'Big Daddy' living out his final act
Idi Amin denied any atrocities and said he wanted to be remembered only as an athlete
As the former dictator lies in a coma, Riccardo Orizio recalls an interview with the man who left Uganda awash with blood.
Idi Amin once humiliated four Britons
by making them carry his sedan chair.
The African master of cruel farce and bloodstain parody has done it again. Apparently hours from death in a Saudi hospital, Idi Amin has emerged from a coma to defy the world once more with his unique form of black theatre.
Known not only as "Big Daddy", but also as "President for Life", "Field Marshal", "Al Haji Doctor" and of course "CBE" - in his own satirical version, the title stands for Conqueror of the British Empire - he is ending his colourful life just like any other disgraced dictator. He is in exile, without reputation and without money, forgotten if not forgiven. Neither, when his death inevitably comes, will he be mourned by his country-men. He is a monster who has fled the scene and is now living out his final act.
I met Idi Amin in Jedda in 1999 after chasing him for several years to obtain an interview for my book, Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators. As ever, he was giant-like and more overweight, with his eyes protruding from his jovial face. His English was as broken as when he was the Daddy of Uganda.
I found him clothed in traditional Saudi white dress and initially keen to expand only on subjects such as boxing, food and satellite TV. He was an expat living in Jedda, graciously hosted by the Saudi Royal Family in the name of Islamic solidarity and almost an idol for his fellow African immigrants.
To his followers, Amin is no monster. He epitomise the modern African leaders who began their careers in the West, in Amin's case, as a corporal in a British colonial regiment. There, though, all similarities end. Amin was a loose cannon. He sent farcical telegrams to world leaders, humiliated four British businessmen by forcing them to lift his sedan chair in a parody of the colonial daguerreotype, and visited the Pope wearing fake Ugandan military honours.
In return for all this, he was labelled a cannibal - in those days, of course, so was any bad African. This happened, though, the day Amin answered a question about anthropophagy with the words: "It's not for me. I tried human flesh and it's too salty for my taste."
"I'm a good Muslim and I'm only interested in Islam," he tells me. I ask if he feels remorse. A more astute former dictator would elaborate on the need for conciliation. Big Daddy is unrepentant: "No, I only feel nostalgia." For what? "For when I was a non-commissioned officer fighting against the Mau Mau in Kenya and everyone respected me. I was as strong as a bull. I was a good soldier in the British Army. I was born in a very, very poor family. And I enlisted to escape hunger. But my officers were Scottish and they loved me. The Scots are good, you know."
Throughout his rule, Amin openly said and did what others would never have dared to. He spoke of invading and toppling the racists in South Africa. He expelled 80,000 Asians, accusing them of being economic exploiters. He destroyed the economy of the "Pearl of Africa." His worst crime, however, was to kill - or order the deaths of - 300,000 people.
He had a vast appetite for women, bogus decorations and army life. He loved, then hated, the British. He proclaimed himself an admirer of Adolf Hitler. He equally loved and hated Colonel Gaddafi, who gave him asylum for one year in 1979 but then hated his wife Kay, and ordered her limbs cut off because she had dared to have an abortion. Of Henry Kessinger, he complained: "He never comes to Kampala and Mao Zedong, he argued, should have sought his advice as a mediator.
My encounter with Amin is both informative and utterly useless. He doesn't make any revelations, he doesn't say anything that he had not said before. His sitting room is chaotic, furnished in the same gilded decor beloved of the Saudi middle classes.
From a room near by I hear the sounds of a happy domesticity: women chatting, a baby crying, food being prepared. The garden, where a few cars are parked, is devoid of shrubbery. The person who takes me to Amin is the porter of my hotel. Idi is pleased to talk, but has little to add to history. "I'm still on top of things. You say I'm now isolated, but this is not true," he says. "I still have a lot of friends. I follow the events."
To prove this, he starts to flick the remote on the satellite TV - fitted with the standard monolithic screen that you find in every Saudi home, together with the white leather sofas and portraits of the king. Amin hops from the Congolese channel to the Libyan one, from CNN to the Italian station Rai. "I'm not interested in politics any more," he says. "Nowadays, I play the organ. Oh, yes, I go fishing at a resort near the Yemeni border. The fish are delicious. I have a peaceful life."
I am lost for words and for questions. I finally manage to find something to say. Still thinking about Idi Amin with a fish rod, I manage to utter: "And how do you want to be remembered, Mr President?" sounds too spectful for a man who committed such horrible crimes. "Oh," he says, "I want to be remembered as a great athlete. As a boxing champion."
Uganda never had a chance. Amin knocked it out after a few rounds. After the Tanzanian invasion of the country in 1979, it emerged that behind the carnival antics of Big Daddy there was a reeking trail of blood. The chopped-off heads of some of his adversaries were discovered in the fridges of the presidential residence.
On the hill of Nakasero, beside one of his villas, an extermination camp was found where emaciated prisoners survived by gnawing the bones of those already dead. "All lies to spoil my reputation," Amin tells me.
The Egyptian masseur who has had Idi Amin as a client for several years confides: "Such a nice man. From what I've seen, he is a real gentleman who wouldn't hurt a fly. He becomes a bit strange only when we ask him about his time as President of Uganda. He doesn't like questions about the past, but he loves his present, he has a young wife, comes here with his children and swims to keep himself in shape."
As recently as four years ago, Amin was still very much involved in the regional wars that plague eastern Congo, south Sudan and southern Uganda. An Italian businessman told me that Amin approached him to inquire about a container full of "important material" to ship discreetly to northern Uganda; guerrillas there are staging a lunatic war against the regime of the current president, the Washington-supported Yoweri Museveni.
Amin's eldest son, Taban Amin, nicknamed "Sheriff" is one of the warlords who fight against Ugandan interests in the hotbed of the Great Lakes region. And back home in Uganda, most of Amin's family has also returned to business, his ex-wives, sons and daughters were all allowed to return a long time ago, perhaps in the name of national reconciliation. Other sons live in the US.
As the 78 year old lies still dangerously ill, however, the real questions posted by the legacy of Idi Amin are far removed from the Uganda he left behind in the Seventies. At a time when former heads of state are regularly dispatched to prison - or at least are ordered to justify their actions in international courts of law - why has there never been any pressure exerted on Saudi Arabia to rid itself of this dictator?
And why has Uganda, the country he destroyed, willing to let him return there to die? Why has the international community managed to jail both Slobodan Milosevic and Manuel Antonio Noriega, when it is happy to know that "Baby Doc" Duvalier lives in peaceful exile in France? Similarly, Mengistu of Ethiopia lives in Zimbabwe.
And why is exile rather than justice offered to the President of Liberia, Charles Taylor? Why has Florida become a retirement hotel for former dictators and former military leaders from Central America, many of them morally or legally responsible form crimes similar to those of Idi Amin? Why are so many leaders of the Haitian henchmen, the Tontons Macoute, living undisturbed in the Bronx and the suburbs of Paris?
These are questions that do not seem to trouble Idi Amin. During my encounter with him, he is interested only in importing genuine Ugandan food to satisfy his huge appetite, and making sure that he has enough green bananas.
He is worried about his collection of beloved cars - a white Range Rover and a blue Cadillac, among others. All the time, avoiding nosy journalists who seek to ask him about the "prolonged pilgrimage" that Amin has been undertaking in Saudi Arabia since 1980.
We'll not miss Idi Amin. But the blank candour of this big African corporal - "Running a country is like running a big business: you have to award yourself a descent salary" - sounds more naive these days than anything.
Of course, this does not justify the death and the suffering caused by Big Daddy. As a partial consolation to those who loved to hate him, another Idi Amin would not be possible today. Africa has changed, though not necessarily for the better. As Rwanda showed us, the massacres are bigger.
The wars are more brutal - Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo. Corruption has increased, fed also by the endless invasion of NGOs and donor agencies. Billions of dollars in oil revenues are still keeping afloat a raft of inefficient regimes and brutal military dictatorships.
The difference is that Africa has no Idi Amin any more. The Cannibal of Uganda is going. And with his departure, the exclusive club of world dictators is growing smaller.