My Africa Today

CORDIAL RELATIONS: President Museveni(L) being seen off by his Tanzania counterpart Jakaya Kikwete at Mwanza Airport. (File Phto)
That dubious claim that Amin was a butcher of tens of thousands is coming under closer scrutiny each week.


On April 11, 1979, a joint expeditionary force of the Tanzanian army backing several armed Ugandan exile groups of the Uganda National Liberation Army captured Kampala and the five-month war against the regime of President Idi Amin was over. Amin fell from power.

Hundreds of thousands of Ugandans celebrated the fall of Amin and that Easter Sunday churches were filled with worshippers grateful that an eight-year "reign of terror" had at last come to an end.
It bears debate, however, whether this war to remove Amin was worth the effort, money, and lives it took.

It is said that the Tanzanians fought to remove a dictator and yet today Ugandans are ruled by a leader whom some Tanzanian legislators denounced as a dictator in 2005 as the constitution was being amended to enable him rule beyond the then stipulated two terms.

It has also been widely claimed over the last 30 years that Amin's regime killed between 300,000 and 500,000 Ugandans. This was partly the basis for Tanzania's intervention in late 1978.

Economically, Uganda suffered in many ways during and especially immediately after this unnecessary war. The MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighter-bombers of the Uganda Airforce have never returned to the level at which they were in the 1970s.

A Ugandan peacekeeping contingent to Somalia would have been a formidable sight and no Somali would have dared fire mortars at a plane bringing Ugandan troops to Mogadishu, as happened last month when the UPDF arrived to take up position.

Today, the fact that the Ugandan army does not create a psychological deterrence and does not put fear into the armed Somali groups in Mogadishu, tells of what a shadow of an army Uganda has when compared with that of the 1970s.

Army and police barracks that were well-maintained in the 1970s are today some of the most embarrassingly dilapidated public housing estates in Uganda.
Masaka and Mbarara towns were bombarded during the war and although Mbarara has recovered somewhat since 1979, it has never returned to what it was in the 1970s and Masaka has never recovered at all from that 1979 destruction.

When Amin left power, Uganda did not have any foreign debt but today subsequent governments have still not cleared the debt owed to Tanzania. The war cost Tanzania over 500million dollars which, in 1979 terms, was a lot of money.
The Tanzanian government from time to time has reminded Uganda to repay that money, to no avail.

Instead, President Museveni finds it more important to order Bank of Uganda to pay off businessman Hassan Basajjabalaba's personal debts than to pay of the more important debt of gratitude to Tanzania.

It is said that Amin persecuted the Acholi and Langi tribes with a vengeance during his rule. But it is clear now that never have the people of Teso, Lango, and above all Acholi suffered and been economically and materially deprived as much in Uganda's history as they have since 1986.
The Acholi have spent 20 years in sub-human conditions, a situation that would have been and was unthinkable under Amin.

Less than two years after the war to oust Amin, Uganda was embroiled in a civil war again, launched by two guerrillas, Andrew Kayiira and Yoweri Museveni, who claimed that the root cause of Uganda's problems had been Amin and once he was removed from power, Uganda would return to sanity.

To this day, the Tanzanians do not seem to realise that they were fooled by the Ugandan exile groups to fight a war against Amin that had nothing to do with restoring democracy.

The first official casualty of the NRA war was not a UNLA soldier, but a Tanzanian sentry standing guard at the quarter guard at the Kabamba army barracks on February 6, 1981.

In March 1979, the Libyan strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sent a contingent of Libyan soldiers to help shore up the beleagured regime of Amin. The Tanzanians fought these Libyans, many were killed, and Tripoli was humiliated.

Libya then embarked on an anti-Tanzania diplomatic campaign throughout the Arab and Islamic world in the 1970s and Tanzania suffered for it in a boycott by some Arab countries.

But just three years after 1979, Kayiira and Museveni were already getting arms and financial support from Gaddafi, much to the irritation and dismay of the Tanzanians.
In 2005, during the debate within Uganda over the extension of the term in office of President Museveni, several Tanzanian members of parliament angrily denounced Museveni and the NRM regime over breeding dictatorship in Uganda, the removal of which had been the primary reason for Tanzania's costly war of 1978 and 1979.

That is where the story ends --- after all the wasted resources, lives, and time fighting Amin, Uganda is back to square one, a war that was utterly unnecessary. That is how ironic history can be.