While President Milton Obote attended a Commonwealth summit in Singapore, army commander Idi Amin seized control of Kampala, dissolved parliament, and declared himself president. What began as a coup welcomed by many Ugandans weary of Obote's rule descended into one of Africa's most violent dictatorships, marked by mass killings, the expulsion of Asian Ugandans, and international isolation.
Idi Amin, a former boxing champion and British colonial army sergeant who had risen through the ranks of Uganda's post-independence military, moved quickly and decisively. Tanks rolled through Kampala, the airport was seized, and radio stations announced the change of government before Obote, still in Singapore, fully understood what was happening. Many Ugandans initially celebrated, exhausted by Obote's increasingly authoritarian and economically troubled rule.
The celebration was short-lived. Amin's regime would go on to kill an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 people over eight years through purges of the army, ethnic massacres, and the terror of secret police units. In 1972 he expelled Uganda's entire Asian population of roughly 80,000 people, seizing their businesses and property, gutting the country's commercial economy overnight.
Amin cultivated a bizarre and terrifying public persona, styling himself "Conqueror of the British Empire" and holding boxing matches for foreign diplomats, while presiding over one of the era's most feared police states. He was finally driven from power in 1979 after invading Tanzania and being routed by a Tanzanian-led counter-invasion, fleeing into exile where he lived out his life in Saudi Arabia, never tried for his crimes.