Idi Amin: The Rise and Fall of Uganda's Ruthless Dictator - Audio History Documentary

Idi Amin's rise to power in Uganda is one of the most chilling tales of the 20th century. Known for his ruthless dictatorship, Amin’s story is steeped in mystery and controversy from his murky beginnings in the mid-1920s. Join us as we unravel how British colonial rule laid the groundwork for his ascent through the military ranks, eventually leading to his notorious reign.

As Amin seized power in 1971, Uganda witnessed a series of dramatic and devastating events, from the infamous expulsion of the Asian population to his strange and strategic international alliances. This episode brings to light Amin's calculated maneuvers that plunged Uganda into economic chaos while he maintained an unpredictable diplomatic stance on the world stage. Discover how his brutal policies isolated the nation, with resistance brewing both internally and across the Tanzanian border.

The episode delves into the downfall of Amin's regime, as Tanzanian forces and Ugandan exiles orchestrated his ousting in 1979. Despite living out his days in exile without facing justice, Amin's legacy casts a long shadow over Uganda and East Africa. We explore the turmoil that followed his departure, highlighting the struggles of a nation trying to heal from the scars of one of Africa’s most brutal dictatorships. Join us for a sobering look at how Idi Amin’s reign reshaped a country and left a lasting imprint on history.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
The man known to history as Idi Amin was born in unclear
circumstances in the mid 1920s in Uganda.
Some accounts, including a statement by Amin's own son
Hussein, place his year of birthas late as 1928, but he was most
likely born in 1923 or 1924. His place of birth is also

(00:28):
disputed, but the suggestion that he was born in the capital
of the country, Kampala, is probably spurious and Amin was
more likely born at Kabulko, in the Muslim dominated
northwestern part of the country, near the border of what
is now South Sudan. His father's background is
similarly unclear. Andreas NIA Bire was a member of

(00:50):
the Kakwa people according to some accounts, and he converted
to Islam from Roman Catholicism in the early 20th century and
then changed his name to Amin Dada.
However, other sources suggest he was ethnic Nubian and that he
may have been raised as a Muslim.
If so, his family probably came from Sudan originally and had

(01:12):
been among Sudanese communities which.
Had been brought South by Emin Pasha, a late 19th century
governor of the Ottoman provinceof Equatoria, who had ventured
as far South as Uganda in the 1880s.
Amin's mother was ASA Ate, whosedescent is also disputed.
She may have been an ethnic Aquaor Lukbara, different peoples

(01:35):
living in what is now northern Uganda.
What little we know of Edie's childhood indicates that his
father abandoned him and his mother when he was young, and he
was raised by her alone. He attended an Islamic school at
Bombay in the early 1940s while the Second World War was raging
to the north and east in ItalianEast Africa.

(01:56):
And the Maghrib. Any assessment of Amin's life
must start by exploring the history of Uganda under colonial
rule, like many other. Parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Uganda was a country which had been contrived more from the
imaginations of its colonial rulers than one which had an
ethnic or religious coherence toit.

(02:18):
The. Region which the country covers
today was inhabited by differentpeoples in the pre colonial
period, the largest being the the Burgandans who ruled a large
swathe of the country in the South of modern day Uganda
including the region around the capital of Kampala.
However, the area also containedmany neolotic peoples in the

(02:39):
north and east such as the Kakuaand Lumbara and in the northwest
there was a substantial Sudanesepopulation.
Pockets of Kuliak people also inhabit the regions which today
lie along the border between eastern Uganda and western
Kenya. And to compound matters, the
people of the country were also divided along religious lines

(03:01):
with a large Muslim population in the north where Islam had
spread S from Egypt and Sudan, while elsewhere others followed
the Ugandan native religions. A great many had also accepted
faiths such as Roman Catholicismor Protestantism.
This was the patchwork of competing ethnicities and
religions out of which modern day Uganda.

(03:24):
Emerged. The Kingdom of Buganda covered
much of the country when the British began to encroach here
in the late 19th century. The Ugandan Protectorate was
established in 1894 as part of the ambitions of some British
imperialists in Africa to obtaincontrol of a continuous stretch
of territory on the continent, running from Cairo in Egypt to

(03:46):
Cape Town in South Africa under British rule.
Some of the internal divisions of the country were exacerbated
when the colonial regime favoredelements amongst the Baganda,
which had adopted Protestantism and used them as a proxy to
govern the country and overrule the Muslim elements in the
north. Colonial rule was exploitative

(04:06):
but also brought benefits in theshape of the beginnings of a
modern infrastructure and economy, notably in the
production of cash crops such assugar and cotton, whilst
literacy levels also increased considerably in the first half
of the 20th century. Another important development
was the creation of a Ugandan military under the British when

(04:27):
the colonial regime began training and arming native
Ugandans in the early 20th century, a process which
accelerated prior to and during the First World War as a means
of striking at Germany's colonial possessions in East
Africa. One of these native units was
the King's African Rifles through service, in which Amin

(04:47):
would emerge as a force in. Uganda in the 1960s.
In 1946, when he was probably about 22 or 23 years of age, Idi
Amin enlisted in the King's African Rifles or the KAR in
Uganda. Later claims that he had joined
the British Army during the Second World War and had fought

(05:08):
on the Burma front against the Japanese were fabrications
largely created by Amin himself.He rose quickly.
In the KAR, he was popular amongthe British officers and made a
strong impression with his athletic abilities and his work
as a soldier. Accordingly, he was promoted as
quickly as was possible for an individual of African descent at

(05:30):
the time within the ranks of theKAR, and by the late 1940s he
was stationed in neighboring Kenya, where there had been
greater agitation against British colonial rule than in
his native Uganda. As a result, Amin was here in
1952 when the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, also known as the
Mao Mao, began A revolt against British rule which would drag on

(05:54):
for the remainder of the 1950s. Amin served with distinction
during this campaign in Kenya, though he would later try to
downplay his involvement in a war which was designed to defend
British imperial rule. He was promoted to 1st to the
rank of Corporal in 1952 and Sergeant the year after.

(06:14):
Throughout the 1950s Amin continued to meet with some
success. Ian Graham, Amin's commanding
officer in the KAR and a man wholater wrote a memoir on his
relationship with Uganda and thefuture dictator, subsequently
claimed that Amin was one of thebest soldiers and mid ranking
officers he ever commanded and other officers agreed with this

(06:37):
assessment. It was also during these years
that he was sent to Europe for additional military training and
found himself stationed in and sterling in Scotland for some
time. This was the beginning of an
affinity for the country which, as we will see, led to a mean
toying with the notion that he could become King of Scotland in
later years. Having returned to Africa, he

(06:58):
was given the title of Efendi orAfande in Swahili in the KAR in
1959. This made him a Class 2 Warrant
Officer and was the highest rankwhich an African could rise to
within the British Armed Forces in East Africa.
But there were also indications of the trouble which lay ahead
with Amin. In late 1961 and early 1962, the

(07:22):
KAR were called on to intervene in widespread cattle raiding
which was occurring on the border between Uganda and Kenya.
During this, Amin commanded his platoon to massacre scores of
villagers, the only escaped being court martialed for this
civilian atrocity. Because Uganda was on the brink
of gaining independence from Britain and the colonial

(07:43):
governor, Sir Frederick Crawforddid not want a scandal emerging
surrounding 1 of only two nativeUgandans who were commissioned
officers in the colonial army there.
As a mean was rising within the ranks of the colonial British
Army, great change was sweeping across Africa.
In 1941, the Western Allies had agreed to the Atlantic Charter

(08:06):
following pressure from the USA,which stated that there would be
greater independence granted to the colonies of the European
powers in the aftermath of the Second World War.
This, combined with an inabilityto preserve their empires
following the war, ensured that a great.
Many nations in Africa would attain independence in the.
Middle of the 20th century In 1945, the vast majority of the

(08:29):
continent was held either by France in the north and
northwest, or by Britain in the South and east of the continent.
In the central regions, Belgium had a huge territory in the
Congo, while Portugal had two large blocks around Mozambique
and Angola, whereas Italy had held most of the Horn of Africa

(08:50):
and Libya. Little happened in the immediate
aftermath of the war to grant independence to these extensive
colonies, but by the 1950's the pressure to do so had become too
great. As a result, in 1956, Morocco
and Tunisia gained independence from France, and the process
accelerated quickly thereafter. 1960 in particular saw Cameroon,

(09:13):
Senegal, Togo, Mali, Benin, Niger, the Ivory Coast, Burkina
Faso, Chad and Madagascar. All.
Gained their independence from France at roughly the same every
time that Belgium relinquished control of its colonies and
created the countries of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda.
Britain had relinquished controlof Ghana in 1957 and followed

(09:37):
with Nigeria in 1961. The process of decolonization in
East Africa occurred a few yearslater than in parts of Northwest
Africa. The manner in which it came
about in Uganda and adjoining regions also differed
considerably from other countries further to the
northwest. In many of these other countries

(09:59):
political groups had emerged a pro independence indigenous
peoples who had often been educated in London or Paris and
then returned to their homelandsdetermined to achieve self rule.
In Uganda, there were some callsfor independence, but little by
way of a coherent political movement or political parties to
speak of by the late 1950s. Accordingly, there was not a

(10:22):
mature political environment into which power could devolve
when independence was finally declared on the 9th of October
1962 and the Republic of Uganda came into existence.
Nevertheless, 3 major political parties quickly emerged, the
Democratic Party representing the Catholic population, the

(10:43):
Ugandan People's Congress largely representing the Nilotic
people of the north of the country, and the Kabaka Yeka, a
Bagandan nationalist party. In its first post independence
elections in 1962, the People's Congress and Kabaka Yeka united
to exclude the Democratic Party from power and Milton Aborte,

(11:04):
the UPC leader. Leader became Uganda's first
Prime Minister. Obote would dominate Ugandan
politics during the 1960s thereafter, but his period in
office was dogged by many of thesame problems which had affected
other African nations in the post independence period, namely
the problem of uniting a countrywhich was an artificial

(11:26):
construct of the British and hadmany different ethnic peoples
and religions within it. As such, the mid 1960s.
Saw a battle? Between some who wished for a
decentralized federal state where the Bugandans and the
Nilotic people and other groups would largely govern themselves
and their own provinces, and those who wished for a powerful

(11:48):
centralized Ugandan state governed from the capital of
Kampala. This conflict climaxed in
February 1966, when Abote suspended the constitution and
assumed extensive powers, which amounted to little more than a
dictatorship. But this was not exactly an
uncommon occurrence in post independence Africa.

(12:08):
All across the continent, strongmen were seizing power in the
1960s, with vicious dictators such as Joseph Mabuto in the
Congo, Jean Bacasa in the Central African Republic,
Francisco Mashas Nguema in Equatorial Guinea, and Abubakar
Sangu le La Mizana in what was then the Republic of Upper

(12:29):
Volta, but which we know today as Burkina Faso.
Thus, Uganda was following this depressing trend when Abote
seized power in 1966 for Amin Abote's consolidation of his
hold on the country. Was beneficial already in the
early years of independence. He had continued to rise within

(12:51):
the Ugandan armed forces. He was made a captain at
independence in 1962, then a major in 1963, and deputy
commander of the Ugandan military in 1964.
Finally, in 1965, when he was still only 40, Amin was made one
of the commanders of the army. In 1970 he reached the peak of

(13:12):
the Ugandan military and was made overall commander of the
Armed Forces of Uganda. Much of this meteoric ascent
throughout the 1960s was securedon the back of his complicity in
Ubote's corrupt dealings in Uganda.
With the rise of the dictators across much of Africa during the
period had come the emergence ofkleptocratic states where the

(13:33):
dictators and their followers effectively assets stripped the
resources of their countries to become immensely wealthy
themselves. In the mid 1960s, Amin was
aiding Ubote in a gold and ivorysmuggling operation between the
Congo and Uganda of some of thisactivity was intended to
facilitate the arming of separatists and rebels within

(13:54):
the Congo, but much of the proceeds were also purloined
into the pockets of Abote, Amin,and their accomplices.
Discovery of Abote and Amin smuggling activities in 1966 was
central to Abote's decision to seize absolute power in Uganda
that same year. By the late 1960s, then, Idi

(14:16):
Amin was one of the most powerful individuals in Uganda.
Obote's regime became increasingly oppressive as it
went on, particularly so following an attempted
assassination of the dictator in1969, one which failed but which
saw a further crackdown on any political or military dissent
across the country. And as Obote's enforcer, Amin

(14:38):
was central to these measures. However, despite his close
associations with Obote, it now seems it seems clear that Amin
was conspiring throughout the late 1960s to seize power
himself, or at least to consolidate his hold over the
military. In particular, he was hiring
extensive numbers of troops fromthe Kaqwa and newbie areas of

(14:59):
northern Uganda bordering on Sudan.
These were his own ethnic peopleand fellow Muslims.
By filling the Ugandan military with soldiers and officers drawn
from this area, Amin was consolidating his control of the
army in advance of a possible seizure of power.
Moreover, Amin was probably courting the support of Britain

(15:20):
and Israel for such a move. Britain continued to have
considerable influence in East Africa and was concerned in the
context of the Cold War with what it perceived to be the
socialist policies being pursuedby Abote, while Israel had been
involved in Uganda during the 1960s and was anxious to use
Uganda and adjoining regions as a means of drawing the attention

(15:44):
of its northern neighbors, Sudanand Egypt, away from Israel's
ongoing occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.
Eventually, Amin's machinations came to a head in the early
1970s. In October 1970, Abbotti, who
was by now suspicious of Amin's intentions, removed the general

(16:04):
from overall command of the Ugandan military and appointed
himself to the role. He then set about preparing
charges of financial misconduct against Amin, but he moved too
slowly. Which?
Proved to be a. Fatal error.
In the interim, Amin had learnedof Abbotti's intentions and
moved aggressively against the President.

(16:24):
On the 25th of January 1971, while Obote was absent at a
meeting of the Commonwealth nations in Singapore, Amin
launched a military coup. The capital of Kampala was
quickly secured, as were some ofthe main communication outlets,
such as the radio stations. Consequently, Amin was able to
inform the nation that he was seizing power from the corrupt

(16:48):
Obote before the president, several 1000 kilometers away,
could even react. Amin presented himself as the
restorer of the constitution. He would, he claimed, hold
office for just a few weeks or months during the transition
back to a democratically electedgovernment.
Obote would head back to Africa,to neighboring Tanzania, where

(17:08):
he spent the 1970s in exile. Amin would hold power for eight
years in one of Africa's most brutal dictatorships.
Amin quickly consolidated his control of Uganda in the weeks
following the almost bloodless coup of January 1971.
On the 2nd of February, he declared himself to be the new

(17:29):
president of Uganda as well as reappointing himself as overall
commander of the Ugandan armed forces.
The new regime speedily morphed into a military dictatorship,
with any pretense of honoring the legal system and old
constitution being quite ephemeral.
Military tribunals broadly replaced the court system and

(17:49):
Amin's followers within the armywere appointed to a range of
senior political offices and civil jurisdictions, positions
which they generally had no training for.
Amin would henceforth rule by decree, and he renamed the
government headquarters in Kampala as the command post.
And then, in order to consolidate his hold on both the

(18:10):
military and civilian government, extensive purges of
both were undertaken with thousands of individuals removed
from their positions and replaced by committed adherents
of Amin and his military government.
And these individuals were oftennot simply stripped of their
positions, but killed by the regime.
In the beginnings of the massivebloodletting which characterized

(18:33):
the Amin regime in Uganda throughout the 1970s, Amin's
seizure of power did not go completely unopposed.
As we have seen, Milton Obote had sought refuge.
In Tanzania in 1971, Uganda's larger and more affluent
neighbor to the South here the Tanzanian president Julius

(18:53):
Nierere. Offered support to obote and
withheld official recognition ofAmin's regime in Uganda.
Moreover, in the weeks and months that followed, as many as
20,000 Ugandans fled S into Tanzania to find political
asylum here. Those were soon conspiring on
how to remove Amin from power and forming into bands of

(19:14):
militarily trained guerrilla fighters.
These forces included a young Yoeri Museveni who would play a
major role in Ugandan subsequentpolitics.
Finally, in September 1972, elements amongst these Ugandan
exiles moved into action. A strike force of some 1500

(19:34):
fighters crossed over the northern border into Uganda with
the goal of initiating A coup similar to our means the
previous year. Entebbe airport outside Kampala
would be seized. Then the capital would be
secured along with the main radio stations so that news of
the coup could be broadcast to the nation.
These plans, however, never cameto fruition.

(19:56):
The invasion was a fiasco and was quickly suppressed by Amin,
who had advanced knowledge of it.
Hundreds of the invaders were killed and it was over within
days. But it is a significant
indicator of the role which Tanzania would play in future
events. In its early years, Amin's
regime was greeted with open arms by the international

(20:18):
community. The British and the Israelis had
supported the coup in 1971 and moved quickly to recognize
Amin's regime as soon as he seized power, believing that the
former KAR officer would be easier to deal with than Abote
had been. And Amin was more than happy to
encourage their delusions, presenting himself at this early

(20:39):
stage as a reconciler of Uganda's political, ethnic,
ethnic and religious problems, someone who would unite the
varying religious groupings and ethnic peoples of the country.
Thus, in July 1971, Amin was welcomed on state visits to both
Britain and Israel. In Britain he met the Prime
Minister, Edward Heath, and evenhad lunch at Buckingham Palace.

(21:03):
He also took the opportunity offered by the state visit to
return to Scotland. Where he had.
Trained in the 1950s, Amin had aspecial fondness for the country
and he would go on to give several of his sons Scottish
names and even dressed a regiment of the Ugandan army in
Scottish kilts. As we will see a few years

(21:24):
later, in the mid 1970s he even entertained A bizarre alliance
with the Scottish paramilitary organization which resulted in
him offering to become King of Scotland in both London and Tel
Aviv. Amin requested additional
weapons in order to take the fight to Tanzania, but both
government declined. Curiously, neither the

(21:47):
government in Britain nor in Israel seemed to have gained the
measure of the individual they were actually dealing with when
Amin visited their respective capitals in the summer of 1971.
But they soon came to have suspicions about his true
nature, and this quickly. Gave way to.
Regret. In July 1971, while Amin was

(22:07):
dining at Buckingham Palace and reacquainting himself with
Scotland back in Uganda to Americans, a journalist by the
name of Nicholas Stroh and a sociology lecturer called Robert
Seidel, who were investigating some of the early political
killings associated with a meansregime, went to Umbarada Army
Barracks. They had been warned not to go

(22:29):
there, but ignored these warnings, a decision that would
prove fatal. Both men were murdered at the
barracks. The American reaction was swift,
and an investigation to which anAmerican legal official named
David Jeffries Jones was Jones quickly determined that the pair
had been murdered by Amin's men,but he fled the country in fear

(22:50):
of his own life before the investigation could be
concluded. The killing of Stroh and Seidel
was the first serious indicationthat Amin would not be the
reliant strongman the West believed he might be in Uganda.
Other clearer. Signs of how problematic Amin
might be was soon becoming apparent.

(23:12):
Having had his request for additional arms and modern
weaponry rebuffed by the governments in London and Tel
Aviv, Amin next called on Colonel Muammar al Gaddafi, the
de facto dictator of Libya. Following his seizure of power
in 1969, Gaddafi had establishedhimself in opposition to the
former colonial powers, expelling much of the Italian

(23:34):
colonial community and seizing control of Western military
bases, which had a strategic significance in the Cold War, as
well as introducing elements of Islamic Sharia law.
It was thus quite ominous to find Amin seeking an alliance
with the Libyan leader, and whenhe visited Libya, Amin presented
a fantastical view of his own country and of himself in order

(23:57):
to acquire military support fromGaddafi.
For instance, Amin depicted himself as a committed Muslim
and appears to have convinced Gaddafi that as much as 70% of
Uganda's people were Muslims, whereas the true number was in
the range of about 6%, mostly found in the northwest of the
country bordering Sudan. But Gaddafi was sold on our

(24:19):
means claims and the Ugandan brought his country into the
Organization of Islamic States and promised to place limits on
the religious freedoms of Christians back in Uganda in
return for Gaddafi's weapons. Back in Uganda.
In 1972, the violence being unleashed by the Armen regime
increased. It was aimed in particular at

(24:41):
the Acholi and Lango ethnic groups who opposed Armen's
regime. By early 1972, at least 5000 of
these had disappeared, includingsoldiers, lawyers, students,
religious leaders and local political figures.
Often bodies were found floatingin the River Nile.
At this stage though, the international media was broadly

(25:03):
unaware of what was occurring. One incident, however, gained
widespread attention and that was in January 1972 at Mutakula
near the Tanzanian border, but this had only been extensively
reported because it had spilled over into Tanzania itself.
Nevertheless, while the Western media and other countries

(25:24):
foreign services were quite ignorant of what was occurring
in Uganda at this time, the bloodletting was ever
increasing. Figures for the death toll and
the number of displaced during Armen's dictatorship are
notoriously difficult to determine with accuracy, but
already by the summer of 1972 there were 10s of thousands who

(25:44):
had either been killed or forcedto flee.
Into exile in Tanzania or elsewhere.
While religious and political persecution was growing
steadily, it would only get worse in the years that
followed. The action.
Which first made Amin's regime notorious to the international
media, came in the autumn of 1972 and concerned the country's

(26:06):
large community of ethnic Asian people.
Indian and South Asian settlement in East Africa was
long standing and dated back at least as far as the 12th
century. With the dawning of the first
age of globalization in the second-half of the 19th century,
it increased dramatically, and by the end of the Second World
War in 1945, they were well in excess of half a million Asians

(26:29):
living in East Africa, many of them from India in particular.
But it was not just that there was a large community of Asians
in regions such as Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique,
but the fact that this Asian spread into East Africa was
perceived to play an overly large role in the economies of
these regions. By the mid 20th century, Asians

(26:51):
had established A dominant position in the trade and
industrial activity of the region, such that 80 to 90% of
commercial trade and. Industry in Uganda was in the
hands of the Asian community here.
For instance, it was recorded in1948 that of 195 cotton
jinneries or factories. In Uganda, 183 were run by

(27:14):
individuals of Indian descent and this was reflected in the
currency in use of the the country.
The banknotes of the East African shilling, a currency
used by the British colonial government in the region between
1921 and 1969, had their values written in Gujarati as well as
Arabic and English. Not long.

(27:35):
After his ascent to power, Amin determined to try to remove much
of the Asian population from thecountry and to try to wrest
control of commercial activity and industry in Uganda out of
their hands and place it in those of ethnic Ugandans.
Consequently, on the 4th of August 1972, he announced that
those of Asian descent within Uganda who did not have full

(27:59):
Ugandan citizenship would have to leave the country within 90
days. This now created a quandary for
the British government. As it had promised at
independence. To give Asians living in the
region British citizenship if they desired it.
As such a logical place for manyof the 10s of thousands of non

(28:20):
citizen Asians living in Uganda who had to leave the country to
head to was Britain. Yet large sections of the
British political establishment were concerned about the
potential arrival of 10s of thousands of refugees into
Britain from Uganda. As a result, Edward Heath's
government in London tried to dissuade Amin on his course of

(28:41):
action and delay the expulsion order.
As the deadline at the beginningof November 1972 neared, panic
set in. Eventually, a United Nations
emergency airlift was required at the 11th hour to bring 27,000
Ugandan refugees of Asian. Descent to Britain.
Kamin's. Motives for the expulsion order

(29:03):
were clear to see before the 10sof thousands of people were
forced out of the country on their way to the airports and
borders. Those who were forcibly exiled
were generally robbed of everything of value which they
had. Those who objected within the
country to this, such as the Chief Justice Benedicto
Kiwanuka, suffered a harsh fate.Kiwanuka was an important figure

(29:26):
in the transition to independence within Uganda.
He had briefly served in the early 1960s as a technocratic
Prime Minister of Uganda, following the granting of the
right of self governance to the country and before the elections
which had brought Obote to power.
He had been imprisoned by Obote's government in 1969 but
was released by Amin when he seized power in 1971.

(29:50):
Originally he tried to work withthe new regime and was made
Chief Justice of the country, but his criticism of Amin over
the treatment of the Asian community and other issues saw
him arrested in September 1972. He was executed on the 22nd of
September by Armen's forces at Machindier Military Prison.

(30:11):
The manner of his execution is indicative of Armen's brutality.
Kiwanuka's ears, nose and lips were severed before he was
castrated, disemboweled and set on fire.
Another very. Significant aspect of the
expulsion of the Asian communityin 1972 was seen in the months
and years that followed with thecollapse of the Ugandan economy.

(30:34):
The 50,000 to 60,000 Asian Ugandans who had been forced out
of the country had controlled. An extensive amount of the
country's Trade and Industry these.
Businesses were now handed. Over to our means followers
within the military, however. These were usually individuals
who had no idea. How to run the companies which?
They were given, and often lack,the basic literacy and numeracy

(30:58):
needed to conduct trade. Farm machinery which was used
for crop production eventually broke down and could not be
fixed. Cotton gins which jammed or
stopped working never reintroduce.
And perhaps the most ironic signof the total mismanagement of
the economy was seen in the collapse of cement factories at
Toro and Fort Portal. As a result, the Ugandan economy

(31:22):
went into a tailspin in the mid 1970s counties shortages of all
kinds of goods which had been either produced or imported by
these businesses followed, and with it prices increased,
inflation grew steadily, and by 1975 and 1976, the Ugandan.
Economy was effectively collapsing under a means rule.

(31:43):
The years following. The expulsion of Uganda's Asian
community saw Amin striking an increasingly confrontational
pose on the international stage.By the end of 1972, most Britons
had left the country and early in 1974 Amin succeeded in
alienating London by expelling 14 members of the British High

(32:03):
Commission, who had been installed as a kind of post
colonial oversight committee in Kampala following the granting
of independence in 1962. Despite this and increasing
sanctions directed against Amin's regime by Western
countries, there was also a verystrange situation in which
planes were regularly flying outof Stansted Airport in London

(32:25):
carrying cargoes of luxury European goods for Amin and
other senior members of his regime.
The so-called Whiskey Run operated outside of any trade
sanctions which were meant to apply to Amin and his followers.
And this was occurring at the same time that Amin was
increasingly turning to Libya and the Soviet Union for

(32:46):
assistance, while also denouncing continued Western
support for the apartheid regimein South Africa and denouncing
his other former ally, Israel, as a result of its involvement
in the Arab. Israeli war of 1970. 3.
This diplomatic. Schism with the West came to a
head in 1975 when Amin's regime hosted the summit of the

(33:09):
Organization of African Unity inKampala, with Amin serving as
the summit's chairman. Here he essentially press ganged
several Britons into carrying him into a reception at the
summit while he publicly embarrassed the British Foreign
Secretary, James Callahan, who had come to the summit
specifically to intercede with Ameen to release the British

(33:30):
author Dennis Hills, who in a recent book called The White
Pumpkin, had referred to Ameen as a village tyrant.
Callahan left believing all hopeof cooperation with Ameen was
over, but Hills, who had been sentenced to death prior to
Callahan's intervention, was spared by the Ugandan
government. Meanwhile, Ameen continued to

(33:51):
tie himself ever closer to the Soviet Union by.
The end of. 1975 the regime had received 10s of millions of
dollars in economic aid and military assistance from Moscow,
while Amin had also dispatched several 1000 Ugandan troops to
Eastern Europe to receive modernmilitary.
Training and for its part, the Soviet government was interested

(34:13):
in courting Amin as a way of geographically offsetting
British influence in Kenya and the perceived Chinese
involvement in Tanzania. It was in the mid. 1970s as well
that Amin developed a connectionwith a paramilitary organization
back in Scotland that has becomethe subject of books and even a
film in recent years. At this time, the nascent

(34:34):
Scottish National Liberation Army, a fringe paramilitary
group in Scotland which had begun a low level terrorist
campaign in their home country involving posting letter bombs,
contacted Amin having clearly heard of its fondness for the
country. Amin indicated some sympathy for
their desire to. To acquire independence from
Britain, even. Offering to become King of

(34:56):
Scotland should they need him tostep in and perform the role, a
proposal which would make him the first ruler of Scotland
independent of Britain in nearly400 years.
This bizarre suggestion, while an interesting indicator of
Amin's increasingly unhinged state of mind, was simply a
footnote to his tenure as Ugandan dictator, despite its

(35:18):
subsequent notoriety as a resultof a book and film.
Film starring Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy as all of this
was. Happening on the international
stage in the mid 1970's, the regime continued its brutal ways
at home. Amin and his followers were
openly favoring some religious and ethnic groups within Uganda

(35:40):
and persecuting others. The dictators own ethnic groups,
the Icaquas and newbies of the northern regions were favored,
while the Bugandans, the predominant ethnic group in the
South near Lake Victoria and around Kampala, were also
courted. Similarly, the small Muslim
minority were shown great preference as they shared a

(36:00):
religion with Armen. By the second-half of the 1970s,
for example, Muslims occupied over 80% of the top positions
within the military and government, despite making up
just about 6% of the population.However, the state continued to
effectively persecute some of the other religious groups and
ethnic groups, most notably the choli and langi of the

(36:23):
northeastern and eastern part ofthe country.
Throughout the mid 1970s, tens of thousands of people from
these groupings continued to be killed, demoted, attacked,
imprisoned, or displaced from their lands and homes.
And to achieve this level of oppression, Amin continued to
expand the already sizeable Ugandan army, making it

(36:44):
effectively into a military aristocracy of his supporters
who ruled the country. Amin was.
Facilitated in this oppression through the work of the state
Research Bureau, a secret policeorganization which had been set
up shortly after he seized power.
It's work though, is largely associated with Roberts or Bob

(37:04):
Astels. From the mid 1970s onwards.
Astels was a legacy from the. Colonial era a British soldier
and. Official who had fought in the
Second World War and then entered service in Africa.
He eventually ended up in Ugandain 1949, and after spending the
next 13 years there, he decided to remain after independence and

(37:25):
worked for Abute's government. Although he was briefly
imprisoned following Armen's seizure power in 1971, he
eventually wormed his way into the dictator's good graces.
And was appointed as head of theState Research Bureau in the mid
1970s under Astles. The Bureau was charged with
uncovering plots against Armen and the regime and was

(37:48):
responsible. For the disappearance of
thousands of individuals who were suspected of various
crimes, it was not an uncommon sight in the streets of Kampala
and other Ugandan cities throughout these years to see
individuals forced into the trunks of cars and driven off,
often never to be seen again. Amin seems to have trusted

(38:08):
Astles as he became increasinglyderanged and paranoid in the mid
1970s as one of the few individuals.
Whom he knew wasn't trying to overthrow him.
Amin's own. Behavior and lifestyle was
changing in the 1970s as he became increasingly
unpredictable. The dictator was a polygamist
who married at least six women in the 1960s and 1970s.

(38:32):
He divorced three of these in 1974, two of whom died under
mysterious circumstances in the months that followed.
Then he married a 19 year old GoGo dancer called Sara Kiolaba in
a vast £2,000,000 wedding in thesummer of 1970, 25 at which the
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafatacted as his best man.

(38:54):
In total he sighed as many as fifty children and perhaps many
more through numerous concubines.
Many of these were variously raised at palaces and luxury
houses which are mean increasingly acquired across the
country. Meanwhile Amin, who had been
athletic and a keen sportsman inhis younger years, grew larger
in size as he settled into his 50s.

(39:17):
He was rabidly paranoid about conspiracies being launched
against him, a not unjustifiableconcern for an individual in his
position, but this would often extend into bouts of sheer
lunacy. Bob Astle's later described
being rung by members of the government who believed he acted
as a moderating influence on Armen when he was quote out of

(39:39):
control. An issue which?
Seems to have. Become a major factor affecting
his personality and his actions as ruler of Uganda was that he
had contracted syphilis in his younger years and by the 1970s
may have been suffering from partial dementia resulting from
tertiary syphilis. This would perhaps explain some

(40:00):
of the more bizarre behaviour and the accusation of
cannibalism which attached themselves to him towards the
latter end of his dictatorship. In the late. 1970s An Israeli
Doctor Who had served in Uganda sometime earlier had openly
stated. It's no secret that Amin is
suffering from the advanced stages of syphilis which has

(40:20):
caused brain damage. Perhaps this also accounts for a
telegram which Amin sent to KurtValdheim, the secretary general
of. Of the United Nations at the
time, praising the actions of the Nazi dictator of Germany,
Adolf Hitler, and seeming to suggest that the Holocaust had
been carried out by setting people on fire with gas.

(40:40):
Word of the message got out quickly to world leaders, and it
was increasingly clear after this that Africa was dealing
with a partial madman. Meanwhile, the praise Amin
heaped on German actions in the Second World War damaged his
relations with the Soviet Union.One of.
His last remaining backers, economically and militarily.

(41:03):
This was. All compounded in 1976 in one of
the most infamous incidents associated with Amin and his
regime. On the 27th of June that summer,
an Air France plane was hijackedon its way from Tel Aviv to
Paris by Athens. It was diverted to Entebbe
airport outside Kampala and it soon became clear to the

(41:24):
international media that Amin was in league with the Palestine
Palestinian terrorists and members of the West German urban
guerrilla movement, the Revolutionary Zelen, which had
orchestrated the hijacking. In the hours that followed, the
non Jewish passengers were released from the plane and
demands were now issued that dozens of Palestinian political

(41:45):
prisoners being held in Israel were to be released.
Otherwise, starting on the 1st of July, the kidnappers would
begin executing the Jewish hostages.
However, what followed was an incredible rescue operation.
The Israeli commanders flew fromIsrael to Uganda, refuelling in
Nairobi and neighboring Kenya tofree the hostages.

(42:05):
The airport at Entebbe had been built by Israeli contractors
years earlier and they knew the exact layout.
Consequently, on the night of the 4th of July, approximately
100 Israeli commanders managed to land in a surprise attack,
freed nearly every single hostage, blew up most of the
Ugandan Air Force's fighter planes which was stationed at

(42:28):
Tebe, and took off again out of Uganda in a mission that lasted
just 90 minutes. Amin was bewildered and enraged
by what had happened when he awoke the next morning.
Amin's role. In facilitating the Palestinian
hijacking of the Air France flights in the summer of 1976
was just. One of the.

(42:48):
Increasingly incendiary activities he was engaging in on
the international stage. In the second-half of the 1970s,
it was largely clear that the Kenyan government had
facilitated the Israeli mission to free their citizens at
Entebbe by allowing them to refuel in Nairobi.
The Kenyan regime was no doubt antagonized by a means

(43:09):
increasingly jingoistic attitudetowards them.
Back in 19 O2, the British had included a large portion of what
was western Kenya within the borders of the Protectorate of
Uganda. These same lands were eventually
returned to become part of Kenyawhen it was given independence.
But in the mid 1970s Amin began pressing a largely baseless

(43:32):
claim that this part of western Kenya was actually Ugandan land
or part of a greater Uganda. And this would no doubt have
encouraged the government in Nairobi to facilitate the
Israeli rescue mission in July 1976.
But it did have implications, asin the weeks following the air.
France episode Amin had hundredsor perhaps even thousands of

(43:55):
ethnic Kenya. Indians who were living in
Uganda killed in reprisals. Throughout the mid. 1970s
religious leaders across Uganda had become increasingly
concerned about the divisive nature of the regime's
approaches towards Uganda's Christians and its Muslim
population. Amin had deliberately courted
the Muslim population and oppressed some of the Christian

(44:18):
churches. The Archbishop of the Church of
Uganda, Jannini Luwam, had been especially vocal about the need
to cool religious tensions and late in 1976 he chaired a
conference of Anglican, Catholicand Muslim leaders.
An agreement was reached at thismeeting that all involved would
work going forward to ease religious divisions within the

(44:39):
country. But when Amin, who had not been
informed of the gathering beforehand, learned of this, he
had Luhum arrested on fabricatedcharges of having plotted an
armed insurrection. Then on the 17th of February
1977, Luhum was effectively paraded for the international
media. The following day a statement

(45:00):
was issued by Amin's regime thatthe Archbishop had been killed
in a car accident. Yet no one was deceived and
reports since suggest that Amin even shot Lewum himself.
The Archbishop was subsequently acclaimed as a martyr and a
further sign of how unstable Amin was and how isolated his

(45:20):
regime had become followed when he was not invited to a meeting
of the heads of the Commonwealth's states shortly
afterwards. Luum and.
The other religious leaders actions were indicative of the
manner in which senior figures in Uganda were increasingly
opposing Amin's regime. This extended into the ranks of

(45:41):
his government. Already in 1975 Emmanuel Bleyer
Waqawa, Amin's finance minister,had defected to Britain whilst
on a visit to London. But more damaging still was the
defection of the Health Minister, Henry Kiemba, in 1977.
Gemba quickly authored an account of the Amin regime from
the inside and published it as AState of Blood, a blistering

(46:04):
indictment of Amin's brutality and bloodletting, however.
While the international community's disdain for Amin and
his regime severely hampered Amin's ability to govern Uganda,
it would not remove him from power.
As long as Amin retained a tightcontrol over the military and
government within the country itself, he was secure in his.

(46:26):
Position. But this was increasingly not
the case. By late 1977, a split had
developed within the Ugandan military between those who
remain steadfastly loyal to Aminand those who favoured the vice
president, General Mustafa Ajisi, over the madman that Amin
seemed to now be. It was in awareness of Ajisi's

(46:47):
growing strength and in an effort to shore up his own
authority, that Amin would enterin 1978 into a fatal conflict
that would bring about the end of his regime.
For years, relations between Amin's Uganda and Tanzania to
the South had been strained, even hostile at times.
It was here that Milton Aborte had established himself in exile

(47:11):
in 1971, and from here that the abortive invasion of Uganda was
launched by some of his supporters in the autumn of
1972. And now, at the end of the
1970s, it became the source of Amin's final overthrow.
In the late autumn of 1978, troops loyal to Adrisi had
mutinied in southern Uganda, near the Tanzanian border.

(47:33):
When some fighting broke out here, Amin elected to
effectively turn the engagement into a war with Tanzania, one
which would shore up his supportwithin Uganda and allow him to
consolidate his control of the country.
This decision may have been madehalf heartedly when he realized
he had lost control of some elements of the army on the

(47:54):
southern border and he wanted totake take credit afterwards for
their incursions into Tanzanian territory.
In any event, the initial stagesof the Uganda Tanzania war went
well for Amin. In the early winter, Ugandan
forces entered in large numbers into northern Tanzania and
occupied the region in such a way that as 1978 was coming to

(48:16):
an end, Amin was able to announce that he intended to
annex the Kagera region of northern Tanzania.
However, the situation would allchange very quickly in 1979.
In January. 1979 The Tanzanian President Julius Niere began
mobilizing the Tanzanian People's Defence Force with the

(48:37):
goal of striking back N against Armen's armies.
They were joined by a large contingent of Ugandans who were
opposed. To the Armen regime and who had
been living in exile in Tanzania.
As they moved, N Armen's forces started falling away in places
and being defeated in others. Some units fled over the western
border into the Congo. Gradually the main bulk was

(49:00):
forced back towards Kampala as winter gave way to the spring of
1979. Amin was now desperately seeking
foreign aid, but despite appealing to Saudi Arabia and
Saddam Hussein's Iraq, he only received the minimal support
from Gaddafi in Libya and the Palestinian Liberation
Organization. The decisive engagement of the
war finally occurred at the Battle of Lucaya, southwest of

(49:24):
Kampala, on the 10th and 11th ofMarch.
March. Here a force of 2000 Ugandan
troops and 1000 Libyans, supported by 18 tanks, were
overrun by a joint Tanzanian andUgandan exile army, one which
had little tank support but far superior infantry numbers.
In the hours that followed the defeat, and as news of it

(49:46):
arrived in Kampala, many urged Armen to accept the situation
and stepped down as leader of Uganda.
In Kampala, Amin remained defiant to the end, even as
Tanzanian and Ugandan exile troops closed in on Entebbe
airport on the shores of Lake Victoria to the southwest of the
capital. He refused.

(50:07):
To back down. And even fired his military
chief of staff, Yusuf Gawan. However, with dwindling numbers
of supporters and the belligerents closing on the
capital itself, he did eventually flee from Kampala by
helicopter on the 11th of April 1979.
The day which is generally seen as marking the end of the Idi

(50:28):
Amin regime in Uganda. Yet in the months that followed,
peace did not immediately returnto Uganda.
A loose civilian government was formed out of various interest
groups, but it could not operateeffectively, was seriously
divided and eventually a new military coup occurred in May
1980. This would lead in the short

(50:48):
term to a military government, but unlike Armen in 1971, the
interim military governor Paula Mwanga did pave the way for
elections and a transition to civilian government towards the
end of 1980. In these, none other than Milton
Aborte was returned as Uganda's new president.

(51:08):
Milton Aborte's return to power in the elections of 1980 did
not, however, go unopposed. Many groups believed, perhaps
not without substantial justification, that the
elections had been rigged in favour of Aborte's Ugandan
People's Congress. As a result, as Aborte took
office for a new term as president, a guerrilla war
between his government and thosewho did not recognize its

(51:31):
legitimacy was beginning in Uganda.
The so-called Ugandan Bush war would drag on for over 5 years
between in Abote's government and the guerrillas led by Yoweri
Museveni. Eventually, as Museveni and his
followers got the upper hand, Abote fled from Uganda in 1985.
Then in January 1986, the guerrilla fighters entered

(51:53):
Kampala and Museveni, who had first fled to Tanzania back in
1971 as a young man in his 20s, became the new president of
Uganda. The coming of Museveni and his
National Resistance Movement to power in Kampala was not a new
dawn for Uganda. Museveni has never left office
and is one of the world's longest serving heads of state,

(52:16):
having recently been re elected in January 2021, and Ugandan
politics has been dogged ever since by human rights abuses and
persecution of minorities. The Ugandan.
Bush War, though, was played outin the 1980s and would not
involve Idi Amin the bloodshed. He was responsible.
For was largely confined to the 1970s, it is difficult to get an

(52:40):
accurate idea of exactly how many deaths.
Samin's regime was actually responsible for the results of
Uganda having an I'll defined population level at the time,
making it difficult to assess the number of deaths from
censuses and other statistical data.
And also the fact that by their very nature, the killings and
disappearances which claimed thelives of 10s of thousands of

(53:02):
people were not recorded officially.
In addition, it is often difficult to decide what to
count. Many thousands died in Uganda,
for instance, during these years.
Not as a. Result of a government
directive, but indirectly as a result of a means creation of a
military state in which senior members of the army could murder
people with impunity. Equally, the mishandling of the

(53:25):
economy added to the death toll.But again, again in indirect
ways. However, these limitations
aside, it is generally accepted today based on claims made by
Amnesty International, that Amin's regime killed at least
300,000 people between 1971 and 1979, though some evidence from

(53:45):
census records suggest a population decline of somewhere
between 420,000 and 800,000. While a precise figure may not
be possible, what is undoubted is that Amin's regime created
immense hardship for the people of Uganda throughout the 1970s
and it was one of the most brutal dictatorships the

(54:05):
continent saw during the period.Following the flight.
From Kampala, Amin did not immediately leave Uganda for a
few weeks. He was at.
Large in the. East of the country and even
attempted to set up an opposition government with its
capital. In the city.
Of Jinja on Lake Victoria, he quickly faced up to the reality
though and left the country entirely, heading first to Libya

(54:27):
where his old ally Gaddafi gave him temporary refuge.
However, in 1980 he headed further east and settled in
Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, where hewas given official sanctuary by
the government. Shortly after his arrival there,
he gave his first post rule interview in which he defended
his reign as ruler of Uganda andclaimed that many in his

(54:48):
homeland wished for him to be restored to power.
Despite such assertions, Amin would never return to power or
play a further major role in political life, though he
attempted to return to Uganda in1989 when he flew to Zaire,
where a major war had broken out, with implications for
several neighboring countries, including Uganda.

(55:10):
Here, Amin had hoped to use the disorder as a means of building
up a support base for his returnto Uganda, which had been
plunged into fresh disorder itself in the late 1980s.
It was an abortive mission, and within months Amin was back in
Saudi Arabia, where a reluctant Saudi government had been
coerced by the United States andothers into accepting Amin back

(55:33):
again. Amin lived.
Out the remainder of his life inSaudi Arabia without trying to
intervene again in Uganda, he was also firmly warned not to
give television interviews or speak to the press, and he
stayed relatively close to his villa in Jeddah.
His later years involved a cycleof sports events, gym sessions

(55:53):
and massage parlours, while he was often seen taking his Range
Rover or Chevrolet Caprice out for shopping trips and visits to
the airport, where Amin regularly had to clear parcels
of goods from Uganda through customs.
The airplanes full of luxury goods on the whiskey runs from
Stansted Airport to Kampala in the 1970s had been succeeded by

(56:15):
parcels of cassava and other East African foods arriving into
Jeddah in the 1990s. Curiously, there were only
limited calls for Amin to be tried in any international court
for his war crimes during these years.
Finally, in the summer of 2003, when he was either 80.
Years of age or? Very near it, his family

(56:36):
reported that the former dictator was in a coma in a
Jeddah hospital brought about bykidney failure.
A request by his family for him to be allowed to return to
Uganda to die met with the response that he would be
prosecuted if he set foot in Uganda.
Thus it was that when A means life support was switched off on
the 16th of August 2003, he diedin Jeddah and was buried in a

(57:00):
largely nondescript grave in theSaudi Arabian capital.
There is no doubting. That Idi Amin was a brutal
dictator. His regime introduced extensive
political oppression right from its very inception and
exacerbated religious and ethnicdivisions within Uganda as a way
of dividing its people and ruling over them.

(57:22):
Rather than trying to unite the various groupings of Ugandan
society together to make a strong Uganda in the post
independence period, headed by an increasingly unstable
individual, one who was possiblysuffering from a type of
syphilis induced dementia and who had always been an immoral,
excessively violent individual, the regime oppressed large

(57:43):
sections of its people throughout the 1970s.
It is unclear exactly how many deaths the regime was directly
responsible for, but a cautious estimate would suggest at least
300,000 people, while abject mishandling of the economy
further impoverished millions more than As his administration
grew increasingly unpopular evenamongst the groupings Amin had

(58:07):
tried to explicitly cultivate ashis allies, the dictator turned
to trying to initiate regional wars with Uganda's neighbors in
order to shore up his support back home.
This policy backfired though, and war with Tanzania in 1978
quickly led to Amin being deposed and exiled the following
year, bringing to an end the eight-year reign of one of

(58:29):
Africa's more brutal dictators. Yet a means.
Ascent to power and the manner in which it occurred also serves
as a striking reminder of the failures of the decolonization
of Africa in the 1950s and 1960s.
Amin was trained by the British and rose to power within the
King's African Rifles while he was responsible for a major

(58:52):
atrocity of civilians in Uganda on the eve of the country's
independence, it was decided to forgo court martialing him and
brush the event under the carpetbecause it was not deemed
politically shrewd to prosecute him at the time.
His regime could perhaps have been avoided if he had been.
Later, the British and Israeli governments supported him in

(59:12):
seizing power from Milton Abortein in 1971 owing to their own
geopolitical interests. Narrow self-serving concerns
such as these saw countries on both sides of the Cold War
facilitating the rise and maintenance of dictators like
Amin and Joseph Mobutu in the neighboring Congo or Zaire

(59:32):
through the post independent period in Africa.
And yet those who facilitated a means rise in 1971 cannot have
known what would ensue between 1971 and 1970. 29 an
increasingly unhinged dictator and his followers were
responsible for killing hundredsof thousands of Ugandans,

(59:52):
displacing many more, and destabilizing the entire East
African region. The pity of it all is that,
having fallen from power in 1979, Amin was able to live
freely in exile and was never indicted in an international
court. What do you think?
Of Idi Amin, was he perhaps the most vicious of the continent's

(01:00:13):
dictators in the age of oppressive regimes which
followed independence in the 1960s and 1970s?
Please let us know in the comments section.
And in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.