The rise and fall of Idi AminIn Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State, Prof. Mahmood Mamdani delivers one of the most searing critiques yet of the Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni regimes. Reviewers note: Idi Amin joined the King’s African Rifles, the army run by the British colonial power, in 1946 as a cook. After the coup of 1971, many soldiers who had survived either left with Obote or followed him into exile to Tanzania or Sudan. Mamdani left on the last official day of the expulsion and reunited with his parents in the transit camp on Kensington Church Street, London. Eventually, following the short Tanzania-Uganda war of 1979, waged by Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere and Ugandan rebels, including Yoweri Museveni, Amin was overthrown and took refuge in Saudi Arabia.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 11, 2026 11:08 UTC