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Abstract
Idi Amin, President of Uganda between 1971 and 1979, has become a contemporary icon of evil, exemplifying the idea of postcolonial Africa as an inevitable repetition of the “heart of darkness”. This article argues that Amin’s performance of gender and sexuality was central to the development of this iconic image, while a sexualized hyper‐masculinity, linked to his colonial military background, was crucial in both Amin’s rise to power and his manner of exercising it. Using both Lacanian theories of radical evil and anthropological analysis, the article concludes that Amin’s image represents an historical imaginary concealing the realities of postcolonial power.
Notes
1. This article is dedicated to the memory of Rena Grant (1959–92).
2. See, for example, Mazrui, “Casualties”; Mamdani, “Asian Expulsion”. Larger still was the expulsion of the Banyarwanda (originally from Ruanda) under the Obote II regime in the 1980s (ibid. 87).
3. The basic texts on the recent history of Uganda remain the collections edited by Holger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle (Uganda Now; Changing Uganda; Developing Uganda).
4. On southern Ugandan attitudes to the people of the North and Northwest, see Leopold, “War in the North”.
5. See, for example, Godwin Matatu in Africa 37 (September 1974).
6. Jamison’s bibliography lists 406 “scholarly, research‐level works [on Amin and on Uganda during his rule] in English and housed in libraries in North America” (xiii). Even before his overthrow, one academic commentator remarked on Amin’s position as “Africa’s most publicised ruler” and remarked on the number of academic discussions of his rule (Woodward 153).
7. In fact, although considerably drier than southern Uganda, rainfall levels in West Nile are higher than those of, for example, England.
8. “Emin” is the Turkish version, and “Amin” the Arabic form, of a fairly widespread Muslim name meaning “Faithful”.
9. On the Nubi, and on Amin’s Nubi identity, see especially Southall, “General Amin and the Coup”; Mazrui, “Resurrection”, Soldiers and Kinsmen, “Religious Strangers”; Soghayroun; Rowe; Woodward; Johnson “Sudanese Military Slavery”, “Structure of a Legacy”; Hansen; Kokole. See also Leopold, Inside West Nile, “Legacies of Slavery”.
10. Sudi = Sudanese = Nubi. Wendy James (pers. comm.) points out that this verse builds on the original Arabic connotation of “Sudanese” as synonymous with “black” or even “slave”. It is one of the ironies of Ugandan history that it has there come to have connotations of “Arab” and “Muslim”. Of course, on both counts it implies “other”.
11. Much of this work, as Mazrui explains in the introduction to Soldiers and Kinsmen, was first written while at close quarters to Amin, teaching at Makerere at a time when the latter was an active Chancellor, who frequently sought to test academic and student opinion concerning his policies. The book was published, however, after Mazrui had left Uganda; by 1975 he was at the University of Michigan.
12. This might in part be explained by the occasional explicit references he makes to contemporary American Black Power movements. It should be said that Mazrui’s account of Amin was fiercely contested at the time by a Makerere colleague, the anthropologist Aidan Southall, in a number of articles (particularly “General Amin and the Coup”, “Bankruptcy”).
13. See Leopold, Inside West Nile.