Idi Amin Hobby-horse

Idi Amin Dada Oumee (May 17th, 1924 - August 16th, 2003) is a soldier and Head of State Uganda is with the capacity between on January 25th, 1971 and on April 11th, 1979. It left the image of a Dictateur insane, violent and sanguinary.

Its youth

There is an uncertainty as for its date and its birthplace. Idi Amin Dada has of sound living never published, nor authorized official biography. The majority of the sources indicate that it would have been born in 1923 or 1924 with Koboko, in the province of the Western Nile, in the North-West of the country. But according to the Ugandan researcher Fred Guweddeko of the university of Makerere, Idi Amin Dada was born Idi Awo-Ongo Angoo with Kampala the May 17th 1928. His/her father Andreas Nyabire (1889 - 1976), of the ethnos group Kakwa and Roman Catholic religion, converted with Islam in 1910 and it would have changed its name into Amin Dada. Other sources indicate that Dada was not the name of his/her father but a nickname that Amin acquired later with the army (see below).

He is the third child of the couple (a sister and an older brother). His/her father is useful in the army like private in a British colonial regiment then integrates in 1921, as bully boy, the Ugandan police force. His/her mother, according to Guweddeko, is called ESA Aatte (1904 - 1970), of the ethnos group Lugbara. It is the girl of a tribal chief of Leiko Iruna, village now located in Democratic republic of Congo. She is specialist in the medicinal plants and of the chamanic practices and, among others, the royal family Buganda looks after. The world of the magic in which Amin Dada will pass part of its youth will play thereafter a great part in its life and the influence which it will have on much Ugandan. Between 1924 and 1929, it has as patients Lady Irene Druscilla Namaganda, Nabagereka of the Buganda and Kabaka Sir Daudi Chwa. His/her parents separate in 1931 and Idi Amin is given up by her father who would have suspected Kabaka Daudi Chwa of being the true father. Idi Amin grows in her maternal family with Mawale close to Semuto (current district of Luwero). His/her brother and his sister die in 1932. Between 1936 and 1938, it keeps goats. From 1938 to 1940, he lives in the house of the sheik Ahmed Hussein in the town of Semuto then in 1940, share for Bombo to live with his maternal uncle Yusuf Tanaboo. According to Fred Guweddeko, it seems that he did not follow the elementary school of the city because of discrimination towards the Nubien S, that he took part in revolts of the Nubians against discrimination and brawled against the students of the Makerere university in Wandegeya. It joined an Islamic school with Bombo in 1941, where it excels reciting the Coran. His/her mother is established with her son in the area of Lugazi, in the north of Lake Victoria, where many people of its ethnos group work in the fields belonging to a rich person Indian family, Metha. Then it settles not far in Jinja, where is confined a regiment of the King' S African Rifles {{in}} of the British imperial army of Africa. Idi Amin Dada does various small work before being made recruit as assistant-cook in 1946, in this regiment. A British officer would have noticed it when he was gatekeeper in a town hall.

Its military career

Amin works in quarterings of Magamaga with Jinja with the kitchens and the wash-house. Its physique and its breadth (1m91, more 100kg) impress, it then follows a military training then is sent as soldier in 1947 to the Kenya in Gilgil where it is used in the 21e brigade of infantry of the KAR then in Somalia for Belet Uen to fight the raids on the cattle of the Shifta. In 1950, the unit of Idi Amin Dada goes back to Fort Hall to Kenya. It is involved then with the Scottish military brass band of the regiment. In 1951, it briefly turns over to Jinja before setting out again for Kenya the same year. In 1952, its battalion is engaged in the repression of the revolt of the Mau Mau with the Kenya. Amin Dada becomes corporal then sergeant in 1953 for his role in the mobile patrols in the forests occupied by the Mau Mau. For this period, it has two children, a girl and a boy with women Kikuyu. Idi Amin is regarded as a skilful, obeying but cruel soldier. Illiterate (it will read with sorrow thereafter), it can cause the empathy of his superiors by a mixture of zeal and buffoonery. He becomes chief of group in 1958. The following year it is made Effendi , higher rank for the blacks in the British colonial army of Africa, quasi-equivalent to the first rank of officer. For the anecdote, according to some, the nickname " Dada" could be to him come from this military period in Kenya, where frequently surprised with the camp with two girls in her tent, whereas only one was authorized, it had taken the practice to answer to the British officers that one was its hobby-horse (sister in Swahili). Amin turns over to Uganda in 1954 to Jinja. It is selected to carry out the parade at the time of the visit of the queen Elisabeth II. It is also him which directs the following year the guard of honor which accommodates of its return of exile the king Mutesa II. It leaves then on the district Lango where it succeeds, with the head of a squadron, to defend Langi against the raids of Karimojong. It has a new child with a Langi woman. The same year, it is sent in the south of Sudan to counter a military mutiny, tries of which it discharges successfully. In 1957, it essuie a refusal with a request for increase in its pay, it also fails tests to obtain a promotion. In 1958, new failure with tests but it makes a success of the exercises on the ground and is promoted in December 1959. In July 1960, following the death of a British officer, killed by Turkana in Karamoja, Idi Amin Dada is sent in this area and will be congratulated “to have restored the prestige of the law of the order in the area of Karamoja” by the command of the British army. It would have carried out three Turkana warriors and would have made align the others, their sex posed on a table and would have threatened them to cut it to them if they did not reveal where they had hidden their weapons.

In July 1961, two years before independence, it becomes one of the two Ugandans to becoming officer with the rank of lieutenant. The same year, it belongs to the group charged to find a compromise political with Edward Mutesa II which was favorable to the only independence of the kingdom of the Buganda. He convinces Mutesa that the Ugandan army will never act against the kingdom. The mission of negotiation is successful.

Idi Amin is sent again against the Turkana nomads in 1962 to alleviate their quarrels on the cattle with Ugandan Karamojong. Its squadron then makes a true massacre in several villages. A British investigation in Kenya will discover that several Turkanas were killed, tortured, certain burned alives. Whereas this act should have been worth the martial Cour to him, its good relationships with the British officers and especially the independence who advertisement are explained that the latter make him only one reprimand.

According to certain historians of colonization, the British military authorities (like also the French) with the approach of the African decolonization, supported the promotion of little educated soldiers and on which they thought of being able to keep an influence and thus, indirectly, to control the future national armies.

During this period in the army, Idi Amin is an achieved athlete, champion of swimming, he is champion of Uganda of boxing in the category weight-heavy means of 1951 to 1960.

With the head of the army, after independence

After independence in October 1962, Milton Obote, Ugandan the Prime Minister, originating in the area nilote of north like him, Idi Amin reward of her support by appointing it captain in 1963 then Deputy to order (assistant commander) of the young Ugandan army in 1964. It is sent in Israel to follow a drive parachutist. This country is then very active in East Africa and will be during a few years an invaluable military support for Amin Dada. In 1965, Obote and Amin are implied in a business of ivory and coffee, gold smuggling coming from the Democratic republic of Congo. A parliamentary inquiry required by the president Mutesa II (also king of the Bouganda, powerful area Bantou E of the South) puts Milton Obote on the defensive. In 1966, this last sends the army to the Bouganda and deposits the king and chair country with the support of its new chief of staff, Idi Amin Dada, just named at this station and the rank of general. It makes stop several ministers, suspends the Constitution of 1962 by abolishing the federalism and the kingdoms. He proclaims new president then and institutes a presidential regime with sole party. President Mutesa is constrained with the exile in Great Britain where he dies in 1969. This political change and this centralization mark also the takeover of the ethnos groups of north, in the past less favoured vis-a-vis the ethnos groups of the center and the south bantoues.

Amin Dada starts to recruit men of its ethnos group for the Ugandan army but also of the Moslems of the area of the Western Nile, area of the North-West of Uganda, near of the Sudanese border. Its relations with Obote start to be degraded.

In December 1969, an attempted murder against president Obote fails. The general Sergeant Pierino Okoya, assistant commander of the army and only rival soldier of Amin Hobby-horse called to this last and Obote which it is close to stopping the culprits. The January 25th 1970, Okoya and his wife are assassinated in their residence. The relations between Idi Amin Hobby-horse and Milton Obote are strongly degraded after this murder. In November, after being put little of time under house arrest, Amin Dada loses any command in the army to occupy only one administrative office.

The seizure of power

After having learned that Obote planned to stop it for diversion of several million dollars of the funds of the army, Amin Dada seizes the power by a coup d'etat the January 25th 1971, whereas Obote attends a top of the the Commonwealth to Singapore.

Its come to power, at the beginning, is rather well accommodated by the international community. The Americans see of an good eye the inversion of Obote of which they worried about the too socialist policy. A support in writing pad of Israel and the United States for this coup d'etat was often evoked but without being clearly shown. A note interns British Foreign Office describes it like “a splendid type and good player of Rugby”! Its takeover is also well accommodated in Uganda, especially of Baganda whose Obote was the sworn enemy. Idi Amin Dada takes daily walkabouts then, traversing the streets of the capital at the wheel of a convertible Jeep. It gives to the former king and president Mutesa who died in exile, from the national funeral in April 1971, releases many political prisoners and dismantles the General Service Links , the Ugandan secret police.

Eight years of tyranny

He promises to hold of the elections in a few months. However, little time after having taken the capacity, it installs called a " State Research Bureau" which proves to be only one Ugandan alternative of death squads to pursue and assassinate the supporters of Obote but also the Ugandan Intelligentsia of which Amin Dada is wary. The military chiefs who did not support the coup d'etat are carried out. Amin Dada reveals its cruelty: many is decapitated, about thirty others die after dynamite had been thrown in their cell.

Obote finds refuge in Tanzania from where it tries to take again the control of the country by a military invasion in September 1972, without success. The partisans of Obote within the Ugandan army, mainly of the ethnos groups Acholi and Lango are also implied in this invasion. The answer of Amin Dada will be bloody. It makes bombard the towns of Tanzania and purging the army of all the officers of origin Acholi or Lango, which for the majority are carried out. Ethnic violences increase, gain all the army, then the Ugandan population. As this violence increases, Amin Dada becomes increasingly paranoiac, fearing even a coup d'etat of its own government. The Nile Mansions Hotel in Kampala becomes the disaster centers interrogation and of torture of the dictator.

The August 4th 1972, Amin gives to the 50.000 Indo-Pakistani present in Uganda 90 days to leave the country, thus following a dream which he says to have had, and in which God would have ordered to him to expel them. Their expulsion will result in a serious economic decline for the Muslim population of Uganda. Many Asian indeed held the principal trade and companies of the country where the majority had been born, the third generation of Indians having immigrant in Uganda at the time colonial. Those which remained were off-set cities towards the campaigns. The majority obtained asylum in Great Britain. The Ugandan soldiers for this period plundered and forced the Indians in all impunity and their goods were confiscated with the profit them military close relations of the capacity. As the true nature of Amin Dada appears, the United Kingdom and Israel, principal supports foreign of Uganda, start to restrict their assistance and refuse to sell new weapons to him. Amin Dada turns then to the Libya of Kadhafi, which then began its project from a great African policy and towards the Soviet Union. The Ugandan chief then will follow a policy of confrontation towards Great Britain and to a lesser extent the the United States. The latter closes their embassy with Kampala in 1973 followed in 1976 of the the United Kingdom. Amin Dada breaks its relations with Israel and starts to support the Palestinian liberation movements.

The increase in terror

Starting from 1974, terror increases. The mode launches out in a paranoiac hunting against all those which according to him, can threaten it. Begin then from the persecution campaigns against the rival tribes or the supporters, or supposed such, of Milton Obote, and drives out it with the intelligentsia of the country: former ministers and senior officials, judges, diplomats, professors of university and teachers, catholic clergy and Anglican, bankers and business men, journalists, leaders tribal and also a certain number from abroad will be assassinated or will disappear. Cases were reported shaven whole villages and hundreds of floating body on the Nile.

This same year, an ONG, the International commission of the lawyers, in a report/ratio with the the United Nations, estimates that between 25.000 and 250.000 people were assassinated in Uganda since the coup d'etat of 1971.

In parallel, the mode is militarized with excess, military manpower increase considerably and the army absorbs all the budget of the country. The military tribunals with expeditious justice replace the civil courts. All the stations of the government and the administration are occupied by soldiers, the Parliament east dissolves and the important administration is subjected to the military discipline.

The dictator reigns by decrees, primarily oral and often announced directly by the national radio. Amin Dada reinforces also its sedentary apparatus. To the State Research Bureau come to be added the Public Safety Unit , reconstitution of a secret police and a military police force. The presidential guard of Amin Dada also acts like an additional death squad, in addition to the protection of the dictator of the many attempts, real or imaginary, of assassination. This sedentary apparatus will include/understand to 18.000 men.

Uganda under Amin Dada engages in a vast military development policy which worries Nairobi. At the beginning of the month of June 1975, the Kenyan persons in charge confiscate the loading of a large convoy of weapons of Soviet manufacture on the way for Uganda since the port of Mombasa.

The tension reaches its maximum in February 1976 when the Ugandan president announces suddenly that it will inquire into the fact that most of the South Sudan and west and center of Kenya, up to 32 km of Nairobi, are historically integral part of colonial Uganda. The Kenyan answer comes two days later, very concise, indicating that the country will not share “a simple inch of its territory”. Amin Dada went into reverse finally after the Kenyans had deployed armor-plated troops and transport, in defensive position, on its border with Uganda.

Entebbe

Amin Hobby-horse, after its rupture with the Occident, maintains the strong bonds with the Palestinian movements. The buildings of the Israeli embassy are even offered to PLO to be used to him as general headquarters. The June 27th 1976, flight 139, a Airbus of Air France connecting Tel Aviv to Paris is diverted after a stopover with Athens, towards Libya. On invitation of Amin Hobby-horse, the plane then lands with the international airport Entebbe located at 32 km in the south of Kampala. The takers of hostages ask for the release of 53 Palestinian prisoners and the Fraction Red Army in exchange with the 256 passengers and team members. 3 other terrorists join them in Uganda and they “are assisted” by the Ugandan troops. Amin Dada very often visits the hostages, giving the indication of a mediator. At midnight, the July 3rd 1976, Israeli commandos attack the airport and release all the hostages except two (is killed during the attack, another, a 75 years old woman, Dora Bloch, who had been brought in a hospital before the attack is assassinated by two Ugandan officers on direct order of the dictator two days after the Israeli operation). In this operation, the Israelis destroy, on the ground, the fighter plans of the Ugandan air force, 9 Migs, strongly reducing its potential. The success of the Israeli operation will contribute largely to the fall of the dictator. The resistance and the operations of sabotage of movements opposed to the dictator will handicap the country during the last years of the mode.

After this raid, Idi Amin Dada makes carry out 200 officers and senior officials whom he considers inefficient, expels all the foreigners and starts a new violence campaign.

In January 1977, it shows Janani Luwum, the archbishop Anglican of Kampala, notorious opponent to the dictator and defender of the oppressed Christians of Uganda, to plot for a foreign invasion. The following day, this last is assassinated with two ministers.

Among the personalities killed by Amin Dada during its dictatorship also appear:

Benedicto Kiwanuka, former Prime Minister and later Chief Justice
Joseph Mubiru, former governor of the Ugandan central bank
Frank Kalimuzo, vice-senior of the Makerere University
Byron Kawadwa, Ugandan playwright.

The madness

Starting from 1975, Idi Amin Hobby-horse autoproclame marshal, then life president. This year in front of the media, it is put in scene on a sedan-chair, obliging Western business men to walk it. Summer 75, an Ugandan writer of British origin, Hill Refusals, is condemned to died to have treated Amin Dada of “tyrant of village”. It will be saved only by the visit express in Kampala of the English Secretary of State to the foreign affairs James Callaghan and after intervention of the president Zairean Mobutu Sese Seko and of the Somalia N Siad Barre, President-in-Office of the OAU which threatens to cancel the top with Kampala.

In July 1975, the top of OAU is taken place in Kampala and Amin Dada assumes the chairmanship of the African organization, embarrassing many of other countries of the continent. He sees this event like a dedication and organizes multiple demonstrations at the time of the top of which the election of a “miss OAU”, of a car rally in which he takes part in the wheel of a Citroen SM to Maserati engine. A a little grotesque military demonstration on the edge of Lake Victoria is supposed to represent the attack of South Africa by Panafrican forces ordered by the marshal Idi Amin Dada. It also benefits from the top to marry in fifth wedding a young dancer whose husband mysteriously disappeared when Amin, the previous year, was interested in the young woman. Yasser Arafat was one of the witnesses of the marriage.

Amin Dada is impassioned racing cars racing, of which it has several models, of boxing and films of Walt Disney. Many journalists regard it as an eccentric and vaguely comic character. He is largely caricatured in the Western countries as a fatal buffoon. He exposes in particular in front of the camera of the French scenario writer Barbet Schroeder his plan of invasion to take again the Golan in the State of Israel. Rumors also run on its Cannibalisme supposed but without that not being proven.

After being turned over to Great Britain, Dennis Hill will rise in an interview against this vision according to it too limited of the dictator:

“ Amin Dada has qualities of tribal chief compensating for his lack of education, by an address, a talent for survival, a personal force, courage and a capacity to measure the weaknesses of its adversaries and the wishes of its people ” “ It is not sufficient to limit Amin Dada to a buffoon or a murderer. It is a African reality. It carried out the African dream, the creation of a really black State ”

But the years passing, Amin Dada becomes increasingly erratic and does not listen to anybody any more.

It is made make special clothing to be able to carry many decorations of the second world war of which the Military Cross and the Victoria Cross British. It car-allots many titles like that of “king d' Écosse”. In 1977, after the British had broken their diplomatic relations with the mode, Amin Dada stated to have overcome the English and conferred the decoration of “Conqueror of the British Empire”. Radio Uganda will then diffuse before his messages the integrality of his new title: “Its Excellence the life president, Marshal Alhaji Dr. Idi Amin Hobby-horse, holder of Victoria Cross-country race, DSO, holder of Military Cross-country race and Conquérant of the British Empire”.

Partly based on its “visions” and this erratic behavior, of the psychiatrists thought that Idi Amin Dada could suffer from a Neurosyphilis: Deborah Hayden studies this assumption in its work Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries off Syphilis .

The fall and the exile

But the economy declines more and more. Already weakened by the departure of the Indo-Pakistani, entrepreneurial heart of the country, that of the majority of the foreign business men and the stop of the Western assistance, it undergoes a new blow with in 1978, the fall of the course of the coffee, principal Ugandan export. Libya also starts it to decrease its assistance.

In October 1978, of the mutinies burst in the south-west of the country, part of the soldiers taking refuge in close Tanzania. Amin Hobby-horse with a mode with the barks, seizes this pretext and orders the invasion of Tanzania then. With the assistance of 3000 men of the Libyan troops, Amin tries to annex the provinces of the north of this country in the area of Kagera. Tanzania, under the presidency of the mwalimu Julius Nyerere, declares the war in Uganda then and starts to counter-attack, enlisting for that exiled Ugandan.

The April 11th 1979, Amin Dada is forced to flee the Ugandan capital Kampala. The Tanzanian army takes the city with the assistance of the guerillas Ugandan (the UNLA, the Uganda National Release Army ) and Rwandan. Amin flies away then for the exile, initially in Libya then in Saudi Arabia. It is then lodged in Djeddah by the Saoudi government “by Islamic charity and in thanks for its role in the diffusion of Islam” provided it does not mix any more a policy. The Saoudi State provides him a house, rather modest but also a driver, with the personnel of house, provides for his subsistence and pours a pension to him. The new Ugandan government chooses to leave it in exile, saying that it is free to return but should then face its crimes.

Its mode will have made between 100 000 and 500 000 victims, majority of the observers agreeing now on a figure around 300 000. It left a country in ruin: inflation of more than 200%, a debt of 320 million dollars, a given up agriculture, closed factories and a generalized corruption.

In 1989, it tries to return to Uganda, but it is recognized with Kinshasa and is returned in Saudi Arabia by the Zairean authorities.

July 20th, 2003, one of its wives, Madina, informs that it is close to death, in the coma, at the hospital specialized King-Fayçal with Djeddah. She pleads near the Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni so that it can return to die in Uganda but this last indicates that it will then be judged immediately.

Idi Amin Dada dies in Saudi Arabia the August 16th 2003, at 79 years the supposed age and is buried with Djeddah with the Ruwais cemetery.

August 17th, 2003, David Owen, former secretary of foreign affairs British declared during an interview given on Radio 4 of BBC that when it was with the government (1977 - 1979), it had suggested the assassination of Amin Dada. Its idea was immediately rejected. Owen explained that “the mode of Amin Dada was the worst of all, it is a shame which one allowed him to be maintained also a long time with the capacity”.

That much Ugandan called Big Daddy remains paradoxically popular in part of the Ugandan population, especially in the northern area. It illustrates now near observers or analysts of Africa, the extreme drifts of a continent which still did not succeed in being freed from its past.

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