By Frank Kamuntu
Idi Amin was a Ugandan dictator, military officer, and politician who ruled as the third president of Uganda, a country in central-eastern Africa, from 1971 to 1979.
Idi Amin was a brutal military dictator responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans. He died in 2003 from kidney failure. Amin was born to a Kakwa father and Lugbara mother. In 1946, he joined the King’s African Rifles (KAR) of the British Colonial Army as a cook. He rose to the rank of lieutenant, taking part in British actions against Somali rebels and then the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya.
When Uganda’s former leader, Idi Amin, seized power from the then president, Milton Obote in 1971, his act was received with lots of cheers in Kampala but he would later be seen as a monster after he took up a dictatorial style of leadership.
He had come to power with good intentions for his people but as time went on he became power-drunk and started abusing people, historians say. Amin was a dangerous despot who relied heavily on brutality to hold on to power, thus killing local and church leaders, judges, politicians, security officials and ordinary citizens who opposed or were rumoured to oppose him.
He would not let anybody from inside or outside the boundaries of Uganda undermine his authority or stand against his wish. He did not only rule by decree but also awarded himself all sorts of titles befitting of a continental conqueror, the likes of Napoleon, Hitler etc.
A polygamist, Idi Amin married at least six women, three of whom he divorced. He married his first and second wives, Malyamu and Kay, in 1966. In 1967, he married Nora, and then married Nalongo Madina in 1972. On 26 March 1974, he announced on Radio Uganda that he had divorced Malyamu, Nora, and Kay.
Malyamu was arrested in Tororo on the Kenyan border in April 1974 and accused of attempting to smuggle a bolt of fabric into Kenya.
In 1974, Kay Amin died under mysterious circumstances, with her body found dismembered.[130] Nora fled to Zaire in 1979; her current whereabouts are unknown.
In July 1975, then Ugandan president Idi Amin wedded Sarah Kyolaba, as his fifth wife, at the Nile Mansion (now Kampala Serena Hotel), with Palestinian Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat as his best man.
Kyolaba became a public figure and often appeared with Amin at the country’s national and sporting events.
That was as much as the public knew. But behind the scenes, their marriage cost the life of famous musician Jessy Gitta Kasirivu, Kyolaba’s well-known lover and bandmate, who dared to stand up to Amin over the love of the woman he called his.
Mrs Amin was once known as ‘suicide Sarah’ because she was a go-go dancer for the Ugandan army’s Revolutionary Suicide Mechanised Regiment Band.
She married the dictator after he spotted her performing at the age of 19. The pair were later married in a lavish £2million ceremony in the country’s capital, Kampala. She was said to be his ‘favourite wife’ and went by the title Lady Sarah Kyolaba Idi Amin.
On 25 December 1974 she gave birth, and Amin had the child’s birth announced on television as his own, and the real father soon disappeared. With a famously roving eye, the man who claimed to have fathered some 43 children plucked Sarah from obscurity at the age of 19 while she was a performer for the uniquely titled Revolutionary Suicide Mechanised Regiment Band of the Ugandan Army.
Their lavish wedding in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, cost more than £2m and featured Yasser Arafat as best man. How did she die? When Kyolaba last owned a small hair business in nearby Tottenham, it had been more than 30 years since she first arrived in Britain. She battled cancer till her death last at the age of 59 at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead.
Her death brought to a close a whirlwind existence which saw her elevated from modest beginnings in Uganda to become the fifth – and reputedly favourite – wife of the dictator.
