Ugandans forgive dying Amin
2003-07-21 18:47
Kampala - Ugandans old enough to remember the brutality of Idi Amin's reign in the 1970s reacted with sympathy on Monday to the news that the former dictator lay dying in a Saudi hospital.
"We are aggrieved but we forgive. If anybody does not forgive this, it is a recipe for more confusion in the country," Henry Mayega of the United People's Congress, the party Amin toppled in 1971, said.
"We are taught every day about forgiveness and reconciliation. Amin should just be accorded that," said Nakato Naboosa, a 54-year-old female newspaper vendor on a Kampala street.
Between 1971 and 1979, Amin, who was hospitalised on Friday and who since fell into a coma, led a regime held responsible for more than 300 000 deaths and the devastation of a flourishing economy.
But Naboosa believes the "Butcher of Africa" did the right thing when, soon after coming to power in a coup he expelled Uganda's 80 000 Asian residents and gave their businesses to cronies who quickly ran them into the ground.
"He should be allowed to come back. He had rid us of Indians and now they are back. They have chased us from the verandahs where we used to sell our papers and they demand that rent should be paid in dollars," she complained.
Stand trial
Many Ugandan businesspeople share this sentiment, even if the intellectual class would like to see the septuagenarian stand trial for his excesses.
With an official at Jeddah's King Faisal Hospital saying Amin "is expected to die any moment," that is unlikely to happen.
Uganda is now rife with debate over whether Amin should be allowed to come home to die, or if that proves impossible, to be buried in Uganda.
"Amin has a right to return home," declared the state-controlled New Vision daily.
"At the same time, all Ugandans are subject to the law, including the presidential prerogative of pardon. ... Ultimately though the decision to return or not lies with Amin and his family," the paper added.
"His regime was bad, but we need to pardon him. His family members should be allowed to bury him if he died," said a middle-aged woman in Kampala.
Like many Ugandans who spoke to AFP on Monday, the woman refused to give her name, an indication of the lingering terror still evoked by an ailing old man who has not set foot in his homeland since he was toppled.
"What I have read in the papers suggests that Amin was a human being after all," said an accountant at a cash machine in the capital, who went on to say Amin was now "inconsequential."
Generation of intellectuals killed
During Amin's tenure, a whole generation of Ugandan intellectuals were either killed for questioning the regime or fled into exile, and many never returned.
"He should not be let off scot-free. He should stand trial," commented a retired civil servant.
Market trader Robert, at 32, is perhaps too young to properly remember the years when "Big Daddy" was in State House and believes Amin helped indigenous Ugandans gain a leg-up in commerce.
"If it was not for Amin no African would be in business. Amin should be allowed to come back," he said, adding, in reference to a continuing rebel war in the north of the country: "Are we not talking about reconciliation every other day?"
A taxi driver, Sulaiman Kakooza, 38, was also sympathetic, saying it would be bad if Amin died in exile.
"Every leader we have got since independence has killed. But for Amin, yes, the brutality of his agents was excessive, but also we have to recognize that those who were fighting him exaggerated his misdeeds," he said.