Background and career
Awon'go Idi Amin Dada Oumee (30 May 1928 – 16 August 2003) was a Ugandan military officer and dictator who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 until his overthrow in 1979. He gained power after the 1971 Ugandan coup d'état and subsequently ruled the country under a regime characterized by rampant human rights abuses, economic mismanagement and corruption. International observers and human rights groups estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were killed under his regime. Amin was born to a Kakwa father and a Lugbara mother. In 1946, he joined the King's African Rifles, part of the British Colonial Army, as a cook. He rose to the rank of lieutenant, taking part in British actions against Somali rebels and then the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. Uganda gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, and Amin remained in the army, rising to the position of deputy army commander in 1964 and being appointed commander two years later. He became aware that Ugandan president Milton Obote was planning to arrest him for misappropriating army funds, so he overthrew Obote in 1971 and declared himself president. During his years in power, Amin shifted from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying considerable support from Israel to being backed by Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, the Soviet Union, and East Germany. In 1972, Amin expelled Asians, a majority of whom were Indian-Ugandans, leading India to sever diplomatic relations with his regime. In 1975, Amin assumed chairmanship of the Organisation of African Unity, an intergovernmental organisation designed to promote solidarity among African states (an annually rotating role). Uganda was a member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1977 to 1979. The United Kingdom broke diplomatic relations with Uganda in 1977, and Amin declared that he had defeated the British and added "CBE" to his title, for "Conqueror of the British Empire". During the late 1970s there was increased unrest in Uganda, prompted by Amin's persecution of political dissidents and certain ethnic groups and also by the country's very poor international standing, a result of Amin's support for the 1976 hijacking that led to Israel's Operation Entebbe. He then attempted to annex Tanzania's Kagera Region in 1978. Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere ordered his troops to invade Uganda in response. Tanzanian Army and rebel forces successfully captured Kampala in 1979 and ousted Amin from power. Amin went into exile, first in Libya, then Iraq, and finally in Saudi Arabia, where he lived until his death in 2003.
Virtually all retellings of Amin's early life are contradictory since he did not write an autobiography and never authorized a written account of his life. British governmental records put Amin's birth year as 1925; however, no records were kept for native Ugandans at the time. In a 1972 interview with Judith Hare, Amin gives his birthplace as the village of Koboko and his age as 46, which would make his birth year 1926. According to a book published in 1977 by Little, Brown and Company and written by a British adviser in Uganda using the pseudonym David Gwyn, Amin was born in Buganda, with his age given as 48, making his birth year 1928. The most comprehensive biography of Amin comes from his family based on oral tradition, which has some authority, but its details ultimately cannot be confirmed. Family tradition and Saudi authorities in Jeddah put his birth date as 10 Dhu al-Hijja 1346 in the Islamic calendar (30 May, 1928 in the Gregorian Calendar).
According to Amin's family, Ugandan oral tradition and his Saudi death certificate, Idi Amin Dada Oumee was born on 30 May 1928 around 4 a.m. in his father's workplace, the Shimoni Police Barracks in Nakasero Hill, Kampala. He was given the name Idi after his birth on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. According to Fred Guweddeko, a researcher at Makerere University, Amin's birth name was Idi Awo-Ango Angoo. There is disagreement on the meaning of the name Dada, with some arguing that it meant ‘sister’ or ‘effeminate’ in Kiswahili, but most sources agree that Dada was a clan within the Kakwa tribe, which was observed over thirteen generations. Amin was the third son born to Muslim parents, Amin Dada Nyabira Tomuresu (1889–1976), an ethnic Kakwa, and his second wife, Aisha Chumaru Aate (1904–1970), an ethnic Lugbara. His father, a Christian, was christened as a Roman Catholic and born with the name Andreas Nyabira Tomuresu. According to British journalist David Martin, Nyabira spent most of his life in South Sudan. Andreas converted to Islam in 1910 after being conscripted as a bugler by the colonial British army under his uncle, the Kakwa tribal leader, Sultan Ali Kenyi Dada, as a six-year-old child soldier and was given the name Amin Dada. He joined the Protectorate Police Force in Kampala's Nsambia Police Barracks in 1913. Nyabira was forcibly conscripted into the British King's African Rifles in 1914. He fought in the First World War as part of the East African campaign in Tanganyika before being honorably discharged in 1921 and given a plot of land in Arua District. The same year he joined the Protectorate Police Force in the Nsambia Police Barracks. He was transferred to the Shimoni Police Barracks in 1928, where, according to his family, Amin was born. He was later transferred to the Kololo Police Barracks before retiring from the police force in 1931, whereafter he worked at the Office of the Resident District Commissioner in Arua District. His mother, Aisha Aate, was born to a Kakwa mother and Lugbara father. By all accounts Aate was a traditional healer, herbalist and a midwife. Ten years before Amin's birth, Aate joined the Allah Water (also known as Yakani) movement, which was an anti-colonial alternative medicine congregation centred on a "water of Yakan" that was infused with a psychedelic daffodil plant locally known as Kamiojo, described as the "LSD of Central Africa". The movement was repressed by British colonial authorities, who had judged it as rebellion. Despite being largely described as a cult, Amin's family claims that Aate was a priestess in the "Yakanye Order" which they explained as a "secret African society", of which Idi Amin was also a member, that used "sacred water and other mystical powers" for warfare. According to Amin's family Aate had cured Irene Drusilla Namaganda, then Queen of Buganda and wife of Daudi Cwa II of Buganda, of her infertility. Aate's high-ranking role in the Allah Water movement allegedly gained the interest of the Bugandan royal family and her alleged connection to the family led to rumours of Amin's biological father being Daudi Chwa II. These rumours were reportedly spread by Nyabira's childless senior wife, who was spiteful of Aate bearing two children. According to Amin's family, Idi Amin was given the title Awon'go (lit. 'noise'), in reference to rumours about his alleged paternity. Idi was reportedly chosen to take a paternity test as an infant by tribal elders, which involved abandoning him for four days in a forest near Mount Liru in Koboko, where they returned to find Amin still alive. The elders attributed this apparent miracle to Nakan, a sacred seven-headed snake in Kakwa folk religion. His brother and sister died in 1932, when Idi was four years old. Amin's parents divorced when he was four, and most accounts suggest that he moved in with his mother's family in 1944 in the rural farming town of Mawale Parish, Luweero District, in north-western Uganda. The divorce of his parents was reportedly due to the lasting rumours regarding Idi's paternity, which angered his mother. Despite this, his family insists that he moved with his father according to Muslim tradition in Tanganyika Parish, Arua District, while his mother continued to practise healing in Buganda.
While living with his mother's relatives, Amin reportedly worked as a goat farmer from ages eight to ten. In 1938, he moved to the home of Sheikh Ahmed Hussein in the nearby town of Semuto and began memorizing the Quran through recitation until he was 12. In 1940, Amin moved to Bombo and lived with his maternal uncle, Yusuf Tanaboo. He attempted to register for primary school but was rejected, reportedly owing to his paternal Nubian heritage. The same year Amin was injured while participating in Nubian riots against discrimination at Makerere University in Wandegeya. He was enrolled in the Garaya madrasa in Bombo, continued memorizing the Quran under Mohammed Al Rajab until 1944 and reportedly won honours in recitation in 1943. Amin was conscripted into the colonial army alongside fifteen other students before being discharged for being underage. In 1945 he moved to the Kiyindi Parish in Bwaise Parish and worked different odd jobs, including a stint as a doorman and concierge assistant at the Grand Imperial Hotel in Kampala.
Amin joined the King's African Rifles in 1946 as an assistant cook, while at the same time receiving military training until 1947. In his later life, he falsely claimed to have served in the Burma Campaign of World War II. He was transferred to Kenya for infantry service as a private in 1947 and served in the 21st King's African Rifles infantry battalion in Gilgil, a Kenya Colony, until 1949. That year, his unit was deployed to northern Kenya to fight against Somali rebels. In 1951, while Amin was in a camp at Nanyuki, his platoon commander Peter Garwood tasked him with ridding the camp of sex workers. Amin set out to do this with a pick-axe handle, using it to beat both soldiers and sex workers. In 1952, Amin's brigade was deployed against the Mau Mau rebels in Kenya. He was promoted to corporal the same year, then to sergeant in 1953. In 1959, Amin was made Effendi Class 2 (Warrant Officer), the highest possible rank for a black soldier in the King's African Rifles. Amin returned to Uganda the same year and received a short-service commission as a lieutenant on 15 July 1961, becoming one of the first two Ugandans to become commissioned officers. He was assigned to quell the cattle rustling between Uganda's Karamojong and Kenya's Turkana nomads. According to researcher Holger Bernt Hansen, Amin's outlook, behaviour and strategies of communication were strongly influenced by his experiences in the colonial military. This included his direct and hands-on leadership style which would eventually contribute to his popularity among certain parts of Ugandan society.
Following Uganda's independence from the British Empire in 1962, Amin was promoted to captain and then to major in 1963. He was appointed Deputy Commander of the Army in 1964 and, the following year, to Commander of the Army. In 1970, he was promoted to commander of all the armed forces. Amin was an athlete during his time in both the British and Uganda Army. At 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in) tall and powerfully built, he was the Ugandan light heavyweight boxing champion from 1951 to 1960, as well as a swimmer. Amin was also a formidable rugby forward, although one officer said of him: "Idi Amin is a splendid type and a good (rugby) player, but virtually bone from the neck up, and needs things explained in words of one letter". In the 1950s, he played for Nile RFC. There is a frequently repeated urban myth that he was selected as a replacement by the East Africa rugby union team for their 1955 tour match against the British Lions. Amin, however, does not appear in the team photograph or on the official team list.
