The Night Wanderers by Wojciech Jagielski
Author:Wojciech Jagielski [Wojciech Jagielski]
Language: eng
Format: epub
The first seven of many lean years came with the reign of Idi Amin Dada.
Perhaps no leader did as much harm to Africa’s reputation as Amin. He was the personification of horror, known as the curse and disgrace of Africa. Milton Obote said that Amin was the most terrible monster ever to emerge from the womb of an African mother. For many years after he fled Africa, those who were ill-disposed to the continent would cite him as an example of the allegedly innate barbarity of the Africans.
Those who knew him claim that he exuded menace and goodwill in equal measure. He always stood out from the crowd—for his height, weight, strength, booming voice, noisy laughter, jabbering speech, insatiable lust, shrewdness, and brutality. People said his mother was a witch who knew how to cure people, but could also cast spells on them; moreover she was from the Lugbara tribe, which produced many powerful wizards. The popular explanation was that as the son of a witch, Amin was bound to be different from ordinary mortals.
His eccentricities and outbursts of cruelty were explained by fits of a shameful disease he had caught from one of his numerous lovers, and also by the fact that he had never known his father, who had left the family in a rage, convinced Idi was not his son, but a bastard sired by the Bugandan king, Kabaka Daudi Chwa. Amin’s mother had been summoned to the palace to treat the Kabaka’s family. She was also meant to provide advice from the spirits who entered into her and told her how to prepare healing concoctions and herbs.
Abandoned by his father and brought up by his mother the witch, Amin grew into a giant and strongman, but in his heart and soul he remained a child—a large, cruel child, tetchy and irascible, going from one extreme to the other, from amusement and delight to dejection and rage. These mood swings and racing thoughts made him unpredictable. “Amin’s temperament is unstable and unreliable. One day he emits an extremely warm and friendly aura, but soon after his face assumes a terrible, grim expression. One moment he is convulsed with laughter, honestly amused like a child, but the next moment he flies into a rage,” the London Observer wrote of him. “His strange disposition is reflected in his political decisions.”
Only in the British colonial army, where he served loyally, was he ever successfully restrained. Men like him, strong and ruthless, but eager and obedient, were readily signed up. Later on, when the British colonies became independent states, they were promoted and entrusted with power, in the belief that after being such submissive servants and adjutants, they would do what they were told as free, independent people too. Thus from being a bold bullyboy sergeant, Idi Amin Dada was elevated to the role of commander-in-chief of the Ugandan army.
But once he was a general, he seized power and declared himself president. He did it out of fear for his own skin, when he realized he was in extreme danger of losing everything.
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