Friday, April 26, 2013
How Idi Amin, the 'Butcher of Uganda' changed my life -- for good
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
KAMPALA, UGANDA
(ANS) -- It's hard to believe, but it is
true, that Idi Amin Dada, who became known as the "Butcher of Uganda"
for his brutal, despotic rule while president of Uganda in the 1970s,
and was possibly the most notorious of all Africa's post-independence
dictators, changed my life for good.
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Idi Amin with the many medals he had awarded himself
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This monster, who seized power in a military coup in 1971 and ruled over
Uganda for 8 years, is said to have been responsible for the murders of
some 300,000 Christians during his terrible period of misrule.
Winston Churchill visited
Uganda and wrote a book in 1908 called "My African Journey" in which he
said, "For magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of
brilliant life -- bird, insect, reptile, beast -- for vast scale --
Uganda is truly 'the Pearl of Africa.'"
But by 1979, when Amin
fled into exile; first to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia where he died
in Jeddah on August 16, 2003, his country had been reduced to a
"Tarnished Pearl of Africa."
Amin's time in power saw
shocking bloodshed, with a number of his opponents either murdered,
tortured, or imprisoned. His insatiable bloodlust finally saw, according
to human rights observers, at least 500,000 Ugandans killed during his
eight-year reign of terror.
For many, he became a huge joke and was satirized on British TV by actor
John Bird, especially after he gave himself so many titles, including
"His Excellency, President for Life," "Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor,"
"Idi Amin Dada, VC,[C] DSO, MC," "Conqueror of the British Empire in
Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."
So how on earth did this
vicious killer, who took power in a military coup of January 1971,
deposing Milton Obote, and a former heavyweight boxer, who stood 6 feet,
4 inches tall and weighed 270 pounds, changed my life and helped me
find a new mission in my life - helping the Persecuted Christian Church?
Well, it began in the
Spring of 1979 while I was in a smoky bar off Fleet Street, London (the
then center of the British newspaper industry. It was called "The Stab
in the Back" and I was drunk as usual with my colleagues, when an old
friend, Ray Barnett, came back into my life after he became deeply
concerned at how far I had slipped from my earlier Christian faith. (I
had been born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, and my father
later became an Evangelical pastor in Birmingham, England, for some 30
years.)
Ray, an Irish-Canadian,
who had founded a non-profit called Friends in the West and later began
the African Children's Choir, had previously taken me on a reporting
trip to Russia, where we were held briefly under house arrest, and often
looked me up when he was in London.
Ray who was born in
Coleraine, Northern Ireland, and later settled in British Columbia,
Canada, was aware that I was desperately unhappy with my life as a
tabloid reporter with the Sunday People newspaper and really wanted to
help me get my life back on track with God.
So in that smoky bar
filled with cynical London hacks, Ray shared with me the incredible
story of the courageous Christians of Uganda who had survived the
"Uganda Holocaust." He explained that 300,000 believers were among those
who were slaughtered during the mass killings of those eight years of
Amin's misrule.
He then challenged me to
give my life and talents back to the Lord; quit my job and travel with
him to Uganda to write a book on what had happened in that country. His
timing couldn't have been better and that night I recommitted my life to
the Lord, agreed to quit my job on the Sunday People, one of Britain's
largest circulation newspapers, and fly to Uganda with him to begin work
on the book which was eventually published by Pickering And Inglis , a
British publisher, and also by Zondervan in the United States. It was
called "Uganda Holocaust."
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Ray Barnett and Dan Wooding pictured after arriving at Entebbe Airport
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We flew from London to Nairobi in Kenya and then onto Entebbe Airport
and as we were touching down, Ray turned to me and said, "Well, Dan,
you've gone and done it now."
I smiled wryly. "Yes, I have.
You know, on the last day at the paper they had a reception and all the
staff sang 'All things bright and beautiful' for me. I think they must
have made history. I don't think a hymn's ever been sung in the Sunday
People newsroom before.
"I'm glad I'm out, but it
was quite a wrench. It was as if I had a ladder up to a building which
was my career. I had crawled and scratched my way to the top and when I
got there I discovered I had the ladder against the wrong building all
the time.."
As the plane touched down
on the runway at the battle-scarred airport, the passengers, mainly
Ugandan refugees returning home, clapped joyously as the hostess said
"Welcome home!"
In Nairobi, we had
approached World Vision International and they agreed to allow Ray and
me to join one of their relief reconnoiters, and to travel with them in a
Volkswagen Kombi van that would take us on the long, hair-raising
journey into the very heart of the Uganda holocaust.
Now at Entebbe, we
clambered down the steps of the plane to be greeted by a hot, stuffy
billow of air, and I noticed a huge presence of Tanzanian troops. About
three hundred yards from our plane, the notorious "Whisky Run" jet stood
motionless and riddled with bullets. This Boeing 707, bearing the
black, red, and yellow insignia of Uganda Airlines, used to make a
weekly fourteen-hour flight to Stanstead Airport in England, where
Amin's men would load it up with booze (even though they were Muslims)
and other "goodies" for the killer squads.
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Dan and Ray with soldiers in Uganda
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The Ugandans paid for this with cash from the sale of coffee. Often
there were as much as forty tons of goods in the airplane's hold. Whisky
was always a priority. It was Amin's way of buying their loyalty.
As we walked into the
devastated terminal, it was amusing to see a table with a single
immigration official, parked in the middle of the twisted mess. I
presented my passport and before he even looked at it, he fixed me with a
baleful stare and asked in an eerily, controlled voice, "Do you have
any Kenyan newspapers? It gets so boring here with only two flights a
day." (One was from Kenya, the other Zaire.)
I lamely handed him a Nairobi newspaper, so he stamped my
passport. Obviously documentation didn't mean too much, as long as I had
something for him to read.
When the three of us got
through customs, we were met by Geoffrey Latim, a former Olympic athlete
who had fled the country during Amin's reign. He was to be our guide.
Latim led us to a Christian customs officer who, while being watched by a
poker-faced Tanzanian soldier armed with a rifle, made a token check of
our bags.
"There is no phone link
with Kampala and little or no petrol (gasoline)," explained Latim. "So
we might be in for a long wait until a driver arrives for us. He dropped
me off and said he would be back later."
Latim was right. During
that time, the Christian customs official, who turned out to be from the
Acholi tribe, joined us for a chat. He shared with us how God had saved
his life. "I was going to be killed on April 7, 1979," he said. "But on
the sixth, Entebbe was liberated by the Tanzanians troops and my life
was spared."
The man revealed that his
name was on a death list found when the State Research Bureau
headquarters at Nakasero, Kampala, was liberated by the Tanzanians. He
looked sad as he told of the heartbreak of his job during Amin's rule.
"I saw many people passing through customs and I knew there was no way
they would reach the aircraft," he said tragically. "They would be
intercepted by the State Research men and never be heard of again. These
terrible killers were all over the airport. Most of them were
illiterate and had gotten their jobs because they were of the same tribe
as Amin."
Eventually the Kombi
arrived and we began the thirty-mile journey to the capital. We were
stopped at several road blocks set up by the Tanzanians, and Latim
patiently explained to the positively wild-looking soldiers-most of whom
were carrying a rifle in one hand, a huge looted "ghetto-blaster"
playing loud, thumping disco music in the other -- why we were in
Uganda. Burned-out military hardware, including tanks, littered the
sides of the main highway to Kampala.
Soon we were at the
Namirembe Guest House, run by the Church of Uganda, but originally set
up by the Church Missionary Society. It was getting dark as the van
bumped its way into the grounds, which are just below the cathedral.
"You are all most
welcome," said the ever-smiling manager, Naomi Gonahasa. We soon
realized the incredible difficulties under which she and her staff were
working. There was no running water and so it had to be brought in jerry
cans from the city on the back of a bicycle, at $1.50 US a can.
Each resident was
rationed to one bottle of brownish water per day -- and that was for
everything. They had no gas for cooking, so it was all done on a
charcoal fire. What made it even more difficult was that there were no
telephones working in the entire city, so we could not alert any of
Ray's contacts that we had arrived.
When we unpacked in the
fading light, we heard the sounds of machine-gun fire reverberating
across the city below us. Then came the sounds of heavy explosions and
of screaming and wailing, which continued all through the night.
I now realized that Ray
had been deadly serious when he told me that this trip could cost me my
life. I got down by my bed and re-committed my life to the Lord.
"God," I said against a
background of screaming, "I don't know what is going to happen here, but
I want you to have your own way with my life, and that of Ray. We
realize the dangers, but they are nothing to what our brothers and
sisters here have faced over the past eight years."
As I stood up, I turned
to Ray who was calmly lying on his bed, reading his Bible, and said, "A
fine mess you've got me into again.."
He smiled. "Where would you rather be -- in Fleet Street, or here, serving the suffering church of Uganda?"
My look showed him that I knew I was now in the center of God's will.
During our stay at the guest house, we became firm friends with Naomi
and her husband Stephen. As we built up trust with them, they revealed
their part in saving the lives of believers on the run from Amin's
savage killers.
I learned from them the secret code word which they responded to when someone came to them for sanctuary.
"This was a good hiding place from State Research people,"
said Stephen. "People would turn up here and as long as they knew the
code word "Goodyear", we would hide them. Their food was served in their
rooms. Naturally we would not let them sign the guest register in case
it would be checked."
Naomi added, "We were not really frightened, because we believed that God was protecting us."
This sincere young
couple, obvious targets for the thugs of the Ugandan State Research
Bureau, were also active members of an underground church. Often
believers from the Deliverance Church, one of the twenty-seven groups
banned by Amin after he claimed had received orders from Allah in
dreams, would have meetings in the lounge of the guest house.
The next morning we had
our first experience of the terrible ferocity of Amin's battle against
the church during his reign of terror. We went to a church in Makerere,
run by the Gospel Mission to Uganda. As we examined the bullet holes
that had riddled the ceiling and the walls, I asked a member what had
happened.
He told me that on April
12, 1978, Amin's wild-eyed soldiers had invaded the church and begun
firing indiscriminately at the 600-strong congregation. Assistant
pastor, Jotham Mutebi, was on the platform and he sank to his knees in
prayer.
Amid the mayhem, hundreds
more quickly dropped to their knees between the pews. With upraised
arms they began to praise the Lord. The sturdy red brick church was
filled with a cacophony of incredible sound-a combination of prayer,
praise and bullets.
Joseph Nyakairu, a member
of the church orchestra, raised his trumpet to his lips and blew it as
loudly as he could. The Amin soldiers thought the Christians were about
to counter-attack and fled the sanctuary.
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200 church members who were going to be burned alive celebrating their freedom
(Photo: Dan Wooding)
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In the ensuing confusion, nearly 400 people managed to slip away from
the church. But at least 200 remained on their knees and continued to
worship the Lord when the soldiers returned and continued spraying
bullets everywhere. They took hold of Joseph's trumpet and threw it to
the ground, spraying bullets at it. Then they "executed" the organ. The
congregation knew that death could be imminent and that they were under
arrest!
They were taken to the State
Research Bureau headquarters at Nakasero, and there they were mocked and
told that as soon as General Mustafa Adrisi, Idi Amin's
second-in-command, signed the execution order, they would all be burned
alive.
The 200 sat in silent
prayer and, even as they prayed, General Adrisi was involved in a
terrible car crash in which both his legs were badly fractured. He ended
up a cripple in a wheelchair and finally Amin turned against him," said
one believer.
When the signed order from Adrisi did not appear, the guards
led the prisoners to the cells. They were kept behind bars for some
months. Many of them were badly tortured, but miraculously none of them
died.
As we left these incredible people, I turned to Ray and said, "I've
never met believers of this caliber in my country. They certainly have
much to teach us about faith and courage."
We bumped along for hours on end, having to stop regularly at road blocks.
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Idi
Amin with Archbishop Luwum. Note the pistol at the side of Amin. He was
said to have used it shortly afterwards to murder the Archbishop
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In Latim's hometown of Gulu, we learned the astonishing story of the
burial of Archbishop Janani Luwum, who according to credible sources in
Kampala, had been brutally shot in the mouth by Idi Amin himself.
Mildred Brown, an English woman who was working in the region
translating the Scriptures into Acholi for the Bible Society, began to
explain how Janani's body had been taken to his home village of Mucwini,
near the Sudan border, for burial.
His mother, at her home, told the soldiers, "My son is a Christian.
He cannot be buried here; he must be buried in the graveyard of the
local church."
So the soldiers took the casket to the picturesque tiny hilltop church for a hurried burial.
As we drank our tea, Miss
Brown told us, "The soldiers had begun to dig the grave, but hadn't
been able to complete the job before dark because the earth was too
hard. They left the coffin in the church overnight, SO they could finish
the grave the next day."
Thus the hardness of the
ground gave the group of believers at Mucwini the chance to gaze for the
last time on their martyred archbishop. By the flickering gleam of a
hurricane lamp, they saw the body of a purple-clad man. They noted there
were two gun wounds, one in his neck, where the bullet had apparently
gone into his mouth and out again, the other in his groin. Janani's
purple robe was stained with blood, his arms were badly skinned, his
rings had been stolen, and he was shoeless.
They were all gazing
quietly, reverently, at the body of a martyr, a man who was killed for
daring to stand up to the "black Hitler of Africa."
Even as the people gave
thanks for their beloved archbishop, just one of some 500,000 victims
under Amin, the government-controlled newspaper, Voice of Uganda,
published a call for President Amin to be made emperor and then
proclaimed him as "the Son of God."
Back in Kampala, we were
able to meet up with "God's Double Agent in the President's Office". Ben
Oluka, who was senior assistant secretary in the Department of
Religious Affairs in Amin's office, had used his influence to bring
about the saving of many Christian lives throughout Uganda.
But what Amin did not
realize was that Ben Oluka was not only doing what he could to assist
suffering believers, but was also pastoring an underground church in his
home. It was a small group from the Deliverance Church, an indigenous
Ugandan evangelical fellowship.
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Book cover
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"At that time, I was working in the office that had to enforce the
president's ban (against the twenty-seven denominations), and secretly I
was running an underground church myself," he said. "When the ban was
announced, much of the church immediately went underground, and house
meetings sprang up throughout the country. There is a higher power, and
when government restricts freedom of worship, God's supremacy has to
take over. I was personally ready for martyrdom."
And that was the feeling of
millions of Ugandan believers, regardless of Amin's persecution. They
were willing to die for their faith.
At the end of the trip, I
knelt by my bed at the Namirembe Guest House and prayed, "Lord, these
Ugandan believers have had such an impact on me that I want to dedicate
my talents for the rest of my life to helping suffering believers around
the world who don't have a voice. Please help me to be a voice for
them."
I returned from Uganda a different person. The courage of the Ugandan Christians will live with me forever.
"After working on a story like this, how can I ever return to Fleet Street?" I shared with my wife Norma back home in England.
Now, I realize how his
persecution of his people and particularly the Christians there, had
changed my life forever. What Amin meant for evil, God has used for
good! And now that I have since moved with my family to Southern
California, I spend all my time writing about the Persecuted Christians
of the world, including those in Uganda, through my news service (
www.assistnews.net), and through my "Front Page Radio" program on the KWVE Radio Network (
www.kwve.com) and my "His Channel Live" Internet TV show on
www.hischannel.com.
"Uganda Holocaust" is still available on various Internet sites, and you can check them out or go to
www.amazon.com.
| Dan Wooding,
72, who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, is an award
winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his
wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 49 years. They have two
sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He
is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special
Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he
hosts the weekly "Front Page Radio" show on the KWVE Radio Network in
Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United
States and around the world. Besides this, Wooding is a host for His
Channel Live, which is carried via the Internet to some 192 countries.
Dan recently received two top media awards -- the "Passion for the
Persecuted" award from Open Doors US, and as one of the top "Newsmakers
of 2011" from Plain Truth magazine. He is the author of some 45 books,
the latest of which is
"Caped Crusader: Rick Wakeman in the 1970s." To order a copy, go to: Caped Crusader - Amazon |
