“His Excellency the President for Life, Marshal Alhadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, holder of the Victoria Cross, DSO, holder of the Military cross and Conqueror of the British Empire”
– Idi Amin’s full title to be used at all times
Amin gives citizenship to British officials in 1975.
To amplify his already vast ego and broadcast his political presence to all areas of Ugandan life at all times, former British colonial army sergeant and heavy-weight boxer Idi Amin (30 May 1928 – 16 August 2003) kept a platoon of official photographers to make him look good.
Amin spent eight years in power (1971-79) and was reported to have been responsible for the deaths of up to half a million Ugandans. He brutally suppressed other ethnic groups and banned all other political parties. Amin was finally overthrown when the neighbouring army of Tanzania invaded Uganda in 1978. Amin fled to Saudi Arabia for exile in 1979, where he lived until his death in 2003.
Refugee Day, June 1975 © Uganda Broadcasting Corporation
This is Amin, the sadistic dictator with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands. The man who kept the heads of his enemies in his freezer.
Henry Kyemba, who served as Amin’s Minister of Health for three years in Amin’s cabinet, said of his former boss:
“Amin’s bizarre behavior derives partly from his tribal background. Like many other warrior societies, the Kakwa, Amin’s tribe, are known to have practiced blood rituals on slain enemies. These involve cutting a piece of flesh from the body to subdue the dead man’s spirit or tasting the victim’s blood to render the spirit harmless… 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.”
Or you may remember Amin as a clownish thug, the ‘Big Daddy’ lampooned by Benny Hill and in The Collected Bulletins Of President Idi Amin, “as taken down verbatim in the pages of Punch each week by Alan Coren”. This extract from the passage Where Is You, Adolf Hitler, Now We Needin’ You?:
Got no time for de Peace Corpse, anyhow. Load o’ freakies only comin’ over here on account of we growin’ de good stuff, couple o’ deep puffs on de well-known Kampala Gold, feel like your head got legs. Soon as dey finished, dey starts bombin’ roun’ de countryside tryin’ to pull de good works, gittin’ de people all confused wid de irrigation schemes an’ de intensive dairyfarmin’ an’ followin’ ’em roun’ wid de tape recorders tryin’ to grab fust rights on de folk songs, before you know it, everybody sittin’ roun’ on de groun’ shoutin’ crap like “We all brudders, yeah, yeah, we into de peace bag, man, everybody gittin’ to love one anudder, dat de way it is, we ain’t gonna be moved, black an’ white together, wow, heavy, man, and so forth.” Fat lotta use, who de hell want de peace stuff, gimme de Gaddafi technique, he comin’ over here with de famous Kalachnikov 9mm machine gun in de brown carrier bag an’ he showin’ everyone how you blows a head off at five hunnerd yards, dat de sort o’ foreign aid we lookin’ for.
The Idi Amin Archive
Archbishop Janani Luwum (murdered on February 17, 1977) with President Amin.
The photographers at the ministry of information took tens of thousands of pictures of Amin. There are none show him persecuting minorities, torturing political opponents, expelling all Ugandan Asians, persecuting Christians, kidnapping and murdering Jews and doing the things that kept his bloody grip on power in the 1970s.
We see the man at public occasions, showing the dictator with his family or close associates, playing with some of his very many children surrounded by Christmas decorations, playing the accordion and swimming.
Idi Amin playing the accordion at Buvuma Island in 1971. Photograph- Uganda Broadcasting Corporation
The images were found in a locked filing cabinet at the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (U.B.C.) by archivists in 2015. In all there were seventy thousand negatives, most of them in medium format. The majority of them were made in the 1970s. The negatives have now been digitized as part of a preservation project organized by the U.B.C., the University of Michigan and the University of Western Australia.
According to Hajji Edrisa Mayanja Njuki, the head of the presidential press unit during the 1970s, the images show the “real Amin”. “The pictures that show his good side had never been produced and published. It has always been the negative side of the story,” Njuki is quoted as saying.
Amin celebrates his 51st birthday in 1979.
President Amin visits Syrian Arab Republic, June 1976
Mustafa Adrisi, the army Chief of Staff, opens a photo exhibition on the Soviet Union at the Uganda Museum, 20 May 1975
Black Americans (delegation included Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan) meet H.E. on August 11, 1975
Amin addresses troops during a visit to border regions.
Amin and his family with the South Vietnamese President in Uganda, 1973.
Amin makes a speech at Nile Mansion in 1978.
Idi Amin at Lake Albert in July 1973.
Miss Tourism girls visit Amin at State House in 1978.
President Amin with Muammar Gaddafi, Libya, October 1974
Via: Guardian, Blind, Derek Peterson, Smithsonian
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