u
Uganda
0 memberReign of Terror
I have reason to believe that Amin’s practices do not stop at tasting blood: on several occasions he has boasted to me and others that he has eaten human flesh. One day, in August 1975, he was talking to some senior officials about a trip to Zaire, and said that he had been served monkey meat there. Seeing that his audience was rather shocked by this (eating monkey meat is unacceptable to Ugandans), and clearly deciding to dramatize the occasion further, he added, “I have also eaten human meat.” I heard the others catch their breath in horror. We all looked at each other, bewildered, uncertain how to react. A silence fell. Realizing he had gone too far, he went on to say that eating human flesh is not uncommon
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By mid-1971, an inexperienced junior officer corps virtually ran the country. One of the most feared of these men was—and is—Lieutenant Malyamungu who was in charge of quelling dissent in the army. Before he joined the army, he had been a gatekeeper at Nyanza Textile Industries, where my brother Kisajja was personnel manager. At the time of the coup, he commandeered a tank with which he shot up the entrance to the Entebbe airport terminal, killing two priests. After the coup he headed Amin’s execution gangs, with unlimited power to execute anybody in the army, even officers senior to him.
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From some thirty of these tribal areas, the British forged Uganda in the late nineteenth century. Britain, the greatest imperial power, had a particular interest in Uganda, because the region controlled the source of the Nile, which controlled Egypt, which controlled the Suez Canal, which controlled the most direct route to India, the jevvel in Britain’s imperial crovvn. Because Uganda was important to the British for its ovvn reasons, the borders vvere set vvithout much thought for the people involved. Thus the borders did not coincide with tribal territories, which overlap neighboring Zaire, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.
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In the space of just a few months, Uganda had gone from a peaceful democracy to something very close to a military dictatorship.
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My tenure as Minister of Culture. 1972-74, was not particularly demanding Within my own ministry there were few problems, I had to ensure that football matches between army teams and civilians were properly controlled, otherwise the bitterness towards the army tended to erupt into open violence. One particular club, the Express (since banned by Amin), was nicknamed the "Club of the Dead" because so many of its officials and supporters had been murdered In any Army-Express match the army team had to win. If it lost, the crowd would be in for a beating for being "anti-army."
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The most immediate problem facing independent Uganda was the issue of the “lost counties” which had once belonged to Bunyoro and were now part of Buganda. In the 1890s, the British had, with the assistance of the Kabaka of Buganda, fought and beaten Bunyoro, and the British had awarded the Kabaka a chunk of Bunyoro for his efforts. The Banyoro (people of Bunyoro) had always resented this. The British, conveniently for them, left the problem for the new regime to solve. The Independence Constitution called for a referendum to be held within two years so that the inhabitants of the “lost counties” could decide for themselves which area they wished to belong to. The current Kabaka, of course, had little interest in holding the referendum, for the Banyoro in the “lost counties” would undoubtedly vote to be governed by their own people rather than the Baganda. But Obote insisted on the referendum, which was held in 1964. The Kabaka duly lost the counties to Bunyoro, and the tenuous alliance between Obote and the Kabaka collapsed, a split between Prime Minister and President that eventually led to the end of democratic rule in Uganda.
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