Newspapers shed no tears for ‘monster’ Amin

NEWSPAPERS in east Africa yesterday shed no tears at the death of Idi Amin, the former Ugandan dictator whose blood-drenched reign in the 1970s left hundreds of thousands dead in one of Africa’s most shameful episodes.

Uganda's state-owned New Vision newspaper carried a black and white photo of Amin, who died on Saturday in Saudi Arabia, above a caption that proclaimed: "End of an era, with the death of Africa's bloodiest despot."

The paper closed the blood-soaked Amin chapter with a verse from the bible. "Now you are as weak as we are! You are one of us! You used to be honoured with the music of harps but now you are in the world of the dead. You lie on a bed of maggots and are covered with a blanket of worms," said the verse.

Uganda's numerous FM radio stations blared recorded messages of Amin all Saturday night and programmes about the man who proclaimed himself as the CBE 'conqueror' rather than 'commander' of the British Empire, as well as conferring on himself a doctorate of law, not to say other titles.

Kenyan English-language Sunday Nation splashed on its front page:

"Final fall of the tyrant who shocked the world", suspending its usual reserve of not speaking ill of the dead.

The top-selling paper regretted that the failure to get rid of Amin was one of the most shameful misdeeds ever committed in Africa.

"Amin is one of the worst accidents of leadership to occur in our continent and belongs to the ugly African past of coups and dictatorships that should never be allowed to rear its ugly head in the continent again.

"That a buffoon like Amin was allowed to stay in power for so long, despite the massacres and unbelievable human rights violations, is one of the biggest shames of our times," the paper said. Tanzanian newspapers pulled no punches and called Amin a monster who triggered his own timely exit by attempting to annex large swathes of northern Tanzania's Kigera region.

The papers profiled Amin's rise to power and his horrendous regime that reportedly killed at least 300,000 people in Uganda. Ordinary Tanzanians blame the Ugandan dictator for his nation's serious economic problems that followed a costly war as a result of his 1978 invasion of Tanzania.