Transcription
Uganda, Tuesday, March 26, 1974. This morning, Tuesday, March 26, 1974, Idi Amin wakes up again from a nightmare. Assassins were trying to assassinate him in the house during the night, and these assassins were his soldiers. Like Gaddafi and Stalin, he sleeps very little. For these paranoid men, the night brings out their worst fears, especially for Idi Amin, who lives in an irrational world where the spirits of his dead enemies come to haunt him and seek revenge.
In addition, some fears are very real. Three years ago, as an army general, he succeeded in overthrowing his predecessor in a coup. Now he himself fears being overthrown. To maintain power and protect himself, he has unleashed a reign of terror across the country. Any dream he has, he considers a premonition, can lead to hundreds of arrests and executions on the same day. He was afraid that something could happen to his life. As a result of his rule, people were afraid of him, and he was also afraid of the people. Everyone is being oppressed, starting with his closest aides, who are beginning to disappear one by one. Everyone in Uganda, members of the armed forces, the police, and the public, are all responsible for his security. Immediately, they are to report anyone they hear engaging in subversive activities, or attempting to plan anything against him, to the police immediately.
The methods used by Amin's police are extremely brutal. Victims are beaten to death with clubs, burned in the savanna, their bodies thrown to the crocodiles in the Nile, or publicly shot while wearing white aprons to highlight the blood, suffocated with their penises stuffed down their throats, and some were blown up with dynamite in groups. In three years, he had already had more than 150,000 Ugandans slaughtered. Unlike Stalin and Gaddafi, Amin personally participates in the repression. His house is only a few meters away from the main detention and torture center. To enter without being seen, Amin built a tunnel. He tortures the victims himself and then finishes them off with a heavy hammer. Amin suspects everyone, especially his entourage. His daughter remembers how he spent his nights watching his soldiers. He didn't sleep much. He could sleep, especially during the day, but at night, he could only be on the balcony, with the light off, while he watched the soldiers and how they patrolled. As he learned, a place like State House, where there are bushes, many trees, and things like that, must be feared. He must have been afraid of his soldiers because he knew they could hurt him as his employees. You see, and it was true. They told him that the people who would bring him down were the people he worked with. That's why when you are president, you love people close to you but don't trust them. Like Stalin and Gaddafi, Amin seized power by force. All dictators are caught in the same spiral of violence. They were suspicious of everyone and could trust no one, especially those closest to them who were in a better position to assassinate them. Because of this immense pressure, they will gradually descend into madness and paranoia. He doesn't know it yet, but today Idi Amin has good reason to be afraid. His cousin, General Arube, with whom he grew up and whom he appointed army brigadier, is planning to overthrow him. As he later told his son, Jafar Amin was about to live the hardest day of his reign. The case of the attempted coup by his own tribe, the Kakwa, we Kakwas, was the most painful thing for my father. Charles Arube was almost like a brother. As a cousin, he was very much like a brother. In addition to all the atrocities he has committed, Amin will now have to take another step. Go against a member of his family. Amin Dada also plundered his country. He collects luxury cars and spends unlimited amounts of money. He is rarely in his office and spends a lot of time in his villas in the company of his mistresses. He had many wives. As you can see, he had most of the houses where he had to have a wife there. It is estimated that Idi Amin had at least 40 children, and even Babi Sekaida, a daughter of one of his three legitimate wives, I don't remember exactly how many brothers and sisters she had. We stayed with my six siblings, four died, and four, then eight, oh, I think 22. After three years of absolute power, Amin could finally have everything he was deprived of in his childhood. My father came from the lowest ranks of society. He used to say that he was simply an example for farmers, someone who used to cut sugarcane as a child becoming head of state, so it is possible. He lived in the colonial era, and from nothing he came to power. Still, he served and lived in the colonial era. Amin belongs to the Kakwa tribe, a tribe living in a remote desert region of Uganda. His father abandoned the family when Amin was very young. His mother practiced witchcraft. She raised her son alone in an irrational world dominated by spirits. To survive, she moved in with a soldier in the British colonial regiment, but other soldiers on the base kept mocking her and finally kicked her and her son out. The two lived in absolute misery until Amin had no choice but to enlist in the same regiment that had insulted him. At the age of 18, he was just a kitchen boy, but he quickly rose through the ranks. After a few years, he became one of the few black officers in the colonial army who noticed Amin's strength and potential for violence. Responsible for suppressing the rebellion of rebellious tribes, he resorted to methods of terror and torture. There was a method he used of cutting off the genitals of perpetrators and humiliating them. After independence and the departure of the British in 1962, Amin continued his rise and became commander of the Ugandan army under President Milton Obote. His ambition did not end there. After several assassination attempts, he finally succeeded in overthrowing Obote and seized power on January 25, 1971. Idi Amin was not well educated, but he had a lot of natural intelligence. He managed to maneuver his way to the complete surprise of everyone around him. Now Amin is the one who has the power. I said you want to teach Britain a lesson, Mr. President. Why is that? Does this mean the end of the friendship you had with Britain? This is the lesson I am now teaching the British. With a certain irony, he finds provocative ways to humiliate his former masters. He forces British businessmen to kneel and pledge allegiance to him. His throne is carried by four white men. He even goes so far as to bestow official British army decorations on himself. To make it perfectly clear to you, I have been honored with the highest rank of British Imperial Conqueror in Uganda. Without worry, Amin invents the most magnificent titles for himself. He declares himself President for Life, King of Scotland, and his paranoia reaches delirious proportions, Lord of all Beasts of the Earth and Fish of the Seas. At 1.95 meters and 125 kilos, Amin Dada is a true force of nature, a giant who overwhelms everyone. His outstanding physique and sense of showmanship make him very popular. From the beginning, cameras from all over the world focused on this eccentric and unpredictable individual, who did not hesitate to grant an interview in his swimming pool wearing pajamas. I practice politics and sports, and even the tactics I use in sports and in eliminating people, I apply them in politics. In his youth, Amin was the Ugandan boxing champion eight times in a row. Amin is the strongest man in the country. He is the big father, reassuring and frightening at the same time. If his eccentricities amused his people in the media, they also served as a smokescreen for his crimes. 12:30 PM. Amin has just learned something that has made him furious. His three wives had been celebrating all night with their personal guards. Her husband neglected her, they wanted to provoke him, but they could not imagine the risk they were taking. Amin will not tolerate this insult and decides to take revenge. He rushes to the radio station to reveal the improper behavior of his wives to the whole country. He shouts: "My wives are traitors!" "They betrayed me, and they destroyed my political work." "I disown them and divorce them on this very day." "They must leave the house!" Upon hearing these statements, the three wives hastily packed their bags and fled the house to escape Amin's wrath. When they return home from school, the children don't understand what's happening. I remember we were preparing to go home. When we came from school, we discovered that our mother and the fathers' wives were not at home. Then we asked the maids where our mothers were, and they told us they had packed their bags and left. We were shocked. We couldn't even ask our father because even by chance he was looking at us, we were afraid to ask. Yes, we were at school. A few months later, Malyamu, Babi's mother, was seriously injured in an accident. She managed to flee Uganda and seek refuge in London. Her daughter would not see her again for over 30 years. Nora was exempted for political reasons. She belongs to a tribe that Amin persecutes. He saves her to absolve himself of all responsibility. Kay will not be so lucky. A year later, she was found dismembered in the trunk of a car. The children discovered this horror on television. We were playing, so they called us to go and watch. Then our sisters came running and asked us to go and watch television as Mama Kay had died. So my sister Kid, Mama Kay's eldest, started crying. She had been cut into pieces. It was very difficult for us. It was a strange thing. It is the Minister of Health himself who Amin ordered to put the victim's body back together. He ordered that the body parts be sewn back together as they should have been, which we did that day in the hospital. The children had to go and see their mother's body. It was a very painful experience for them at that age. Amin exploits the event for a gruesome display. He has Kay's body sewn up and displayed in front of the hospital for the whole crowd to see. He even forces her children to look at it. He shouts in front of everyone, "Your mother, as you can see, was a loose woman!" "Look what happened!" "This is how unfaithful people are punished by God." Babi Sekaida still remembers the moment when she saw her brothers and sisters come home from the hospital. They were just crying and unhappy. They no longer played with us. They sometimes said that they missed their mother and that we still had our mother while they no longer had a mother. After divorcing his three wives this morning, Amin must now face his cousin, General Charles Arube. He wants to see him in person, to read in his eyes the signs of betrayal, of which he has been warned. Arube represents everything he hates. He is an elegant and cultured man, an intellectual educated in England. He poses a real threat to Amin because Arube has the support of a large part of the regular army. The situation is more delicate because he is dealing with a family member. Amin begins by accusing him openly. He says he knows of Arube's plot and that he will not escape punishment. However, Arube remains unfazed and does not try to defend himself. Instead, he criticizes Amin's reign of terror that has swept the country. Amin explodes in anger. No one has ever dared to challenge him like this. He is the president now, and if Arube says anything else against him, he can have Arube executed immediately, but Arube remains defiant. Amin realizes that his cousin is determined and perhaps he has underestimated his basic strength. He has no choice but to eliminate him. So he changes his attitude and pretends to want reconciliation. He tells him that he is his brother, Kakwa like him, and that they must make peace, then he asks him to leave in peace and wishes him God's protection. The two men pretend to reconcile, but they know that an armed confrontation is inevitable and that in the end, one of them will die. As soon as Arube leaves the room, Amin summons his mercenary chief and orders him to gather his men to hunt down Arube and assassinate him. If Amin himself gives the order for you to be eliminated, they can appear anywhere with everyone watching. They will not care. Amin waits until his mercenaries confirm that Charles Arube has been assassinated. The stakes are enormous. It is the most dangerous coup attempt he has faced, but he is confident. He has a private army of 18,000 men funded by looting the state budget. These are actual death squads that terrorize the entire country. Amin's time was a time of terror. We were afraid at that time, very afraid of the soldiers. Mohammed Kisambira was Amin's banker before being imprisoned like many collaborators of the dictator. The method of killing was by hitting people on the head with a hammer. So the civilian population was terrified of the actions of Idi Amin's soldiers. Fear was instilled in people. This time Amin's mercenaries failed. He has just learned that they were ambushed and killed by Arube's men. Charles Arube and three other Kakwa colleagues incited a coup. They took positions in key areas of radio, television, and important government buildings. They thought they had seized power. Charles Arube seems on the verge of winning the battle. Amin gathers his forces to launch a counter-attack. I remember that day when our father came, wearing his guns, and everything. Then he was in the office with other soldiers. Many soldiers came to our house at State House. They were on their way to a meeting, there was something, but we couldn't figure out what was wrong. Amin gives his mercenaries orders to surround the building where Arube and his men are gathered, awaiting his orders before killing them. It is midnight, and Amin has returned to his room. Everything went according to plan. Arube thought his coup was successful, but he made the mistake of stopping the fighting and celebrating their victory with his men in a barracks. Meanwhile, Idi Amin's mercenaries spread quietly throughout the area without Arube's forces realizing it. All the soldiers positioned themselves one by one outside the building. As soon as he arrived at the post, Amin's men informed him that they were ready to launch the attack. Amin tells them to wait and manages to reach Arube on the phone inside the barracks. He called Charles Arube, and when Charles Arube picked up the phone, he felt that the man was drunk and seemed to be celebrating. They were talking on the phone, tears in his eyes as he spoke. This is according to my father's interpretation. He said: "Mother gave you to me and told me to take care of you." "After all this, you want to take power from me." "Come and betray me." He is crying. I am talking about my father's tears. He was remembering something very painful. Charles Arube replied, "It is good for a Christian to learn to rule." He told Charles Arube to look out the window. Charles deployed his men outside, but when he looked out, he saw no one from his people. He saw different vehicles. He told him that he was surrounded. When the phone call ended, he called the radio people outside, and they told him they had just heard the sound of gunfire inside. He killed himself. This is a painful truth, that among us Kakwas, we had to undergo a cultural cleansing because brothers fought, and blood was shed. Whether he committed suicide or, more likely, was killed by Amin's men, Charles Arube died. Today Amin escaped the most threatening coup he had to face. Still, there is one last thing he has to do before he is definitely finished with Charles Arube. His body was taken to the mortuary in Kampala. Amin must now honor the Kakwa warrior ritual. If you taste the blood of some of your victims, then you will be protected to appease the spirits of those you killed or those you treated brutally. If you taste their blood, you can mitigate your punishment. Amin himself believes in these things. No one was present at the scene, but it is very likely that Amin, according to his beliefs, stuck a knife in Arube's side to drink some of his blood and thus capture his spirit so that he would not take revenge. In 1979, when the Tanzanian army invaded Uganda, Idi Amin Dada fled to Saudi Arabia and lived there in exile until his death. He said in his last interview that he had no regrets, only nostalgia. He died in 2003 at the age of 75 without a trial. His reign lasted eight years, resulting in the deaths of 300,000 people. Today, the Ugandan government is no longer a dictatorship, but the prisons and torture chambers where hundreds of thousands were slaughtered are still there, abandoned in the forest. On March 1, 1953, Stalin closed himself in his office, and did not appear all day. His entourage dared not disturb him. When, finally, the Kremlin messenger entered the office, he found Stalin unconscious, lying on the floor, the victim of a major stroke. His torment lasted five days. He was 75 years old. Stalin died the same way he ruled, alone in his office. The man responsible for the deaths of more than 20 million people died at the height of his power, mourned by millions of Soviets and even by some of his victims. He had established a system that would last with him for more than 35 years.