Monitor serves new
Entebbe, Uganda
Thirty years ago tomorrow, the military government of Idi Amin was overthrown by a combined force of the Tanzanian army and a motley of armed Uganda groups exiled in Kenya and Tanzania during the 1970s. Starting tomorrow, this newspaper shall publish a mini-series in which it tries to recreate the events that preceded and followed the war that ended Amin’s eight-year rule.
The Tanzania-Uganda war started in October 1978 and changed the political landscape in Uganda, as shall be seem in this series. It was the first fully-fledged international war Uganda ever fought. It is widely assumed that the war was started by Amin’s soldiers.
What happened during Amin’s rule remains a closed book. What we know is a mixture of propaganda and an incomplete record.
The effects of that war and its immediate aftermath are still with us today. Throughout the first Obote and Amin governments, Uganda maintained a steady record of public documents, from the files in government ministries to the records of the Uganda Golf Club. The widespread and indiscriminate looting put an end to that. Unanswered questions about Amin himself and the effect of his regime remain.
How did this semi-literate soldier rise to power? How is it that he was warmly welcomed by the vast majority of Ugandans in 1971 – including the Asians – only to have a large cross-session of the intelligentsia turn against and fight him?
How did the Uganda Army, widely regarded as the strongest in East Africa in the 1970s, crumble before the advancing Tanzanian troops almost without a fight?
What did Amin himself say about himself, his rule, and his opponents? Why does it seem today, with the benefit of hindsight, that most of what the country once owned was bought or built during the first Obote and the Amin governments and that today, Uganda is almost wholly owned by foreigners?
Is Uganda better off now than the vilified Amin regime? What was the effect of the 1972 expulsion of the non-citizen Asians?
The mini series will give both sides of the story, including those who think he was a monster.
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