{UAH} FOR THOSE PRAISING UGANDA INDIANS: Uganda’s Asians were also sinners
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Uganda's Asians were also sinners
Forty-five years ago, Idi Amin expelled his country's Asians — and they became Britain's great immigration success story. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was among them. Now, she takes an unflinching look back at the bloody ethnic upheaval of 1972 and asks to what extent Ugandan Asians were culpable
Forty-five years ago this autumn, planeloads of my fellow Ugandan Asians arrived at Stansted airport in Essex after being expelled by President Idi Amin, an archetypal baleful, devious villain who also had animal magnetism and told great jokes. When President Mugabe was finally forced out of power in Zimbabwe last month, it brought back memories of populist African leaders who grab power, become dictatorial and fail their nations. That story never ends. Exile, for us, proved to be a blessing.
Ted Heath's government had to resettle 28,000 disorientated children, women and men from the former British colony, while Enoch Powell stirred up populist fury against this "influx". The years that followed were hard. But look at us now. Haven't we done well? David Cameron pronounced us Ugandan Asians "among the most successful migrants anywhere in the world". Even Nigel Farage extols our virtues. We are judged to be exemplary incomers who turned tragedy to triumph. Smug Ugandan Asians still boast that Uganda never recovered after our banishment. Some are so grateful to Britain, they have framed pictures of Heath and the Queen on their walls.
When we arrived, the UK was in a sorry state. The upbeat 1960s were over. In 1972 the economy was diving, industrial disputes were raging, cities and towns were bleak, doped hippies symbolised the state of the nation — disorderly, spent and purposeless. This was not the Great Britain we had imagined. Awe was replaced by shock. But Ugandans are pragmatic, canny, ambitious and audacious. I remember going to an army camp where some of the accidental migrants were temporarily housed. Some men seemed unusually hearty. They had walked around town and seen infinite possibilities. Mr Shah, an experienced exporter, said: "They close shop at five. Lazy, losing all that money. We will be rich, my friends." Much mirth.
And a large number of them did just that. They revived the nation of shopkeepers, pioneered 24-hour shopping, diversified, got rich, very rich. My nerdy maths teacher bought a chain of pharmacies, other acquaintances ran lucrative care-home companies, my late brother and cousins set up profitable travel agencies. As Lord Dolar Popat once said in the Lords: "Many of us encountered racial tensions, jobs were not plentiful, it was a very difficult time initially … [but] we started over again. Ugandan Asians have helped to transform the fabric of British society."
At a recent wedding party thrown by Ugandan Asian friends, every other car in the car park was a Merc, Jaguar or big BMW. Our Toyota Prius looked like a poor relative. Among the many Ugandan Asian business legends are the property magnates Zul and Nazmu Virani, the manufacturer and retailer Mitesh Jatania, the global investment manager Rupin Vadera and Lord Rumi Verjee, who founded Domino's Pizza. Some of them are also big donors to aid organisations and political parties.
Like Jewish Britons, Ugandan Asians are trailblazing in politics and other areas. Priti Patel became the first elected female Asian Tory cabinet minister. Though forced to resign over unauthorised meetings in Israel, hard Brexiteers still see her as a potential future prime minister. Her father, Sushil, a self-made businessman, newsagent and former Ukip candidate, was from Uganda. As were Shailesh Vara MP and Lord Popat, both Tories, the Lib Dem peer Rumi Verjee and Labour's Baroness Shriti Vadera, sister of Rupin. Our children and grandchildren are rising stars in the media, law, medicine, the City, think tanks and the charity sector.
This neat narrative, well known and oft told, makes everyone feel good — the receiving nation and the incomers. But it buries inconvenient truths, leaves out much of what happened. Those untold stories, like the restless undead, haunt many of us as we get older. Distorted histories inhibit the future and impede reconciliation. Uganda's President Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, handed back Asian properties, invited us back. But that did not bring closure. There is too much unfinished business.
Old photos have faded, but my memories remain vivid: the red earth, green, green grass, fecund mango and banana trees, hills and lakes, markets, schools, my alma mater Makerere University, black friends lost for ever, relatives and Asian mates scattered around the world. Or dead.
I can't forget the street-food stalls, the blind man who made metal colanders, young Johnny, the cook next door, who once slashed himself badly while grating a coconut. His mistress, a tough Muslim matriarch, berated him for dripping his inferior blood on her white coconut. Japan, my buddy, our servant, helped my mother to prepare wedding feasts and ironed the clothes she sewed for customers. Both sang Bollywood songs as they worked. He told me spooky stories in Swahili while pulling jiggers from my toes. Even as a child, I hated the way many Asians treated black Africans. Some of the cruellest were in my own family.
Independence from Britain in 1962 came bringing promises, soon broken. One evening in 1966, at a birthday party, we were bopping to Mustang Sally by Wilson Pickett when special forces kicked the door down and demanded alcohol. By 1970, the country had become lawless and feral. Three Asian sisters in our neighbourhood were raped by soldiers. The youngest became mute. Asians were intimidated and robbed at roadblocks.
I met Idi Amin in 1968. I was a school prefect and he was the head of the army, appointed by Milton Obote, Uganda's first elected leader after independence, a good socialist with bad autocratic instincts. The bulky general told me: "You Asians are no good people. Weaklings and crooks, all of you." Three years later, following a coup, Uganda had a new leader, Field Marshal General Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, president for life of Uganda, conqueror of the British Empire in Africa, last king of Scotland, doctor of political science.
Twenty months after that, he expelled the 75,000 "weaklings". Some Asians had British passports, others were Ugandan citizens and became stateless. After completing my degree at Makerere, I got a place at Oxford. I arrived in May 1972 and never went back. Exiles left behind homes, businesses, temples, mosques, graves, hearts. Bakul Vyas, who retired recently after a long career at British Airways, still misses "the big house, servants, the landscape, all the good things". His anger remains raw as he recalls the hellish last days, the humiliation and terror. His father — stateless, broken-hearted — died only three months after the deportations.
Jasmeen Houssen can't forget "coming home to the aroma of fried cassava, splashing in Lake Victoria, climbing Mount Elgon in skimpy shoes, the joy, the friends". She recalls the poverty of Africans and the conspicuous wealth of many Asians. The only female to get into the law faculty at Makerere, Houssen wanted to be a constitutional reformer: "That dream was blown away by Amin's anti-Asian tsunami. There is a well of bitterness in me. I will never forgive Amin."
Ugandan Asians still talk of a paradise lost, but it was never that simple. We Asians were grossly sinned against, but we were not blameless. Inward-looking and selfish, we did not care enough about the sufferings of black Ugandans.
The writer Joseph Ochieno is a black Ugandan refugee living in London. He knows other Ugandans who believe what Amin did to Asians was heroic. Ochieno doesn't share this view. But this thoughtful man can't forgive those Asians who were only interested in their own good lives, not the future of the country. They subverted "the elected socialist and internationalist government" and supported Amin before he turned on them. Vyas was one of them. "I went out to celebrate. Obote had gone. He wanted to nationalise 51% of our businesses and impose big taxes on properties. I was young. I didn't know any better," he says.
Vincent Magombe, a black Ugandan journalist and refugee, thinks Asians need to be more honest and less solipsistic: "The suffering of Asians is nothing, nothing. I have nothing against them. But fewer than 20 Asians died. More than 750,000 black people were obliterated." That tragedy is passed over. Black Ugandan dissenters have been persecuted by all their leaders. Those who could fled to the west. More than 180,000 of them are in the UK. Belinda Atim, a black Ugandan who works for international health and human rights organisations, came to Britain in the 1990s. "My life has been about loss," she says. "I have witnessed and survived appalling atrocities. My family members suffered from abuses, torture and extrajudicial killings. Not just my family, but people from the entire northern region, Acholis. Our suffering has not ended."
One of my black interviewees had a mini-breakdown while we spoke. She couldn't carry on.
Patience, the daughter of a fellow Makerere student, wrote to me recently: "My father was killed by Idi Amin's soldiers. After you left, my mother was raped. She was your friend. I am the daughter of the rape. You don't know me. Ugandan Asians keep talking about their property. Why is no one interested in us?" I felt deep shame and guilt when I read the email. She is right. These lives should matter.
Asians first arrived in Uganda in the 1880s. They were indentured labourers — pitifully low-paid workers legally tethered to employers — brought over by the British to build a railway. They were followed by entrepreneurs and chancers who'd heard there was money to be made. The wayfarers opened shops, learnt local languages, made themselves indispensable. In time, they became cautious, nifty, middle-class, more supportive of the British Empire than against it. Immigration numbers grew, so too the ethnic gap.
In 1972, the anthropologist and Hindu monk Agehananda Bharati wrote: "What Africans can't forget is the disdain in which the Asian has been holding the African. They know Asians detest their darker colour and physiognomy … The Asian males had a few concubines, but no African could approach an Asian woman."
He was right. In 1961, a family friend almost kicked his black cook to death just because he told the man's daughter she was beautiful. In 1968, I played Juliet to a black Romeo and was beaten up by my male relatives and disowned by my father for ever.
The Ugandan blogger Stephen Kamugasa thinks it was a cunning British plan: "In keeping with the principle of divide and rule, Asians were quickly subsumed into the official colonial government, in which they played the role of being a buffer between the whites and black natives. They were above local natives and had access to better services and opportunities. It bred much resentment."
The divisions were most palpable in Kampala, where I was raised. Some city Asians were good people. Vyas's father, a cotton exporter, ensured fair pay for producers. I knew businessmen who trained black staff and paid school fees for their children. But they were a minority. Lord Popat accepts that "there was prejudice. A class divide. We may have been selfish, didn't integrate, did not get involved in democracy. But we learnt lessons. Here in the UK we are integrated and engaged."
Popat was born and raised in the countryside, where, unlike Kampala, people mixed, trusted and helped each other. His mother became an informal midwife and delivered African babies. That may be why he is refreshingly candid about our mistakes. The Madhvani plantation tycoons were also based outside the capital. They built schools and hospitals, understood reciprocity. There were a few other enlightened individuals, most now forgotten. In 1957, some Asian intellectuals came together, a band of principled political brothers who dreamt of a rainbow nation, equal and truly independent. Those hopes were dashed. One of them was Anil Clerk, QC, who was abducted and murdered in 1972 by Amin's thugs.
There is another side to this complicated story. Corrupt and unworthy black politicians routinely scapegoated Asians in East Africa. The novelist Paul Theroux, who was one my lecturers at Makerere, wrote a passionate essay about this blame game: "[Asians are held] responsible for flagrant racism, the failure of African socialism and progress, all bad driving and motor accidents, sins of pride, envy, scandal, gluttony and lust, monopoly business, African neurosis, subversion of ruling parties … a high birth rate and bad food."
Amin was not our only enemy, he was just the worst of the lot. My niece's nanny, Teresa, used to say Obote was a hyena that waited for kills and then feasted on the flesh: "Me, I like a warrior, I like a buffalo. Uganda needs a buffalo, not a hyena."
Uganda got its buffalo. I was at uni then. The transition was seamless and soundless. On that morning, January 25, 1971, I opened the curtains in my small room in the hall of residence and a dead baby bat fell on the floor, a bad omen. The radio played My Boy Lollipop all day, interspersed with announcements by military men of curfews and the new order. The next day there was rejoicing, dancing in the streets. Obote had become unpopular. But our university was suddenly full of sinister unknown men. Meetings and debates were banned. One day in May, we gathered on campus to protest. Tanks appeared at the main gate. Tear gas was released, shots were heard, students were abducted. In a photo, I am running away in a checked minidress, a scarf round my head, knee socks.
The persecution of intellectuals and experts gathered pace. Amin knew the country would be easier to subjugate if he could rid it of academics and lawyers. He also suffered from a pathological inferiority complex. He turned up at Makerere that June. Dressed in full academic gear, he conducted the graduation ceremony. Horror and comedy, as always with him.
Our vice-chancellor, Frank Kalimuzo, was murdered by soldiers using hammers. A bright law student, Paul Serwanga, was also slain. Women were found decapitated in the grounds. One was pregnant. Night after night, jackboots came into our hall of residence, looking for women from certain tribes. Some hid in the rooms of Asian students, which the soldiers did not enter — strange but true.
Susana, a roommate, was one of Amin's concubines. She gave me the recipe for his favourite stew — I still have it. He had her killed and enslaved her younger sister. African Ugandan refugees here have their own horrific tales. Ochieno's adopted brother was murdered, his body never found. Old Samuel, a priest, had his genitals hacked off. Mary Namusisi, 70, told me: "Amin hated my tribe. So his soldiers smashed my baby boy with their boots. They mashed him like a vegetable."
All this was going on while the US, UK and Israeli governments were backslapping the tyrant. He came on two state visits in 1971 and 1972. The Telegraph described him as "a welcome contrast to other African leaders and a staunch friend to Britain".
In his book Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses, the historian Mark Curtis proves that the British government helped Amin into power. Obote wanted to nationalise key big businesses and strongly opposed the sale of arms to South Africa. Officials acknowledged Obote's policies were good for Ugandans, but bad for British interests. Amin would be their man. This is yet another example of British foreign policy that left a terrible legacy.
Magombe was 18 when Amin was toppled in 1979. He had written a play titled The Fall and Trial of Idi Amin. It was performed at an arts centre. Amin's defeated, marauding soldiers turned up, trashed the place, assaulted the youthful players. Magombe left. Unlike most Asians, people like him have found no peace.
The old country is still troubled. The same noxious geopolitical games are played. Oil has been discovered, so westerners are flocking in. Asian entrepreneurs too. The richest man in Uganda today is Sudhir Ruparelia, an Asian and a close chum of black politicians. He lives like an oligarch. Recently an investigation was launched into his business dealings.
Idealistic black and Asian Ugandans feel we were denied a future together. We could have created a vibrant, non-racist nation. Vyas, an international tennis player, wanted to be mayor of Kampala. I wanted to teach at Makerere and write history books. Houssen might have become a judge. Our children could have set up IT hubs. Magombe, Ochieno and Atim dream they would have built a proper, non-tribal democracy.
Simi is Asian, David is African. Both are divorcees who teach in London. They fancied each other in school in Kampala, when such relationships were forbidden. Last year they found each other on Facebook and got together. They plan to go to Uganda and start a small business. Popat has built a maternity clinic in his old town. Vyas sends equipment to his old school. Maybe that lost future can be found again. Uganda is a wonderful country. Despite our successes in the UK, our hopes must keep burning.
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