Word: aminations
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During his twelve years as dictator, Bokassa has established a reputation for megalomania and incompetence that rivals that of Uganda's Idi Amin Dada. Incensed at the rising theft rate in Bangui, Bokassa in 1972 joined his troops in the public beating of 45 thieves in the capital's central square. Three died, and the brutally wounded survivors were put on display for six hours in the broiling sun. A year earlier, to celebrate Mother's Day, Bokassa ordered that all mothers in prison be released-and that all those who had been accused of matricide...
...book most likely to attract attention to Amin is A State of Blood (Grosset & Dunlap; $10. Paperback, Ace Books; $2.50) by Henry Kyemba. He sought political asylum in Britain last May after serving Amin for six years as principal private secretary and later as Minister of Health. Written with the help of a former Reuters correspondent, John Man, A State of Blood is full of sensational detail. Kyemba reports for instance that Amin has experimented with cannibalism. "I have eaten human meat," he once remarked. "It is very salty, even more salty than leopard meat." Although Amin's bizarre...
Kyemba sheds some new light on the deaths of Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum and two Ugandan Cabinet ministers last February. At the time, Amin claimed that the three had been killed in a traffic accident shortly after he had denounced them as traitors at a mass meeting. In reality, Kyemba writes, the three were killed by Amin's dread secret police. Kyemba, as Health Minister, was asked to arrange for the arrival of the bodies at a local mortuary. "As I expected," he writes, "they were bullet-riddled. The archbishop had been shot through the mouth and had three...
Perhaps the ugliest tale Kyemba offers concerns Amin's own family. In March 1974 the dictator suddenly divorced three of his four wives; the three, says Kyemba, had been unfaithful, as Amin found out. Five months later, the dismembered body of one of the former wives, Kay, was found in Kampala. For once, Kyemba exonerates Amin: "I do not believe, as I first did, that Amin had a direct hand in Kay's death." Instead, he writes, she died during an abortion that was being performed by her lover, a doctor. Kyemba speculates that the doctor dismembered...
...Kyemba remain in Amin's service for so long? He never fully explains. In the end, after the killing of so many Cabinet members and other officials who had once been favorites of Amin's, Kyemba realized that "however friendly the President seemed, I would never be safe. I knew too much." Some have argued, he notes, that Idi Amin may ultimately be succeeded by an even greater chaos or an even more evil regime in Kampala. "I disagree," writes Kyemba. "Nothing could...