Big Daddy Takes Charge

Six months ago Uganda's President Apolo Milton Obote boasted that he was "perhaps the only African leader not afraid of a military coup." Last week Obote was proved to be more foolhardy than farsighted as his army staged Black Africa's 27th coup d'etat in little more than a decade. Random battles raged from Kampala, Uganda's lovely capital city in the hills beside Lake Victoria, to Gulu in the north. At the Entebbe International Airport, a rebel tank clanked up to the front door and fired a shell at the far wall; the target was a portrait of Obote, but three waiting passengers, including two Canadian priests, were killed by shrapnel.

More than 16 hours after the fighting broke out, Radio Uganda announced that Obote had been overthrown. Then, after a musical interlude (I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now), it introduced his successor: Major General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dada, 46, a huge (6 ft. 3 in., 240 Ibs.) army careerist who once reigned as Uganda's heavyweight boxing champion and has been armed-forces chief of staff since 1966.

Act of Treason. The response in Kampala, where Obote was never popular, was jubilant. Cheering crowds trampled on thousands of framed Obote photographs. Some tried to scale the walls of the 17-story Apolo Hotel, Obote's namesake, to tear down its huge neon sign. Others attempted to commandeer a tank to blast an engraving of Obote from the seal of the Parliament building.

Obote, en route home from the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference, took refuge in Dar es Salaam, capital of neighboring Tanzania. His host, President Julius Nyerere, denounced the coup as "an act of treason to the whole course of African progress." It may also have an adverse effect on the East African Community, a common market that Uganda shares with Tanzania and Kenya. Obote accused Amin of corruption and chicanery, blamed the takeover on the Israelis (who help train Uganda's armed forces) and vowed that he would go home as President. It was far more likely, however, that his political career was at an end.

The Late King Freddie. As Uganda neared independence a decade ago, the shrewdly opportunistic Obote skillfully manipulated the hereditary leaders of Uganda's four tribal kingdoms. He won the support of Sir Edward Mutesa II, the Kabaka of Buganda (more widely known as "King Freddie"), by promising to create a federal system that would preserve the identity of the four kingdoms. After independence in 1962, Obote became Prime Minister and the Kabaka became President. Four years later, however, Obote attempted to unify the country by ousting the Kabaka; forced into penniless exile in London, Freddie died of alcohol poisoning in 1969.

Obote, an insecure but vain man who has been described by a Uganda journalist as a "captivating one-way conversationalist," grew increasingly suspicious after assuming the presidency. More and more, he resorted to the use of emergency powers to stifle his opposition. According to Amin, this distrust reached its zenith in recent weeks, when Obote concocted a plot to purge the army of everyone except members of two northern tribes--his own Langi and the neighboring Acholi. Amin, who belongs to a smaller northern tribe, the Kakwa, said that he got wind of the scheme only last week, when he returned home and found an army halftrack parked in his driveway. Inside was a wounded driver, who told Amin that the purge had already begun. Amin rallied most of the army behind him. Clashes with Obote loyalists lasted less than 24 hours, with an estimated 100 soldiers and 20 civilians killed.

Amin accused Obote of indulging in "drink, smoking and women and maintaining an idle life at public expense." Despite Obote's loudly proclaimed "move to the left" in 1969, said Amin, Obote merely created "a wealthy class of leaders who are talking of socialism while they grow richer and the common men poorer."

Amin promised to hold free elections as soon as possible and to permit all parties--including Obote's own People's Congress Party--to participate. In his first private interview, the general told TIME Correspondent Eric Robins that even Obote was "free to stand again as President." He invited political exiles to come home, but added: "There will be no return to the four tribal kingdoms; Uganda will remain a republic." He also freed 55 political prisoners, including a former Prime Minister, a former army commander and seven former Cabinet members, some of whom had been held without charge since 1966.

Thumps and Pumps. Big Daddy, firmly in charge, treated Ugandans to a lavish dose of his personal style. An outgoing man with four wives and seven children, he thumps backs, pumps hands and roars unrestrainedly at jokes. He drives his own open Jeep--"just to show that I am in command." A school dropout after second grade, he insists: "I am not an ambitious man who wants to remove a portrait of one man and replace it with my own."

His most crowd-pleasing gesture last week was his promise to the Baganda that he would bring home the Kabaka's body from London for burial with full honors. The tribesmen celebrated wildly--perhaps too wildly. A number of the Baganda, who either do not believe or never heard that their Kabaka is dead, are convinced that poor old King Freddie will be coming home alive.

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