Jaffar Amin was only five years old when his father Idi Amin Dada expelled the Asians from Uganda in 1972. However, as an adult, he understands the importance of discussing issues related to the expulsion and “conversing” with the Asians so that history does not repeat itself in Uganda or anywhere in the world!

Vali Jamal

http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/insights/Rethinking_Amin_An_Asian_s_perspective_83813.shtml

 
“There’s considerable discussion in the media these days about the reign of Idi Amin Dada, most of it centring on the question of terror he unleashed in the last five years of his rule.

It is estimated that he killed 300,000 - 500,000 people. Taking the medium figure, that is like four per cent of Uganda’s population at that time and one-fifth of adult males.

If one were to narrow it down to males in the age group 30-50 (because those were in some kind of opposition position) we get a ratio of over 40 per cent; similarly if we factor in that most “targeted assassinations” (a term now popularised) happened amongst selected northern tribes we have to contend with multiple disappearances of adult males among them.

The revisionists point out such facts and in general dispute them. We have to have a sense of proportion. I myself have wondered about the state of the country in which over 200 people were being liquidated everyday. Did people see this going on? Each family in the country should be affected in this way?

In the north, each family should be left with none of their adult males? Did bodies actually float down to the Owen Falls dam and muck up the turbines?

To us Asians, Idi Amin was the ultimate nightmare, uprooting us from our country of birth, depriving us of our lifetime’s savings. Is revisionism possible there? Yes, but only in the way the world saw the expulsion and in the way it zeroed-in on Amin, ignoring similar moves in neighbouring countries. I relate that to the way the world wanted to portray Amin, and he gave them the paint brushes.

To us, the expulsion was the only thing happening in the world at that time; our place in the history books. Whereas to the outside world it was all about how the British could accommodate “60,000” of their subjects on their “overcrowded” islands. Not a word of indignation was expressed – let alone fulmination, as in post-independence Kenya and 2008 Zimbabwe - that “British” property was being confiscated.

Enoch Powell had just made his “rivers of blood” speech. They put out adverts in the Uganda Argus advising Asians “in the interests of their own families” not to come to Leicester. In the end, no more than 30,000 of their subjects were still left in Uganda in 1972. They succeeded hugely in England, and now they only want to talk about that. Ten thousand went to Canada and an equal number went as refugees to various countries.

They obfuscate that despite the expulsion, the British wanted to continue to business-as-usual with Uganda. They had winked him into power, with the Israelis in the driving seats of the jet planes, so to speak.

Why did it change?

Amin went to his sponsors within six months of his coup expecting to be showered with gifts of arms. Then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier said, “Did you say Phantoms? Don’t you know we have to buy them from America ourselves?” Amin switched sides to Libya and Saudi Arabia, kicking out the Israelis and nationalising British properties.

At the UN, he praised the holocaust. He was now Adolf Hitler incarnate and the world had something inside Uganda to latch onto this image – well-publicised public executions, disappearances of public figures (Chief Justice Benedicto Kiwanuka, Archbishop Janan Luwum), the 1976 hijack of the Air France flight to Entebbe by Palestinians over which Amin seemed to be presiding and it was said he personally participated in the murder of passenger Dora Bloch. Like the gruesome murder of his wife Kay in that fictional movie, The Last King of Scotland, right?

Some of us on being expelled and meeting reporters at Britain’s Stansted Airport had stoked his demonisation, because that’s what they wanted to hear, not some namby-pamby stuff about losing a duka in Wobulenzi. So we spoke of our fear of imminent death, actual murders and rapes. Fear there was.

There was shooting all the time. We saw the town empty one evening, cars dashing out on both sides of the road to just get away. The Tanzanians had invaded. But murders and rapes? In researching for my book on Ugandan Asians – centred on the expulsion, of course – I came across just five murders and they were quite as likely done by kondos (thugs). Amin himself pronounced very strictly on any such acts. No one spoke to me of rape.

Unknown to many people, around 100 Asians stayed put in Uganda, having been confirmed of their Ugandan passports and having braved a fiery speech by Amin to rusticate them to Karamoja.

They speak of meeting Amin on the streets, riding his Volkswagen or a bike even.

To Amin, the expulsion was a step to return the economy to its rightful owners. It was a popular move in Uganda at that time and something that had been tried in several other African countries.

In Kenya they had restricted work permits to citizen Kenyans, forcing the foreigners to exit. Dr Apollo Milton Obote (RIP) had tried it in his Common Man’s Charter. And, as Amin shrewdly reminded former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere (RIP) in a telegram, he had wanted to do the same in his creeping nationalisation of Asian properties in the late 1960s. True to his character, Amin went on to say that he would have married the Mwalimu but for his grey hair. That went around the world – the buffoon.

The objectives were the same - to equalise the economy in favour of Africans. And that was it: 50,000 people (half a per cent of the population) of Asian extraction controlled over half of the nonfood economy of Uganda in 1972.

Unfortunately, in distributing Asian property he favoured his cronies and created a new land-owning class as unegalitarian as the Asians.

What about now? Around 25,000 people of Indian origin now live in Uganda. Of these, the ‘original’ Asians number less than a 1,000.

All of them are grateful to President Yoweri Museveni for bringing them back. They have done wonders to revive the economy.

Just to give one statistic: Sugar production at Madhvani’s estate declined by 90 per cent from 1972. Since repossessing the estate, sugar production has exceeded its 1972 level by one-third!

There are around 50 or so major industrial enterprises controlled by Asians/Indians. Add to that transport, construction, services and we could be reaching 20 per cent of the GDP – a GDP that is five times as big compared to 1972.

Will questions again arise about foreign domination? I hope not. It’s now a much larger economy in which the Africans have a much bigger stake than Asians in all fields except manufacturing”.

(Source: Vali Jamal, “Rethinking Amin: An Asian’s perspective”, Sunday, April 26, 2009, The Sunday Monitor on line)

 

Please click on the link to read a document outlining Jaffar Amin’s agenda for PEACE, TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION which includes information on his first meeting with Vali Jamal.
 

Please click on the link below for information on an upcoming book by Vali Jamal which includes the experiences of other Asians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin Dada in 1972 and ones who chose to stay! 

http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/new-book-by-vali-i-v-jamal-on-ugandan-asians-forthcoming-august-2009/