NBC is releasing SNL on DVD, and I've been watching the early episodes (the first four seasons). In 1976, '77, and '79 Garrett Morris played Amin. Yes, it's a sketch comedy show, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that it's a wholly mindless one. Ah, we'll trick them into current events with laughter!
If you have watched/are going to watch the video, you don't need to read the next paragraph.
Beyond that, I was struck by the appallingly familiar chain of events surrounding Amin's regime. Obote is voted in; Amin, Britain, and Israel work together to overthrow Obote. Amin wreaks havoc in Uganda. Museveni spends the 1970s building a resistance to help rid the Ugandans of the tyranny and massacre they have to endure for eight years. Success! Amin is ousted! Another election is held, and Museveni is not elected, Obote is reelected. Here's where it gets tricky, does Museveni really create the NRA solely because he believes Obote's people rigged the election (hello modern day United States, Iran, Afghanistan), or is he also pissed at the fact that, after all he has done to free the Ugandans, there's a possibility that he was passed over? Regardless, he stages a coup in 1986 and, for all his want to be a good and legitimate ruler, speaks to the Acholi people in a retributionary (it's a word now) way (instead of prosecuting those perceived as having committed crimes against humanity (though both sides were involved in a civil war)). Then, of course, Northern rebel groups form to overthrow Museveni. The groups - again, those who say that they have good intentions and are working for the people - ultimately resort to "coercion, abduction, and terror."
It's like listening to Guns N' Roses' "Civil War" and then listening to "One in a Million" (which I wish I could believe was ironic or satirical and which I can barely believe Slash played on).
It's easy to think that everything would be O.K. if a "civilized" and democratic election were held. But how do we expect any country that has been colonized, ruled by force, and conspired against (Britain and Israel and Amin) to trust in an election when the first one (which was as recent as 1962) ended poorly and the second one (in 1979) was rigged and brought about civil war and the NRA? It's difficult to trust in a system you don't know; it's even more difficult to trust again a system you've seen fail. Taking rule by force seems like "doing things the hard way," but it's the model that has been in place and "worked" since the colonization of Africa began. Death, fear, resistance; these things seem to have had more staying power and lasting influence than democracy.
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