9. The Bizarre Idi Amin
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada (circa 1925 – 2003) was a military officer who seized power in a 1971 coup, and ruled until 1979. He had been commander of the Ugandan army when he got wind that he was about to be arrested for theft. So he overthrew the government and declared himself president. Amin’s regime was known for repression, ethnic persecutions, human rights abuses, economic mismanagement, corruption, and nepotism. But what sets him apart from other brutal and incompetent kleptocrats was his unpredictable and often macabre behavior, and sheer weirdness. Amin’s governance was bizarre from the start, and grew increasingly more erratic and unpredictable with time. He started off as a conservative, and was initially supported by the West and Israel. Then he turned around, and became an ardent supporter of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
