conflicts were papered over. Britain was only too
anxious to accept at face value that the African
politicians had indeed formed the consensus neces-
sary to make independence viable. And so in
October 1962 Uganda gained independence with
the kabaka as titular president; in 1963 Dr Obote
became the chief minister. Obote attempted to
overcome the internal conflict by authoritarian rule
and reliance on the army. In 1966 Obote set aside
the special rights enjoyed by the Buganda tribe in
the kingdom of Buganda and the kabaka was dri-
ven into exile. A short insurrection in May of that
year by Bugandans was suppressed by force.
The tragedy of Uganda was its so-called army,
an undisciplined force which for years wreaked
destruction on the country. In 1971 it seized con-
trol of the government under its infamous chief of
staff Idi Amin who, even before independence,
had murders on his conscience. A soldier of great
physical strength, with minimal education but an
outwardly jovial presence, Amin was ostensibly a
Muslim, although in fact he was a barbarian. He
had been one of the few black people promoted to
officer rank in colonial times – the Ugandan army,
like the Congolese, had lacked black officers – and
so he became a colonel almost immediately after
independence. Ugandans, who were at first glad
to be rid of Obote, soon began to suffer even
more under Amin, who as a Muslim had the sup-
port of President Gaddafi of oil-rich Libya. Amin
gave the army free rein to massacre the inhabitants
of this small country of less than 10 million; pos-
sibly as many as 300,000 disappeared or were
murdered. The exact number of victims was never
established. Opponents ‘disappeared’ and met
violent deaths. Amin ruled by terror. Cabinet min-
isters, a courageous chief justice and the Anglican
archbishop were all killed. During Amin’s years of
misrule human rights were utterly disregarded.
Yet the civilised world, including the UN, recog-
nised him as president and received him with hon-
our. Most African states behaved no better. The
Organisation of African Unity paid him the com-
pliment of meeting in Kampala and elected him
president. It was politic to ignore his part in the
murder of hundreds of thousands of his own
people. This was the Realpolitikof the 1970s. It
was Nyerere of Tanzania who finally toppled Amin
from power in 1979 after the Ugandan leader had
invaded Tanzania to settle by force the disputed
frontier between them.Amin was never brought to justice for his crimes;
instead he was given shelter by Gaddafi in Libyan
exile and later Saudi Arabia where he died peace-
fully. Obote thereupon sought a new mandate in
rigged elections and assumed the presidency. But
unhappy Uganda was rent by civil wars and tribal
conflicts, until in 1986 the National Resistance
Army led by Yoweri Museveni captured Kampala.
Museveni put an end to Obote’s misrule. The task
then was to rebuild Uganda. This would not be
easy after the policy of Africanisation which, on
Amin’s orders, had in the mid-1970s driven
tens of thousands of industrious Asians out of
the country. Their enterprise instead benefited
Britain, despite the reluctance with which they
were allowed entry.
President Yoweri Museveni and his ministers
made valiant efforts to bring about a reconciliation
of warring factions, with some success. The econ-
omy, dependent on coffee exports, was badly hit
when the world price of coffee fell again in 1992.
Foreign economic aid helped to support efforts to
reform the economy. In 1991 it became evident
that a new catastrophe threatened Uganda –
AIDS. The Ugandan government was more open
than most in facing the scourge, which kills the
young and leaves behind the old and children.
In 1991 1.2 million were estimated to be HIV-
infected and the numbers increased daily there-
after. Yet, perversely, the Africa of the early 1990s
was still threatened by overpopulation and famine.
Yoweri Museveni is one of the few long-term
African leaders with much to his credit. Uganda
made a remarkable recovery from the depths of a
failing economy at the start of his presidency.
There is more freedom than elsewhere and a par-
liament that on occasion asserts itself. But this has
been a democracy for seventeen years without real
political parties, which Museveni feared would
split the country into rival tribalism, until in 2003
Museveni announced the country might be ready
for multi-party politics. Re-elected in 2002 for a
final four-year term he cannot stand again under
the present constitution. A new multi-party con-