OPINION

By Kintu Nyago

President Yoweri Museveni’s recent criticism of Idi Amin’s brutality was spot on.

To understand Amin horrendous human rights record, one needs to trace his political and military origins. He differed from most conscripts who joined the King’s African Rifles to fight in the Second World War whose training focused them on resisting Nazi Germany’s and Imperial Japan’s fascism.

They were not indoctrinated to hate African nationalism and came from wide social backgrounds. For instance, Sgt. Maj. Robert Kakembo was conscripted into the KAR after graduating from Makerere. Indeed, his anti-colonial views consolidated during WW II, as reflected in his 1946 book titled An African Soldier Speaks.

Other notable WW II veterans included Wiberforce Nadiope, Benedicto Kiwanuka and Joseph “Jolly Joe” Kiwanuka, all of whom were architects of our independence. These in addition to Captain George Mawanda, Dr Albert Bwogi and his brother Lt Ernest Kawalya.

Amin was recruited into the post-World War II KAR, whose core mandate was to suppress African nationalism, that was on the rise from the late 1940s as predicted by Kakembo in his aforementioned book.

A British Foreign Office document titled “Leading Personalities in Uganda 1975”, noted that Amin joined the KAR in 1946 as a private. He participated in the suppressing of the late 1940s anti colonial uprisings in Uganda, known as Namba Munana and Namba Mwenda, led among others by Omutaka Jemusi Mitti Kabazzi, the head of the Bataka Bu anti-colonial movement and Ignatius Kangave Musaazi.

His rise to prominence in the KAR occurred during the Mau Mau rebellion (1952-56). This armed peasant uprising resulted from the massive land grabs inflicted mostly on the Kikuyu people in the Kenyan Highlands. The British responded with unrestrained force, causing the death of more than 10,000 people. Hence, King Charles’s official regret to the Kenyan people while visiting Kenya, last week.

In Kenya, Amin served under Maj. Iain Grahame, an Etonian, with counter-insurgency skills, including hand-to-hand combat, that he imparted onto his troops.

Up to today, Amin’s ruthlessness is remembered in Mathira constituency, central Kenya, as was recounted by Wamba Muriuki to a Kenyan newspaper early this year. She recalled that Amin shot and injured Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote, popularly known as “General China”. By the end of this rebellion, he had been promoted to warrant officer.

Maj. Grahame described Amin, as” ...a superb athlete and first rate NCO”, but in his opinion lacked the capacity to be promoted beyond the rank of sergeant major.

And that was the tragedy of Uganda. For the British, due to the 1955 anti-colonial Kabaka’s Crisis in Uganda, when Sir Edward Muteesa was exiled in 1953, and the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, failed to create an indigenous military officer corps in East Africa, before independence, unlike in Ghana and Nigeria. Hence the racialised KAR discouraged the Robert Kakembos, Mawandas and Nadiopes from remaining in the colonial military, enabling Amin to thrive.

The brutality Amin gained from Kenya was further displayed when dealing with Turkana cattle rustlers in 1962. Hence Governor General Sir Walter Coutts, in his 1963 handover report to Prime Minister Obote, in which he advised him to court martial Amin. However, Obote had his own, parochial, political calculations, involving using Amin to retain power. He, therefore, ignored this advice.

Obote had another opportunity to reform the Ugandan military a year later after the 1964 East African military mutiny. Unfortunately, for Uganda, he did not. Unlike Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who reformed their respective armies, hence establishing a firm foundation for Kenyan and Tanzanian stability, Obote opted to appease the mutineers. Hence Amin was promoted from NCO (non-commissioned officer) to the rank of full colonel within three years!

This enabled Obote to abrogate Uganda’s constitution and to dispatch Col. Amin to attack the Lubiri. An incident in which, according to Human Rights Commissioner John Nagenda, up to 3,000 people were massacred. The rest is well documented in the Justice Oder Report.

The writer is Uganda’s Deputy High Commissioner to Pretoria