{UAH} THE UNTOLD JEKYLL AND HYDE STORY OF IDI AMIN

The untold Jekyll and Hyde story of Idi Amin

Idi Amin, driving, and the late Mobutu Sese sseko, who was then president of Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo. Picture: File  

By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI

Posted  Sunday, January 31   2010 at  09:02

Following a string of books and films depicting the late Ugandan president Idi Amin Dada as a buffoon and blood-thirsty dictator, a new book, The Other Side of Idi Amin Dada by Christopher Colombus Sembuya praises him for his “positive contributions” to Uganda in the fields of business, infrastructure, religion and sports, among others.

“True, the circumstances and the period of Idi Amin were characterised by terror, but that does not have to put away his other side that was a sincere positive contribution to Uganda…” argues Sembuya in the book.

“Often Amin has been accused of so many wrongs, that any of his right doings always obscured,” he adds in the book, published by Sest Holdings Ltd.

Sembuya credits Amin for the creation of Uganda’s first and only national flag carrier, the Uganda Airlines Corporation and expanding the Uganda Railways following the collapse of the East African Community in 1977.

Amin’s government introduced many changes in the textile sector including the creation of the National Textiles Board to co-ordinate all the industry’s activities. Sembuya attributes the poor state of the country’s textile garment industry to the privatisation of Nyanza Textile Industries Ltd and abolition of the Lint Marketing Board.

“It is saddening that Uganda imports millions of dollars’ worth of low quality garments when better fabrics could be produced locally by revamping our local textile mills. Jobs are instead being offered to overseas nationals instead of bona fide Ugandans,” he laments.

A sportsman in his own right, having been a rugby player, swimmer and boxer in his youth, Amin also played football and drove rally cars as president. He did not stop at that and provided moral and financial support to sports. During his rule, John Akii Bua won the 400m hurdles gold medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics in Germany. The Uganda Cranes were runners-up at the 1978 Africa Cup of Nations, losing to hosts Ghana.

Amin is credited for constructing, purchasing and maintaining national assets abroad. In 1974, Uganda joined the Organisation of Islamic Conference. He united the country’s once fractious Muslims under the banner of the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council. He contributed generously to projects of different faiths in the country. Amin created a special department of religious affairs, which was almost at ministerial level.

He brought back Sir Edward Muteesa II’s body from the UK for state burial with full honours on April 4, 1971.

Amin is also remembered for linking Uganda to the rest of the world by putting up earth satellite stations at Mpoma in Mukono and at Ombaci in West Nile region.

Sembuya quotes one of Amin’s widows, Madina Amin – who claims that the Mpoma Earth Satellite Station was Amin’s gift to the Baganda, generally, and people of Mukono in particular for accepting him as a son-in-law.

It is said that though the gift looked impressive to the eye, the village people could not help wondering, not so quietly, what on earth they were going to do with the monstrous metal dish in their midst.

And stories are said to have circulated, some one suggesting that perhaps the giant structure was a secret weapon being used by the Europeans to spy on Ugandans, particularly in Mukono. When a prolonged drought destroyed the banana plantations in the area of the satellite station, some locals blamed it all on Amin’s strange dowry.

The author provides background to Amin’s ascendancy to power. He observes that the January 1964 mutiny by units of the Uganda Army demanding higher pay and more rapid promotions was the beginning of the involvement of the military in Uganda’s state affairs.

“…The military then began to assume a more prominent role in Uganda’s life. Obote selected the popular officer, Idi Amin Dada, and promoted him rapidly through the ranks as a personal protege,” Sembuya argues.

Eventually, a rift developed between Amin and Obote; worsened by the support Amin had built within the army by recruiting from the West Nile region; his involvement in operations to support the rebellion in Southern Sudan; and an alleged attempt on Obote’s life in 1969.

In October 1970, Obote himself took control of the armed forces, demoting Amin from his months-old post of commander of all the armed forces to that of commander of the army. Having learned that Obote was planning to arrest him for misappropriating army funds, Amin seized power in a military coup on January 25, 1971, while Obote attended a Commonwealth meeting in Singapore.

A broadcast on Radio Uganda accused Obote’s government of corruption and preferential treatment of the Lango region. Amin announced that he was a soldier, not a politician, and that the military government would remain only as a caretaker regime until new elections, which would be announced as soon as the situation was normalised. He promised to release all political prisoners and did so, Sembuya writes.

While touring Tororo in eastern Uganda on August 4, 1972, Amin announced a dream he had had and whose implementation would have far reaching effects on the lives of all Ugandans, altering their attitudes forever. In the dream, a higher power had directed him to rid Ugandans of foreigners who were “milking” the economy at the expense of native Ugandans.

The president gave Uganda’s 70,000 Asians (mostly Indians) 90 days to denounce their British citizenship or leave the country. The Indians controlled everything from shops, to garages, schools, plantations, factories and other big commercial enterprises in the country.

“The Ugandan government claimed that the Asians were hoarding goods, exporting wealth abroad and sabotaging the national economy to the detriment of indigenous Africans. He ensured that they were compensated for what they lost,” Sembuya writes.

Sembuya argues that: “…The declaration of the economic war was never to challenge or create racial divisions but rather to elevate the Ugandans, having been worried about the little involvement for local Ugandans in the business and commerce. Ugandans who had been blind for a long time had their eyes opened.”

The expulsion of Indians emanated from Obote’s 1968 landmark blueprint for socialism, known as The Common Man’s Charter. Obote’s government threatened to nationalise many industries in 1969, saying Asians exported much of their wealth and were accused of large-scale graft and tax evasion.

“On the economic front,” Sembuya adds: “Idi Amin expelled the Asians to ensure that the national economy remained in the hands of Ugandans. Only those with Ugandan passports were spared. The Amin regime then distributed, free of charge, the assets and enterprises formerly owned by the non-Ugandan Asians to local traders. This gave birth to many of Uganda’s first black millionaires who took up these opportunities as a result.”

“Amin has always been referred to in writings and speeches as a murderer, an idiot, a man who never went to school, a fool. The death, in suspicious circumstances, of the Archbishop of Uganda, Janani Luwum and some Cabinet ministers further clouded the good deeds Amin had undertaken during his administration of Uganda,” Sembuya admits.

“Amin may have risen to prominence for the wrong reasons, but it remains impossible to delete the many good deeds he undertook for the development of his country,” Sembuya contends.

EM

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