In his new book, the highly respected academics and writer, Ugandan Mahmood Mamdani revisits the era dominated by Uganda’s dictator Iddi Amin and looks at his legacy as it plays out today under President Yoweri Museveni. Review, in two parts, by our East Africa correspondent. Part One. The rise and fall of Idi Amin In Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, Prof. Mahmood Mamdani delivers one of the most searing critiques yet of the Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni regimes. The celebrated scholar gives his authoritative and personal account of the tragic postcolonial fate of Uganda, his homeland.
In 1972, when Mamdani (whose son, Zohran, has been elected as the Mayor of New York, US) returned home to Uganda, he found a country transformed by “an orgy of violence.” Two years earlier, with support from the former colonial power Great Britain and Israel, which had trainers in the national army, Idi Amin had overthrown Uganda’s first President, Milton Obote’s government in a coup on January 25, 1971. Uganda had achieved its independence from Britain in 1962 with Milton Obote el as the first Prime Minister. Reviewers note: Idi Amin joined the King’s African Rifles, the army run by the British colonial power, in 1946 as a cook. He was physically big and took part in sporting activities such as boxing, was generally genial in temperament and seemed obsessed by Scotland. He then moved to the fighting section as a lieutenant. He was involved in action against Somali rebels and the Mau Mau’s fight for independence in Kenya. Amin gained the reputation of being totally ruthless, often killing whole villages. This streak contrasted with his otherwise jovial personality but impressed the British, who promoted him and called him a ‘jolly old chap’. At independence, he had attained the rank of Deputy Army Commander, and by 1964, he was commander under Milton Obote. When Obote left to attend a conference in Singapore, Amin, who believed the Prime Minister was going to arrest him over misappropriating army funds, struck and, with the help of the British and Israeli military trainers, overthrew Obote and declared himself the president. Reports suggest that the initial close relationship between Amin and Israeli Military Mission Chief, Colonel Baruch Bar-Lev, has convinced many, including Obote himself, that Israel was principally behind the coup and support for Amin, although there is an equally strong belief that the British were the principal instigators, as Obote was leaning towards the socialist countries. Whatever the truth, the relationship with Israel turned sour completely. Amin became vehemently anti-Israel, even sending a telegram to the UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim in which he praised the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. He justified the killing of six million Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany, saying, “It happened because Hitler and all of the German people knew that the Israelis are not a people who work for humanity, and because of that they burned them alive and killed them with gas on the soil of Germany.” Amin’s sea change against Israel came about following his decision to take a detour and meet the young revolutionary, Muammar Gaddafi, who had overthrown the former corrupt king. He changed the terms of oil revenues from the Western companies to favour the country and used the cash to develop the country and the people. He had become a hero for most of the developing world and Africa in particular, as most of the leaders at the time were thoroughly corrupt, funnelling their countries’ fortunes abroad. In his book, Mamdani fleshes out the background behind Amin’s volte-face. After the coup of 1971, many soldiers who had survived either left with Obote or followed him into exile to Tanzania or Sudan.
Amin was more concerned with his regime’s survival. The soldiers who had left had formed a large section of the army created by the British and were now in Tanzania and Sudan, taking orders from Obote. Amin turned to Israel and Britain in his hour of need for military support. When the support was not forthcoming, Amin turned to Anwar El-Sadat of Egypt, Mamdani writes.
“On Sadat’s advice, Amin met Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and, through Gaddafi, President Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan. The result of the tripartite consultation was the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972, which brought an end to the Israeli presence in Southern Sudan, as well as Israeli links with the South Sudanese rebels, known as the Anyanya. Nimeiry suggested that Amin absorb close to half of the Anyanya forces, which Amin was eager to do since it would replenish his troops after the loss of practically half the army in the aftermath of the coup. Nimeiry reciprocated by closing Obote’s bases in South Sudan,” he adds.
Mamdani continues: “Brokered by Gaddafi, the Addis Ababa Agreement was signed on March 17, 1972. It proved to be a turning point in the relationship between Sudan and Uganda on the one hand, and Uganda and Israel on the other. Within a month, all Israeli military instructors were thrown out of Uganda. All arms deals with Israel were cancelled, and all civilian construction by Israeli companies, including at Arua Airport, was stopped.”
He expelled virtually all Jews and Israeli trainers and advisors from the country and later the same year, he suddenly announced that all Asians – who formed the backbone of the country’s economy, would be given three months to ‘pack up and go”. The edict affected both citizens and non-citizens. He called him ‘brown Jews” and said they were sabotaging the economy and keeping the majority poor.
He also turned his ire against the then-dominant Buganda ethnic group, which controlled most of the agricultural export and processing industries.
His decision was popular as the majority, which was poor, believed that they would be given the shops, houses, cars and other possessions of the Asians. Expulsion of Asians Soon after the 1971 coup, Amin began accusing the Asian community of being anti-social, refusing to integrate with the Africans in Uganda, and engaging in a host of malpractices.
He accused Asians of deliberately keeping a social distance from the African majority, for not cooperating in social activities with Africans, practising social segregation, discouraging interracial marriages, smuggling, hoarding, renting of front rooms to Africans, unfair competition in trade, evasion of income tax by keeping two sets of books, and bribing government officials.
“We have seen that when leaders of the Asian community responded, they said little that was new, even if what they said was true. They split the blame between the colonial government and culture (both African and Asian). When it came to the future, they claimed they had no power to shape it: the capacity and responsibility for change lay exclusively with the government,” Mamdani notes.
On August 4, 1972, Amin told troops in the town of Tororo, “I am going to ask Britain to take over responsibility for all Asians in Uganda who are holding British passports because they are sabotaging the economy of the country. I want the economy to be in the hands of Ugandan citizens, especially Black Ugandans; I want your troops to help me protect the country from saboteurs. There is no room in Uganda for people who are encouraging corruption.”
In Amin’s devastating decree, Uganda’s 70,000 Asians (mostly Indians) who were controlling major sectors of the economy were given 90 days to leave the country.
According to Mamdani, expulsion stories are replete with accounts of widespread thievery, but “there was neither large-scale loss of life in 1972 nor sporadic massacres for which Uganda has become notorious. Massacres, and indeed genocide, have been the fate of minorities who have vied for power, such as the Tutsi in Rwanda.
“For minorities, such as the Asians, whose ambitions have been confined to the marketplace, expulsion has been their fate. In Uganda in 1972, there was not much in the way of large-scale robbery or looting for one reason: the expulsion itself was one big, well-organised collective theft.”
Mamdani’s family lived in a rented flat on 15 Baskerville Avenue in Kololo, probably Kampala’s wealthiest suburb. Being the eldest child in the family, Mamdani decided to leave last. His sister, Masuma, left for New York City after securing a scholarship to Wellesley College. Mamdani’s brother, Anis, left for Dar es Salaam. Their parents left for England.
Mamdani left on the last official day of the expulsion and reunited with his parents in the transit camp on Kensington Church Street, London. “After the camp came loneliness, anxiety, depression. My parents lived in Wembley, in the United Kingdom, for several years before returning to Dar es Salaam to join my brother and me.
“One day, when they were back in Dar es Salaam, I asked Ammy and Daddy what their favourite pastime had been in Wembley. They said it was going to Gatwick Airport to receive the weekly flight from Entebbe, on the off chance they might recognise one of the disembarking passengers. That night, I cried,” he recalls.
“The process we know as the expulsion lasted for three months. Those who left could only take out fifty pounds sterling per person. For those who had any more left, the option was to spend it in the time one had left in the country…,” he writes.
Left with no choice, the Asians began to depart, leaving behind their properties. They were treated brutally on the way out; many were robbed of every penny or piece of jewellery they had on them. They scattered about the world – some were accepted by Britain, others by countries like Spain, Canada or the US.
“At the heart of the experience of the ‘Asian expulsion’ was a sense of shared loss of home, of community, of continuity. Every immigrant knows that a sense of belonging develops over generations. …Every place we lived in after the expulsion, we lived as if we were guests, our houses or rooms stamped with the feeling of being transients in our own home.
“Years after we married, Mira (his wife, Mira Nair, an award-winning Indian filmmaker) remarked on how our family homes, whether in Wembley or Dar or back in Kampala, always seemed like guesthouses and we, their occupants, seemed ready to leave at a moment’s notice. With the loss of Uganda, we lost a sense of belonging and of rootedness. This was our greatest loss,” Mamdani laments. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Baganda were slaughtered. Their bodies were thrown into the River Nile, where the crocodiles feasted on them to such an extent that at some point, they were too full to eat anymore.
Reviewers’ note: Amin’s plan backfired. The economy went into a tailspin. His behaviour became more eccentric, and he was ruled by superstition. He forced some British embassy officials to carry him in a heavy palanquin and declared himself the ‘king of Scotland’. He offered marriage to the UK’s Queen Elizabeth. He personally shot several people he had invited to government house to meet him, including the Archbishop of Uganda, Janani Luwum. Uganda, which had been the most prosperous of the three East African states, including Kenya and Tanzania, became the poorest, with thousands fleeing the country to look for safety and income in surrounding nations. Eventually, following the short Tanzania-Uganda war of 1979, waged by Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere and Ugandan rebels, including Yoweri Museveni, Amin was overthrown and took refuge in Saudi Arabia. Amin was followed by Museveni, who has now ruled for nearly four decades. The post Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State by Mahmood Mamdani. appeared first on New African Magazine .