Idi Amin’s fascism and its lessons

“People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.”¹ – V. I. Lenin

Many Ugandans still see Idi Amin positively, foremost Muslim Ugandans. Many Ugandans were deceived by Idi Amin’s “economic war” against the Indians. But especially the anti-socialist forces were happy when they heard about Idi Amin´s coup because he said in his declaration for the coup on the 25th January 1971: “The creation of a wealthy class of leaders under the cover of socialism while they grew richer and the common man poorer.”² This was the main reason behind the fascist putsch: Aborting the construction of socialism in Uganda and preserving capitalism.

Idi Amin accused Obote of what he himself would later do for his cronies: Turning them into “Black millionaires”. Mahmood Mamdani just recently referenced Idi Amin’s promise of “Black millionaires” in his latest book “Slow Poison”:

“For Amin, the challenge of independence was to make Black rule meaningful by nurturing Black millionaires in place of wealthy Asians.”³

It is therefore obvious that Idi Amin´s regime was a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In fact the “economic war” turned out to be a war against the working people of Uganda under the pretext of getting rid of the Uganda-Indian part of the national bourgeoisie. Dimitrov said that “fascism is nothing but the ruthless, terroristic dictatorship of big business”⁴. Idi Amin’s regime is an example for that. Mahmood Mamdani’s book “Imperialism and Fascism in Uganda” is recommendable for details on this topic. But this article here is there to deliver an overview to the broad mass of the people about Idi Amin´s fascism.

Idi Amin accused Obote in his 25th January 1971 speech that he would have built the GSU (General Service Unit) into a “second army”⁵. The GSU was the Ugandan secret service under Obote. Counterrevolutionary forces hated and feared the GSU for its efficiency in combating them. Was Idi Amin therefore a saint who abolished the secret service? Of course not! He liquidated the GSU and built his own one under the cynical name State Research Bureau. But this “bureau” did not research state statistics, as the name would suggest. The only research it could have done was to research death toll statistics of its murdered victims.

Idi Amin ordered the murder of Acholi and Langi in the Ugandan army⁶. That alone was a big bloodbath in the early days of his regime. That bloodbath would turn over time into an entire lake of blood⁷. Overall under Idi Amin between at minimum 80.000 and 300.000 or even up to 500.000 Ugandans have been murdered according to estimations⁸. We will never know the true number because the fascist henchmen did not care about how many they killed, but most likely is a number between 300.000 and 500.000 Ugandans. Back in the day of his fascist regime Uganda had only 12 million people. That means a killing of between 2.5% and 4.2% of the entire Ugandan people. That was a massive loss not just for individual families but also for Uganda´s society and economy. Idi Amin said in 1971: “There should be unity to do away with Obote’s bloodshed.”⁹ Isn’t it obvious that fighting a few counterrevolutionaries is far less bloodshed than killing a not too small percentage of the Ugandan population?

Idi Amin was an admirer of Hitler and made no secret of it. In 1972 he said: “Germany is the right place where when Hitler was the Prime Minister and supreme commander, he burned over six million Jews.”¹⁰ This ruthlessness of the Nazis is what can also be seen in the butchering of his own people. The State Research Bureau was even compared to Hitler´s Gestapo in its methods¹¹.

In 1971 Idi Amin condemned the nationalizations and claimed them to have caused a lack of supplies: “Economic policies like nationalization, which left many people poor, unemployed and lacking essential commodities like food, clothing, medicine.”¹² But the truth was that this was what was about to come under Idi Amin´s rule. It was not the nationalizations that ruined Uganda, but the fascist economic policy.

The industrial production of Uganda was massively declining under the entire period of Idi Amin´s rule:

Manufactures	Unit	1970	1975	1977-78	1977-78 as % of 1970
Cotton and other fabrics	linear meters	54.6	39.1	30.3	55
Blankets	´000s	1164	322	165	14
Soap	´000 tonnes	12.9	3.6	1.2	9
Cooking oil	´000 tonnes	13.0	6.1	1.5	11
Paints	´000 liters	1660	858	586*	35
Matches	´000 cartons	49.3	31.4	8.1	16
Cement	´000 tonnes	191	98	73	38
Super-phosphates	´000 tonnes	24.8	4.0	0	0
Corrugated iron sheets	´000 tonnes	11.9	1.4	0.8	7

The one number marked with * is from the year 1977; the other numbers in this table column account for 1978¹³.

The whistleblower Henry Kyemba from Idi Amin´s cabinet wrote in his book “A State of Blood” in 1977:

“By mid-1973, the huge amounts of Asian wealth and property, which could have continued to support the country, had almost vanished. Dairy farms had been allocated to butchers, who slaughtered the milk animals and sold off the meat; since then the country has had little milk. Salt and sugar; bread, cheese; cars and their accessories; household goods – all the essentials of civilian life became increasingly rare.”¹⁴

“Before I left, I had not seen butter in the shops for many months. I hadn’t seen bacon or cheese for years, both once local products. This is the way things are in Uganda in 1977.”¹⁵

The statistics back these claims.

The production of agricultural export products also declined:

Product	1970	1975	1978
Tobacco	5.0*	3.6	1.5
Tea	18.2	18.3	10.9
Cotton	76.3	13.8**	11.1***
Coffee Arabica	16.2	14.0	5.0***
Coffee Robusta	159.3	123.1	75.0***

The output is presented in thousands of tons. * accounts for the year 1972; ** accounts for 1976/77; *** excludes output that is not sold through official channels¹⁶.

The reason for the downfall of the coffee production in particular was that the Idi Amin regime accumulated more and more of its value in its own hands and paid the peasants less:

Year	Farmer	Miller	Coffee Marketing Board	Surplus taken by the state
1972/73	39	10	11	40
1973/74	27	7	8	58
1974/75	32	8	10	50
1975/76	19	5	7	69
1976/77	15	4	6	75
1977/78	28	6	6	60

The statistical numbers are in percent¹⁷. As we can see, the trend of overaccumulating by the state was a bit changing in 1977/78 but the trust was already lost and the buying price was still below the pre-fascist level. This hit the Ugandan economy especially hard because in 1977 93% of Uganda´s exports were coffee¹⁸.

Overall the Ugandan economy under Idi Amin had only one tendency: Downwards¹⁹.

Year	GDP	Monetary economy	Cash agricultural output
1973	-1.2%	-3.6%	-6.2%
1974	-2.0%	-4.0%	-12%
1975	-2.7%	-4.8%	no data
1976	-0.4%	no data	-0.4%

The fascist economic policy ruined Uganda and destroyed what Obote built in his first government. Henry Kyemba was right to say: “In 1973 the process of collapse had already begun.”²⁰ Uganda had no economic future under fascism. Idi Amin’s fascist regime was like lepra for Uganda’s economic development.

Idi Amin accused Obote in 1971 of having no elections since 1962: “The failure by Obote’s government to organize any election for the last eight years.”²¹ How many elections did Idi Amin hold? Zero! He claimed to only temporarily seize power. What was the outcome? He has been declared “president for life” in June 1976²²! In short: Idi Amin tried to portray himself as a “democrat” in 1971 but at the latest point in 1976 he let this mask completely fall into the dirty ground.

The fascist character of the Idi Amin regime was well known at the time of his rule. Obote called for a “Uganda-wide rebellion” against the “fascist and dictator Amin” on the 19th January 1979²³. That call went out to the UNLA to fight together with the Tanzanian forces to liberate Uganda. Together they succeeded in April 1979.

The destruction of Uganda’s economy during the Idi Amin regime gave the Obote II government a weak economic basis to build up on. The successes of the “Golden 60s” were torn into shreds. The aggressive war against Tanzania, in which Mbarara and Masaka were razed to the ground due to heavy resistance of the fascist Ugandan army just added to these problems.

Whose fault was the destruction of Mbarara and Masaka? That of the Tanzanians, who just fought because Idi Amin attacked their country or Idi Amin, who set Uganda as a country like a bet in a gamble? May the reader answer that by himself. Intelligence is something every human is able to possess.

Uganda’s liberation from fascism by the UNLA with the help of the Tanzanian armed forces was the best that happened to Uganda since the time of the socialist Obote I government. It resulted in the Obote II government, which tried to rebuild Uganda and tried to keep the socialist orientation, though recognizing that the economic situation Idi Amin left behind didn’t have the basis to build up socialism immediately again. I already handled the Obote II government in an article²⁴.

Michael Parenti said: “Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content.”²⁵ Isn´t Idi Amin an obvious case for such a “false revolution”?

How can any Ugandan worker, peasant or small shopowner see Idi Amin in a positive light? They can only by listening to false rumors on the streets, to gutter-gossip.

The final verdict over the fascist tyrant Idi Amin shall be for all Ugandan communists and working people forever this one:

“You will not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land and slain your people. The brood of evildoers shall never be named.”²⁶