[UAH] Curtains quietly drawn on president Amin’s henchman

Curtains quietly drawn on president Amin's henchman

Former President Idi Amin Dada with Bob Astles who died last December. The two men worked closely in Zaire (DR Congo) before Amin become president. File Photo. 

In Summary

The passing of Astles robs Uganda of a man who could have had intimate insights on the enigmatic personality that Amin was.

Robert "Bob" Astles' funeral was as bizarre as the life he lived.

Quietly passing on from his £1m home in Wimbledon, south London, on December 29, last year, Astles was cremated before a group of five friends, relatives and neighbours, British newspaper, The Telegraph reported.

More intriguing, though, is the concealment that the five people who attended, showed, as they declined to speak to the newspaper about Astles' passing.

How a man, once a close confidante to one of Africa's most feared and hilarious presidents could fall ill and pass on, all escaping the semi-omnipresence of the media and the ubiquity of social networks, is surprising.

In an era where the media combs every corner of the globe and news goes viral within a blink, Astles' unremarkable passing and cremation, perhaps, personifies how, though once feared, reviled and infamous, he had fallen off the radar.

Born in Ashton, United Kingdom, in 1924, little is known about his life at home before he joined the British Indian Army and later the Royal Engineers, reaching the rank of Lieutenant.

Perhaps emboldened by his encounters during the World War II as a youthful boy of 21, he left the United Kingdom and ventured in what many of his British contemporaries still regarded a dark and raw continent, Africa.

A brutal colonial officer
He took the baptism of fire in earnest, quelling a creeping Bataka rebellion in Buganda before taking up a job as a colonial officer with the Ministry of Works.

Using his earnings from the Works Ministry and gratuities from the British government, Astles showed entrepreneurship skills by setting up an airline company-the Uganda Aviation Services Ltd.

Henry Kyemba, who served as Principal Private Secretary to President Milton Obote and briefly under President Idi Amin, before being shuffled to the Ministry of Culture and Social development, links Amin's initial contact with Astles to have been made in 1964 as the Uganda Army made forays into Zaire [Democratic Republic of Congo].

Astles is said to have been on secret service missions for then President Obote while Amin was an officer with the Uganda Army.

A relationship that would gradually blossom was thus nurtured in the jungles of Zaire.

As PPS, Kyemba often found his work crossing paths with Astles, who had joined Uganda Television [presently UBC], as a cameraman but steadily rose to manager.

"He looked to be very committed with his camera work," Kyemba, a man of considered opinion sums up his interactions with Astles.

Being the obstinate man that many civil servants of the early post-independence regimes Astles did not adjust to the ways of Amin after the 1971 coup.

With knowledge of how he had always worked closely with Obote, Astles was inevitably regarded with suspicion by the new regime and the fertile opportunity to ditch him, came when he declined an overture from Amin to carry on his work at the station.

Bob arrested but gets closer to Amin after his release
Astles was arrested and detained at Makindye prison for about three months, reportedly under cruel interrogation about his previous dealings with the fallen government.

But in a U-turn, Astles soon made peace with Amin, earning near-immortal notoriety for doing the dirty work of one of Africa's most feared dictators.

Kyemba says, Astles married Mary Ssenkatuuka, one of the pioneer female graduates in the country. With a fondness for the wild, Astles procured a private jet which jetted him around national parks, often in the company of Amin.

During the flights that Kyemba had with him and Amin, he saw him as a "friendly man".

With the volatility in the country that blighted the Amin era, assigning Astles to manage the Cape Town Villas, a presidential hotel, was certainly a show of trust.

But what immensely cast Astles into the spotlight was his ferocity as he led the anti-smuggling unit in the vast waters of Lake Victoria amid reports of a shoot-to-kill policy from Amin.

Cash crops being a lucrative business then, smuggling had become rife and in choosing Astles to counter the vice, it was a show of faith for a task that called for the lion-hearted.

"He was ruthless in his attempts to please his bosses," Mr Kyemba says, noting that the ordeal that Astles experienced during his incarceration might have solidified his "loyalty" to Amin and might have fed into his brutality as he thwarted smuggling.

"Though I have no evidence, I cannot be surprised because many people lost their lives. He was very ruthless with both imaginary and real smugglers," Mr Kyemba cautiously responds to allegations that Astles might have been complicit in the killings that blighted the Amin era.

As the guns rumbled and Amin's fate looked sealed, Astles, now a sort of amphibian, escaped via Lake Victoria to Kisumu, Kenya.

He was however picked up by security and deported to Uganda to face murder charges. After a trial in which a chilling testimony about how Astles had reportedly shot a 16-year-old boy in the head and abdomen, court, nevertheless, acquitted him.

Justice Seth Manyindo described him as "an impressive, straightforward witness."

Possibly with regime functionaries not contented with the judgment, Astles did not enjoy the fruits of the judgment until 1985 when he was released, with reports of being forced to denounce his Ugandan citizenship as a condition.

He left for the United Kingdom and sunk into oblivion.

Astles anonymity was interrupted by the 2006 movie, the Last King of Scotland, which featured the reign of Idi Amin.

Save for the intermittent interviews with inconspicuous news websites and blogs, Astles retired to the backstage and the mystery, once a staple name during Uganda's macabre Amin era and the days after, was stealthily plucked from our midst.

editorial@ug.nationmedia.com

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H.OGWAPITI
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