26. Uganda’s Mad Tyrant
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada (circa 1925 – 2003) was a military officer who seized power in a 1971 coup, and ruled his country until 1979. He was 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. His 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, and earns him a place on this list, was his off-the-charts level of weirdness.
Idi Amin’s behavior was odd 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. Suddenly, he made a sharp turn in the other direction, and became an ardent supporter of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and the PLO. He ordered the expulsion of Uganda’s ethnically Asian citizens and residents and seized their businesses and enterprises, as well as those of Europeans in Uganda. Those enterprises, which formed the economy’s backbone, were handed over to Amin’s relatives and supporters who promptly drove them into the ground. That was not even close to the worst of it, however, because Amin was not just a clown, but a mass murderer as well.
