【外交政策 20150407】“这个人，我管他叫父亲。”
【中文标题】“这个人，我管他叫父亲。”
【原文标题】‘This Man I Call Father’
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】JUSTIN ROHRLICH
【原文链接】http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/04/07/this-man-i-call-father/
贾法尔•阿明，他是一个配音演员，像MC Hammer一样。他在脸书上讲述家庭的历史。噢，对了，他的爸爸是非洲最臭名昭著的独裁者。
1978年1月，乌干达总统伊迪•阿明佩戴着勋章，在一次户外集会中。
1978年，伊迪•阿明和他的儿子、侄子、外甥在白马旅店。（第二排右为贾法尔。）
1979年4月11日，终身总统阁下、陆军元帅、艾尔哈吉博士、维多利亚十字勋章获得者、优异服役勋章获得者、一切飞禽走兽海中游鱼之王、大英帝国征服者、非洲和乌干达征服者伊迪•阿明被反叛起义赶下台。
对大部分人来说，阿明的8年统治时期充满了暴力。九千名“不忠诚”的士兵——相当于乌干达三分之二的兵力——在阿明执政的第一年被处死。出于担心民众内部的威胁，包括乌干达大主教简阿尼•鲁温在内的基督教徒不但被草率判处死刑，而且被强迫自己行刑，也就是让犯人用棍棒把对方打死。在他的一生中，同类相食的谣言总是挥之不去，据说他在冰箱里存放着几个反对派首领的头颅。2003年他去世后，《卫报》发表的一份讣告说这位乌干达领导人是“非洲独立后最残暴的军事独裁者之一”。他直接指挥的具体杀戮人数难以统计，但BBC认为这个数字大约是40万。
有些人认为，除了这些数字，还有其它有关这个男人的情况。其中一个最积极的鼓吹者不是别人，正是贾法尔•阿明——独裁者与7位官方妻子所生下的40个子嗣中的第10个。贾法尔坚持认为世界误解了他的父亲。
现年48岁的贾法尔和他的妻子和6个孩子住在坎帕拉。他定期在脸书上发表家庭的照片，包括他的父亲，和一些轶事、回忆录，以及对目前乌干达社会的抱怨。
我一直对独裁者的私生活感兴趣。几年前，我在互联网上搜索到贾法尔的信息。我向他发出了一个友好的邀请，顺带问他是否愿意和我分享他的故事，以便形成一篇文章。我本来期望会收到一个礼貌的“不，谢谢”。但是贾法尔迅速地回复，愿意提供一些多年来他曾经被问到，以及他认为有可能被问到的一些问题的简单回答。
他发过来的的确是一些非常原始的信息。2013年8月的一个下午，我打开邮箱，发现无数封邮件，内容几乎都是与他父亲生活有关的意识流回忆录。我花了不少时间才理出头绪，有些内容就像是未来之书的笔记，有些是贾法尔谈话的内容，还有些就是大片不相关的文字，直接被贴在邮件中。
2012年，贾法尔•阿明在乌干达。
贾法尔并不是那种邪恶独裁者的恶魔子嗣，而是一个生活在郊区的居家男人。过去11年里，他是DHL的一位经理。现在，他是一名配音演员，他那悦耳动听的声音在调频88.2千赫里敦促人们参观韩国家具公司在坎帕拉的展厅，或者搭乘卡塔尔航空公司的飞机。
我恐怕不会把我们之间的关系定义为“朋友”，贾法尔和我通过几次电话，讨论合作的可能性。大约一年后，贾法尔电子邮件的结尾处都会有一些类似“上帝保佑你和你的家人”这样的话。他最近写信给我，说：“我应当向你致以最诚挚的谢意，因为你展现了我父亲人性的一面。”
与此同时，贾法尔还表现出对于讨论过去的担忧。早些时候，当我提出很多跟进问题的时候，贾法尔回复说：“你和我认识的那些碌碌无为的博客写手没什么区别，我还是喜欢接受正规媒体的采访。所以，这是我最后一次和你联系，把我的那些资料当作礼物吧，你可以把它们丢掉，说英语的人总是擅于表达。”
我们最后一次通信之后，双方沉默了一个多月。后来我告诉贾法尔，我已经从《外交政策》我的编辑那里得到了正式的项目启动批准。贾法尔后来告诉我，他正在寻找一个合作伙伴，和他一起制作一个八字还没一撇的纪录片，他希望能借此展示“伊迪•阿明爸爸的另一面”。我可以看出来，他并不想错过把事情公诸于世的机会。
在大部分人看来，伊迪•阿明代表黑暗和邪恶。历史把这位已故的乌干达领导人与波尔•布特、萨达姆•侯赛因和斯洛博丹•米洛舍维奇并排陈列在邪恶狂人的神庙中。贾法尔说他不会戴着“有色眼镜”评判他的父亲，但他认为“苏丹和刚果因饥饿和不幸致死的人数，超过这个他称呼为父亲迫害致死的人数。”据贾法尔说，伊迪•阿明的终极目标是“打破殖民主义锁链，解下套在我们脖子上的殖民主义枷锁”。很多人觉得伊迪•阿明——已故美国驻乌干达大使说他是“非洲的希特勒”——仅仅是一个双手占满鲜血的暴君。但对贾法尔来说，他是“一个伟大的父亲”。
贾法尔认为，世人对他父亲挥之不去的恶意，主要原因是信息沟通不顺畅。全世界都说阿明是个嗜血狂徒，但贾法尔说其实不是这样。那么贾法尔的哥哥摩西，据说被他的父亲杀死并吃掉，又是怎么一回事呢？据贾法尔说，他实际上“还活着，就住在法国”。
1965年，伊迪•阿明的家人在乌干达津加。伊迪阿明的弟弟莫舍•阿明•达达在左边，伊迪•阿明的父亲、贾法尔的祖父亚得里亚•阿明•达达在座，伊迪•阿明的妻子莎拉•穆特西•基贝迪•阿明站在中间。
贾法尔说他并不是唯一相信摩西还活着的人。一位朋友曾经给贾法尔写过一封信，他在2009年把信的内容贴到脸书上：“几年前我在美国，《芝加哥太阳报》的一位首席编辑说，他可以原谅阿明的所有独裁罪行，但永远无法原谅他牺牲自己儿子的行为。”他说：“我做过尝试，但无法让他相信摩西•阿明依然健在的事实。据他所说，很多可靠的乌干达人都向他讲述了摩西悲惨的命运。”
阿明其他的家人觉得没有必须去改变别人的想法，贾法尔说，他们不愿“自找麻烦”。但是，在他那些“简略”的回复中提到：“我这种人似乎感到，我把这一生都会用来解释我父亲的遗留物，我已经把这件事当作我的个人目标。”
贾法尔的措辞经常听起来就像是一位英国的绅士。他说他在英国殖民期间充分接触了盎格鲁撒克逊文化，还说他的父亲对英国的所有事物都很着迷，“但痛恨他们的排外主义”。但是如果伊迪•阿明痛恨权贵阶层媚上欺下的作风，他肯定不会留意生活中那些美好的事情。
在70年代，阿明没收了维多利亚湖附近的一处房产，把它改造成——用贾法尔的话来说——他自己的“巴尔莫勒尔或者戴维营”。他管这个地方叫“开普敦视角”。阿明还经常住在离坎帕拉不远处的一个23英亩的岛屿上，他把那里戏称为“天堂岛”。
并不是所有人都觉得这是一个美丽的田园。据说阿明把“若干”位部长丢给湖里的鳄鱼，2002年，一位当地渔民在接受《每日电讯》采访时说：“我在钓鱼的时候，经常会看到湖里有很多尸体，有些只是部分尸体。这都是阿明的敌人，他杀死他们，丢到湖里喂鳄鱼。”
在一个与残忍同义的国家里，充满了阿明任意施虐的故事。一位前政治犯R记得，他看到了“很多残忍的事情，很多的阉割行为。他们把人阉割，这些人还活着，你的工作就是事后清理干净。”一位大学讲师得罪了阿明，后来被发现尸体躺在路边，脑袋被砍掉。阿明的一位部长亨利•基姆巴在1978年说，阿明曾经两次在私下里和他说他吃过人肉，说“比豹子肉咸一点”。
贾法尔并没有花费更多的时间详述针对他父亲的恐怖指责，在他的回忆中，贾法尔设法让父亲成为一个普通的人，他说阿明“喜欢小设备”。他父亲的收藏包括一个铝制的波拉德照相机，用褐色的皮革包裹起来，还有一个来自迪拜的Betamax录音机。（贾法尔最近问我是否可以帮忙下载一部高清晰的匈牙利影片，拷在移动硬盘中，用联邦快递寄到坎帕拉。他说：“我从未仔细看过这部电影，”这里电力供应不稳定，很难登录电子邮箱。）据贾法尔说，他的父亲还喜欢开着玛莎拉蒂在各地闲逛，出其不意地出现在聚会、葬礼、农民机会等场合，让民众有惊喜感。
1975年11月3日，12名即将加入阿明军队的前英国军官，在坎帕拉宣誓向伊迪•阿明效忠。
与此相反的是，那些侥幸得以生存的阿明的敌人，会遭到公开的羞辱。1975年7月，阿明让一群在乌干达做生意的英国商人，用轿子抬着他出席一个外交接待仪式。其中一个人就是坎帕拉的汽车经销商罗伯特•斯卡伦。
去年3月，贾法尔在脸书页面上写到：“多么壮观呀！白人抬着非洲黑人！绝妙的角色颠倒！”
贾法尔说那些人其实很高兴，“在这个欢乐的气氛中，白人也在笑，因为他们不是被强迫的，是自愿的。”斯卡伦在1997年消失了，当年的《观察家》杂志引用一位匿名的乌干达官员的话，说他被逮捕之后被阿明的心腹用大锤砸死。
他的尸体一直没有被找到。由于斯卡伦已经无法讲述自己的故事，我联系到他的女儿，现年51岁的谢莉。她是一名注册护士，在英格兰黑泽市经营一个移动的皮肤病诊所。父亲失踪时，谢莉只有14岁。和贾法尔不同，她并没有带着那么愉快的心情回顾过去。
她在电子邮件中说：“我的姨妈告诉我，我父亲承受了巨大的压力。如果他不配合，其他侨民的生命和安全就要受到威胁。其他人都在为我父亲工作，我和其中一个人还保持着联系。我知道那把椅子来自共济会旅社，我父亲是共济会成员。”
斯卡伦失踪后不到两年，乌干达内部的异见人士，加上阿明兼并坦桑尼亚喀格拉省的企图失败导致了一场战争。第二年4月，阿明被坦桑尼亚军队和乌干达反对派士兵赶下台。
1976年，贾法尔•阿明和他的弟弟摩西、卢姆巴、马克明尼、吉里贾在乌干达坎帕拉的白马旅店，当时伊迪•阿明还在位。
阿明与当时12岁的贾法尔流亡国外，随行的是80多名政府官员、军方领导和家庭成员。一行人来到利比亚，成为穆阿迈尔•卡扎菲上校的客人，他一直是阿明忠实的盟友。
但是，大约一年之后，阿明发现怀有政治野心的卡扎菲开始与直接导致他下台的坦桑尼亚总统朱利叶斯•尼雷尔结盟。阿明认为这是被判。1980年，他移居到沙特阿拉伯吉达，贾法尔和几个兄弟姐妹以及他父亲的一些随从一同前往。（其他人分散到巴黎、金撒沙和英国。）
正如BBC驻非洲资深记者布莱恩•拜罗在2003年写到：“沙特一直是一个忠实的盟友，因为伊迪信奉伊斯兰教，他掌权时命令在全国修建清真寺。”沙特给阿明提供避风港的条件很明确：我们的大门向你敞开，但是别碰政治，也别乱说话。
阿明和他的随从到达之后，沙特王室给阿明提供了庇护身份和薪俸（贾法尔说每月的薪俸超过2.6万美元）。阿明只相信他自己的孩子，最后他遣散了大部分随从。贾法尔很快发现自己变成了“临时的差人、厨师、管家、账簿先生、司机、保镖等角色”。
伊迪•阿明的流亡生活并不像一个等死的嗜血狂徒，而是更像一个享受西棕榈滩的退休人员。贾法尔讲述了他们去购物的情景，超市是他父亲最喜欢的地方。他在一份回忆录中说：“在沙特阿拉伯，爸爸喜欢购物，所以我们经常去大商场，尤其是西夫韦商场。”
阿明经常在当地一家巴基斯坦餐厅吃饭，对于一个在1972年种族性质的“经济战争”中剥夺了8万多名南亚居民的生意和财产，并把他们驱逐出国的人来说，似乎是个奇怪的选择。（贾法尔回忆到：“他把针对这件事情的争议留给安拉，但他总是觉得他希望世界知道，他已经补偿了亚裔英国人。”）
午餐后，阿明会到滨海路边的红海里泡个澡。晚上回到家，“冰箱里塞满了食品，除霜格子里是更加精致的食物”，然后是7点钟的祈祷和晚餐。
1983年，伊迪•阿明在沙特阿拉伯麦加，与他的家人、沙特保镖和市场上的儿童在一起。贾法尔站在中间，戴着墨镜。
贾法尔最近发给我有关他和父亲流亡生活的一段回忆录，描述了他们在1989年吉达机场，偶然遇到伊斯兰民族组织的路易斯•法拉堪的事情。贾法尔的弟弟摩西要回到巴黎的学校，家人去给他送行。当他的父亲在附近一个小商铺打发时间时，贾法尔看到了法拉堪和他的随从走过来打招呼。贾法尔说，他正在听MC Hammer（译者注：美国说唱乐手），这让法拉堪的女婿和首席幕僚莱昂纳德•默罕默德“发笑”。
“我说：‘我是眼光读到的舞蹈家，在我看来，他是唯一能在跳舞比赛中击败我的人。’”
18岁的事后，贾法尔离开吉达和他父亲的流亡生活，到艾尔文大学去深造。这是一所有300名学生，位于英格兰莱切斯特的学校。这位新学生意外地发现，这座小镇就是他父亲在15年前把印度裔乌干达人驱逐出国之后的主要聚居地。因此，他想尽办法隐藏自己的身份，甚至他的父亲在和他通信时都使用一个化名“阿布•费萨尔•万基塔”。
在1989年完成学业之后，贾法尔回到沙特阿拉伯。第二年，24岁的他由于担心即将爆发的波斯湾战争，萌生了回到祖国乌干达的想法。他并不觉得会遇到什么危险，距离他父亲的位置被推翻已经过去了十多年。尽管贾法尔不相信阿明会对自己过去的所作所为表示悔意，但他认为乌干达已经有足够的时间休养生息。
我很想知道事实是否的确如此。伊迪•阿明曾经被继任政府警告，如果他返回乌干达，必将面临战争罪行的指控。直到2003年去世，他再也没有回到乌干达。但他至少3个儿子回到并居住在乌干达。家族的财产早已不复存在，现在，36年之后，阿明家族的后裔过着普通人的生活。那么，他们是否受到欢迎？或是鄙视？有人恨他们吗？还是忍耐？
瑞贝卡•西维利来自乌干达卡拉莫贾区，她亲眼见到自己的家人在1971年阿明上台后不久被政府军杀害。她当时只有8岁，从那以后，她从未对人说起过她的经历。
一名乌干达士兵在与卡拉莫贾区的一位居民争执时落了下风，西维利记得一群士兵袭击了小镇。她的姨妈交给她一个平底锅防身，让藏在房子里。
2011年10月，贾法尔穿着乌干达国家足球队的运动服。
现年52岁的西维利永远不会忘记伊迪•阿明的军队所犯下的罪行，几年前，当她在一个马拉松比赛中遇到贾法尔的时候，她并没有退缩。西维利经常在加利福尼亚州和乌干达之间往返，一个朋友介绍她给我认识，她说：“我们乌干达人并不认为孩子有罪，他们的父亲才是罪人。”
坎帕拉的一位专栏作家和政治评论家加瓦亚•特古力，也见证过阿明军队的暴行和杀戮。对他来说，很难摆脱这些记忆。
特古力在他位于坎帕拉的办公室告诉我：“我们这些真正见识过阿明暴行的人，很难把这些行为和他家人的具体形象联系在一起。我儿时伙伴的父亲就被阿明杀害，我亲眼见到一些人被带走后再也没有回来，他们受尽了折磨。我看到过父亲受折磨时孩子恐怖的叫声。在我父亲被带走之后，我一直生活在恐惧中。每次我见到阿明的后代，或者仅仅是听说，坦率地说，我都会非常恐惧。一股寒流顺着脊背升上来，太痛苦了。我并不是针对他们，但我们总会看到他们父亲的样子浮现在他们的身前。我知道很多与我有类似经历的人有着更深切的感受。”
2006年，贾法尔的哥哥特班•阿明被总统约韦里•穆塞韦尼任命为乌干达国防部的高级官员（特古力说这是他很难接受的一件事）。另一个哥哥侯赛因已经公开宣布要竞选乌干达2016年的议会席位，尽管贾法尔并没有类似的计划，但他说自己不反对在政府中任职的选择。
阿明再次领导乌干达并非是一件完全不可能发生的事情。这个国家人口平均年龄是世界上最年轻的，大约78％的乌干达人不到30岁，因此他们对于阿明统治的时代基本没有第一手的记忆。即使不是侯赛因或者贾法尔，我们依然无法排除一种超现实的可能性，就是有那么一天，乌干达再一次被伊迪•阿明这个名字所领导。
贾法尔说：“如果我的次子伊迪•阿明在40年后打算竞选总统，我将是他的第一拥护者。听天由命吧。”
他想说的话还有很多。当我告诉贾法尔，说这篇文章将会发表时，他在回复的邮件中说：“你已经忘了这本书的佣金这回事了！”
原文：
Meet Jaffar Amin. He does voiceover work, likes MC Hammer, and posts family histories on Facebook. Oh, and his dad was Africa’s most notorious dictator.
The president of Uganda, Idi Amin, with all his medals, photographed at an outdoor rally in January 1978; Idi Amin, surrounded by his children, nieces, and nephews at the White Horse Inn in 1978. (Jaffar is in the second row on the right.)
On April 11, 1979, His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of all the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, was overthrown by a rebel insurgency.
To most people, Amin’s eight-year reign is best remembered for its violence. Nine thousand “disloyal” soldiers — a full two-thirds of the Ugandan Army — were executed during Amin's first year of power. Supposed threats within the civilian population — Janani Luwum, the archbishop of the Church of Uganda, for one — were not only summarily executed, but often forced to do the work themselves and club one another to death. Throughout his life, rumors of cannibalism followed Amin, who was reported to have kept the severed heads of his rivals in a freezer. An obituary in the Guardian after his death in 2003 described the Ugandan leader as “one of the most brutal military dictators to wield power in post-independence Africa.” The exact number of killings for which he can be blamed is hard to pin down definitively, but the BBC has pegged the figure at around 400,000.
Some say there’s more to the man than the numbers. One of his most vocal boosters is none other than Jaffar Amin, the 10th of the late dictator’s 40 officially recognized offspring, by seven officially recognized wives. Jaffar insists that the world truly misunderstands his dad.
Jaffar, now 48, lives in Kampala with his wife and six kids. A prolific Facebooker, he regularly posts pictures of his family, including his father, along with anecdotes, reminiscences, and the odd complaint about the current state of Uganda.
I’ve always been interested in the private lives of dictators, and a couple of years ago, after a quick search, I landed on Jaffar’s profile. I sent him a friend request, along with a note asking if he’d be willing to share his story with me for an article. I expected a polite “No thanks.” But Jaffar responded right away, agreeing to forward along “generic” answers to questions he has either been asked over the years, or ones he assumed he would be asked.
What he sent was anything but generic. One afternoon in August 2013, I looked at my inbox to find dozens and dozens of pages littered with almost stream-of-consciousness reminiscences about life with his father. It took a while to make sense of it all — some of it seemed to be notes for a future book, some of it taken from a talk Jaffar had given, and some of it consisted of large, disjointed blocks of text pasted directly into the email.
Jaffar Amin poses for a photo in Uganda in 2012.
Jaffar doesn’t come off as some sort of evil dictator’s demon spawn, but rather as an everyday guy living in the suburbs. He spent 11 years working as a manager for DHL. These days, he picks up commercial voiceover gigs when he can — his dulcet tones have urged people to visit the Kampala showroom of a South Korean furniture company called Hwansung, to tune in to 88.2 FM, and to fly Qatar Airways.
Though I wouldn’t describe the two of us as “friends,” Jaffar and I have spoken on the phone a handful of times to discuss our possible collaboration. After about a year, Jaffar’s emails started coming with signoffs like, “God bless you and your family.” He recently wrote to me, “I owe you a wealth of thanks for bringing out the human side of my parent.”
At the same time, Jaffar has also obviously grown somewhat weary of discussing the past. Early on, when I asked one too many follow-up questions, Jaffar replied, “You could be a run-of-the-mill blogger for all I , for I have always only given Interviews to the Established Media Houses so consider this my last correspondence with you[,] take the gift or simply trash it or bin it as we Anglophones are fond of expressing.”
It was far from our last exchange. The silence ended a month or so later, after I told Jaffar I had gotten the official go-ahead from my editors at Foreign Policy. I can only assume that Jaffar, who later told me he was looking for partners to work with him on a somewhat nebulous documentary film project that he said he hoped would show “the other side of Idi Amin Dada,” didn’t want to pass up the publicity.
To most of the world, the name Idi Amin carries dark connotations. The annals of history place the late Ugandan leader alongside Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and Slobodan Milosevic in the pantheon of vicious madmen. For his part, Jaffar says he doesn’t view his father “through rose-tinted glasses,” though he argues that “more die from hunger and misadventures into Sudan and the Congo than have been accused of this man I call father.” Idi Amin’s overarching aim, according to Jaffar, was “to break the colonialist chains and unshackle the colonialist yoke from around our necks.” To many, Idi Amin, a man the last U.S. ambassador to Uganda referred to as “Hitler in Africa,” was simply a murderous tyrant. To Jaffar, he was “great as a father.”
Jaffar attributes some of the lingering ill will toward his father to basic breakdowns in communication. While the world was convinced that Amin had a taste for human flesh, it wasn’t so, says Jaffar. What of Jaffar’s brother, Moses, who was allegedly killed and eaten by his father in 1974? He’s actually “alive and well in France,” according to Jaffar.
Idi Amin’s family in Jinja, Uganda, 1965. Moshe Amin Dada, Idi Amin’s younger brother, is on the left. Idi Amin’s father and Jaffar’s grandfather, Andrea Amin Dada, is seated. Idi Amin’s chief wife, Sarah Mutesi Kibedi Amin, stands in the center.
And Jaffar says he’s not the only one who believes Moses is alive. “A few years ago when I was in the United States, the editor in chief of Chicago Suntimes newspaper told me how he would forgive Amin of all atrocities committed but never the one of sacrificing his son,” an acquaintance wrote to Jaffar in a letter, which he then posted to Facebook in 2009. “I tried but couldn't convince him that Moses Amin actually was still alive. According to him, many reliable Ugandans had told him of Moses's sad fate.”
The rest of the Amin family does not find it necessary to change anyone’s perceptions. They are happy, according to Jaffar, to “let sleeping dogs lie.” But, as he said in his “generic” answers, “I'm the type who feels that I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to explain my father's legacy. And I've set that as my own personal goal or agenda, so to speak.”
Jaffar’s turns of phrase often sound like they’re coming from an English gentleman. He says he was exposed to Anglo-Saxon culture through Uganda’s British colonial history and what he describes as his father’s obsession with everything British, “while hating their exclusivity.” But if Idi Amin hated upper-crust snobbery, he certainly didn’t mind the finer things in life.
In the 1970s, Amin expropriated a property on the shore of Lake Victoria to create, in Jaffar’s words, his own “version of Balmoral or Camp David.” He called it “Cape Town View.” Amin also helped himself to Mukusu Island, a 23-acre piece of land in the lake not far from Kampala. He dubbed that one “Paradise Island.”
Not everyone found the area so idyllic. Amin reportedly threw “several” of his own ministers to the crocodiles that lived in the lake, with one local fisherman telling the Telegraph in 2002, “When I was fishing, I would see many bodies, sometimes just parts of bodies, in the lake. They were enemies of Amin and so he killed them. Then the crocodiles would eat them.”
Tales abound of Amin’s casual sadism, carried out during a reign that has come to be synonymous with brutality. “R,” a former political prisoner, remembers watching “a lot of bad things, a lot of castration. They cut people up and all kinds of stuff. Those still alive — your job was to clean it up.” A university lecturer who displeased Amin was later found beheaded by the side of a road. Henry Kyemba, one of Amin’s former ministers, claimed in 1978 that Amin admitted to him two separate times that he had eaten human flesh, calling it “saltier than leopard meat.”
Jaffar doesn’t spend too much time dwelling on the details of the grisly accusations leveled at his father. In his reminiscences, Jaffar humanized his dad, explaining that Amin was “fond of gadgets.” His father's collection included an aluminum Polaroid camera wrapped in maroon leather, and Betamax machines flown in from Dubai. (Meanwhile, Jaffar recently asked if I’d download an HD version of a Hungarian film onto a flash drive and FedEx it to him in Kampala. “I have never had a chance to watch this film properly,” he said, explaining that power outages were also making it hard for him to access his email.) And according to Jaffar, his father also liked to drive his Maserati around the country and turn up at parties, funerals, village gatherings, and so forth, unannounced, delighting his surprised subjects.
Twelve British ex-army officers, who were to be in Amin's armed forces, swear the oath of allegiance to Idi Amin in Kampala, on Nov. 3, 1975.
Conversely, those on Amin’s bad side who didn’t find themselves dead could instead face public humiliations. In July 1975, Amin had a group of British businessmen, working in Uganda as guests of the regime, carry him to a diplomatic reception atop a sedan chair. One of them was a Kampala car dealer named Robert Scanlon.
“What a spectacle it was!” Jaffar wrote on his Facebook page last March. “Caucasian men, carrying a Black African! A hilariously true inversion of roles!”
Jaffar claimed the men were in on the gag, insisting, “The Caucasians in this jestful event were also laughing because they were not forced to carry dad. They did it willingly.” Scanlon disappeared in 1977. That year the Observer, citing an anonymous Ugandan official, reported that he was arrested and then sledgehammered to death by Amin’s henchmen.
His body has never been found. Since Scanlon isn’t around to give his side of the story, I got in touch with his daughter Chérie, now 51. She is a registered nurse who runs a mobile dermatology clinic in Blackpool, England. Chérie was 14 years old at the time her father went missing. Unlike Jaffar, she doesn’t look back on the episode with a great deal of mirth.
“My aunt told me my father was under great duress to do it,” she told me in an email. “There was a threat to the lives and safety of other expats if my father did not cooperate. The other men worked on contract with/for my father. I am in contact with one of them. I understand that the chair was brought from the Masonic lodge. My father was a Freemason.”
Less than two years after Scanlon’s disappearance, dissent within Uganda and Amin's ill-fated attempt to annex the Kagera province of Tanzania led to a war. The following April, Amin was ousted by Tanzanian troops and Ugandan opposition fighters.
Jaffar Amin and his brothers Moses, Lumumba, Machomingi, and Geriga, at the White House Inn, a hotel in Kabale, Uganda, in 1976, while Idi Amin was president.
Amin went into exile with Jaffar, who was 12 years old at the time, along with an entourage of some 80-odd government ministers, military officers, and family members. The group moved to Libya as guests of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, who had been a loyal Amin ally.
But about a year into their stay, Amin became offended when the politically ambitious Qaddafi began allying himself with Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, the man behind Amin’s fall. Amin viewed this as nothing less than a betrayal. In 1980, he relocated to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Jaffar, along with a small handful of siblings and associates of his father’s, went with him. (The others wound up scattered between Paris, Kinshasa, and Britain.)
As longtime BBC Africa correspondent Brian Barron explained in 2003, “The Saudis had been staunch allies because Idi was a Muslim convert who ordered mosques built across Uganda when he was in power.” The deal the Saudis made with Amin in return for safe haven was clear: Our door is open, but stay out of politics and keep your mouth shut.
Upon the arrival of Amin and his entourage, the House of Saud provided Amin with sanctuary as well as a stipend. (Jaffar says it was more than $26,000 a month.) Insisting he could trust no one but his own children, Amin eventually ordered the bulk of his hangers-on to leave. Jaffar soon found himself serving as the “proverbial errand boy, cook, housekeeper, banker, driver, bodyguard, and etcetera.”
Idi Amin’s life in exile sounds less like that of a bloodthirsty madman waiting to die than one of a retiree trying to stay busy in West Palm Beach. Jaffar describes days spent shopping, with the supermarket being one of his father’s favorite destinations. “In Saudi Arabia, Dad loved to shop,” Jaffar explained in one of the reminiscences he sent. “So we made a lot of trips to the mall, especially the Safeway.”
Amin often took his lunch at a local Pakistani restaurant, which seems a curious choice for a man who stripped Uganda’s prosperous 80,000-odd South Asian residents of their businesses and property during 1972’s race-based “economic war” before expelling them from the country. (“He left the controversy to Allah, but he always felt he needed the world to know that he compensated the British Asians,” recalled Jaffar.)
After lunch, it was off to the Corniche for Amin’s regular dip in the Red Sea. The day would close with a return home with “bags full of groceries for the sagging freezer and the frost-free fridge for the delicate stuff,” followed by seven o’clock prayers and dinner.
Idi Amin at a fruit market in Mecca, Saudi Arabia with his family, his Saudi bodyguards, and children from the market in 1983. Jafar is in the center, wearing sunglasses.
Jaffar recently sent me some new memories of life in exile with his dad, describing a serendipitous meeting with the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan at the Jeddah airport, in 1989. Jaffar’s kid brother Moses was heading back to school in Paris, and the family had gone to see him off. While his father killed time at a nearby soda fountain, Jaffar spotted Farrakhan with his entourage and walked over to say hello. According to Jaffar, it “tickled” Leonard Muhammad, Farrakhan’s son-in-law and chief of staff, that he was listening to MC Hammer.
“I said, ‘I am a discerning dancer and to my mind he is the only one who could beat me in a dance competition.’”
When he was 18, Jaffar left Jeddah and his father’s life in exile to matriculate at Irwin College, a 300-student, sixth-form school in Leicester, England. In what came as a surprise to the new student, the town was the primary destination for Ugandan Indians his father had kicked out of their homes a decade and a half earlier. Given this, it isn’t surprising that Jaffar made an effort to mask his identity while there. In fact, so determined was Jaffar to fly under the radar, that his father signed all correspondence to him with a pseudonym, “Abu Faisal Wangita.”
When he completed his studies at Irwin in 1989, Jaffar returned to Saudi Arabia. But the next year, when he was 24, fear of the impending Persian Gulf War gave Jaffar the motivation he needed to return home to Uganda. He didn’t foresee a problem. More than a decade had passed since his father was ousted from power. Though Jaffar does not believe Amin would express remorse or regret for anything he had done, he felt Uganda had had enough time to “turn the corner.”
I was curious to know if this truly was the case. Idi Amin was warned by the government that replaced him that if he ever returned to Uganda, he would face charges for war crimes. He never stepped foot in the country again before his death in 2003. But at least three of his sons have returned to live in Uganda, one of whom was convicted of murder for beating and stabbing a man to death in a London gang fight. Whatever family money once existed is apparently gone, and now, nearly 36 years later, the remaining Amins have settled into fairly routine existences. So, have they been welcomed, or are they viewed with scorn? Are they hated? Tolerated? Something in between?
Rebecca Severe, from Uganda’s Karamoja region, saw most of her family wiped out by government troops in a 1971 massacre shortly after Amin seized power. She was 8 years old at the time and she has never spoken about what she saw until now.
After a Ugandan Army soldier came out on the losing end of a dispute with a local person in Karamoja’s Moroto district, Severe remembers soldiers descending on the town, where they “did their work.” Savere was handed a saucepan for protection by her aunt and sent to hide in the house.
Jaffar poses wearing a signature jersey of Uganda's national football team — the Cranes — in October 2011.
Indelible as the murders carried out by Idi Amin’s men were, Severe, now 52, didn’t flinch when she met Jaffar at a marathon in Kampala a few years back. “We Ugandans don’t see the children as the problem,” said Severe, who now splits her time between California and Uganda, and was introduced to me by a mutual acquaintance. “We view the parent as the problem.”
Gawaya Tegulle, a columnist and political commentator in Kampala, also saw his share of brutality and killings carried out by Amin’s forces. For him, the memories have been a bit harder to shake.
“Those of us who actually witnessed the atrocities of Mr. Amin do have a bit of trouble relating with them,” Tegulle told me from his office in Kampala. “I have fathers of my childhood friends that were killed by Amin. We watched some of them being carted off to their death, beaten all the while. We have kids who screamed in terror as their fathers were being tortured, while being taken away. I lived in fear of my own dad never coming back home.”
“Every time I see one of them Amin kids, or even hear about them, I'll be frank with you — I freak out,” he continued. “A cold shiver goes down my spine. It's so hard. And I have nothing against them. But we tend to see them in the light and context of their father before them. And I know many of my peers who share even deeper sentiments than mine.”
In 2006, Jaffar’s brother, Taban Amin, was appointed to a senior position in Uganda’s state security services by President Yoweri Museveni (something Tegulle said he still finds hard to stomach). Another brother, Hussein, has publicly announced his intention to run for a seat in the Ugandan parliament in 2016. Though he hasn’t yet acted on it, Jaffar told me that he has entertained the idea of running for office.
It’s not outside the realm of possibility that an Amin will once again lead Uganda. The country’s population is the world’s youngest — about 78 percent of Ugandans are under 30 — and thus have no firsthand memories of the Amin years. And if it’s not Hussein or Jaffar, there is also the somewhat surreal possibility that Uganda could one day again find itself with a leader by the name of Idi Amin.
Said Jaffar, “I will be my second son Idi Amin’s No. 1 cheerleader when he stands for high office 40 years from now, inshallah.”
In the meantime, he still has lots to say. When I told Jaffar this article would finally be running, I got an email back saying, “You forgot about our book commission already!”
“2003年他去世后，《卫报》发表的一份讣告说这位乌干达领导人是“非洲独立后最残暴的军事独裁者之一”。他直接指挥的具体杀戮人数难以统计，但BBC认为这个数字大约是40万。”--------------------------乌鸦站在猪身上，死在黑奴贩子手里的黑人何止400万
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