How should Ugandans below 40 remember Amin?

To begin with, what were the objectives of this institute, its mission statement, vision and value addition or lack thereof, to Uganda? Neither the President’s letter nor the media reportage on the institute says much but at least one of Amin’s outspoken sons has distanced the family from these efforts, championed by former legislator Hassan Kaps Fungaroo. 

I urge Mr Fungaroo to publish the content of their paper/concept to better inform debate on this matter, otherwise it is unhelpful to dive into a discussion of the merits of the said institute and the basis of rejection of the same by the country’s CEO, without appreciating the bone and flesh of the idea. 

One notices, however, that there is a marked pattern of Ugandans, both young and old, to all of a sudden heap praise on Amin, forgive (perchance rationalise?) his government’s misdeeds and, as comedienne Ann Kansiime not so long ago told an interviewer, say, “I feel like we miss him.” 

In 2022, I had dinner with an elder in his 70s who told us that he would rank Idi Amin’s government “as the second best Uganda has ever had after Obote 1 (1962-1970)”.

As someone who only turned 30 last week, whose only interaction with the three most consequential leaders Uganda has had (Amin, Milton Obote and Museveni) is through written and spoken word about the first two, I always abstain from indulging in debate with men and women whose eyes have seen the sun rise and set since 1962. 

The most I can do is ask, “Why do you say so?” I had these type of discussions with the late Yona Kanyomozi who served as minister of Marketing and Cooperatives in the Obote II administration and whose unpublished autobiography I had the privilege of ghost-writing. 

On the subject of Amin, I allocate Kanyomozi’s word significant currency. On the day that Amin overthrew Obote, January 25, 1971, Kanyomozi met with Mr Museveni and others that afternoon in Kampala and plotted to start efforts to get rid of Amin. 

The young men of that time did not have the luxury of tweeting their frustrations away, and hosting Twitter (X) Space discussions about the political questions of the day or popping Champagne at beaches on boat cruises while plotting to “remove a dictator’ who, by the way, pays fat salaries every month to those in the ‘struggle’ to remove him and cruises their leader of opposition in a convoy of poorly paid mean-looking.

Anyway, Kanyomozi’s world view in general and views on Uganda’s politics, from my hundreds of hours of interaction with him over years, became more refined and thoughtful. He died a die-hard anti-Musevenist but also had a fairer review of the period 1971-1979. 

I am not at liberty to share everything in this space but, to him, the story of Amin is one that needs to be examined by independent actors because, according to him, there are several distortions, including on some of the controversial killings that happened around that time. Who did what, when, where, why? There are people who know where the bones are buried but they won’t say. Amin may erupt from his grave and slaughter them.

Whether Amin sanctioned or approved of the killing of the Chief Justice Benedicto Kiwanuka or Archbishop Janani Luwum remains in contention, with some speculating that he was perhaps the victim of a smear campaign. 

From our discussions with Kanyomozi, it is probable that some actors within the groups that fought Amin, actually manufactured intelligence (working with their collaborators in the Amin system) on some of these figures with the intention of triggering Amin into an over-drive reaction and getting his henchmen to eliminate these men. The same may be said of the killing of Lango/Acholi soldiers on account of their ethnic background. 

Which of these accounts is true or false is a rather difficult question to answer and answers may be told in several generations to come. What is clear though, is that Amin must not be allowed to get away with these crimes. 

Let’s for argument sake, concede that he was manipulated into killing these people, is that not a testament of his leadership qualities and the mental state of his reign that his opponents exploited? If these men (they were usually men) were killed by Amin’s opponents, was it not the role of his government to protect them from harm? Either way, it is unfathomable that anyone would somehow try to find flowery language to rationalise this dark episode of our history. The buck stops with the president and Amin must, in his grave, carry his cross.

Be that as it may, however, different sections of the public have dived into the debate arena with diverging views. It is noticeable that sections of the Opposition are intent on driving the debate along the premises of ‘whataboutism’ and comparison between the author of the ‘no thank you’ letter and the subject of the letter (Amin).

There is a folly in this approach. To premise the debate on an Amin vs Museveni, or Amin vs Obote, or Obote vs Museveni weighing scale negates context, circumstances and the content of each man’s reign. 

Let Amin carry his cross and let Obote carry his cross and let Museveni carry his cross, but more importantly, let each man’s epoch be examined on its merits, content and context. 

If you compare yourself with others, “you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself,” Max Ehrmann wrote in the 1920s prose poem, Desiderata.

Indeed, in 2nd Corinthians 10: 12, we are taught that, “When they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.” 

Stuart Hall, who served as professor of Sociology at the Open University in England and is credited in media studies as the father of cultural studies, was concerned with the concept of representation. 

Whereas we associate representation with such questions as whether something is depicted in an accurate or distorted manner, Hall interpreted representation through “a more active and creative role” in relation to the way people think about the world and their place within it.

Hall contends that, “Messages work in complex ways, and that they are always connected with the way that power operates in any society, together at the same time.” 

His ideas on the intersection of knowledge and power is quite fascinating to read as he examines, “the image”. 

The idea of interrogation, “normally brings to mind asking hard questions of a suspect. But how do we interrogate an image?” That image, for the purpose of this discussion, is Idi Amin. Hall advises that we interrogate this Amin image, as represented to us over the years, “by examining it, asking the hard questions about it rather than just accepting it at face value. Just as a good interrogator looks behind the suspect’s story or alibi, so must we probe inside and behind the image.”

The story of Idi Amin, his dramatic rise to power and what he did with power is a difficult one to tell. How we, as a people and nation, remember Amin is complicated by the fact that our collective and dispersed memories of the man are mediated by power (indigenous power and Wester

What do Ugandans who did not live through the Amin years believe? What do they discard as propaganda? How should our nation, for the next generations, remember this episode of our history? 

Was the expulsion of the Asians a good or bad thing? You read Uganda: An Indian Colony by Prof Samwiri Lwanga Lunyiigo, contrast it with the President’s letter dismissing this action by Amin as destructive to the economy and are left more confused than satisfied by two men who saw it through their own eyes. 

There is never a univocal account of history but the variances in Uganda’s story of Amin are too far and wide in between as to offer a constructive engagement with history. 

A legacy told by victims and victors
The history of that period has largely been told by two categories of people: Amin’s haters, victims, critics, opponents on the one hand and his victors on the other. 

Somewhere in between, the two categories intersect in their narratives and converge at one juncture: an unwritten accord to tell history through the eyes of the victim and/or victor, to the detriment of ‘the other side of the story’. 

That intersection is largely amplified by Western media (itself a product of processes that one can categorise as both victims and victors of Amin, because of his stance on the West – such as on the Israel-Palestine question, the role and place of indigenous Ugandans in the post-colonial economy and the imperialism of the West in light of Africa’s quest for true independence).

The first category of the writers of Amin’s story embarked on a campaign that was two-fold; expose the wrongs, evils, excesses of Amin in real time to the world and, as ferociously as possible, demonise, through exaggeration, manipulation and trickery, Amin’s rogue side while downplaying any positives. 

Books like Henry Kyemba’s State of Blood played a critical role in this power-play in the same way that George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which was sponsored by USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to demonise Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. 

The second category of the authors of Amin’s story is as baffling as the first one; those who defeated him. 

From the day he took office by the force of arms, Amin was the subject of resistance. He fought his way to dominion of the Ugandan territory through blood and iron, surviving several assassinations and attempts at overthrowing his government for close to a decade, until he met his Waterloo in 1979. 

Groups that had been in the trenches fighting him, including the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) that was selfishly vested in returning to power and it did in 1980, Front for National Salvation (Fronasa) and several others, were baying for Amin’s blood but even more, they were thirsty to tell the story of their defeat to the world in ways that victors that have overcome such a formidable opponent, would. 

The challenge with these two categories, therefore, is that society is deprived of a true, balanced and fair account of history as distortion, exaggeration, misrepresentation, is how the story is structured to be told and written. 

Therefore, suggestions that this episode of our history should be “forgotten” fall within this continuous cycle of victims and victors shaping a history of a people and a period. 

Marshall McLuhan once said he wasn’t sure who discovered water, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t the fish. 

In other words, “When we are immersed in something, surrounded by it the way we are by images from the media, we may come to accept them as just part of the real and natural world. We just swim through them, unthinkingly absorbing them as fish in water.” 

Stuart Hall, our intellectual compass on cultural studies, invites us to, “step out of the water in a sense and look at it, see how it shapes our existence, and even critically examine the content of the water”. 

How then are we to remember a figure so enigmatic as Idi Amin? There are no easy answers. As Hall argues, “Messages work in complex ways, and that they are always connected with the way that power operates in any society.” 

Power determines the production and interpretation of meaning through subtle and direct control of the media, academia and other sources of knowledge. 

It follows that the representation of the man and debate around him shall be shaped along the lines that suit the politics of the time. We do not begrudge anyone for that, because that is how power works. 

Second, as a society, there are lessons we can pick from other nations and societies that have pretty much gone through similar or worse episodes in their history. I will use South Africa, Rwanda and Germany as examples. 

We must take a stand and stop pussyfooting, cut the ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Idi Amin did horrendous things while he was in power that shook our collective conscience as a people. He ruled without any checks and balances, banned Parliament, muzzled the courts of law on political cases, violated human rights of Ugandans in ways unimaginable and acted with impunity that makes his hero, Adolf Hitler, have good company wherever the two evil men are wining and dining from now. 

Did he do good things for his country? Oh yes! He built this and that in New York, London, Kampala and other capitals of the world, he took the Uganda national football team to the African Cup of Nations finals and the Uganda Airlines has never thrived in business as it did after him. 

One can go on and on, listing Amin’s achievements but the actions of men in power are to be measured on a balance sheet of liabilities and assets, not one side of the scale. Matter of fact, under apartheid, South Africa registered incredible progress as a nation; that evil system put in place one of the world’s widest and most respectable road networks, built ESKOM into one of the world’s leading energy utilities, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as one of the leading in the world and their universities and hospitals could compete with any other in the world. 

In Africa, the apartheid system built for itself, a first world country in territories where Whites lived and operated but there is no doubt that the African National Congress will take long to achieve a fraction of what that system did to the South African economy which owes most of its industrial growth and development to apartheid. 

And yet, despite all these achievements, the world took a stand on apartheid. Similarly, Germany under Adolf Hitler registered significant progress and achievements as he introduced policies to revive the economy after the effects of the Great Depression. 

It does not matter how many glowing economic achievements the Nazi system registered but its desecration of human dignity is an important yardstick through which its place in the world should be measured for the world is made up of people and not brick and mortar that can be blown up by Hamas or Israeli forces in a minute. 

Therefore, let Amin carry his cross. Let Ugandans take a stand that this was an accident of history that should not be forgotten but be remembered for its evil and let it be a reminder of how low our society can sink and the safe guards we must put in place to prevent a repeat of this sordid error and era in our lifetime. 

There should be no room for glorification or rationalisation of Amin as the case is with all other morons who wrecked mayhem in their societies. 

Mr Ivan Okuda is a lawyer and writer based in Kampala who occasionally comments on current affairs.