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General Amin and the Coup: Great Man or Historical Inevitability?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

I have come to the conclusion that General Haji Idi Amin Dada is not a bizarre or maverick intrusion upon the Uganda political scene,1 but deeply and significantly entwined in it. I wish to present what appear to me to be the most important interrelated factors in the conventional functional sense, but to do so diachronically, so that they become continuous themes or forces,2 in which successive events have causative effect on one another.3 This raises all kinds of interesting theoretical and epistemological questions which I shall not be able to dispose of at the same time. I shall also be forced to be selective, without being able to justify each choice and step of the argument as it deserves. Central to my interpretation is the fact that General Amin is a Nubi, and that the history of the Nubi is important for the understanding of contemporary events. The present régime is more and more dominantly a Nubi régime, and its core strength is a Nubi strength.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

Page 85 note 1 Cf. Listowel, Judith, Amin (London, 1973),Google Scholar passim.

Page 85 note 2 This is what some political anthropologists call ‘the diachronics of political field analysis’. The interrelated factors in the flow of action must be considered as co-existing and as ‘having positions relative to each other’, but this does not necessarily involve the artificial abstraction of a ‘still’ which creates an ‘erroneous impression of stability and balance’. Swartz, Marc J., Turner, Victor W., and Tuden, Arthur (eds.), Political Anthropology (Chicago, 1966), pp. 27–8.Google Scholar This is a gratuitous assumption, but it is true that nobody, including those who adopt the processual approach, can evade the fact that setting down a verbal description of a flow of events in words on a sheet of paper does fix it in a ‘still’, which cannot represent the full flow of the events themselves.

Page 85 note 3 I am prepared to accept Hume's judgement that such causation is a matter of faith, not logic, and still wish to proceed since this is the only diachronic tool we have.

Page 86 note 1 Swartz, Turner, and Tuden suggest that it is tidier, though not necessary, to begin when the field components are at peace—op. cit. p. 27—though such an assumption runs Counter to their whole argument.

Page 86 note 2 Thomas, Harold B. and Scott, Robert, Uganda (London, 1935), pp. 21 and 263–8.Google Scholar

Page 86 note 3 The expedition sent to the Sudan by Khedive Muhammad Ali in 1839 is chosen by Wanji, Barn A. as the point of departure for his study of ‘The Nubi Community: an Islamic social structure in East Africa’, Makerere University, Sociology Working Paper, No. 115, p. 4.Google Scholar

Page 86 note 4 Southall, A. W., Alur Society: a study in processes and types of domination (London, 1956 and 1970), pp. 280–1.Google Scholar See also Mountney-Jephson, A. J., Emin Pasha and the Rebellion at the Equator (London, 1890),Google Scholar and the works of Henry Stanley.

Page 87 note 1 Wanji, op. cit. p. 3.

Page 87 note 2 Gray, Richard, A History of the Southern Sudan, 1839–1889 (London, 1961), p. 3.Google Scholar

Page 87 note 3 Wanji, op. cit. p. 21.

Page 87 note 4 On the people of these mountains, see Nadel, S. F., The Nuba: an anthropological study of the hill tribes in Kordofan (London, 1947).Google Scholar However, some would suggest a connection with the Dongolawi traders who were from Nubia.

Page 88 note 1 Thomas and Scott, op. cit. pp. 35–7, 264, and 438.

Page 89 note 1 Wanji, op. cit. pp. 8–9 and 22.

Page 89 note 2 Lugard, F. D., The Rise of Our East African Empire (Edinburgh, 1893;Google Scholar London, 1968), Vol. II, p. 233.

Page 89 note 3 Huntingford, C. W. B., The Northern Nilo-Hamites (Oxford, 1953).Google Scholar

Page 90 note 1 Cf. Low, D. Anthony and Pratt, R. Cranfold, Buganda and British Overrule: two studies (London, 1959 and 1970);Google ScholarFallers, Lloyd A. (ed.), The King's Men: leadership and status in Buganda on the eve of independence (London, 1964);Google Scholar and Kiwanuka, M. S. M. Semakula, A History of Buganda:from the foundation of the Kingdom to 1900 (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

Page 90 note 2 See Ibingira, Grace, The Forging of an African Nation: the political and constitutional evolution of Uganda from colonial rule to independence, 1894–1962 (New York and Kampala, 1973), p. 9.Google Scholar The former Minister of Justice and General Secretary of the Uganda People's Congress, put in detention by President Obote from 1966 to 1971, comments with approval on Lugard's view of the inevitability of the steps in the establishment of British domination over a colonial territory: ‘first travellers, missionaries, and traders; then treaties of commerce and friendship; then a kind of Protectorate half-concealed under the form of an unequal alliance; afterwards the delimitation of spheres of influence and the declaration of a kind of right of priority; then Protectorates properly so called, the establishment of tutelage, the appointment of Residents, and all that follows in their train; and finally, annexation pure and simple’.

Page 91 note 1 Mutesa II, the Kabaka of Buganda [Freddie, King], Desecration of My Kingdom (London, 1967), pp. 61–3;Google Scholar my emphasis.

Page 92 note 1 Welbourn, F. B., Religion and Polities in Uganda, 1952–62 (Nairobi, 1965), p. 22.Google Scholar

Page 92 note 2 Mutesa II, op. cit. p. 160; Welbourn, op. cit. p. 26.

Page 94 note 1 Ibid. p. 25. Judith Listowel sees the U.P.C. alliance as Mutesa's ‘fateful mistake’; op. cit. p. 42.

Page 94 note 2 Gukiina, Peter M., Uganda: a case stuy in African political development (Notre Dame, 1972), p. 125.Google Scholar

Page 96 note 1 Evidence and Findings of the Commission of Enquiry into Allegations made by the late Daudi Ocheng on 4th February 1966 (Kampala, 1971).Google Scholar

Page 98 note 1 Kironde, Erisa, ‘Uganda, Buganda and Elections’, in The People (Kampala), 17 12 1966,Google Scholar quoted by Low, D. A., The Mind of Buganda. Docwnents of the Modern History of o.n Afritan Kingdom (London, 1971), p. 226.Google Scholar

Page 98 note 2 Mutesa II, op. cit. p. 192. See also Ryan, S., ‘Uganda: a balance sheet of the revolution’, in Mawazo (Dares Salaam), III, 1, 06 1971, pp. 57–9.Google Scholar

Page 99 note 1 One version has it (and this is supported by Mutesa's account) that it was Akena Adoko, another close kinsman of Obote, and his Special Force of Lang'o who were sent to the Palace first, simply to find out whether in fact arms had been stockpiled; they met stiff resistance and were in danger of being overwhelmed, so the army was brought in to complete the job.

Page 99 note 2 The events of the ‘Obote Revolution’ are described by Young, M. Crawford, in Africa Report (New York), 06 1966, pp. 816.Google Scholar

Page 99 note 3 The General Service Unit had been formed soon after independence, one of its chiefjobs being to keep watch on the C.I.A. It was the Special Force in particular that was accused of being predominantly Lang'o.

Page 99 note 4 See Ryan, loc. cit.

Page 100 note 1 Gukiina, op. cit. pp. 132–4 comments: ‘With the downfall of the traditional leadership in Buganda at Mengo Hill and its aftermath, it became an absolute certainty that Buganda would be impossible for Obote to rule without intensive use of military and police force… the siege of Mengo Hill had put Uganda on the road that was, out of necessity, bound to lead to a political system in Uganda that is, both in theory and practice, a unitary form of government based on the use of military and police force… The irony of Uganda's post-independence politics is that a government whose basis is force had to be imposed on the people in the name of the people. …relatively ruthless authoritarian rule in Uganda came to be not only a necessary but an inevitable stage of Uganda's political development.’ My emphasis.

Page 100 note 2 Uganda: the first 366 days (Entebbe, Government Printer, 1972), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

Page 103 note 1 Swartz, Marc J., ‘Processual and Structural Approaches in Political Anthropology: a commentary’, in Canadian Journal of African Studies (Ottawa), III, 1, Winter 1969, pp. 575–8.Google Scholar

Page 103 note 2 Swartz, Turner, and Tuden, op. cit. p. 38, do say that ‘political phase development’ as the unit of political action is applicable to major international ‘trouble cases’, such as the Suez and Cuban crises, but the suggestion has not been taken up, and the concentration has been on ‘local-level politics’.

Page 104 note 1 Mazrui, Ali A., ‘The Lumpen Proletariat and the Lumpen Miitariat: African soldiers as a new political class’, in Political Studies (Oxford), xxi, 1, 03 1973, pp. 112.Google Scholar

Page 105 note 1 See the staff study by the International Commission of Jurists, , Violations of Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Uganda (Geneva, 1974),Google Scholar especially pt. III, ‘The Reign of Terror’.