God Help the People

Uganda's President Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin has established himself before the world as an ignorant, cruel and megalomaniacal despot. Last week, as his pronouncements grew wilder and wilder, East Africans were beginning to wonder whether Amin was not merely out of his depth in the job, but out of his mind as well. Items:

> He inspected Uganda's military bases seeking possible sites for transit camps for the 40,000 to 50,000 Asians of British citizenship whom he has ordered expelled by Nov. 7. Amin accuses the British government of not granting immigration vouchers quickly enough, but the real bottleneck is his own government--which, as of last week, had issued exit permits for only 60 Asians. Nonetheless, Amin insists that any Asians still in the country on Nov. 7 will be interned. The decision to uproot the Asian community, he has said, came straight from Allah.

> Amin accused "British crooks" of plotting to assassinate him, and put under surveillance all 7,000 Britons living in Uganda. He also charged that Britain was planning a "land, sea and air invasion" of Uganda. When it was pointed out that landlocked Uganda is miles from any ocean, Amin belittled British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home for betraying his "ignorance about Africa" by plotting a naval attack in the first place. He greeted the newly arrived Canadian High Commissioner in Kampala, William Olivier, by asking him when Canada intended to throw out the Queen and install a Canadian as head of state. Replied a startled Olivier: "I am not a prophet."

> In a cable to U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Amin declared that Hitler had been right about the Jews because "the Israelis are not working in the interests of the people of the world, and that is why they burned the Israelis alive with gas in the soil of Germany." He once admired the Israelis. Only a year ago, while visiting Jerusalem, the Moslem Amin had asked the Israeli air force to fly him to Mecca. Since then, however, after receiving a promise of aid from Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, he has expelled all Israelis from Uganda, including military advisers that had helped train the Ugandan army, Amin's power base. Now he demanded that all Israelis, like the Ugandan Asians, be resettled in Britain.

To Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, who has opposed Amin from the beginning, Amin sent an incoherent telegram: "I want to assure you that I love you very much and if you had been a woman I would have considered marrying you." Nyerere did not reply. Neighboring Kenya's President Jomo Kenyatta watched Amin's wild career in silent horror. Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda condemned Amin's actions as "terrible, abominable, shameful." Added the Times of Zambia: "Only in the befuddled mind of a punch-drunk ex-boxer could the fact be disputed that his operations against the Asians are giving Africa a bad name. God help the people of Uganda."

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