Benevolent Dictator

If you are familiar with the film, The Last King of Scotland, you will have heard of Idi Amin, the ruthless dictator-president of Uganda in the 1970s. Amin seized control of the country in a military coup, beginning almost a decade of tumultuous rule. Political rivals were purged, disobedient military officers were executed, and intellectuals were killed. The Ugandan economy was turned upside down as the merchant class Asian Indians were exiled from the country, taking their entrepreneurial abilities and capital with them. Amin was a brutal ruler who left a legacy of blood and destruction.

Or did he? If you talk to present day Kampalans, you will find a very different opinion of the man. In contrast to the negative view of Amin shared by Westerners, many Ugandans I have spoken to find Amin to have been quite a good leader. Amin was a patriot, they say, who was not without his flaws, but loved his country and did his very best for it. My colleagues and professors who have lived through Amin’s time speak of private secondary schools which only allowed entrance to white or Asian Indians, government agencies headed by those with British heritage, a commercial center with only two African-owned business, and entire hospital floors at Mulago Hospital, where I work, reserved for VIPs – Europeans and Asians. Amin ended all of these practices, they say, and Africanized the country. The schools were open to all, businesses were given (forcibly) to African owners, and an African nation was truly given to Africans. For what was independence, if Uganda was still to live under de facto colonialism?

Sure, there were costs of this transition, as the Uganda replacements were not always as competent or ready to accept the responsibilities of their new posts. But, as Amin said, to learn to swim, one must be prepared to take a few gulps of water before the skill is mastered. Perhaps the African businessmen were not as efficient as the Asian Indians, but at least Uganda is run by Ugandans, a fact that may not be as evident in neighboring Tanzania and Kenya.

My colleagues’ views are not without merit. If I had grown up in what I viewed to be such an unfair environment, it would only be natural to feel resentment toward the European and Asian outsiders who were benefitting from the country’s resources, while local Ugandans suffered. Seen from this point of view, Amin’s populist policies can be judged as not only understandable, but even just.

The younger generation I spoke to, however, emphasized a more negative view of the dictator. Amin was a rash man, they said, who acted on impulse. He would wake up one day, claim to have a dream which called him to exile all the Asians, and then pronounce a law requiring them to leave within ninety days. Many of these Asians were Ugandans by birth, having been in the country for generations. They had nowhere left to go, and the results were devastating. Many ended up committing suicide. Other, more dubious stories abound, such as Amin telling the national football team not to return from Kenya after their World Cup qualifier loss, or face execution, and ordering a brutal murder of his own wife.

There are many views of the man in Uganda, all of them quite strong. Amin’s legacy is quite a complicated one, which surprised me very much, as I expected a strong hatred toward such a brutal dictator. But the public’s views did remind me of another leader who commands a complex legacy, whom I often talked about with my friends while in China. Speaking to the local people about their own history reminds me that human events seldom occurs in black and white, and the Western view is not always the objective view I assume it to be.