Friday 10 April 2009

Head to head: Toppling Idi Amin

From BBC World News, London, UK

The sons of Uganda's former dictator Idi Amin (picture to your right) and Tanzania's ex-President Julius Nyerere have met for the first time, three decades after the two countries fought a war

The BBC's Swahili Service brought the two together to reflect on the five-month conflict, which left half a million people dead and culminated with Tanzania troops ousting Amin from Kampala on 10 April 1979.

The two families - President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and President Idi Amin - ought to have met because they were the two protagonists.

So, after carefully considering BBC's request, I agreed to travel more than 1,000km to Tanzania to meet Madaraka Nyerere in Butiama (his home town in northern Tanzania).

Both of us were young when the war broke out. Madaraka was 16 and I was only 12.
Madaraka Nyerere comes from a family of somebody who's revered as a father of the nation and a great symbol of African socialism.

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