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A MODEL DESPOT
He was not just Uganda's President for Life. He was,
Idi Amin insisted, also the King of Scotland and the Conqueror of the British Empire. To
many who heard his inane
pronouncements on television and watched him dance buffoonishly in the streets even as he dismantled his nation's economy, the 300-lb., 6-ft. 4-in. dictator seemed more like Africa's leading clown. But to those who endured his tyranny for eight years in the 1970s, he seemed a nightmare that had lasted too long.
"Indeed, he is a clown when he chooses," his onetime Attorney General once noted. "Face to face, he is relaxed, simple and charming. But this is no more than a facade ... He kills rationally and coolly." To slake his thirst for absolute power and soothe a driving paranoia, Amin oversaw the murder of perhaps 500,000 Ugandans at the hands of torturers and executioners. His example was one of the most extreme, but hardly unique
in the annals of 20th century despotism. Yet after being ousted in 1979, Amin, unlike Iraq's captured dictator, was allowed to spend his remaining years
in comfortable exile, finally
fading into a coma and dying unpunished—and unrepentant to the last.
—By Unmesh Kher
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