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I was closely involved with this operation. Obote and I had a personal radio link with Amin. Ours was code- named “Sparrow”; Amin’s was “Kisu.” The rebels often came to Entebbe, stayed in Amin’s house, and saw Obote. Their greatest need was for arms and transport. They had no cash, but they did have truckloads of gold and ivory, seized as they
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Toward the end of my leave, one incident—the murder of Michael Kagwa, President of the Industrial Court- revealed to the country as a whole that the massacres w'ere not to be limited to the army, or to the Acholi and Langi. Kagwa, who was extremely rich (he had a Mercedes sports car with its own television), had a girlfriend, Helen Ogwang, in whom Amin was interested. In September 1971, Kagwa was seized by Amin’s bodyguards at the Kampala International Hotel swimming pool. They shot him and burnt his body, together with his Mercedes, on the outskirts of the capital near Namirembe Cathedral. No attempt was made to discover who the murderers were. The senior police officers had already been arrested for investigating the Okoya murder. No one would risk death by asking questions that could lead only to Amin. The government “offered” a 50,000-shilling reward for information. So far it has gone unclaimed. Helen Ogwang was later posted to the Uganda Embassy in Paris, where she defected.
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I was not, therefore, directly involved in the extraordinary developments of early 1972, when Amin broke with Israel and began his love affair with Libya. But I was to see their effects, and a brief summary is essential for an understanding of Uganda’s recent history. The events were dictated by Amin’s need for ready cash. Britain was still willing to help, but most of her funds were tied up with specific projects, and British officials always wanted feasibility studies before funds were allocated. Similarly, the Israelis, apart from the fact that they had limited funds and were deeply involved in a number of projects, gave serious consideration to new ideas strictly on merit. That was not the kind of money Amin wanted. He saw his chance while on a state visit to West Germany in February 1972. Shortly before his return, he decided to visit Libya’s head of state, Gaddafi. Since he was flying an Israeli jet, many ministers were shocked at the prospect of his dropping in on an extremist Arab dictator, but he went, met with Gaddafi, and received promises of massive financial and military aid. It was an attractive prospect for Gaddafi as well, for he was suddenly presented with an opportunity to have Israel thrown out of an African country.
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Hundreds of prominent citizens were imprisoned without trial (including the former Army Commander, Shaban Opolot). Regular lists of political detainees—often up to eighty names at a time—were published, as demanded by law, in the weekly Uganda Gazette. Obote, backed by his security forces, ruled supreme. It is ironic that the system later developed by Amin, an illiterate killer who strikes at random, was inherited half-formed from a man raised in the best democratic traditions.
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By the 1970’s, 30,000 of Uganda’s Asians had British passports, but the other 20,000 were legally Ugandans. At the time of Amin's original announcement, nobody thought that he intended to expel both Ugandan Asians and British Asians. But it soon became clear that he did not intend to make a distinction between passports. He wanted the Asians’ property to hand over to his troops. It was a brutal and thoroughly racist decision, and one that was to deal the Ugandan economy a terrible blow.
The Asians were sent out of the country with nothing except a hundred-dollar personal allowance. A stop was put on their bank accounts. Amin did not care where the Asians went as long as they went, and he stuck to his deadline—November 8, 1972—with a countdown that proceeded remorselessly day by day on the radio. He announced that any Asians remaining after the deadline would be sent to detention camps. Informed that some Asians were attempting to avoid deportation by blacking their faces with shoe polish, he issued a dire warning to anyone found guilty of such practices. Understandably, all the Asians made every effort to move out of the country.
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To rebuild a real officer corps from Amin’s illiterate sadists, who could hardly speak a word of English, was an insurmountable problem. The British, however, gave it a try. Soon after the coup, Amin requested and was granted a British officer to train the Intelligence Service. The cadets given to him were Amin’s best, yet they were still totally inadequate. I often met this officer on his way to and from the President’s office and he would tell me of the difficulties he was having. He doubted that the men could ever benefit from his presence. “Obviously an intelligence officer needs some basic intelligence,” he would say. “These chaps have none.” Since they were semi-literate, all he could do was describe the basic tasks of an intelligence officer. Not that they could ever perform these tasks, let alone teach others, which was the long-term aim of the project. He often told me how ridiculous he felt. He stuck it out for three or four months, then said he would try to arrange training for them outside the country, and left.
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The only dismissal into which I could read a deeper motive was that of Professor Banage, Minister of Animal Resources, who had been a zoology professor at Makerere University. Amin was now painfully aware of his own reputation for stupidity, and to fire a professor would have given him considerable satisfaction.
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Reign of Terror
Another incident I know about concerned one of Uganda’s only two qualified pharmacologists. Dr. Mawcrere. On August 5, 1976, Dr. Mawerere was in the doctors’ club near Mulago Hospital, when one of Amin’s Nubian thugs from the Military Police came in. He demanded that the club sell him huge quantities of beer and cigarettes.
Dr. Mawerere ordered
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Reign of Terror
The disappearances are so numerous now that a woman will fear for her husband’s safety if he is late coming home from w'ork. So many have vanished never to be seen again, dead or alive, that an extraordinary new profession has sprung up “body-finding” of which Amin’s men are the chief beneficiaries. Uganda is a religious country and it is vital for religious reasons—let alone personal ones—that the bodies should be properly buried. Body-finders work in teams. If anyone disappears, relatives immediately contact the team and arrange a fee for the tracing of the body. The teams are in daily contact with the murder squads. Sometimes new's will come directly from the murderers, via the bodyfinders, who offer assistance to the relatives in finding the body. The fee varies depending on the status of the victim. To trace a junior official, the family might be asked for 5,000 shillings (600 dollars); it could take anything from 25,000 shillings (3,000 dollars) upwards to find the body of a senior member of the administration. There are also many bogus-finders who offer their services, take the money and vanish. When my own brother disappeared, my family spent some 30,000 shillings (4,000 dollars) in a futile attempt to trace his body. My contact at that time is still one of Amin’s bodyguards.
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When the Europeans came, three other elements were added to Ugandan society. One was European religion. The British brought their Anglicanism, and the French their Catholicism. These were more than a match for the Moslem faith brought by the Arab slave traders in the early nineteenth century. Today, only ten per cent of the population is Moslem, and the rest are about half-and- half Anglican and Catholic. The Europeans also established Christian schools. Since the Moslems did not do this, Islam soon came to be equated with a lack of education.
The British were also responsible for the introduction of Uganda’s Asians. The Asians were originally brought to build the Kenya-Uganda railway, which was supposed to carry troops to proteet the source of the Nile against the imperial ambitions of the French, Belgians and Germans. Long before it was finished in 1901, however, such stratcgic justifıcations seemed foolish—the railway was nicknamed the “Lunatic Line” by British MP’s appalled at its soaring cost. The line never carried troops, but it did enable the Asians to develop trade; they became the middle class of Uganda, and indeed of all British East Africa.
A third element, and one of particularly tragic significance for Uganda today. was the community of Southern Sudanese brought in as mercenaries by the British to staff the lower ranks of the army and the police. İn Uganda, indeed throughout East Africa, they became known as Nubians. They have retained their own identity, like the Asians. They are wholly Moslem. and stili speak their own version of Arabic.
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