Who's Your Dada?

A 1977 caricature of Amin
 by Edmund S. Valtman.
Image - Wikipedia

By Grant Davies

On this day in 1979, the dictator of an African country was overthrown and fled to Libya, never to return to his former home. It was amazing for such a thing to happen to such an important guy. After all, if you go by his title, it would seem like it could never happen.

The country in question was Uganda, but it was actually more of a giant crime scene than a country. And the guy I'm referring to was none other than "His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, 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." Yep, that fun guy was better known to the rest of the world as Idi Amin Dada.

Idi was a particularly accomplished guy. He had a self conferred doctorate of law degree and claimed to be the King of Scotland as well. He was pretty good at a few other things too, including gold and ivory smuggling, polygamy, and that old favorite, mass murder. As  difficult as it is to destroy a country that's already essentially in ashes, he managed the task.

Estimates of the number of people he had murdered run from 80,000 to 500,000, but the record keeping wasn't good, so it's anyone's guess. It's a smallish country or it's certain that the toll would have been much higher.

Anyway, suffice it to say that this imbecile caused more misery and destruction than could be reasonably expected of a guy who was engaged 24/7 for his entire life in mental masturbation.

When he died in Saudi Arabia  in 2003, rational people all over the world shed exactly zero tears. Even in Scotland, not a soul missed their King.