Guest Post from Chris Oakley: October 7, 1978--Idi Amin Assassinated

On October 7, 1978, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin paid a fatal price for his brutality and arrogance
when he was stabbed to death while taking part in an orgy at the Ugandan presidential palace in the heart of Kampala. News of his death plunged Uganda into political chaos as Amin supporters fought with rival factions seeking to restore democratic rule in the country; by the time of Amin’s funeral only four days after his assassination, Uganda was on the verge of civil war. Concerned that the violence might spill over into their own nations, Uganda’s neighbors formed a coalition under the leadership of then-Tanzanian president Julius Nyrere and deployed a peacekeeping contingent to Uganda to restore order. The regular Ugandan army offered only token resistance to the peacekeepers and the pro-Amin uprising collapsed when its leaders were arrested.

With the uprising ended, former Ugandan president Milton Obote, who’d been forced into exile when Amin overthrew him in 1971, was able to return home and resume his post; he led a caretaker administration until March of 1979, when elections were held to form a new full-time government. By the spring of 1981 the Uganda National Police would assume the peacekeepers’ role in maintaining law and order in Uganda’s cities. The Ugandan army underwent a top-to-bottom reorganization as part of a larger overall effort to de-politicize the Ugandan military and purge the last traces of Amin’s extremist ideology from its ranks.

The success of the Nyrere-led coalition’s intervention in Uganda planted the seeds for a broader
regional alliance, the African Union. The AU was established in 1991 at a twenty-two nation summit in Nairobi and would grow to thirty members when the Mandela government of South Africa ratified the AU charter in 1994. Among the organization’s most notable successes during its first decade were the deployment of peacekeepers to halt the Rwandan genocide and its victorious campaign against Somali warlord Mohammed Aidid. By 2007 the African Union’s membership had expanded to include nearly sixty countries and the organization was a major trading partner of the United States and the European Union.

By 2015, the AU would be a key player in international efforts to end the civil war in Syria and address global climate change. As of 2018 the AU was the world’s third-largest trading bloc and a major rival to China for the number two spot in the ranks of global economic powers; nearly one-quarter of the world’s known billionaires would call Africa home and the once strife-torn Kampala was nicknamed “Africa’s Silicon Valley” by virtue of the dozens of home-grown tech companies centered in the Ugandan capital.

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In reality, Idi Amin continued to rule Uganda until the spring of 1979, when he was forced to flee
the country after his regime’s defeat in its border war with Tanzania. He fled to Saudi Arabia, where he stayed till his death in 2003. The African Union was formally established in 2001 as a successor to the Organization of African Unity. As of the time this article is being posted, the AU’s membership total stands at 55 countries; in 2016 the organization introduced continent-wide passports intended to make travel easier for AU citizens. Much of the AU’s defense resources are devoted to fighting the al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab jihadist organization in Somalia. The AU also maintains the AIDS Watch Africa program to combat the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan countries.