30 years after the fall of Amin, causes of 1979 war revealed

Thirty years ago today, the military government of Idi Amin was overthrown by a combined force of the Tanzanian army and a motley of armed Uganda groups exiled in Kenya and Tanzania during the 1970s. It brought to an end the eight-year rule of the man who has gone down in contemporary history as one of the most brutal rulers in modern Africa. In Part I of our new series on the fall of the Amin regime, Timothy Kalyegira contests the widely held belief that the war with Tanzania was started by Amin’s soldiers: --

The first question to ask about the 1978-79 Tanzania-Uganda war is, how did it start and who triggered it off?
The commonly held view, widespread in thousands of books, scholarly papers, and now on websites from all over the world is that as usual, the bad man of Africa, Idi Amin, sent his troops into Tanzania for no apparent reason and what Tanzania subsequently did was counter-attack.

In particular, the view is held that the April 19, 1978 car accident involving the Vice President, Mustapha Adrisi, was set up by Amin to get rid of his rival and tensions within the army over this incident led Amin to stir up war with Tanzania in order to divert his army’s growing tensions.

A paper published in January 1979 by the former president Milton Obote titled “Statement on the Uganda situation” attempted to explain the war this way:

“There is plenty of evidence to show that the recent invasion of Tanzania was a desperate measure to extricate Amin from consequences of the failure of his own plots against his own army.”

One of the main problems in attempting to narrate and record Ugandan history is that there has been no effort to seek a balanced view and break with the stereotyping of the villain of Ugandan history, Idi Amin. Statements and interpretations advanced by interested groups against Amin have been permitted by the world media and world scholarship to pass without scrutiny.

What, then, was the situation in Uganda in 1977 and 1978 just before the war?
According to the Compton Encyclopedia Yearbook, 1979, “The high price of coffee on the world market left Uganda with a budget surplus in 1977, the first in several years.”
The same reference book went on, on page 353 to note, “A number of resistance groups had indeed grown up, both inside and outside the country, but attempts (at least four) to assassinate the president or to sabotage the economy were prevented by the vigilance of Amin’s security forces.”

From this American encyclopedia – and the United States in 1978, as well as most of the western press, were no friends of Amin – we learn two facts: The boom in world coffee prices in 1977 as a result of the frost in Brazil and how that boom was so great that it gave Uganda a budget surplus and secondly, there were at least four assassination attempts on Amin but they were foiled by the “vigilance of Amin’s security forces.”
This indicates that the Ugandan economy, at least in gross dollar export earnings, was vibrant in 1977 and Amin’s army and state security service was still loyal enough to him to foil four known assassination attempts.

Presenting a history programme on the Radio Uganda-affiliated station, Star FM, on July 28, 2006, presenter Semwanga Kisolo said that if there is one thing that used to get Amin so angry that he shouted, it was when he got reports that the salary of any Ugandan government employee had been paid after the 25th of the month.

Just as Amin was always punctual at state events and at his office, he saw to it that government civil servants all over the country were paid by the 25th of every month, no matter what the circumstances.

Under Amin, all army, police, prisons, airforce and intelligence officers and most middle-level to senior civil servants lived a comfortable middle-class life, sent their children to the best schools in every town they worked in, drove the brand-new cars that the Uganda government had imported for its civil servants (Fiat Mirafiori 131, cost Shs75,000, Honda Civic Shs35,000, and Honda Accord Shs45,000.)
The exchange rate of the Uganda shilling to the dollar all through Amin’s time in office from 1971 to 1979 hovered between 7shs to 7.50shs, according to records at Bank of Uganda, the central bank. Inflation remained low for almost all the years that Amin was head of state.

Right up to April 1979 when Amin’s government fell, every single bed at Mulago Hospital and other national hospitals across Uganda had a mattress, bed sheets, a pillow, a blanket, and a bed cover and no patients or their visiting families slept on the floor as it is today. Every single room on the sixth floor (the VIP floor) of Mulago Hospital had a colour television.

Treatment for all Ugandans in all government hospitals in all districts was free of charge for the duration of Amin’s rule.
The Uganda Army shop located near Bulange in Mengo, Kampala was always well-stocked with groceries and electronic consumer goods for the army officers.

Despite the international economic boycott of Uganda led by western governments and pressured on by the exiled Ugandan groups, life in 1977 and 1978 for the ordinary Ugandan ranged from fair to good.

In 1977, a new national airline, Uganda Airlines and a new railway service, Uganda Railways, were born from the ashes of the East African Community. National pride was reinforced.
Furthermore, according to Mr Semwanga Kisolo speaking on Star FM, by 1977, ordinary Ugandans had become fed up with the exile groups. By 1977, African liberation groups like SWAPO of Southwest Africa (today called Namibia), ZANU of Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe), ANC of South Africa, had been banned from Tanzania.