HISTORY: AMIN & THE PAN-AFRICAN FORCE. Picture: Idi Amin checks a bazooka rocket launcher.
During the Anti-Apartheid struggle, Idi Amin made the first ever suggestion for an African Military Force. His idea was for each African country to contribute 1000 men and military equipment to the contingent. The African Forces first mission he suggested, was to liberate Southern Africa from Apartheid and persisting colonialists. All the freedom fighters from Southern Africa including Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique, were already regular visitors to Uganda where Amin gave them sanctuary, training camps and any assistance he could. Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo and many Anti-Apartheid freedom fighters were respected guests in Uganda. Several were even accorded Ugandan passports/citizenship. Amin's Pan-Africanist struggle, particularly for the liberation of Southern Africa, is a most unmentioned chapter of his political activism. It is mainly because he fully embraced pro-African ideology against imperialism that he became the most vilified and maliciously ridiculed African president by a supposedly professional, unbiased, colonialist news media. To-date that negative image has been perpetuated through an even more venomous modern western media. Only Nelson Mandela upon his release in 1994, insisted on mentioning Amins efforts and assistance in the fight against Apartheid. It is unbelievable to hear young South Africans join in ridiculing Amin yet he worked tirelessly for their freedom back then. Today they have done the once unimaginable thing: Attack fellow Africans living in South Africa. Idi Amin had actually offered to command the African Force himself upto Cape Town to fight off Apartheid. His appeal wasn't heeded to by his fellow African leaders. Had the continent genuinely united militarily as well as politically, Africa would have controlled all its land and therefore all its mineral resources so as to empower itself economically for better trade and investment terms that first benefit the African continent and it's people. Written by Hussein J. L. Amin
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