presidents-of-uganda

"Dictators have also been overthrown by foreign invaders working in concert with local rebel armies. Idi Amin of Uganda was as disturbingly clever as dictators go. He once wore a kilt to a royal funeral in Saudi Arabia and he is alleged to have sent President Richard Nixon a "Get Well Soon" card after the Watergate scandal broke. He was also a horrifyingly brutal tyrant. In October 1978 Amin invaded the neighboring country of Tanzania. The Tanzanian army joined forces with Ugandan rebels and, in April 1979, drove Amin out of Uganda and replaced him with the equally dictatorial Milton Obote. Yoweri Moseveni has ruled the country since 1986. To describe Uganda in the twenty-first century as a "shaky democracy" would be polite."

"Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking. I never had any formal education—not even a nursery school certificate. But sometimes I know more than Ph.D.s because as a military man I know how to act. I am a man of action."

"Politics is like boxing — you try to knock out your opponents."

"My mission is to lead the country out of a bad situation of corruption, depression and slavery. After I rid the country of these vices, I will then organize and supervise a general election of a genuinely democratic civilian government."

"His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."

"You cannot run faster than a bullet."

"Although some people felt Adolf Hitler was bad, he was a great man and a real conqueror whose name would never be forgotten."

"In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order."

"I am the hero of Africa."

"Hitler and all German people knew that the Israelis are not people who are working in the interest of the people of the world and that is why they burnt over six million Jews alive on the soil of Germany. The world should remember that the Palestinians, with the assitance of Germany made the operation possible in the Olympic village."

"Amin is a splendid man by any standards and is held in great respect and affection by his British colleagues. … He is tough and fearless and in the judgment of everybody … completely reliable. Against this he is not very bright and will probably find difficulty in dealing with the administrative side of command."

"Idi Amin is a splendid type and a good rugby] player … but virtually bone from the neck up, and needs things explained in words of one letter."

"Racist, erratic and unpredictable, brutal, inept, bellicose, irrational, ridiculous, and militaristic."

"He is killer and clown, big-hearted buffoon and strutting martinet."

"Field Marshall Idi Amin became president of Uganda in 1971. To the rest of the world he was a showman his extravagance was exceeded by his talent for comic buffonery. But behind the grinning face was a calculating monster who brought about a tragedy of monumental proportions. He slaughtered thousands of innocent Ugandans in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and executed his enemies live on television. He mutilated his wife and murdered his ministers keeping their heads in his fridge as a warning to others. He ordered his secret police to torture and kill while Amin kept the pictures for his own sick amusement. By the end of his reign over 300,000 people, one in 60 in the population, had been murdered by Amin. He had turned the prosperous country of Uganda into a disease ridden backwater, its rivers choked with the corpses of his victims."

"Idi Amin's sense of showmanship often deluded foreigners into thinking that he was merely a colorful buffoon. His innumerable victims and their families knew better as they lived through a decade when torture and death might strike anyone, anywhere. Amin's flamboyant brutality attracted the world's attention, but left Uganda, the Pearl of Africa, a devastated and bankrupt wreck. Stories that he was a cannibal, who kept the heads of his victims in his refrigerator and brought them out for discussions, or that he fed his enemies to crocodiles, may not be true."

"Illiterate, garrulous and burly, as terrifying as he was ridiculous, Field-Marshal Idi Amin Dada was a buffoonish bully and sadistic mass-murderer who earned the soubriquet the 'Butcher of Uganda', The soi-disant 'Last King of Scotland' impoverished Uganda, once the Jewel of Africa, a megalomaniacal cannibalistic loon who killed so many of his countrymen that the crocodiles of Lake Victoria could not consume them fast enough."

"Idi Amin virtually destroyed Uganda, murdering 300,000 people; many more were forced to seek refuge abroad. And even with his removal from power, the agony did not end for the Ugandan people. Obote returned to power in flawed elections in 1980 and plunged the country into civil war; by the time he was overthrown in 1985, several hundred thousand more Ugandans had perished. Such was the legacy of Amin."

"We fought a lonely battle against terrorism sponsored by Sudan, and we have defeated it; we cannot be intimidated by any force. For us our guide is the Constitution of Uganda and the laws there under."

"This is not a mere change of guards, I think this is a fundamental change in the politics of our government."

"Some people say accident; it may be an accident. It may be something else. The [helicopter] was very well equipped, this was my [helicopter] the one I am flying all the time, I am not ruling anything out. Either the pilot panicked... [E]ither there was some side wind or the instruments failed or there was an external factor."

"If General Omar el Bashir's government gives me permission to pursue Kony beyond the red line, it will only take me 30 minutes to finish him and his fighters."

"Even when we were still fighting in the bush against the oppressive dictatorships of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, we introduced elections for the committees of the villages under our control."

"In 1972, Idi Amin expelled 80,000 [Ugandan] Indians and confiscated their 4,000 properties. Now, after returning those properties to their rightful owners, we have ensured that security of persons and property are guaranteed under the constitution."

"Africa is wealthy in natural resources; the problem is they are not optimally utilized."

"When we sell a kilo of bean coffee in Uganda, we get one dollar per kilo. The same kilo, when it is processed [and sold in the UK], goes for $10, $11 or even more a kilo. That is the same situation [price disparity] that goes for all raw materials."

"I've never heard an agency say: "Unless you industrialize I will not support you.""

"I shall not be deterred by people who don't see where the future of Africa lies. It is the short-sighted people who put their opinions in writing. They don't understand that the future of all countries lies in processing."

"You cannot, for instance, sustainably protect the environment if the majority of the people are still in primitive agriculture leading to the encroachment of forest reserves."

"If we could export more finished products instead of raw materials, we could become a middle-income country."

"The island is in Kenya, the water is in Uganda... But the [Luos, a Kenyan ethnic group] are mad, they want to fish here but this is Uganda."

"Some people think that being in government for a long time is a bad thing. But the more you stay, the more you learn. I am now an expert in governance."

"Of course. They're disgusting. What sort of people are they? I never knew what they were doing. I've been told recently that what they do is terrible. Disgusting."

"If there is no bread eat mwogo (cassava). Africans really confuse themselves. You’re complaining that there's no bread or wheat, please eat mwogo. I don’t eat bread myself..."

"The western countries should stop wasting the time of humanity by trying to impose their practices on other people. Homosexuals are deviations from the normal. Why? Is it by nature or by nurture? We need to answer those questions. We need a medical opinion on that."

"One of Museveni's defining early pronouncements was his diagnosis of Africa's problem. Africa's problem, he would say, was leaders who did not want to leave power."