IDI AMIN

Idi Amin (May 17 1928 – August 16 2003) was an army officer and President of Uganda (1971 to 1979) whose regime was notorious for its brutality.
Amin’s tenure witnessed much sectarian violence, including the persecution of the Acholi, Lango, and other tribes 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.
Amin was born in Koboko or Kampala, by parents of the Kakwa ethnic group. He was deserted by his father at an early age and brought up in Buganda by his mother who, it is often claimed, was a sorceress. He received little formal education.
Amin joined the King’s African Rifles of the British colonial army as a private in 1946, rising to the rank of lieutenant after seeing action during the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya. He was considered a skilled soldier, however he also had a reputation for cruelty. He rose through the ranks, reaching sergeant-major before being made an effendi, the highest rank possible for a Black African in the British army. Amin was also 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 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. 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 Sudan 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. 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 ‘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, Amin becoming more and more paranoid. The Nile Mansions Hotel in Kampala became infamous as Amin’s interrogation and torture centre.
On August 4, 1972, Amin gave Uganda’s 70,000 Asians (mainly of Indian origin) who held British passports 90 days to leave the country, following an alleged dream in which, he claimed, God told him to expel them. Those who remained were deported from the cities to the countryside. The same year he severed diplomatic relations with Israel, and in 1976 with Britain. In 1972, Amin turned to Colonel Muammar Al Qadhafi of Libya and the Soviet Union for support.
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. He also granted himself a number of official titles, including King of Scotland. Amin was fond of racing cars (of which he owned several), boxing, and Disney cartoons. 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 counter attack, enlisting the country’s population of Ugandan exiles. On 11 April 1979, Amin was forced to quit 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 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, 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, and was buried in Jeddah.

Leave a Comment

Shopping Cart
×

Hello!

Click one of our contacts below to chat on WhatsApp

× How can I help you?