A Day in The Life of a Dictator: Idi Amin Dada

Uganda, Tuesday, March 26th, 1974. This morning, Tuesday, March 26th, 1974, Amin Dada once again awakens out of a nightmare. Killers were trying to assassinate him at home during the night, and these killers were his own soldiers.

Like Gaddafi and Stalin, he sleeps very little. For these paranoid men, the night brings out their worst fears, especially for Amin Dada, 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 all too real.

Three years ago, as an army general, he succeeded in overthrowing his predecessor by a coup d'etat. Now he, himself, is afraid of being overthrown. To maintain power and protect himself, he has unleashed a reign of terror throughout the country.

Any dream of his, deemed premonitory, can result in hundreds of arrests and executions on the very same day. He was scared that something could happen to his life. As a result of how he was ruling, people were scared of him, and he was also scared of the people.

Everyone is subjected to repression, starting with his closest collaborators, who start to disappear one after the other. Everybody in Uganda, members of the armed forces, police and the public, are all responsible for my security. Immediately they hear anybody making subversive activities, or trying to plan anything against me, report that person to the police straight away.

The methods employed by Amin's police are extremely brutal. Victims are clubbed to death, burned in the savanna, their bodies thrown to the crocodiles in the Nile, or shot publicly wearing white aprons to highlight the blood, choked with their own penises stuffed down their throats, and some even dynamited in groups. In three years, he has already had more than 150,000 Ugandans massacred.

Unlike Stalin and Gaddafi, Amin personally participates in the repression. His home is situated only a few meters from the principal detention and torture center. To enter without being seen, Amin has had a tunnel built.

He tortures the victims himself and then finishes them off with a sledgehammer. Amin is suspicious of everyone and especially of his entourage. His daughter recalls how he spent nights in surveillance of his own soldiers.

He wasn't sleeping much. He could sleep, especially during the daytime, but during the night, he could just be on the balcony, switching off the light, as he watched the soldiers and how they were patrolling. You know, a place like State House, where there are bushes, so many trees and things like that, he must fear.

He must have feared his own soldiers because he believed they could harm him as his staff. You see, and it was correct. They told him that the people who would overthrow him were the people he was working with.

That's why when you are president, love people near you but don't trust them. Like Stalin and Gaddafi, Amin seized power by force. All of the dictators were caught up in the same spiral of violence.

They were suspicious of everybody and could trust nobody, especially those closest to them who were best positioned to assassinate them. Due to this tremendous pressure, they would progressively plunge into madness and paranoia. He doesn't know it yet, but today Idi Amin has good reason to be afraid.

His own cousin, General Arube, with whom he grew up and whom he had appointed Brigadier General of the Army, is planning to overthrow him. As he would later tell his son, Jaffar Amin, he was about to live through the most difficult day of his reign. The issue of the putsch attempt by his very own tribe, the Kakwa, we are Kakwas, was the most painful thing for my father.

Charles Arube was more or less 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 go one step further.

Go against a member of his own family. Amin Dada also plundered his country. He collects luxury cars and spends limitless amounts of money.

He's hardly ever in his office and spends a great deal of his time at his villas in the company of his mistresses. He had so many wives. You see, most homes he had must have had a wife there.

It is estimated that Amin Dada had at least 40 children, but even Babi Salama Shida, the daughter of one of his three legitimate wives, can't remember exactly how many brothers and sisters she had. We were staying with my six siblings, four whom died, another four, then eight, oh, I think 22. After three years of wielding absolute power, Amin can finally have everything he was deprived of in his childhood.

My father came from the lowest rank in the community. He was simply saying that he was an example of a sharecropper, somebody who used to slash sugar cane as a child becoming a head of state, so it is possible. He lived in the colonial era, and out of the blue, he came to power.

Still, he had served and lived in the colonial era. Amin belonged to the Kakwa tribe, a tribe living in a remote desert region of Uganda. His father abandoned the family when Amin was still very young.

His mother practiced witchcraft. She raised her son on her own in an irrational world dominated by spirits. To survive, she moved in with a soldier in the British colonial regiment, but the other soldiers on the base kept taunting her and finally drove her and her son away.

The two lived in utter misery until Amin had no choice but to sign up with the very regiment that had humiliated him. At 18, he was only a kitchen boy, but he quickly climbed the ranks. A few years later, he became one of the only black officers in the colonial army who had noticed Amin's strength and potential for violence.

In charge of putting down the revolt of the rebel tribes, he reverted to terror tactics and torture. There was a method he used of cutting off the genitals of the culprits and humiliating them. After Independence and the departure of the British in 1962, Amin continues his ascent and becomes commander of the Ugandan army under President Milton Obote.

His ambition does not end there. After several assassination attempts, he finally succeeds in overthrowing Obote and seizes power on January 25th, 1971. Idi Amin wasn't well-educated, but he had a lot of natural intelligence.

He managed to maneuver his way to the complete amazement of those around him. Now it is Amin who has the power. You've said you wanted to teach Britain a lesson, President.

Why is that? Does this mean the end of the friendship with Britain you've had? That's now the lesson I'm teaching the British.

With a certain irony, he finds provocative ways to humiliate his previous masters. He obliges British businessmen to kneel and declare allegiance to him. He has his throne carried by four white men.

He even goes as far as bestowing official British army medals upon himself. In order to make it absolutely clear to you, I have been honored by the highest order of the conqueror of British imperialism in Uganda. Without a qualm, Amin invents the most fantastic titles for himself.

He proclaims himself President for Life, king of Scotland, and his megalomania reaching delirious proportions, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas. At 1. 95 meters and 125 kilos, Amin Dada is a veritable force of nature, a colossus that overwhelms everyone.

His outstanding physique and his sense of showmanship make him very popular. Right from the start, cameras from around the world are focused on this eccentric and unpredictable individual, who thinks nothing of being interviewed in his swimming pool wearing pajamas. I do both politics and sports, and even tactics that I use in sports and in knocking out people, I apply them in politics.

In his youth, Amin was a boxing champion of Uganda eight times straight. Amin is the strongest man in the country. He is Big Daddy, 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. It is 12:30 PM. Amin has just learned something that has made him furious.

His three wives have been partying all night with their bodyguards. Neglected by their husband, they wanted to provoke him, but could not have imagined 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 indecent behavior of his wives to the whole country. He shouts, "My wives are unfaithful! " "They have betrayed me, and destroyed my political work.

" "I repudiate them and divorce them this very day. " "They must leave the house! " On hearing these declarations, the three wives hurriedly pack their suitcases and flee from the house to escape Amin's anger.

When they come home from school, the children don't understand what's happening. I remember we were preparing to come back home. When we came from school, we discovered that my mother and stepmothers weren't at home.

Then we asked the maids where our moms were, and they told us they had packed up and left. We were shocked. We couldn't even ask our father because even by the way he would look at us, we feared to ask.

Yes, we were at school. A few months later, Malyamu, Babi's mother was badly hurt in an accident. She managed to escape from Uganda and take refuge in London.

Her daughter would not see her again for more than 30 years. Nora was spared for political reasons. She belongs to a tribe that Amin is persecuting.

He spares her to absolve himself of all responsibility. Kay would not be as lucky. A year later, she was found cut to pieces in the trunk of a car.

The children found out about this horror on television. We were playing out, so they called us to go and take a shower. Then our sisters came running and told us to go and see the television as Mama Kay was also dead.

So my sister Kide, the firstborn of Mama Kay, started crying. She was cut into pieces. It was very hard for us.

It was something strange. It's the Minister of Health himself who was ordered by Amin to have the victim's body sewn back together. He directed that the body parts be sewn back the way they should have been, which we did that day at the hospital.

The children had to go to see the body of their mother. It was a very traumatic experience for them at that age. Amin takes advantage of the event for a macabre display.

He has Kay's stitched-up body exposed in front of the hospital for the whole crowd to see. He even forces her own children to look at it. In front of everyone, he shouts, "Your mother, you see, was a loose woman!

" "Look at what happened! " "This is how those who blaspheme against Allah are punished. " Babi Salama Shida still remembers the moment when she saw her stepbrothers and sisters come home from the hospital.

They were just crying and unhappy. They were no longer playing with us. Sometimes they said that they missed their mother and that we still have our mother while they no longer had any mother.

After divorcing his three wives this morning, Amin must now confront his cousin, General Charles Arube. He wants to see him in person, to read in his eyes the signs of betrayal, which he has been warned about. Arube represents everything he detests.

He is an elegant and cultivated 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 even more delicate since he is dealing with a family member.

Amin begins by accusing him outright. He says that he knows about Arube's plot and won't get away with it. However, Arube remains unperturbed and doesn't try to defend himself.

Instead, he criticizes Amin's reign of terror that has swept the country. Amin explodes with anger. No one has ever dared to defy him like this.

He is the chief now, and if Arube says one more thing against him, he can have Arube executed on the spot, but Arube remains impassive. Amin realizes that his cousin is determined and that he has perhaps underestimated his underlying strength. He has no choice, and he must eliminate him.

So his attitude changes, and he pretends to want a reconciliation. He tells him that he is his brother, a Kakwa like him and should make peace, then requests him to leave in peace and wishes him God's protection. The two men pretend to be reconciled, but they know that an armed confrontation is inevitable and that in the outcome, one of them will die.

As soon as Arube is out of the room, Amin summons the head of his mercenaries and orders him to assemble his men to pursue Arube and assassinate him. If Amin himself gave the order for you to be eliminated, they could show up anywhere with everybody watching. They wouldn't care.

Amin waits for his mercenaries to confirm that Charles Arube has been assassinated. The stakes are enormous. It's the most dangerous putsch attempt that he has ever faced, but he is confident.

He has a private army of 18,000 men that he pays by pilfering the state budget. These are actual death squads that terrify the entire country. The time of Amin was a time of terror.

We were in fear at that time, great fear of the soldiers. Mohammed Kisambira was Amin's banker before being imprisoned like many of the tyrant's collaborators. The killing method was by hitting people on the head with a hammer.

So the civilian population was terrified by the acts of Idi Amin's soldiers. People were instilled with fear. This time Amin's mercenaries have failed.

He has just learned that they have been ambushed and killed by Arube's men. Charles Arube and three other fellow Kakwas instigated a coup d'etat. They took up positions in the key areas of the radio, television, and important government houses.

They thought they had captured power. Charles Arube seems on the verge of winning the battle. Amin assembles his troops to launch a counterattack.

I remember that day our father came in, putting on his revolvers, and each and everything. Then he was in the office with other soldiers. So many soldiers came to our home in State House.

They were going into the meeting like there was something, but we couldn't know what was wrong. Amin gives his mercenaries the order to surround the building, where Arube and his men regrouped, awaiting his orders before killing them. It's midnight and Amin returns to his room.

Everything has worked out according to plan. Arube thought his coup d'etat was a success, but he made the mistake of ceasing combat and celebrating their victory with his men in one of the barracks. Meanwhile, Amin Dada's mercenaries spread out quietly all around the area without Arube's troops realizing it.

One by one, all the soldiers posted outside the building are neutralized. Once in position, Amin's men inform him that they are ready to launch the assault. Amin tells them to wait and manages to reach Arube on the phone inside the barracks.

He called Charles Arube, and when Charles Arube grabbed the phone, he felt that the gentleman was intoxicated and seemed to be celebrating. They were talking on the phone, with tears in his eyes while talking. That is according to Dad's explanation.

He said, "My mother gave you to me and told me to look after you. " "After all of this, you want to take power away from me. " "You come and betray me," and he's crying.

I'm talking about my dad's tears. He was remembering a very painful thing. Charles Arube answered, "It is good for a Christian who is educated to rule.

" He told Charles Arube to look outside the window. Charles had posted his people outside, but when he looked outside he didn't see any of his people. He saw different vehicles.

He told him that he was surrounded. When the phone went off, he called the radio of the people outside, and they told him that they just heard a gunshot inside. He had killed himself.

That is a painful truth, which is amongst us, Kakwas. We had to go through a cultural cleansing because brothers had fought, and blood had spilled. Whether he committed suicide or, more likely, was killed by Amin's men, Charles Arube is dead.

Today, Amin has escaped the most threatening putsch he has ever had to face. Still, there remains one last thing for him to do before definitely finishing with Charles Arube. His body had been taken to the Kampala morgue.

Amin must now honor a Kakwa's warrior ritual. If you taste the blood of some of your victims, then you'll be protected in order to appease the spirits of those you've killed or those who you have brutalized. If you taste their blood, you can cushion your punishment.

Amin himself believed in these things. Nobody was present at the scene, but it is very probable that Amin, as per his beliefs, stuck a knife in Arube's side to drink a little of his blood and thereby capture his spirit so that it could not avenge itself. In 1979, when the Tanzanian army invaded Uganda, Idi Amin Dada fled to Saudi Arabia and lived in exile there until his death.

In his last interview, he said that he had no remorse, only nostalgia. He died in 2003 at the age of 75 without ever being prosecuted. His reign lasted eight years, resulting in the deaths of 300,000 people.

Today, Uganda's government is no longer a dictatorship, but the prisons and torture chambers where hundreds of thousands were massacred are still there, abandoned in the forest. On March 1st, 1953, Stalin shut away in his office, did not appear for the entire day. His entourage didn't dare disturb him.

When, at last, the Kremlin courier entered the office, he found Stalin unconscious, lying on the floor, the victim of a major stroke. His agony lasted five days. He was 75 years old.

Stalin died the same way that he governed, alone in his office. The man who was responsible for the deaths of over 20 million people died at the summit of his power, mourned by millions of Soviets and even by some of his victims. He had created a system that would outlast him for over 35 years.