Idi Amin:I will exercise the function of the Head of Government of the Republic of Uganda. So help me God.
Amin:I have been honoured by the highest order of the Conqueror of the British imperialism in Uganda
Idi Amin:This I must make absolutely clear. You must teach people to love their leader
Idi Amin:If the people want me I will go back and I am sure that I will contribute more for the people of Uganda
Vox popWe all the people who were at that time at least have to remember our people who passed out. Me, I an not happy if I see Amin again
Man being interviewed:I heard that he even killed his own child
Man being interviewed:Very few of the children in the age range of 20 and below have heard of Idi Amin so when they come and see things like this maybe they get interested
COM:Idi Amin returned to Uganda in the form of American actor Forest Whitaker who’s starring in “The last King of Scotland” a thriller set in Amin’s Uganda. This is the first time since his death that Idi Amin has been portrayed on film.
COM:“The last King of Scotland” is based on the novel by Giles Foden and tells the story of a fictional Scottish doctor played by James McAvoy who becomes Idi Amin’s closest friend and advisor
Idi Amin:Scottish? Why didn’t you say so?
COM:The making of this film by a British crew in Uganda about such a controversial figure raises a number of questions. How will Ugandans react to this interpretation of their history and how does their view of Idi Amin differ from that of the west? How do you place a fictional story into a historical setting?
COM:And is it possible to separate the real Idi Amin from the strange and bizarre stories that surround him?
Film director: One of the things that has occurred to me while I’ve been here is that up until Nelson Mandela, I think Idi Amin was the most famous African ever in history
Vox pop:Ever since he came to power in 1971 there has been no end to the strange and sometimes horrific stories of how he’s been holding on to power in Uganda
Vox pop:There’ve been reports of numerous massacres, and twelve of his ministers have already fled the country
Film director:All the stories about his cannibalism, witchcraft and multiple partners, he kind of represents all that’s worst and most savage about the dark continent
Actor playing role of Idi:The picture that I had was a sort of colonialised version of who he was
Vox pop:This monster image of the black man who was evil incarnate.
Actor playing role of Idi:Certainly there were many travesties that happened. But it’s a much more complicated and much more complete story. He’s a much more whole man than the image I had
Vox popOne thing that I like about this particular script is that it’s not just a demonisation of Idi Amin and in a way creates what the international community did not see of Idi Amin
Vox pop:Amin’s rating in the country is different from what people think in the outside
Vox popI think some people still rate Idi Amin very highly. He is a patriot. He is a nationalist.
Vox pop:For me, Amin, I think he is a hero I look at him as a hero who tried to bring out Uganda’s nationality and trying to uplift the cultural heritage of our country. I met him when I was doing a brass band and everybody was quite fighting for his hand.
Vox pop:He was so huge and when I put my little palm, my little hand, it just disappeared into his big palm as if I had no hand at all. Ha! Ha!
Vox pop:He made himself this superman and this demigod who could do things that hadn’t been done before. He could dare the British. He could dare the Americans. He could dare anybody. He threatened to go to South Africa and kick out the Boers. He was that type of guy. He recruited people. He offered aid to the British. Ha. Ha. That’s funny. That’s quite funny.
Vox popIdi Idi Idi AminMost amazing man there’s ever beenThe general, the president, the king of the seaIdi Idi Idi AminThe most amazing man that you will have seen
Rallying shout:Uganda Moto
Jon Snow:Amin was larger than life. He was a huge figure. I’m six foot four and even I felt somewhat dwarfed by him. But he was bulky with it. I mean initially he was always quite jolly and the whole of him kind of erupted into Ha! Ha! Ha! There’s nothing really immediately sinister about him but yet his eyes were rather cold.
Amin:I want to ask you. Are you not afraid of interviewing the conqueror of the British Empire as you are British?
Amin:You are not afraid of me?
COM:The film of “The Last King of Scotland” and the novel it is based on places a completely fictional character into the court of Idi Amin.
Foden:If you want to take people who have read it as pure history which it isn’t. It’s a fiction. I often say it’s 80% fiction but mostly fact but mostly fact which sort of gives the sense of its confused status like that
Vox pop:I read the book seven years ago. What I loved about “The Last King of Scotland”, that you had the thriller aspect, that aspect of it, but set against this regime that existed
COMThe film’s director is Kevin Macdonald, a documentary maker best known for the award winning “Touching the Void”. This is his first non-documentary film.
Film Director:Our aim never was to make a film historically accurate. We have taken liberties as the novel does and I think one of the reasons we feel happy doing that with Amin in particular is because there’s something about him which is kind of almost more fictional than it is real. You never really can pin down what the historical reality is.
Vox pop:Amin is now over time become part of the entertainment scene in Uganda. In terms of real memory he is sinking back into the archives
COMThere are few facts known about Amin’s early life. What is known is that he joined the British Army in 1946 where he soon proved himself as an accomplished sportsman and he was Uganda’s heavyweight boxing champion for 9 years.
One of Amin’s former Army colleagues:I knew him terribly well for ten years. I would say quite honestly that this man is a good friend. He had a wonderful indefinable quality of leadership. He was a born leader of man and he was a very successful soldier.
Film director:When he was in the British Army he was a kind of licensed killer and there are all sorts of stories about the things he did when he was in the British Army that was kind of let go because he was, you know, as I was saying, he was licensed to do these things.
Jon Snow:How’s it going?
Kevin Macdonald:Good to see you
Jon Snow:Have you got a Ugandan handshake?
Kevin Macdonald:Aye, I’ve got a Ugandan handshake. I know them all.
Jon Snow:I think we can say the British were responsible for Amin. They found him. They made him a Sergeant Major and because they had not produced a black officer class in Uganda yet, on independence they said: “OK who are our more senior people we have?
Jon Snow“Look at this big chap”
COM:By the time Uganda had achieved independence from Britain in 1961, the British had appointed Amin to effendi thereby ensuring that he was one of the most powerful men in the Ugandan army
COMThis gave him the opportunity to seize power from
President Milton Obote in a military coup in 1971
Film director:The reality about him is that everyone in the country had really welcomed him coming to power and there was a kind of jubilation on the streets
Film director:We start with that kind of Amin, an Amin who was loved by his people
Vox pop:We men of Ugandan Armed Forces are decided to take over power from Obote and hand it to our fellow soldier Major General Idi Amin Dada
Vox pop:Oh it was very very hopeful. It was the masses, the kind of rallies we used to address in the armoured vehicle. He just told all the people to get on with it, setting out to a brave new world
Vox pop:He was, like, the first president who came to the people, first president who seemed to care
COM:Although Dr Garrigan is a fictional character, it is true that whilst President, Idi Amin was treated by a number of British doctors
Vox pop:I think he was what we called hyper manic. He was excited. He felt that he had a better understanding than most people of what was going on and that his ideas which on the whole were fairly obvious were in fact the ideas of a genius and that he owed it to the world to put the world right
Vox pop:Recently General Amin sent a telegram to the Queen inviting himself on a state visit to Britain this August. He told the Queen that he wanted to meet leaders of British liberation movements – the Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalists. The Queen has not yet replied to this telegram.
Doctor:Other examples of it were, I think, the fact that he thought so much. People who become excited and have ideas of grandeur, who think they have the answer to complicated problems in a sense loose touch with everyday reality.
COM:As the character of Dr Garrigan is drawn closer into the world of Idi Amin, he witnesses the increasing brutality of the regime.
Member of film crew :We couldn’t do a film about the human side of Idi Amin without showing some of the real brutality that happened. We had to show that, as well as the charismatic, you know, humorous, side that people also fell for.
Member of film crew:Reports started filtering to Amin and creating the suspicions which I think was the ignition point for the paranoia that eventually led to most of the actions that he took.
Vox pop:I would have said Amin is a very sensitive person like any other president but if you identify yourself that you want to remove you from his power, so you are an enemy. So he will react against you in any way he likes.
Idi Amin:The British government has broken its promises to Uganda and because of that I have decided to expel all Asians from this country
COM:Idi Amin’s announcement that he was giving all Asians living in Uganda just ninety days to leave the country caused an international outcry and was met with horror by his British mentors
Idi Amin:My economy, it has been milked by the non-citizens of Uganda, I will not allow this I Uganda
COM:The worsening relationship between Britain and Uganda is one of the themes that “The last King of Scotland” explores
McAvoy:This film is not about Idi, not just about Uganda. It’s also about how Britain and maybe the rest of the world but certainly Britain, I’d say Britain more than anywhere else, looked at Uganda at this time because I’m very much Britain’s looking glass in this film, you know.
Actor playing the part of Amin:Look at me! The British newspapers call me a madman. The American newspapers say that I am a cannibal.
Jon Snow:In the early 1970s there was still a lot of racism about and I think Amin appealed to a racist stereotype of Africa
Jon Snow:If he hadn’t existed we would have had to invent him. He was the perfect kind of, larger than life, ogerous, you know people making a monster of a dictator.
Film director:And he became hugely good copy and people didn’t necessarily pay attention to the more serious side both positive and negative because they were so loving him as a kind of caricature
Jon Snow:There was no great interest in portraying Africa as other than a basket case and Amin was a classic African dictator. That kind of filled the tabloid need “See what they’re like”
Actor playing the part of Amin:“He is a cannibal! These are lies!”
Actor playing the part of Amin:One of the reasons why he’s so demonised too is because of he was a figure that really stood against, you know, colonisation, and very clearly that’s what he did. He was like, “Get out. We can handle our own affairs” and there are very few people who have done that.
Amin:They should not have continued with the propaganda because today I can control the British myself
Vox pop:It’s also been reported that you pride yourself as the last king of Scotland
COMIn 1974 Idi Amin offered to head the fight for Scottish independence and proclaimed himself the last King of Scotland. He’d developed a lifelong affection for the country whilst in the King’s African Rifles where his commanding officers were all Scottish
Macdonald:We might appear sometimes to be very bossy, telling you what to do. Only because we have to get the job done.
Macdonald :I think Amin was like a kind of distorted mirror reflecting back to the colonial masters in Britain what he had learnt from them. So he took ideas like bagpipes, kilt and imposed them into a completely inappropriate world
Foden:By attaching himself to Scotland and in particular the idea of an independent Scotland he was able to keep the connection of the colonial power, one that he wanted, yet also fight against it. He wanted the connection but hated it at the same time.
Amin:If you go to Scotland you will talk to the people, they will welcome you to their house. If you go to where there is English they don’t want to sit near an African. If they see a black man, they say he is monkey or dog. English themselves, they are the racists completely, not the Scottish.
Film director:In some horrible way he was like a puppet come to life. He was like a plaything of the Empire that turned round and said Boo.
Voice 1:You don’t have to do any nasty scarring on they guy’s left leg.
Voice 2:No blood. I really think no blood. He’s got to be battered to death
Voice 3:Absolutely
COMIsolated abroad and with mounting opposition at home an increasingly paranoid Amin began to place uneducated tribesmen and soldiers in governmental posts and positions of power. They were able to detain and to kill with immunity
Jon Snow:I’ve got some secret files here. I found these at the command post after the Tanzanians liberated. Right? In here, which I think is the most sinister document of all is a list of the employees of the State Research Department. You know what that was? It was the secret police. Yes
Vox pop:Those State Research Bureau were fellows who were always so flamboyant in dress. Idi Amin had very smart soldiers and very smart intelligent guys. So they had all these well polished shoes and they always wore dark shades.
Jon Snow:It’s impossible to overstate just how frightening and terrifying this place was. Everybody was watching everybody else.
Jon Snow:In one of the files that I recovered from the command post. Lists and lists and lists of State Security people. That means lists and lists of names of people who were spying on each other, on everyone else, you know, the paranoia. That’s what it was, paranoia.
Vox pop:State Research. We are so scared of them. You are walking the street, you see a soldier, you just dodge and find another route. We are very very scared of soldiers
Vox pop:They were people who have no value for human beings, and I remember one of the soldiers, Maran Mungu, who said it was more expensive to kill a chicken than a human being because you pay for the chicken. They had no value for life.
Vox pop:Good
Actor:I’ve been sacrificed. Ha! Ha!
Vox pop:Most of the actors, the young men who are acting. They don’t know what the hell Amin was all about. There are no old memories to go by of. Amin
Vox pop:Quite a few people have been involved in the film who had a very strong personal experience of Idi. When they tell you their experiences it really stops you short to remind you if you weren’t aware already that it is a very important story that we’re telling and that we need to get it just as right as we possibly can.
Ugandan :In the film I play the character of the Air Force Commander. Amin whisked him away so my role was brief. To me, I think Idi was monstrous because I lived through his time. I know he was monstrous.
Ugandan:If I took an example of my own father. He was a senior police officer in this country and Idi Amin picked a bone with him. So he fines him and some time about February of 1971, or March, he was among the prisoners transferred to Mutukula prison which is on the border with Tanzania. They took him there with 1500 other prisoners. And there he was killed. They just mutilated him. So he was left among the mass of mass graves, mutilated in a pit, somewhere near the Tanzania border
Ugandan:This was premeditated killing of innocent people, political opponents.
COM:This is a mass grave in which at least one hundred bodies lie buried. All victims of Idi Amin’s army. The corpses include those of women and young children. The grave is the most appalling single piece of evidence yet found in Uganda on the scale and the type of killing which the country endured under Amin.
COMDuring these dangerous times, Michael’s generation grew up hearing strange and dark myths about their leader, that Amin ate the flesh of his victims and that he killed his own son
Vox pop:Up to now it’s very difficult for me to believe that Amin didn’t eat the liver of his son, Moses. Such a scary image had been spread about Idi Amin that you felt everything negative said was true. We feared him so much. If he could kill so much maybe he could also do some of these other things.
COMAnother of these myths is that Amin killed his second wife Kay and mutilated her body
Former Ugandan Minister of Health :Kay was Amin’s wife number two. She was a pleasant lady. I knew her quite well. She was well educated and we thought it was a welcome development because she was able to polish his English.
COMThe film makers used the myths around Kay for dramatic effect by placing Dr Garrigan in the centre of her story
McAvoy:It was important for me not to know anything. It was important for me to believe it all really. As soon as I started realising what’s really not real, .I’d start to justify reasons why we should cut that.
Member of film crew:We debated for a long time whether using the story of Kay was the right thing to do because it’s such a horrific story but we really wanted to show the violence that was very close to Idi.
Actress playing role of Kay:There are things about her life that people are very sensitive about in Uganda. People who remember her get very upset when they talk about her. While it’s true that she did have an affaire behind Idi’s back and she did become pregnant and seek an illegal abortion, she did not have an affaire with a white man, which is, you know, I guess, dramatic licence.
Film director:The only time in the film when Garrigan actually is inserted into a historical event and that historical event is shifted to make room for him
COMKay’s body was found dismembered in the back of a car. To this day it is not clear how she died, who killed her. What is known is that Idi Amin ordered the limbs to be sewn back on so that the family could view the body
Former Ugandan Minister of Health:The body was prepared for viewing. He directed me to have that done and for me to be there when they came to look at their deceased mother
Vox pop:“…and I won’t let you see it if you don’t want to see it, OK?”
Vox pop:We just felt that it was such a powerful moment to dramatise Idi’s frame of mind and see the way that Idi operated, it was valid to use it and that we were not just being gratuitous about it. For a while Michael Carlin, the designer, had these sketches on his wall of different positions that limbs could be in. I guess that was probably the way it would have been.
Vox pop:People have tried to be clever by half by saying all sorts of things about Kay’s body. They said Amin ordered the limbs to be sewn back in reverse but this was rubbish. That I can say with good authority as Minister of Health at the time.
Actor playing role of Amin:Idi Amin kills her, takes the body, cuts it up and sews the parts on differently is one of the most gruesome images of the film and I think that image will stick with people really strongly. And that’s, that’s not true
Actor playing role of Amin r:Recently I started to wonder why make this film. I know that personally I have worked really hard to find the spirit of this man. I am very sensitive to his betrayal as an African figure.
Member of film crew:I can’t wait to see how the Ugandans will react to this film. I think this is really a big unknown. I think any time anybody sees a film about themselves; it’s always quite hard to watch because they can see the difference between the specific reality and the generality of the film.
Vox pop:From this film, one of the best parts of it is to bring out the history that people are so rapidly forgetting because if we do not look from this view at our history, we do not know which way we’re going.
Vox pop:Until we start looking at our history very critically and know where are the mistakes in the history, only then can we try to pave our way for the future.
Ugandan actor:Our sons will ask us how could Amin have come into power. How? Because they didn’t see it so it’s easy for it to happen again because they don’t know. Exposure to films like this maybe will help people.
Ugandan actor:Such things happen. You go to the west and you find these guys don’t know where Uganda is on the map but they know Idi Amin. So we should strive to make the country bigger than Amin. He! He!
Vox pop:Idi, did you write to the Queen of England offering yourself to be her lover? LaughterVox pop:Did you call him Idi?Vox popYesVox pop:You can’t call him Idi. You would be executed.
Amin:I have been honoured by the highest order of the Conqueror of the British imperialism in Uganda
Idi Amin:This I must make absolutely clear. You must teach people to love their leader
Idi Amin:If the people want me I will go back and I am sure that I will contribute more for the people of Uganda
Vox popWe all the people who were at that time at least have to remember our people who passed out. Me, I an not happy if I see Amin again
Man being interviewed:I heard that he even killed his own child
Man being interviewed:Very few of the children in the age range of 20 and below have heard of Idi Amin so when they come and see things like this maybe they get interested
COM:Idi Amin returned to Uganda in the form of American actor Forest Whitaker who’s starring in “The last King of Scotland” a thriller set in Amin’s Uganda. This is the first time since his death that Idi Amin has been portrayed on film.
COM:“The last King of Scotland” is based on the novel by Giles Foden and tells the story of a fictional Scottish doctor played by James McAvoy who becomes Idi Amin’s closest friend and advisor
Idi Amin:Scottish? Why didn’t you say so?
COM:The making of this film by a British crew in Uganda about such a controversial figure raises a number of questions. How will Ugandans react to this interpretation of their history and how does their view of Idi Amin differ from that of the west? How do you place a fictional story into a historical setting?
COM:And is it possible to separate the real Idi Amin from the strange and bizarre stories that surround him?
Film director: One of the things that has occurred to me while I’ve been here is that up until Nelson Mandela, I think Idi Amin was the most famous African ever in history
Vox pop:Ever since he came to power in 1971 there has been no end to the strange and sometimes horrific stories of how he’s been holding on to power in Uganda
Vox pop:There’ve been reports of numerous massacres, and twelve of his ministers have already fled the country
Film director:All the stories about his cannibalism, witchcraft and multiple partners, he kind of represents all that’s worst and most savage about the dark continent
Actor playing role of Idi:The picture that I had was a sort of colonialised version of who he was
Vox pop:This monster image of the black man who was evil incarnate.
Actor playing role of Idi:Certainly there were many travesties that happened. But it’s a much more complicated and much more complete story. He’s a much more whole man than the image I had
Vox popOne thing that I like about this particular script is that it’s not just a demonisation of Idi Amin and in a way creates what the international community did not see of Idi Amin
Vox pop:Amin’s rating in the country is different from what people think in the outside
Vox popI think some people still rate Idi Amin very highly. He is a patriot. He is a nationalist.
Vox pop:For me, Amin, I think he is a hero I look at him as a hero who tried to bring out Uganda’s nationality and trying to uplift the cultural heritage of our country. I met him when I was doing a brass band and everybody was quite fighting for his hand.
Vox pop:He was so huge and when I put my little palm, my little hand, it just disappeared into his big palm as if I had no hand at all. Ha! Ha!
Vox pop:He made himself this superman and this demigod who could do things that hadn’t been done before. He could dare the British. He could dare the Americans. He could dare anybody. He threatened to go to South Africa and kick out the Boers. He was that type of guy. He recruited people. He offered aid to the British. Ha. Ha. That’s funny. That’s quite funny.
Vox popIdi Idi Idi AminMost amazing man there’s ever beenThe general, the president, the king of the seaIdi Idi Idi AminThe most amazing man that you will have seen
Rallying shout:Uganda Moto
Jon Snow:Amin was larger than life. He was a huge figure. I’m six foot four and even I felt somewhat dwarfed by him. But he was bulky with it. I mean initially he was always quite jolly and the whole of him kind of erupted into Ha! Ha! Ha! There’s nothing really immediately sinister about him but yet his eyes were rather cold.
Amin:I want to ask you. Are you not afraid of interviewing the conqueror of the British Empire as you are British?
Amin:You are not afraid of me?
COM:The film of “The Last King of Scotland” and the novel it is based on places a completely fictional character into the court of Idi Amin.
Foden:If you want to take people who have read it as pure history which it isn’t. It’s a fiction. I often say it’s 80% fiction but mostly fact but mostly fact which sort of gives the sense of its confused status like that
Vox pop:I read the book seven years ago. What I loved about “The Last King of Scotland”, that you had the thriller aspect, that aspect of it, but set against this regime that existed
COMThe film’s director is Kevin Macdonald, a documentary maker best known for the award winning “Touching the Void”. This is his first non-documentary film.
Film Director:Our aim never was to make a film historically accurate. We have taken liberties as the novel does and I think one of the reasons we feel happy doing that with Amin in particular is because there’s something about him which is kind of almost more fictional than it is real. You never really can pin down what the historical reality is.
Vox pop:Amin is now over time become part of the entertainment scene in Uganda. In terms of real memory he is sinking back into the archives
COMThere are few facts known about Amin’s early life. What is known is that he joined the British Army in 1946 where he soon proved himself as an accomplished sportsman and he was Uganda’s heavyweight boxing champion for 9 years.
One of Amin’s former Army colleagues:I knew him terribly well for ten years. I would say quite honestly that this man is a good friend. He had a wonderful indefinable quality of leadership. He was a born leader of man and he was a very successful soldier.
Film director:When he was in the British Army he was a kind of licensed killer and there are all sorts of stories about the things he did when he was in the British Army that was kind of let go because he was, you know, as I was saying, he was licensed to do these things.
Jon Snow:How’s it going?
Kevin Macdonald:Good to see you
Jon Snow:Have you got a Ugandan handshake?
Kevin Macdonald:Aye, I’ve got a Ugandan handshake. I know them all.
Jon Snow:I think we can say the British were responsible for Amin. They found him. They made him a Sergeant Major and because they had not produced a black officer class in Uganda yet, on independence they said: “OK who are our more senior people we have?
Jon Snow“Look at this big chap”
COM:By the time Uganda had achieved independence from Britain in 1961, the British had appointed Amin to effendi thereby ensuring that he was one of the most powerful men in the Ugandan army
COMThis gave him the opportunity to seize power from
President Milton Obote in a military coup in 1971
Film director:The reality about him is that everyone in the country had really welcomed him coming to power and there was a kind of jubilation on the streets
Film director:We start with that kind of Amin, an Amin who was loved by his people
Vox pop:We men of Ugandan Armed Forces are decided to take over power from Obote and hand it to our fellow soldier Major General Idi Amin Dada
Vox pop:Oh it was very very hopeful. It was the masses, the kind of rallies we used to address in the armoured vehicle. He just told all the people to get on with it, setting out to a brave new world
Vox pop:He was, like, the first president who came to the people, first president who seemed to care
COM:Although Dr Garrigan is a fictional character, it is true that whilst President, Idi Amin was treated by a number of British doctors
Vox pop:I think he was what we called hyper manic. He was excited. He felt that he had a better understanding than most people of what was going on and that his ideas which on the whole were fairly obvious were in fact the ideas of a genius and that he owed it to the world to put the world right
Vox pop:Recently General Amin sent a telegram to the Queen inviting himself on a state visit to Britain this August. He told the Queen that he wanted to meet leaders of British liberation movements – the Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalists. The Queen has not yet replied to this telegram.
Doctor:Other examples of it were, I think, the fact that he thought so much. People who become excited and have ideas of grandeur, who think they have the answer to complicated problems in a sense loose touch with everyday reality.
COM:As the character of Dr Garrigan is drawn closer into the world of Idi Amin, he witnesses the increasing brutality of the regime.
Member of film crew :We couldn’t do a film about the human side of Idi Amin without showing some of the real brutality that happened. We had to show that, as well as the charismatic, you know, humorous, side that people also fell for.
Member of film crew:Reports started filtering to Amin and creating the suspicions which I think was the ignition point for the paranoia that eventually led to most of the actions that he took.
Vox pop:I would have said Amin is a very sensitive person like any other president but if you identify yourself that you want to remove you from his power, so you are an enemy. So he will react against you in any way he likes.
Idi Amin:The British government has broken its promises to Uganda and because of that I have decided to expel all Asians from this country
COM:Idi Amin’s announcement that he was giving all Asians living in Uganda just ninety days to leave the country caused an international outcry and was met with horror by his British mentors
Idi Amin:My economy, it has been milked by the non-citizens of Uganda, I will not allow this I Uganda
COM:The worsening relationship between Britain and Uganda is one of the themes that “The last King of Scotland” explores
McAvoy:This film is not about Idi, not just about Uganda. It’s also about how Britain and maybe the rest of the world but certainly Britain, I’d say Britain more than anywhere else, looked at Uganda at this time because I’m very much Britain’s looking glass in this film, you know.
Actor playing the part of Amin:Look at me! The British newspapers call me a madman. The American newspapers say that I am a cannibal.
Jon Snow:In the early 1970s there was still a lot of racism about and I think Amin appealed to a racist stereotype of Africa
Jon Snow:If he hadn’t existed we would have had to invent him. He was the perfect kind of, larger than life, ogerous, you know people making a monster of a dictator.
Film director:And he became hugely good copy and people didn’t necessarily pay attention to the more serious side both positive and negative because they were so loving him as a kind of caricature
Jon Snow:There was no great interest in portraying Africa as other than a basket case and Amin was a classic African dictator. That kind of filled the tabloid need “See what they’re like”
Actor playing the part of Amin:“He is a cannibal! These are lies!”
Actor playing the part of Amin:One of the reasons why he’s so demonised too is because of he was a figure that really stood against, you know, colonisation, and very clearly that’s what he did. He was like, “Get out. We can handle our own affairs” and there are very few people who have done that.
Amin:They should not have continued with the propaganda because today I can control the British myself
Vox pop:It’s also been reported that you pride yourself as the last king of Scotland
COMIn 1974 Idi Amin offered to head the fight for Scottish independence and proclaimed himself the last King of Scotland. He’d developed a lifelong affection for the country whilst in the King’s African Rifles where his commanding officers were all Scottish
Macdonald:We might appear sometimes to be very bossy, telling you what to do. Only because we have to get the job done.
Macdonald :I think Amin was like a kind of distorted mirror reflecting back to the colonial masters in Britain what he had learnt from them. So he took ideas like bagpipes, kilt and imposed them into a completely inappropriate world
Foden:By attaching himself to Scotland and in particular the idea of an independent Scotland he was able to keep the connection of the colonial power, one that he wanted, yet also fight against it. He wanted the connection but hated it at the same time.
Amin:If you go to Scotland you will talk to the people, they will welcome you to their house. If you go to where there is English they don’t want to sit near an African. If they see a black man, they say he is monkey or dog. English themselves, they are the racists completely, not the Scottish.
Film director:In some horrible way he was like a puppet come to life. He was like a plaything of the Empire that turned round and said Boo.
Voice 1:You don’t have to do any nasty scarring on they guy’s left leg.
Voice 2:No blood. I really think no blood. He’s got to be battered to death
Voice 3:Absolutely
COMIsolated abroad and with mounting opposition at home an increasingly paranoid Amin began to place uneducated tribesmen and soldiers in governmental posts and positions of power. They were able to detain and to kill with immunity
Jon Snow:I’ve got some secret files here. I found these at the command post after the Tanzanians liberated. Right? In here, which I think is the most sinister document of all is a list of the employees of the State Research Department. You know what that was? It was the secret police. Yes
Vox pop:Those State Research Bureau were fellows who were always so flamboyant in dress. Idi Amin had very smart soldiers and very smart intelligent guys. So they had all these well polished shoes and they always wore dark shades.
Jon Snow:It’s impossible to overstate just how frightening and terrifying this place was. Everybody was watching everybody else.
Jon Snow:In one of the files that I recovered from the command post. Lists and lists and lists of State Security people. That means lists and lists of names of people who were spying on each other, on everyone else, you know, the paranoia. That’s what it was, paranoia.
Vox pop:State Research. We are so scared of them. You are walking the street, you see a soldier, you just dodge and find another route. We are very very scared of soldiers
Vox pop:They were people who have no value for human beings, and I remember one of the soldiers, Maran Mungu, who said it was more expensive to kill a chicken than a human being because you pay for the chicken. They had no value for life.
Vox pop:Good
Actor:I’ve been sacrificed. Ha! Ha!
Vox pop:Most of the actors, the young men who are acting. They don’t know what the hell Amin was all about. There are no old memories to go by of. Amin
Vox pop:Quite a few people have been involved in the film who had a very strong personal experience of Idi. When they tell you their experiences it really stops you short to remind you if you weren’t aware already that it is a very important story that we’re telling and that we need to get it just as right as we possibly can.
Ugandan :In the film I play the character of the Air Force Commander. Amin whisked him away so my role was brief. To me, I think Idi was monstrous because I lived through his time. I know he was monstrous.
Ugandan:If I took an example of my own father. He was a senior police officer in this country and Idi Amin picked a bone with him. So he fines him and some time about February of 1971, or March, he was among the prisoners transferred to Mutukula prison which is on the border with Tanzania. They took him there with 1500 other prisoners. And there he was killed. They just mutilated him. So he was left among the mass of mass graves, mutilated in a pit, somewhere near the Tanzania border
Ugandan:This was premeditated killing of innocent people, political opponents.
COM:This is a mass grave in which at least one hundred bodies lie buried. All victims of Idi Amin’s army. The corpses include those of women and young children. The grave is the most appalling single piece of evidence yet found in Uganda on the scale and the type of killing which the country endured under Amin.
COMDuring these dangerous times, Michael’s generation grew up hearing strange and dark myths about their leader, that Amin ate the flesh of his victims and that he killed his own son
Vox pop:Up to now it’s very difficult for me to believe that Amin didn’t eat the liver of his son, Moses. Such a scary image had been spread about Idi Amin that you felt everything negative said was true. We feared him so much. If he could kill so much maybe he could also do some of these other things.
COMAnother of these myths is that Amin killed his second wife Kay and mutilated her body
Former Ugandan Minister of Health :Kay was Amin’s wife number two. She was a pleasant lady. I knew her quite well. She was well educated and we thought it was a welcome development because she was able to polish his English.
COMThe film makers used the myths around Kay for dramatic effect by placing Dr Garrigan in the centre of her story
McAvoy:It was important for me not to know anything. It was important for me to believe it all really. As soon as I started realising what’s really not real, .I’d start to justify reasons why we should cut that.
Member of film crew:We debated for a long time whether using the story of Kay was the right thing to do because it’s such a horrific story but we really wanted to show the violence that was very close to Idi.
Actress playing role of Kay:There are things about her life that people are very sensitive about in Uganda. People who remember her get very upset when they talk about her. While it’s true that she did have an affaire behind Idi’s back and she did become pregnant and seek an illegal abortion, she did not have an affaire with a white man, which is, you know, I guess, dramatic licence.
Film director:The only time in the film when Garrigan actually is inserted into a historical event and that historical event is shifted to make room for him
COMKay’s body was found dismembered in the back of a car. To this day it is not clear how she died, who killed her. What is known is that Idi Amin ordered the limbs to be sewn back on so that the family could view the body
Former Ugandan Minister of Health:The body was prepared for viewing. He directed me to have that done and for me to be there when they came to look at their deceased mother
Vox pop:“…and I won’t let you see it if you don’t want to see it, OK?”
Vox pop:We just felt that it was such a powerful moment to dramatise Idi’s frame of mind and see the way that Idi operated, it was valid to use it and that we were not just being gratuitous about it. For a while Michael Carlin, the designer, had these sketches on his wall of different positions that limbs could be in. I guess that was probably the way it would have been.
Vox pop:People have tried to be clever by half by saying all sorts of things about Kay’s body. They said Amin ordered the limbs to be sewn back in reverse but this was rubbish. That I can say with good authority as Minister of Health at the time.
Actor playing role of Amin:Idi Amin kills her, takes the body, cuts it up and sews the parts on differently is one of the most gruesome images of the film and I think that image will stick with people really strongly. And that’s, that’s not true
Actor playing role of Amin r:Recently I started to wonder why make this film. I know that personally I have worked really hard to find the spirit of this man. I am very sensitive to his betrayal as an African figure.
Member of film crew:I can’t wait to see how the Ugandans will react to this film. I think this is really a big unknown. I think any time anybody sees a film about themselves; it’s always quite hard to watch because they can see the difference between the specific reality and the generality of the film.
Vox pop:From this film, one of the best parts of it is to bring out the history that people are so rapidly forgetting because if we do not look from this view at our history, we do not know which way we’re going.
Vox pop:Until we start looking at our history very critically and know where are the mistakes in the history, only then can we try to pave our way for the future.
Ugandan actor:Our sons will ask us how could Amin have come into power. How? Because they didn’t see it so it’s easy for it to happen again because they don’t know. Exposure to films like this maybe will help people.
Ugandan actor:Such things happen. You go to the west and you find these guys don’t know where Uganda is on the map but they know Idi Amin. So we should strive to make the country bigger than Amin. He! He!
Vox pop:Idi, did you write to the Queen of England offering yourself to be her lover? LaughterVox pop:Did you call him Idi?Vox popYesVox pop:You can’t call him Idi. You would be executed.