The sporting side of Amin

Idi Amin might have been a ‘butcher’, but he will always be fondly remembered in Ugandan sports. Stories of the towering Field Marshal dishing out dollars, offering his jet to teams or personally visiting sports camps to morale boost athletes, were common.

When Akii-Bua won a gold medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Amin rewarded him with a city bungalow. A street and stadium in Lira were also named after the gallant athlete. This was all on top of a hefty (sh5m in 1975) annual package to sports.

Amin added a tea estate to National Council of Sports assets to ensure financial stability. Such generosity is the reason why most sportsmen would not agree with those calling Amin a sadist.

Amin’s sports story can be traced back to his youth. He was an East African heavyweight champion, rugby player, a swimmer and basketballer. And, not even the presidency could diminish the athlete in him. This sports craze rubbed off to those below him.

For instance in 1973 he directed a match between his cabinet and the diplomatic corps. And trust Amin when it came to fairness in sports. He made Kampala Archbishop Emmanuel Nsubuga the referee.

One of the most vivid images of the sporting head of state was that of Amin rolling up his sleeves and mounting the ring for a contest with then national boxing coach Peter Seruwagi. But this bout, a curtain raiser to the 1974 African Championship, still sends a cold chill down Seruwagi’s spine.

“A surprise punch on Amin would have certainly been my death warrant. State research operatives circled the ring to ensure that their master floored me with ease,” recounts Seruwangi. And floor Seruwagi is exactly what Amin hastily did in the first round of that night at Lugogo cricket oval.

There was something about knockouts and Amin. He won most of his fights by first round knockouts in the fifties. And. when he received complaints from Ugandan boxers that white judges were cheating them, Amin had the most effective of solutions.

He advised the pugilists to knockout their opponents as a means of countering the controversial points decisions. Uganda’s national boxing team popularly known as “The Bombers” took heed. What followed was a golden boxing era that had Uganda rated third in amateur boxing in the world.

Amin was also a master of psychological warfare. Tom Kawere, who was Amin’s teammate, recounts a time in the Millington Drake Championship when Amin scared off a British opponent well before the first gong. It all happened as Amin was shadow boxing in a Nairobi dressing room.

“He timed when the Briton was within earshot and said loudly that he had the previous night got a vision saying his opponent would die in the ring. “The Muzungu already shaken by the ferocity of the Ugandan’s punches, threw off his gloves and took off.”

While Seruwagi had bitter memories of being floored by a presidential right cross, David Agong recounts his encounters with Amin with nostalgia.

One afternoon in 1976 Amin offered a sh10,000 (over sh1million in today’s currency) reward to anyone who would beat him in a breaststroke duel at Kampala International Hotel’s (Sheraton Hotel) pool. Agong, a former bodybuilder and boxer, did it. “I was promptly given the money,” Agong recalls.

Former Cranes striker Polly Ouma, a captain in Amin’s regime, is amongst those with good memories. “As far as Amin was concerned, players’ welfare was always first priority,” Ouma said.

Ouma recounts a time at the height of the Tanzania-Uganda tensions when Amin hosted the team before a Cranes versus Taifa Stars CECAFA Challenge Cup match in Zanzibar. “To Amin, defeating Tanzania on the soccer pitch was as good as defeating his long time East African enemies on the war front.”

Another Cranes player says that Amin made sure that they had enough allowances and offered his presidential jet besides the commercial plane. “He wanted us to completely overwhelm the Tanzanians by not only defeating their football team, but also winning their women’s hearts. And, that is exactly what we did,” remembers the ex-intemational.

Agong, who later became a national team boxing manager, says that to Amin, offering the presidential jet to sportsmen was like availing a personal car for a trip to Jinja. And if you interfered in the president’s love affair with sports, you paid dearly as Voice of Uganda sports editor Sammy Kateregga (RIP) discovered.

Left winger Dennis Obua in response to a newspaper criticism questioning his form, reported to Amin that all was well in the Cranes camp at Kyambogo save for Kateregga’s acidic pen. Amin furiously reacted by firing Kateregga on radio. Hillary Nsambu, who was then one of Kateregga’s assistants, says the editor after hearing his sacking on the 1pm news bulletin on Radio Uganda, did not even have enough time to clear his desk before fleeing to Kenya.

But even the sportsmen should have realised the dictator in Amin shortly after he grabbed power. Sports is an area where the title “President” can be granted to a head of any games federation. But to Amin, this had to stop forthwith in Uganda. Reason: the country had only one president — AMIN.

But whether Amin’s generosity was out of genuine love, or was the dictator’s strategy to manipulate sports as a public relations tool, is still a matter for debate. There are also those who insist Amin used sports as a drug to humble numerous youths who had either dropped out of school (a common occurrence at the time). These could also not find employment at a time when the commercial sector had been paralysed.

Those who argue that Amin was no sports angel, also insist that Uganda’s high points in the seventies were more a result of a strong foundation laid well before the General grabbed power.

This group insists that coaches like Malcolm Arnold, who fine-tuned Akii-Bua and Burkhard Pape, who groomed the Cranes side that sparkled in the seventies, were products of the pre-Amin system.

But whether or not he was the spirit behind Uganda’s success in the seventies, Amin will always remain popular in this country’s sports.

As published in the Sunday Vision of August 17, 2003: Vision Group Resource Centre.

Read more here:

Idi Amin Dada (1971-1979) - https://bit.ly/310RDLu 

The Sporting side of Amin - https://bit.ly/3g2wox4

Amin Famous Quotes - https://bit.ly/31VgGyP