Crimes of a father: The unheard cries of Idi Amin’s family

Now our property in Arua was leased in 1967 when I was one-year-old. My father was still a Brigadier General in the Kings African Riffles. He leased five acres next to the airstrip; they used to call it the aerodrome in Arua. This has been his humble property since those days and he had actually managed to build one of the first titled houses on the same plot in 1962. It was a 99-year lease. His property was adjacent only to a murram road heading to a place called Jiako village.

But our historical area was called Tanganyika. My grandfather was one of the ex-service men in the Kings African Riffles and he participated in World War 1 in Tanganyika. When they came back around 1919, he was awarded a plot which is adjacent to our father’s. It was approximately 15 acres.

My father’s plans
There was an expansion going to take place. It had already been in plans during my father’s time. But the expansion was on the other side of the airstrip. It affects a traditional market area. And that’s where all the housing and facilitations were going to take place; on the other side of the airstrip where the entrance is. It did not affect the area where my father had already leased.

But apparently with the agitation of the people who were going to get affected on the other side of the airstrip, CAA has decided to make the majority of the expansion on my father’s side. If they continue with their plans, it will affect what I consider ancestral burial grounds of the family. And the irony is if he had not been buried in Saudi Arabia, this expansion would have forced us to exhume him together with his brothers and sisters and step mother from our ancestral burial grounds.

Now the social implication among the Lugbara and the Kakwa of exhuming our beloved is very strong vis-à-vis a former head of state who is despised and not recognised but blamed for everything.

That for me is the enormity of this issue. I don’t like stepping on toes, I don’t like agitation; most of the time if I have something to say, I either say it to my elder brother Maj. Gen. Taban Amin or to a very good friend of mine Gen. [Salim] Saleh.

Right now I feel so helpless but sometimes if you cry out in the wilderness, some people hear you. We are Kakwa who migrated from Koboko to Arua. Probably the pressures of some clans in the area might be such that the Ayivu who are the rightful owners of Arua would feel that these neighbours might not have so much of a right when it comes to issues of land than we do. So there is a dilemma. I would wish the community to discuss this and understand the enormity. Is it right to disenfranchise us on a property that was acquired in the 60s before my father becoming a head of State? Or what are the implications of us having to migrate further back into the clan origins in Koboko?

It is not something you start discussing with the heads of State. It is something you start discussing with the community. I never approach it from a political angle; I always approach it from the social implications.

My father had direct brothers from the same father and one who shares his mother and they are lying there; five brothers [all together]. He is the only one who is buried in Saudi Arabia. All his brothers are there, his stepmother is there and like I said, the irony is he would have been there when CAA took this step. My father has three surviving sisters. Can you imagine the humiliation of not being approached?
Formal discussion?

There might have been some discussion with my elder, Maj. Gen. Taban Amin. But the fact is when your relatives start ringing alarm bells it means that nobody is discussing anything with them or probably we as children are not being responsible enough to discuss with his direct relatives. Sometimes it takes bringing something out for the community to discuss, not parties, not generals, but the community to discuss an issue, for a constituency to understand that we are part and parcel of the creation of West Nile.
People often confuse Idi Amin and Amin Dada but my grandfather Amin Dada was there from the inception of Arua. This is 1914. And when they came back from the wars in 1919, he was given a particular place. People never understand the meaning of Tanganyika, for example. There is a place called Kenya but all soldiers who came from Kenya ended up in a place called Kenya village in Arua. These were all ex-servicemen who saw action in the Masai-Mara wars in the Kenya and Tanzania border. My grandfather participated in the Tanganyika.

On compensation
You know when it comes to ancestral land, there is intrinsic value. I keep talking about the enormity of exhuming bodies of your beloved; it is a painful process. To give you an example of perspective, National Transitional Council fighters exhumed the bones of Gaddafi’s mother…for what reason? Can you imagine the pain of that? Are they meting punishment or is there a necessity to undermine us? No presidential emoluments, all properties still under caveat? We have a 6.9sq mile ranch in the Vuura County. You approach that place and all villagers come up in arms against you.

As Jaffer Amin, I believe in taking a stand and saying what is going on? Up to what level are we going to continue being deprived of our rights; the basic human rights let alone the retribution that society believes we still have to suffer the consequences of the past?
That for me is the question. And can we, by a presidential pardon, be saved from having to be expelled from what is legitimately our family property? If at all an individual among the family has sold the property behind the family’s back; if that has happened then it is a tragedy as I say. In Luganda it is called oluujya. People are tampering with our oluujya - that for us is the equivalent of our Kasubi Tombs.

That is where our father would have been buried. I look towards a presidential pardon. I am using a word as though we are incarcerated because that’s the strength of the feeling. You feel as though you are in incarceration and the family cannot move forward in anyway in any sense?

Notice of eviction
I remember during the [last presidential] campaigns there was the fanfare of expansion. Expansion comes with a price. With fanfare you can always say we are going to start pumping oil in 2012, but the implications of oil spills never come into the picture and the evictions in the area of extraction. There was a similar expansion by the way in the 1920s in the same place. But maybe because he was already a top brass in the Uganda Rifles, maybe his was not affected.

But he was the one who implemented the expansion based on the fact that Arua aerodrome has always been the second busiest in the country. Expansion needs to be there, but the strange fact is, do you expand width wise or you increase the length of the airfield to suit the jumbo jets? And the facilitation was lengthwise, you expand. But it seems the width expansion is vindictive. That is the way I see it.

Family survivors
My family is large. But at the moment on the property of my grandfather’s side, upwards of between 10 and 15 people look after the oluujya. On my father’s side, there has been a lot of fear to step onto it. From 1979, people have always had the fear of stepping onto my father’s property. His actual house which was built in 1962 was razed to the ground in 1979. It has never stood up.

What was left there is what we called the armourer or the quarter guard where the soldiers used to live and that is where Jaffar spent one year between 2007 and 2008. For the first time in my life, I lived on my father’s property for one solid year after the demise of the last paternal uncle Capt. Amule Kivumbi Amin Dada.

When he died in July 2007 I took a conscience note of being there with the sisters. He was the last patriarch of the family. He was born in 1946, so he was approximately 60 at the time.

So I felt a responsibility to be there and the community in Arua would tell me strange things like you are the only child of Idi Amin who has bothered to come home. So when you hear me talking about this, I need to take a stand somewhere because all my brothers and sisters are either in Europe or outside the country. The one in government might not feel an attachment to the property but certainly there is always one person who feels an intimate attachment to the culture and I so happen to be that person.

They have always told us “it is scheduled for demolition, it is considered part of the airport, you shouldn’t be here”. That is what you keep hearing from officials. When you get a lot of that, it scares people and my attempt of staying on it was sort of to say we are here especially after the last patriarch died, it meant, “ahh, the rest don’t care about this; they are never there”. It’s the equivalent of the dilemma you hear amongst the so-called mailo land owners. They call them absentee landlords, but when it is an oluujya where people go and bury and the house was demolished at a political level? There was a political decision to destroy the homestead of a former head of State that is why I am saying his was a unique issue.

My plea is for a symbolic stay of execution not to disenfranchise the family of a homestead. It could be a precedent that if this happened, it could happen to any head of State’s family. We are not special. Some look at us as the ones to blame for their woes in life since political strife in 1979. But I plead to the powers that be that this does not happen. That is my plea; humble plea.

What divides us from the aerodrome is the chainmail. In fact my dad had a private gate which still stands, so when the J-2 would land, he would just drive through into his own house.

He built a humble tiled house in 1962 on the same plot and then he got an official 99 year lease in 1967 in his names. Idi Amin Dada. The records are there. Nobody questions it. Nobody questions the need for expansion. He is the one who instigated it. But I think exchanging areas of where the expansion was supposed to be from this side on Moyo Road to the inside where the Jiako village is where my father’s house is.
The agitation was from the people of the market. That is why I told you we seem to be like immigrants. People normally don’t tell the difference between a Muhima and indigenous Munyankole.

Siblings
We are officially 40. But I tend to count us personally at 60. I have done my research and I based all my writings on researching my family’s history and genealogy. He fathered upwards of 60 or more (laughs) he was a true Baaffe (laughs)…father of many. Those are his direct progeny. But in African culture you don’t consider your brother’s children as nephews and nieces, they are your children. They are all affected and probably the affecting could even cover the grandfather’s property so there is a lot of tension.

I don’t know if it’s a sense of family alienation amongst the members but we are not discussing issues of property because at the moment they are still under some form of political caveat. And then if you haven’t decided the issue of administration of the estate then this is what you get.

I must say that the government has done a lot to try and resolve some of the issues but it is niggling issues like this when they come up and yet the actual issue of recognition of the family; presidential emoluments are not resolved, then you are left in a state of limbo.

I have been a champion of reconciliation. I surprised everybody by heading to Butyama to reconcile with the Nyerere family, at a family level not a political level and people were questioning it but also others welcoming it; they were surprised by it. So there is a history of Jaffar backing the trend. I am simply saying no, no I cannot have this. Any man worth his salt stands up for his rights.

On recognition of Amin
My father had his wives. Rather than say Jaffar receiving, I would really like to see my mothers held up in esteem as former first ladies at a certain level. My step mothers are there. There is one in Egypt, some in London. The last junior wife is still in Saudi Arabia. But if these mothers can gain a form of recognition. We have three minors still in the family. One has already surpassed 18. Iman has surpassed 18 but the other two; Leila and Rajab the last born who is more or less the same age as my first born son at 14, is still a minor.

Such people, if they gain such recognition, for me I would be a very happy person. Because that directly reflects on my father. People have legacies but I seek a soft landing for my father; a form of retirement of the legacy. Idi Amin in West Nile and the Muslim community is revered; leave alone the misunderstandings among intellectuals and the Western world. He holds some salt and some form of achievement in Uganda. Controversial as it is, people believe he gave us, as a country, economic independence.

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Jaffar Amin a glance

He is the official third born son of former President Idi Amin Dada in power from 1971-1979. He was christened Tshombe Jaffar Remo Amin following his birth on October 27, 1966, a legendary year in Ugandan history which has seen been regarded the “1966 Mengo Crisis” when his father marched onto the Buganda Kingdom Palace.
His mother, Mama Nakoli from Kaliro District, was one of President Amin’s several wives. By his own admission, Jaffar Amin has as many as 40 siblings scattered across the globe. He is married to Zaitun Issa Sebbi Dimba from Koboko District, his ancestral home, and is a proud father of five.
He is better known in the broadcast industry for the commanding voice overs he has done for radio and television since 1994.
He was 13 at the time his father was deposed and spent much of his life thereafter traveling far and wide. His journeys saw him spend close to a year in Libya in 1979, five years in Saudi Arabia (1980-1984), seven years in the United Kingdom (1984-1990) before returning home to Uganda in 1990.
Since then, he says, he has “feverishly” taken up the “obsession” to get to know his roots having spent most of his working life in foreign countries. That obsession has seen him document his family’s genealogy, publishing an autobiography “Idi Amin: Hero or Villain?” in April 2010.