FORGIVING AMIN
The colorful return and burial of Sarah Kyolaba Amin's remains few days ago attracted attention globally. The Iddi Amin name still turn heads around the world. Where I live, people I interact with still identify Uganda by evoking Idd Amin's name. People here in North America do not really know much about the outside world. A tiny country like Uganda falls outside their TV radar. The world is known only through the screens of the television propaganda. The various portrayal of Idd Amin in movies makes Uganda visible in that light - of cruelty.
Sarah Amin lived a humble life in London, where she operated a small restaurant and later a saloon. Her humility and motherly pose attracting many Ugandans, some of whom, lived in exile since the 70s in fear of her husband. But in Sarah's company, they found convergence given that she spoke very little about her past life as wife to a tyrant. Her customers showed that they have transcended past traumas associated with Amin's regime.
Iddi Amin Dada might have been that monster as he was portrayed. People now see and appreciate that Amin, with all his flaws and cruelty, left legacies of both horror and comedy. In typical Shakespearean presentation of Macbeth,true life is, after-all, defined as tragedy, and where fantasy be-gets comedy. But we also appreciate Amin now as an incomparable nationalist in light of other Uganda's Presidents.
The homily that President Museveni accorded Sarah's family; the pledges to pay tuition; and offers of land to allow the return of the family, are all gestures of goodwill. It reaffirms a tipping of the moral scale, where we forgive without forgetting.
However, whatever gestures we, as Ugandans offer the Amin's family, ran short of depth of the trueness of humanity if we are unable to forgive their deceased father. Forgiving Idd Amin is good, not for reconciliation's sake, or for letting the past go. It is good for our conscience and well-being.
The more we hang on to our dark past, the more we relive those traumas. And yet, in forgiving Amin, we take the courage to sober recollect, to reflect on the tragedies of the past as a whole, not in bits. Uganda has not been a well governed country. It is rich with traumatic moments. Each leader comes with his solution to such problems, but degenerates quickly, into a problem, and a burden, to the country. It just shows that history is not our teacher. We exploit our dark history but learn nothing from it. Somehow, that past has found a place in our psyche where it torments us, and cripples us from developing prudence.
I, therefore, take this opportunity to request the Museveni regime to retrieve the remains of Idd Amin and bring it back for burial at home. The man is dead. His remains should not be punished and treated with contempt. The remains have nothing to loose, but we, who are survivors of his cruelty, do. The more we keep his remains far away, the more we retain a looming cloud of unnecessary importance to his brands.
Strangely, no matter how President Museveni sells Uganda abroad, people do not care about his gorillas or brand of pseudo-democracy. Returning the remains of Idd Amin to his ancestral home, will attract more attention to Uganda, than all the Gorillas and tourism endeavours.
But for the President, such a gesture must be profitable to be pursued. It must endear the Kakwa people to him, as a President. This is how the government hijacked the noble efforts of the late Bazillio Okellos' children to retrieve the remains of their father for a descent reburial in his final resting place, in Muchwini. Maybe the Amin clan should ride on this wave to begin the process, just before the 2016 general elections. Who knows how the President will react!
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