[Edited]
The other day I watched “The Last King of Scotland,” Kevin MacDonald’s 2006 biopic of Idi Amin, for which Forest Whitaker won an Oscar. It was alright. But I made the mistake of also watching the 30-minute short “Capturing Idi Amin,” a behind-the-scenes bonus feature. I’ve been putting off this post, but it’s time, now that Robert Mugabe might be heading for the exits in Zimbabwe. Because “Capturing Idi Amin” contains textbook examples of how not to think about authoritarianism in Africa.
In this documentary supplement to “The Last King of Scotland,” we’re shown the rows of skulls. We’re shown people in hoods strapped to poles waiting to be executed. We’re told of the body count: 300,000 (although an Amnesty International study puts it at half a million). Yes of course, the film tells us, Idi Amin was a bad man. But then Forest Whitaker comes on camera and says:
The picture that I had was sort of a colonialized version of who he was, this monster image of a black African man who was evil incarnate. Certainly there were many travesties that happened. But it’s a much more complicated and complete story and he’s a much more whole man than the image that I had.
Very important, we’re told, not to “demonize” the Ugandan strongman. “The Last King of Scotland,” according to one actor, shows “what the international community did not see of Idi Amin.” It’s a human portrait. Did you know that Amin was a regular guy who even had to fart now and then? I’m not kidding — there’s a scene in “The Last King of Scotland” that puts forward this urgent fact.
To be fair, the short also shows old editorial cartoons that ran in the Western media depicting Amin with big lips and bulging eyes. Racist, indisputably. Journalist Jon Snow rightly says that “Amin appealed to a racist stereotype of Africa.” He also discusses Amin’s British military career and the UK’s complicity in his rise to power.
Legitimate point, but it doesn’t establish what “Capturing Idi Amin” seems to want to establish: that somehow, the problem wasn’t Amin, it was the West, and that our view of Amin should be more charitable.
“Amin’s rating in [Uganda] is different from what people think in the outside,” says General Moses Ali, who is first identified in the short as Uganda’s current deputy prime minister, and later as Amin’s finance minister. “I think some people rate Amin very high,” adds the self-serving Ali. Then we hear from others who still regard Amin as a hero, “a patriot, a nationalist.” Only at the end of the short do we hear from people with harrowing accounts of life in Amin’s police state.
Amin stuck it in the eye of the crumbled British empire, and anti-colonialists swooned — especially ones who didn’t live in Uganda and didn’t have to face the goon squads and the gun barrels. This has been Robert Mugabe’s trick too: stomp on the necks of the populace, then posture as an anti-imperialist and at least some people abroad will forgive you, or call you “complicated.”
Amin opposed apartheid and supported the Palestinians. Terrific. He also thought Hitler was right and the Jews had it coming. No mention of that in either film, the short or the feature.
The short also addresses Amin’s manic insecurity, which led to his brutal crackdowns on dissent. Incredibly, Moses Ali says:
Amin was a very sensitive person, like any other president. If you identify yourself that you want to remove him from his power, so you are an enemy. So he will react against you in any way he likes.
“Like any other president”?
Then we hear again from Forest Whitaker:
One of the reasons why [Amin is] so demonized too is because he was a figure that really stood against colonization. Very clearly, that’s what he did, he was like, ‘Get out, we can handle our own affairs.’ And there’s very few people who’ve done that.
There’s very few people who’ve done that? How about Leopold Senghor of Senegal, a most learned and successful anti-imperialist, who never killed huge numbers of his own people? Or Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, a highly flawed leader and uncompromising anti-colonialist who somehow refrained from slaughtering half a million? These are the men who deserve to be talked about as complicated, as whole. Not Idi Amin.
And not Robert Mugabe. Here’s to his rapid and peaceful downfall and the long-deferred freedom of the Zimbabwean people.
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