Idi Amin
A Study in Tyranny
The myth and reality of Idi Amin have become so entangled that it is often particularly difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty what is one or the other. This is because, among other things, his character and regime lend themselves so perfectly to fictionalisation (as in, for instance, Rise and Fall of Amin, and The Last King of Scotland) and propaganda that what is, for narrative, or dramatic, or political purposes, a variation on, or an extrapolation from a known fact about, Amin or his regime, even a complete fabrication has come to be accepted by many as historical reality, even more so in the absence of authoritative works on the subject. This book dispassionately disentangles the myth from the reality of Idi Amin and his regime while making an interdisciplinary sense of his political-military biography and trajectory from cook to President and beyond. This book takes the reader from Amin’s birth between 1923 and 1928, through his humble beginnings in the British colonial regiment, King’s African Rifles (KAR); his rapid rise through the ranks of successively the KAR and Uganda Army to become Army Commander; his Israeli-sponsored coup against his former mentor, Apollo Milton Obote; his one-man rule of Uganda, which was characterised by unprecedented mass killings and the general collapse of the socioeconomic infrastructure; his overthrow by combined Tanzanian and Ugandan-exiles forces; and his flight into exile in Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2003. This book will appeal to readers desirous of knowing the open-access nature of the Amin regime and how it was possible.
£33.00
About the author
Xavier Ogena was born
in Uganda in 1968. He was educated in Uganda at St Joseph’s College
Layibi, City High School (Kampala), and Kololo Senior Secondary School.
He was also educated in the United Kingdom at Emile Woolf College of
Accountancy, Accountancy Tutors Limited, and the University of London,
where he obtained a BA in Politics, Philosophy and History, and an MA in
Philosophy. He had been successively employed for about 20 years as a
management accountant by various not-for-profit organisations in the UK,
and was also an executive member of the UK and Ireland chapter of
“Museveni’s” National Resistance Movement (NRM), when he returned
permanently to Uganda in 2010. He made, under the banner of the NRM, an
unsuccessful bid for the Oyam County North parliamentary seat in the
Uganda general elections of 2011, whereupon he became a member of the
NRM National Executive Council (NEC) for the next five years, before
reverting to rank-and-file membership of the party, which he has
maintained to date. This is his first published work. The second volume
of his political biography of Museveni is forthcoming. He lives in Oyam,
where he divides his time among farming, reading, and writing.