his regret for the accidental death of her husband and to tell her that she could collect the body from the city morgue. In fact, Astles had evaded the intended assassination. It was one of four occasions when, bored of his company, Amin ordered his death. Years later, having finally returned alive to Wimbledon, Astles, himself a most unpleasant individual, said survival under Amin largely involved staying out of sight until he was in a better mood. The country's predicament was not assisted by Amin's revelation that he was taking his economic advice from God, who appeared to Amin on August 5 1972, and ordered him to expel the Asians. There were some 80,000 Asians in Uganda, who were responsible for up to 90 per cent of commerce and 50 per cent of industry. Some 55,000 of them had maintained their British citizenship, and it was on these that Amin turned, charging that they were "sabotaging the economy of the country, and do not have the welfare of Uganda at heart". Initially he ordered the expulsion of the other 25,000 Asians who had Ugandan citizenship, but later relented. The Asians were told they could take their possessions but were habitually stripped of everything, even their bedding. Most were admitted to Britain, though limited numbers went to Canada and the United States. Irrational though it seemed, Amin's move was in fact a calculated piece of populism, channelling the stored-up resentment of Ugandans at a time when his position was precarious. Furthermore, it made available some £570 million-worth of property, most of central Kampala, in addition to innumerable businesses, which could be dispensed to cronies whose loyalty had been vanishing as the money dried up. In spite of periodic attempts at insurgency from pro-Obote rebels and the increasingly dire predicament of the economy, Amin survived, shored up by what the New York Times Magazine described as a "State sinister that would startle fiction writers", allied to generous Libyan support. African nations were reluctant to intervene openly and precipitate a bloody internecine conflict. Indeed, in early days, some perceived in Amin a public champion against the former colonial powers, a constant irritant who was at least noticed. He was for a time President of the Organisation of African States. By the late 1970s Amin had outlived his novelty value. The event he intended as the re-launching of his international career ended in humiliation. In 1977, an Air France flight carrying 300 passengers from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Amin colluded with the PLO and allowed the aircraft to land at Entebbe, from where the hijackers demanded the release of 53 imprisoned terrorists. All non-Jewish passengers were released, and the remaining hostages taken to the airport terminal, where Amin mingled benignly with them whilst Ugandan troops stood guard. Dora Bloch, an elderly woman of joint British and Israeli nationality, fell ill and had to be taken to hospital. While she was away, Israeli commandos landed at the airport, routed Amin's troops, destroyed a flight of MiG aircraft, and flew out again one hour and 16 minutes later, taking all the hostages, with the exception of Dora Bloch. All seven hijackers were killed. Amin was furious. Dora Bloch's body turned up on waste ground outside Kampala. It became a capital offence to joke about the affair. Amin was particularly upset about the destruction of the aircraft, and dispatched a telegram to Israel threatening an immediate attack unless compensation was paid, as well as expenses he had incurred "entertaining" the hostages. In October 1978, Amin finally sent an invading force of 3,000 troops into Tanzania. They raped and massacred their way through the border countryside. Amin promptly announced he had conquered his neighbour. However, by the spring of 1979, the retaliating Tanzanian forces were in Kampala, Obote was back in power and Amin found himself hiding in Libya. Amin remained there until it was rumoured that even Gaddafi could stomach him no longer. From Libya he went to Saudi Arabia, which became his principal home. He was often to be seen in Safeway or Pizza Hut in Jeddah. Periodically, he made attempts to return to Africa, once turning up in Zaire under a false name. He was sighted briefly in various African states, all of which spat him out. Idi Amin and his first ladies Twice he applied for an American visa, first to visit Disneyland, and subsequently to enable him to pursue a new career as a professional 10-pin bowler. He was refused on both occasions. After a coup in 1985 by Major-General Tito Okello removed Obote from power, Amin amused himself by telephoning journalists with the glad news that he was on his way back to Kampala. It was not to be. At various times the Ugandan authorities considered extraditing him to face charges of murder, but their efforts were half-hearted. Robert Astle's telephone in Wimbledon became Amin's favoured means of communication until, incensed by the size of his telephone bill, the Saudi Arabians finally removed his international dialling facility.

Amin was married at least five times, and acknowledged at least 43 children. His second wife, Kay, died during a failed abortion she undertook to conceal an illicit affair. Amin reputedly ordered her body to be dismembered and re-assembled with the limbs reversed as a warning to his other wives. His fifth wife, Sarah, was a member of the Ugandan Army's so-called "suicide" squad. Amin is said to have ordered the murder of her fiance Jesse Gitta. His head was one of a number that Amin's former housekeeper recounted seeing stored the refrigerator of his "Botanical Room". Sarah went into exile with Amin, but he later banished her. In 1987, living penniless in a council flat in Germany, she publicly sought a divorce. Amin fell into a coma on July 18, and although he was said to have emerged from it on July 23, he never recovered. SOURCE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1439131/Idi-Amin.html





Mad Ugandan dictator's son reveals all about his 'Big Daddy'

By ADAM LUCK

Last updated at 21:02 13 January 2007







Top: 'Big daddy' dictator, Idi Amin. Below: His son, Jaffar.

The terrified prisoner screams as the large metal hooks are pushed through his chest by Idi Amin's merciless henchmen.

The hooks are attached to ropes which are slung over a roof-girder, allowing the bleeding victim to be hoisted off the ground, suspended only by his own skin.

Almost unconscious with agony, he is left hanging there, apparently to die.

It is one of the more gruesome scenes from The Last King Of Scotland, the acclaimed new film about the Ugandan dictator, and it underlines his barbaric image.

Amin died in August 2003, aged 78. He was buried in Saudi Arabia where he had spent the last 24 years of his life in exile, disgrace and silence.

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.

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.

Amin's bloodlust was matched only by his craving for women. He fathered about 60 children - the exact number is unknown - none of whom has ever spoken publicly. Until now.

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'.

But to Jaffar Amin, the 6ft 4in dictator was known simply as 'Big Daddy'.

The 40-year-old English-educated son of the dictator has given The Mail on Sunday the first interview ever granted by a close family member.

In doing so he breaks the vow of silence sworn by the Amin clan since they fled Uganda in 1979. Jaffar and some of his siblings were finally allowed to return a decade later.

'This decision has been very difficult for me because my brothers and sisters did not want me to talk publicly about our father', he says from his modest bungalow in the suburbs of the Ugandan capital, Kampala.

'When we left Uganda we fell from the highest of the high, from a position of extravagance and power, to the lowest of the low and it has been very difficult. My family want to keep a low profile but I feel it is time to speak.

'People can call my father a tyrant or a despot but I want to show the human face of absolute power.

'To show that my father was a human being and that, to me, he was and always will be a good father.'

Idi Amin and his family





Jaffar Amin was born in 1966. That same year Milton Obote, Uganda's first prime minister after the country won independence from Britain, p romoted Idi Amin to army chief of staff.

'My mother Marguerite was the sister of my father's first wife, Sarah', says Jaffar.

'She was the wet nurse to Sarah's children, so that's how they met. Although my father did not separate from Sarah then, the relationship between my father and my mother wreaked havoc, even though it was an informal relationship, and after my birth they separated.'

At the age of three Jaffar was farmed out to Idi's mother, Aisha. 'She was a very commanding figure,' says Jaffar. 'She called my father 'Awongo' meaning 'the one who cries a lot' because he did as a child. My father loved her completely. He was in awe of her, she was everything to him.'

President of Uganda Idi Amin Dada poses with his new bride Lady Sarah Kyolaba after their wedding in August 1975. Jaffar Amin





The move to live with his grandmother began a childhood odyssey that would see Jaffar eventually meet dozens of his father's offspring by six marriages and countless mistresses.

'We Africans are polygamous by nature. We accept children from inside and outside matrimony.

'Marriage is not important because in Africa we have a 'Bride Prize' where the parents of a woman who has become pregnant out of wedlock approach the family of the father and ask for compensation, maybe a cow. My father paid a lot of bride prizes in his life.'

When Jaffar's grandmother died in 1969, he was left in the care of a number of his father's close military allies.

The future president's children were housed in boarding schools in a series of army barracks that would become the scenes of dramatic military attacks - often witnessed by the young Amins.

'One of the schools was close to an armoury, which was the site of a confrontation between troops loyal to my father and the opposition,' Jaffar recalls.

'Everyone was in the dormitory under big metal beds with gunfire raging outside. It was unbelievable for a small kid.

'Our guardian eventually came in and told us everything was fine. The people trying to attack had been forced back.

'We were transferred to another barracks. I suppose you could say our father had put us in danger, but he always had key people to look after his affairs. He made sure we had guardian angels.'

Jaffar did not meet Idi face-to-face until 1970, when he was four and his father 45. As with most things in Amin's life, the encounter was bizarre and unsettling.

The bewildered boy was ushered into a stately dining room where, at the end of a large ornate table bedecked with finest British silver cutlery, sat a huge bear of a man wearing a multi-coloured African shirt and American khaki trousers. He did not raise his sweat-soaked face from his huge plate of steaming chicken.

'Go on then, taste it,' he commanded the boy in a booming baritone, gesturing to his plate. Jaffar hesitantly raised a forkful to his lips and ate it.

Within seconds he was clutching at his throat and gasping for breath: the dish was smothered in searingly hot chilli sauce.

His tears of shock and pain were mirrored by those streaming down his father's face: tears of mirth. Idi was convulsed with laughter. He had, Jaffar admits, an 'unusual' sense of humour.

Within a year of this meeting Amin had seized power from Obote in a coup and begun his brutal reign.





By then Jaffar was being brought up on Nakasero Lodge, another official residence, by his father's second wife, Kay.

'In Africa it is normal to have this extended network of family and friends who you can send your children to,' says Jaffar.

'That was when family life really started for me. My father used to love being massaged by his kids so one of us would take each leg and arm and another would be on his back.

'He was a playful and mischievous man and he was always Big Daddy to us.

'He loved jesting. One of his favourite jokes was to run at people with a spear. They would be shocked to see this huge figure hurtling at them. Then he would throw the spear so it landed at their feet.

'I hated it when people called him a buffoon. I thought of him as like Mohammad Ali he had that same sense of mischief. He was also a great fan of cartoons; he enjoyed slapstick. Tom and Jerry was his favourite.'

Idi Amin at the pool side





Amin was particular about his clothes, Jaffar reveals. 'He had a butler to deal exclusively with his wardrobe. He had to have cravats, was obsessed by them.

'I have no idea of the difference between Louis Vuitton, Hermes or Dior, but he could tell at a glance.

'He had Church,s shoes flown in from Britain. He loved anything British, if it was well made.'

This passion extended to his car collection which included Land Rovers, Range Rovers and Rolls-Royces.

But it was not exclusively British. A Mercedes 300 coupe, a gift from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, was a particular favourite.

Another plaything was an amphibious car. 'He would take his wives or girlfriends out in it and head towards a lake,' says Jaffar.

'The girls would start screaming as they thought they were going to drown, but the car just floated. This tickled my father.'

Jaffar was sent to the elite missionary schools to which his father had once been denied access.

Dictator Idi Amin Dada bathes at the Hilton Hotel's swimming pool between two OAU session





Idi had been born in about 1925 into a marginal ethnic tribe, the Kakwa, on the Sudan border.

Because they were not considered Ugandan, the young Idi was denied formal education and Jaffar believes that resentment later fuelled many of his father's actions.

'He felt Uganda's elitist system denied an equal chance for so many poor children,' he says. 'He would eventually dismantle that social set and put it back together again in the way he wanted.'

In 1937, Idi spent time working cutting sugar cane, an unpleasant and difficult job. 'The people who worked there were effectively indentured labour and the people who owned the fields were Asians.

'They did not treat the indigenous Africans well,' says Jaffar. 'This is why my father eventually expelled Asians who refused to take up Ugandan nationality.

'He thought, "I've had enough of this". He threw out more than 80,000.'

By 1975, Jaffar, now nine, was enjoying the perks of being the President's son.

'That year my father took us to Angola,' he says. 'It was a really nice day trip. My father was friends with a CIA agent who had new equipment from the US, including planes for our trips.

'We had a shooting range at one of our houses and all us children were taught how to shoot, and how to strip an AK-47.

'My father liked us to compete against each other to see who could dismantle the weapon quickest. My record was nine seconds.

'Dad was a great swimmer and he would tell us, "Whoever can hold his breath underwater for two minutes wins 100 shillings". He said it would help us be good marksmen.

'Basketball was another sport he loved. He would watch films of the Harlem Globetrotters and then organise games with his troops but, although basketball is a non-contact sport, whenever my dad played it ended up being more like a wrestling contest. Things got pretty rough.'

Amin's resentment of the West stemmed from his unrequited love for Britain. He had served in the King's African Rifles, a British colonial regiment, attaining the highest possible rank for a black African, effendi.

'My father was a real Anglophile,' says Jaffar. 'He had a love-hate relationship with Britain. He wanted to be a loyal servant, despite his mannerisms.

'Don't forget that he took power with the help of the British. I am an example of what he wanted, because he dumped me in England for my education when we went into exile.

'When he felt rejected by the British Government he focused on Scotland. A lot of the colonial and Army officers early in my father's career were Scottish.

'They were the backbone of the British Empire. My father even offered to help them win secession from the UK.'

As Uganda staggered from one bout of bloodletting to another, Amin would take his children out to the provinces in his Mercedes cars.

Jaffar remembers his young brothers Moses and Mwanga being dressed in mini military uniforms on these trips, as he donned a safari suit.

'My father was very shrewd. He would take with him his children from local mothers to show his loyalty to the area. He would say, 'This is your child.'

But Amin's regime was becoming increasingly paranoid, with Christian ethnic groups being purged from the army in favour of those largely Muslim tribal groups who shared Amin's own background.

Children of Idi Amin





Even Jaffar was beginning to see the writing on the wall.

'My father sent the people from his own tribe for specialist training abroad, but they would come back from Russia or the United States thinking they were better educated than my father and start getting ideas that they wanted to rule.

'The superpowers started creating tensions between his trusted lieutenants.

'My father stamped down on these coups because he had a very good intelligence service that had been set up by the US and USSR, and before that by the Israelis and the British.'

But the conflict was taking its toll and in 1978 Amin ordered the invasion of neighbouring Tanzania while trying to quell a mutiny.

The decision would cost him his crown. 'I was in the room when he took the call,' Jaffar recalls.

'He picked up the phone then slammed it down. He looked at me and said, 'They have attacked me again. The Tanzanians. It is a big force this time.'





The Tanzanians, helped by Ugandan rebels, eventually toppled Amin in April 1979.

As the end approached, Amin became increasingly mistrustful of his commanders.

'A long convoy of fancy cars brought the high command up to a resort in Kampala for a meeting with my father,' says Jaffar.

'He took us up there with him and it was a very tense time. I realised something was wrong because there were hordes of soldiers around whom I did not recognise.

'They were trying to convince him to stand down. He said, 'How can you ask me to do this?'

Jaffar and his siblings were sent back to their missionary school outside Kampala, but the advancing Tanzanian forces cut them off.

His father eventually despatched a rescue mission.

'I was in my pyjamas when they came into the dormitory,' recalls Jaffar. 'I was not scared. I used to watch The Famous Five.

'It was an adventure. When we got into the truck I was amazed by the amount of military equipment in there.

General Mustafa Adrisa, Idi Amin`s number two man





'In the middle of the night we set off for the Rwandan border, but we broke down in the middle of this national park. We could hear the hyenas laughing in the pitch black.'

The following day the convoy made it back to Kampala. 'We could hear the artillery shells in the distance getting closer. It was amazing and there was a sense of disbelief.

'This huge convoy set out from Kampala to Entebbe airport. There I started to realise how many children my father had because he was having 80 seats installed in a plane for us all.

'He was talking to Gaddafi on the phone, telling him, "My children are coming". He wanted to stay on to make his last stand, even though he knew the war was lost.'

Instead, Amin fled to Libya where he spent the next 12 months. But he was restless. Jaffar says: ' We had come from absolute power to almost nothing. My father felt like the man who was once a corporate executive in New York but was now retired in Florida and had only the fishing to look forward to.

'Although Gaddafi was most generous, my father eventually felt betrayed by his socialist agenda and felt he could not trust him. Instead he began to talk about going to Saudi Arabia.'

In 1972 Amin took up a Saudi offer of refuge. The Saudis feared his dreadful reputation was damaging the image of Islam and hoped that if he was based in their country they could guarantee his silence.

General Idi Amin Dada. 1974





Jaffar went with his father and remembers the luxury well. 'There was marble everywhere in our 15-room house,' he says.

'My father was paid $30,000 a month by the Saudis. He had more than 30 of us kids with him and he would tell us, 'You have to liberate Uganda with the fedayeen [Islamic soldiers]. All his children were given commando training.'

When not plotting coups, Amin indulged his other great passion: shopping. 'He loved to shop,' says Jaffar. 'He would go down to Safeway - that was his favourite - and all the kids would grab a shopping trolley and pile them high with goods. The Lebanese security guards would stare at us in disbelief.'

Already a bear of a man, Amin allowed himself to become even fatter in exile. 'It became an issue because our family suffers from arthritis,' says Jaffar. 'It put a lot of strain on his ankles and knees.'

'My father was fond of pizza and loved meat but his favourite was Kentucky Fried Chicken. In Jeddah, he loved us to go as a family to fast-food restaurants.'

Amin also spent a lot of time playing the accordion. 'He played mainly Scottish military music as he was in a Highlanders band in the Fifties,' says Jaffar.

Exile afforded him the opportunity to take stock of his life, 'but I do not believe he would express remorse or regret,' says his son.

'He would put it this way, 'The people will appreciate what I was trying to do for the indigenous African. He was not defensive. He was simply saying, 'God will be my judge.'

'Absolute power destroyed his good intentions. He could make any decision because there was no one to advise him. That is where this nonsense about the Hitler of Africa stems from.

'Uganda was elitist, and the elite left under my father's rule because they did not feel safe. The peasants took over but were not trained enough to deal with the situation.'

Instead, the great and the good of Uganda were murdered with impunity - a fact that appears to escape Jaffar, who dismisses estimates that 500,000 people died under Amin's regime.

'These figures do not add up,' he claims. 'My father would say they were propaganda. No one has ever produced lists of all these people who are supposed to have died. Why?

'My father felt he was serving his people but the elite felt he was taking away their privilege and they fought back. It was not a picnic. They wanted him out and chose a guerrilla insurgency to do it.'

The Amins paid a heavy price, says Jaffar. 'Exile is hell. I have taken a culture on board that is more English than Ugandan. I cannot even speak my father's tongue.'

Jaffar's exile ended in 1990 when he returned to Uganda. Many of his siblings have chosen to live abroad, often shunning their father's name.

Now a father of five, Jaffar is editing a book of his father's thoughts in a bid to improve Idi's reputation.

He recently gave up his job as a logistics manager and is now using the rich baritone he inherited from his father to find work as a voice-over artist for advertisements.

During the Eighties, he lived in the UK, studying for O- and A-levels in London and Leicester. He says he was discreet about his identity while in Britain.

'I did not go out of my way to make it known who I was. I used to enjoy going to the cinema,' he says. 'I loved film. That's one of the reasons why I will be going to see The Last King Of Scotland.'

The film, which stars Oscar-tipped Forest Whitaker as Amin and James McAvoy as his Scottish adviser Nicholas Garrigan, opened in Britain last week.

Garrigan is loosely based on Robert Astles, Amin's British-born right-hand man whose privileged position did not prevent Amin ordering his death whenever he tired of his company.

Jaffar remembers Astles well. 'He was a watcher, a control freak,' he says. 'I don't believe my father ordered Astles's death. They were chums.

'Actually I think Astles was MI6, briefed to do whatever was necessary to protect British interests. However, in a way, I have a lot of respect for him. He stayed the course.

'But I wish the film-makers had stuck to the facts rather than fiction. Forest Whitaker should have talked to me about my father.

'Maybe then they could have made a documentary reflecting the facts rather than perpetuating the stereotypes.

'It is so easy to make my father a simple caricature but he was a complex man.'





Idi Amin’s son relives his father’s years at the helm

The Last Days. Thursday April 11 marked 34 years since Idi Amin was overthrown by a combined force of Tanzania People’s Defence Forces (TPDF) and Ugandan exiles. Over the years, we have heard the story of the victors and the epic battles that led to the toppling of the once feared Amin. But we have heard little from the vanquished. In a series of articles in the following weeks, one of Amin’s children, Jaffar Remo Amin, recounts the events that went on around his father as he desperately tried to stem the tide. When Idi Amin was not confronting neighbouring countries and dealing with internal problems, he took time off to attend social functions.

Beginning in April 1978, there was trouble for dad as there was infighting, cronyism, rivalry and opposition to

his rule in Uganda. Dad also seemed to falter in his control of the armed forces as mounting “friction” occurred

in the Uganda Army, leading to his ouster on April 11, 1979.

That same month, April 1978, dad had relieved a close associate Brig. Moses Ali of his post as Minister of

Finance. My father accused Ali of nepotism and mismanagement in the distribution of newly acquired Honda Accord and Honda Civic cars.

The cars were officially supposed to sell for Shs30,000 but were reportedly selling to some individuals for as

much as Shs120,000. However it was the purported loss of US$40 million meant for the construction of the Grand National Mosque at Old Kampala from the State coffers that immediately triggered the sack.

My father was also unhappy with Maj. Gen. Isaac Lumago, the Chief of the Armed Forces, as well as with Nasur

Ezega, Commanding Officer of Masaka and Abiriga 99 of Masindi Artillery Regiment (both members of the Aringa

tribe). He dismissed them from the armed forces.

In late April 1978, Mustafa Adrisi, then vice president who hailed from the Aringa-Kakwa clan of Gisara, was

injured in a car accident. To some members from the Aringa tribe, this was the final plot by my father’s regime

and people from the Kakwa tribe “to rid the Aringa tribe of all individuals in important and top positions in

government.”

Seeking safety

Following the car accident, Mustafa Adrisi was taken to Cairo for treatment in the company of Haruna Abuna. He

did not return to Uganda until December 1978, at the height of mounting border incidents between Uganda and

Tanzania that escalated into the full blown war that led to dad’s ouster on April 11, 1979. They joined my elder

brother Ali Juma Bashir who was undergoing extensive preservation of a shattered leg following a shooting

incident involving smugglers on Lake Victoria as he was part of dad’s elite Marines Anti-Smuggling Unit.

We were only able to meet our brother Ali Juma Bashir when we went to Tripoli, Libya after dad’s government had been overthrown. He joined us there upon his release from the hospital in Cairo. Relations between dad and Julius Nyerere had continued to deteriorate, despite dad’s attempt to extend a hand of peace to Nyerere at the 1973 OAU (Organisation of African Unity) Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Between September 1972 and October 1978, tensions had continued between dad and Nyerere with the threat of war continuing to be imminent. Units of dad’s army were regularly placed on high alert in readiness for war and suspicion ran high.

Everyone in Uganda was always aware that as long as dad was the president, it was just a matter of time before a

full-blown war erupted between Uganda and Tanzania. Beginning in 1978, tension between Uganda and Tanzania

increased with rumours of an impending attack on Uganda by Tanzania running wild! This led members of dad’s high command to call for an immediate attack on Tanzania, which eventually happened in October 1978.

Before the attack, the Chui and Simba Battalions were rumoured to have mutinied over pay also in October 1978.

At this time, dad made his biggest mistake and as it turns out, the final disastrous gamble by sanctioning the

attack on Tanzania and occupying its territory although with hindsight, a close associate Juma Oka Rokoni, was at

the centre of this most unfortunate of blunders.

Juma Rokoni – nicknamed Butabika – was the grandson of the former Kakwa paramount chief Sultan Ali Kenyi Dada who was a cousin to Idi Amin’s father. He is the same army officer who put a gun to dad’s head back in 1971 when dad became reluctant about taking over the presidency following the military coup against Apollo Milton Obote on January 25, 1971. According to reports, on October 27, 1978, sporadic border clashes and attacks ensued at the border town of Mutukula between the Uganda Army and the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces.

Then on October 31, 1978, the Uganda Army crossed into the Kagera Salient and attacked Tanzania. Juma Oka

Butabika, one of dad’s officers, led the initial attack. He is reported to have phoned dad and claimed that

Tanzanian troops had invaded Uganda, which forced him to take charge of Ugandan soldiers stationed at the border areas in order to repel the Tanzanian invaders. According to reports, dad fell for the information given by Juma Oka Butabika and sanctioned more attacks on Tanzania.

After the attacks by Butabika, dad went on air and declared “a world record” of 25 minutes in capturing some 700

square miles of Tanzanian territory. He announced that his government had annexed the Kagera Salient.

More details have now emerged about the circumstances surrounding the war between Uganda and Tanzania. These include allegations that dad and his senior officers were given false and misleading reports by saboteurs and

subversive elements operating within the State Research Bureau (SRB) in order to start a war between Uganda and

Tanzania so that dad could be overthrown.