Idi Amin

Idi Amin, a Ugandan military officer and dictator, was the country’s third president, holding power from 1971 until he was overthrown in 1979. He came to power through a coup d'état in 1971. Under his rule, international observers and human rights groups estimate that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were killed.

Amin’s father was Kakwa and his mother Lugbara. He enlisted in the King’s African Rifles, a British colonial army unit, as a cook in 1946. He rose to lieutenant and fought in British campaigns against Somali rebels and the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. After Uganda gained independence in 1962, Amin stayed in the military, becoming deputy army commander in 1964 and commander two years later. When President Milton Obote planned to arrest him for misusing army funds, Amin overthrew Obote in 1971 and declared himself president.

During his rule, Amin’s alliances shifted from pro-Western, with Israeli support, to backing from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, the Soviet Union, and East Germany. In 1972, he expelled Asians, mostly Indian-Ugandans, prompting India to cut diplomatic ties. In 1975, he became chair of the Organisation of African Unity, a rotating role. Uganda served on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1977 to 1979. The United Kingdom broke diplomatic relations in 1977, after which Amin claimed he had defeated the British and added “CBE” to his title, meaning “Conqueror of the British Empire.”

Unrest grew in the late 1970s due to Amin’s persecution of political opponents and ethnic groups, as well as Uganda’s poor international reputation after he supported a 1976 hijacking that led to Israel’s Operation Entebbe. In 1978, he tried to annex Tanzania’s Kagera Region. Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere responded by sending troops to invade Uganda. Tanzanian forces and rebels captured Kampala in 1979, ousting Amin. He fled into exile, first to Libya, then Iraq, and finally Saudi Arabia, where he lived until his death in 2003.

**Early life**

Accounts of Amin’s early life are contradictory because he never wrote an autobiography or authorized a written biography. British records list his birth year as 1925, but no records were kept for native Ugandans at the time. In a 1972 interview, Amin said he was born in Koboko and was 46, which would make his birth year 1926. A 1977 book by a British adviser using the pseudonym David Gwyn stated Amin was born in Buganda and was 48, implying 1928. The most thorough biography comes from his family’s oral tradition, which carries some authority but cannot be verified. Family tradition and Saudi authorities in Jeddah give his birth date as 10 Dhu al-Hijja 1346 in the Islamic calendar, or 30 May 1928 in the Gregorian calendar.

**Early childhood and family**

According to Amin’s family, Ugandan oral tradition, and his Saudi death certificate, he was born on 30 May 1928 around 4 a.m. at his father’s workplace, the Shimoni Police Barracks in Nakasero Hill, Kampala. He was named Idi because he was born on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. Researcher Fred Guweddeko of Makerere University says his birth name was Idi Awo-Ango Angoo. The meaning of “Dada” is disputed—some say it means “sister” or “effeminate” in Kiswahili, but most sources agree it was a Kakwa clan name observed over thirteen generations.

Amin was the third son of Muslim parents: Amin Dada Nyabira Tomuresu (1889–1976), a Kakwa, and his second wife, Aisha Chumaru Aate (1904–1970), a Lugbara. His father, originally a Christian christened Andreas Nyabira Tomuresu, converted to Islam in 1910 after being conscripted as a bugler by the colonial British army under his uncle, Kakwa tribal leader Sultan Ali Kenyi Dada, as a six-year-old child soldier. He then took the name Amin Dada. He joined the Protectorate Police Force in Kampala’s Nsambia Police Barracks in 1913.

Nyabira was forcibly conscripted into the British King’s African Rifles in 1914. He fought in World War I during the East African campaign in Tanganyika, was honorably discharged in 1921, and given land in Arua District. That same year, he joined the Protectorate Police Force at Nsambia Police Barracks. He was transferred to Shimoni Police Barracks in 1928, where Amin was born. He later moved to Kololo Police Barracks before retiring in 1931, then worked at the Office of the Resident District Commissioner in Arua District.

Amin’s mother, Aisha Aate, was born to a Kakwa mother and Lugbara father. She was a traditional healer, herbalist, and midwife. Ten years before Amin’s birth, she joined the Allah Water (or Yakani) movement, an anti-colonial alternative medicine group that used a “water of Yakan” infused with a psychedelic daffodil plant called Kamiojo, described as the “LSD of Central Africa.” British colonial authorities repressed the movement, judging it as rebellion.