The Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was always a joker whose antics included making an unannounced visit on the British queen, jumping into a swimming pool with his pyjamas on during a summit of African leaders and declaring himself the ”last king of Scotland.”
But Amin was also notorious as the ”Butcher of Kampala” whose bloody reign from 1971 to 1979 saw hundreds of thousands of people murdered.
In exile in Saudi Arabia since his overthrow, Amin, who will be 75 on January 1, now seeks to return to his homeland. The burly ex-boxer, who could barely read and write, joined the British colonial troop, the King’s African Rifles, in 1946.
Reaching the rank of sergeant major after seven years, he fought for Britain against the Mau-Mau revolt in the 50’s. On January 24, 1971 Amin led a successful coup against President Milton Obote. Britain and Israel, where Amin had trained as a paratrooper, quickly recognised the new anti-communist regime. However, within days Amin showed his true face: military officers, judges and intellectuals who had served Obote disappeared without trace while entire villages were razed to the ground.
According to information from Amnesty International, at least 300 000 people were massacred during Amin’s eight-year reign. A year after seizing power Amin expelled around 50 000 Asians from Uganda and led the economy to the disastrous state from which it is only just now recovering.
”I can still remember the day I packed my suitcase and left the country,” said an Indian clothes dealer in Kampala. ”My house, my shop and everything which I built up over 35 years, I left behind to that criminal.”
The Indian is one of the few Asians to have returned to the country over the past two decades. In the summer of 1972 Amin paid a surprise visit to Queen Elizabeth in London, telling her size 47 shoes were difficult to get in Uganda and asking her where she got her husband’s shoes. The Ugandan despot later went on to declare himself monarch of Scotland and ”conqueror of the British Empire.”
Another of Amin’s eccentric quirks was to invite the children of foreign diplomats to compete against him in swimming races in the pool of the Sheraton Hotel — the children’s parents advised them to let the vain megalomaniac win.
Amin’s fall from power came when the army of neighbouring Tanzania defeated a Ugandan attempt to invade in 1978. On April 11, 1979 the dictator fled to Saudi Arabia. However, the old man is now said to want to leave Mecca and return to Uganda. He reportedly wants to restore his former house in his home town of Arua and live there, in the words of his son, not as a dictator, but as a pensioner. – Sapa-DPA