Idi Amin rose from army cook to Uganda's dictator
Idi Amin joined the colonial King's African Rifles in 1946 as an assistant cook. Tall and powerful, he boxed his way to a national title and climbed to command Uganda's armed forces. In 1971 he seized the presidency, and eight years of persecution and isolation ended with a Tanzanian invasion.
His early life is murky because he never wrote or authorised a biography. British records gave 1925 as his birth year; his family and Saudi death certificate say 30 May 1928, at a police barracks in Kampala. He was the third son of a Kakwa father and a Lugbara mother, Aisha Aate, a healer and midwife. His parents divorced when he was four. As a boy he herded goats, then memorised the Quran under religious teachers, reportedly winning honours for recitation in 1943, before odd jobs including work as a hotel doorman in Kampala.
In the colonial army he served in Kenya, including against the Mau Mau rebels, and later falsely claimed to have fought in Burma. By 1959 he was a warrant officer, the top rank then open to a black soldier, and in 1961 he became one of the first two Ugandans commissioned as officers. He stood 1.93 metres, held the national light heavyweight boxing title from 1951 to 1960, swam and played rugby as a forward.
After independence in 1962 promotions came quickly, and by 1970 he led all the armed forces. Learning that President Milton Obote intended to arrest him over missing army funds, he overthrew Obote in 1971. He moved from pro-Western ruler, once backed by Israel, to an ally of Libya, Zaire and the Soviet bloc. In 1972 he expelled Uganda's Asians, most of them of Indian descent, and India cut diplomatic ties. When Britain broke relations in 1977, he awarded himself the letters CBE, for Conqueror of the British Empire.
Persecution of dissidents and some ethnic groups, and his support for the 1976 hijacking that ended in Israel's raid on Entebbe, left Uganda isolated and restive. In 1978 he tried to annex Tanzania's Kagera Region. Tanzanian troops and Ugandan rebels took Kampala in 1979, and Amin died in Saudi exile in 2003.
Source: Idi Amin
