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The Uganda–Tanzania War, the fall of

Idi Amin, and the failure of African
diplomacy, 1978–1979
a
George Roberts
a
Faculty of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Published online: 11 Aug 2014.
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To cite this article: George Roberts (2014) The Uganda–Tanzania War, the fall of Idi Amin, and the
failure of African diplomacy, 1978–1979, Journal of Eastern African Studies, 8:4, 692-709, DOI:
10.1080/17531055.2014.946236
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Journal of Eastern African Studies, 2014
Vol. 8, No. 4, 692–709, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2014.946236
The Uganda–Tanzania War, the fall of Idi Amin, and the failure of
African diplomacy, 1978–1979
George Roberts*
Faculty of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

(Received 14 April 2014; accepted 14 July 2014)
The Uganda–Tanzania War of 1978–1979 has received little attention from historians.
This article uses British diplomatic sources to explore the causes and course of the
conflict. In particular, it examines how Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere sought to
hide from and later justify to the rest of the world an invasion of Uganda and the
overthrowing of Idi Amin, actions that contravened the Charter of the Organisation of
African Unity (OAU). Distinct among contemporaneous African conflicts for its
noticeable lack of a Cold War context, the war demonstrated the shortcomings of the
OAU in resolving African conflicts. Despite some dissenting voices, Nyerere’s own
disregard for state sovereignty was largely overlooked, as the fall of Amin’s regime
was quietly welcomed by the majority of Africa’s leaders.
Keywords: Uganda; Tanzania; war; Idi Amin; Julius Nyerere; OAU
The Uganda–Tanzania War of 1978–1979 was a landmark event in post-colonial East

African history. In response to Idi Amin’s annexation of the Kagera Salient in north-
western Tanzania in November 1978, Julius Nyerere launched a controversial counter-
attack that routed Amin’s forces and swept him from power in April 1979. Rooted in a
deep rivalry between Amin and Nyerere, the conflict provoked bitter exchanges at the
Organisation of African Unity (OAU), contributed to the failure of ujamaa in Tanzania,
and brought an end to eight years of brutal dictatorship in Uganda.
However, the war remains something of a historiographical desert.1 Historians seem
reluctant to confront issues of international politics which resist interpretation that reject a
supposed Eurocentric focus on high diplomacy and the nation-state. A more practical
problem lies in the paucity of accessible state archive documentation relating to foreign
affairs in either Tanzania or Uganda. However, this can be partly overcome by the careful
use of the third-party government sources, especially in well-preserved and accessible
archives outside of Africa. This article uses recently declassified British diplomatic
documents produced by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to shed light on
the political dynamics surrounding the war.
The use of such sources is clearly not unproblematic. The information within them
represents the prejudices and interests of a small cadre of individuals, shaped by similar
backgrounds and guided by the same institutional practices.2 Yet this need not be a
critical issue, as Stephen Ellis argues, provided the ‘cardinal rules of gathering historical
*Email: [email protected]
© 2014 Taylor & Francis

Journal of Eastern African Studies 693
evidence’ are observed, just as historians of pre-colonial Africa have worked convin-
cingly with the accounts of European missionaries and travellers.3 If the despatches of
FCO diplomats reflect a narrow perspective on international affairs, the same privileged
position permits the historian access to a range of actors through reports of encounters
with Tanzanian, Ugandan, and other African officials and politicians. Provided due
attention is paid to its provenance, material can be clipped from the documentation and
triangulated with more journalistic accounts of the war to substantiate, supplement, and
occasionally counter existing narratives.
After an explanation of its causes, this article traces the war’s development, in
particular its diplomatic dimension and the failure of negotiations to broker a peace. It
then addresses the issues underlying this diplomatic crisis, Nyerere’s attempts to justify
his actions and the reasons for the acceptance of the Tanzanian counter-invasion by other
African leaders.
The origins of the conflict

The roots of the war lay in the coup d’état that brought General Amin to power in
January 1971. Nyerere had enjoyed close relations with deposed President Milton Obote,
having backed his socialist ‘Move to the Left’ policies. Nyerere refused to recognise the
new regime in Kampala and offered Obote and many of his supporters exile in Tanzania.
Thus began a bitter rivalry between the two presidents.
In September 1972, around 1000 armed Obote supporters crossed into southern
Uganda from north-western Tanzania and advanced on Kampala, with the tacit support of
Nyerere. Amin responded by bombing Tanzanian towns near the border. Nyerere was
encouraged by his generals to respond in kind but preferred to settle the conflict via a
settlement brokered by Somalia’s President, Siad Barre. On 5 October Tanzania and
Uganda signed the five-point Mogadishu Agreement, in which both agreed to withdraw
troops to 10 km behind the border and ceased to support forces hostile to the other’s
regime.
The agreement did little to stem the hostility between the two leaders. Nyerere refused
to share a platform with Amin. In 1975, he declined to travel to an OAU Summit held in
Kampala and chaired by Amin. ‘In Uganda, several thousand people have lost their lives’,
explained his Foreign Minister, John Malecela. ‘For African heads of state to go there to a
summit is tantamount to giving a blessing to these killings’.4 Together with a long-
running political dispute between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that culminated in Tanzania
closing its border with Kenya, this led to the collapse of the East African Community.5
For his part, Amin made routine threats to invade Tanzania, often with the intention of
distracting attention from the growing strife at home.
By a seventh year of violent and arbitrary government, Uganda faced economic
collapse. Amin’s disastrous ‘Economic War’, in which all residents of Asian descent were
expelled from Uganda and their businesses put under African ownership, ripped out the
country’s commercial core. By 1978, recourse to the black market was often the only
means to access consumer goods. Many peasants withdrew from the marketplace
altogether.6 The introduction of an American trade boycott in October 1978 on account of
Amin’s human rights record cut Uganda off from the largest market for its key coffee
export, a problem exacerbated by a coinciding global slump in coffee prices.
Amin’s regime concentrated power in the armed forces. By 1978, 64% of Cabinet
portfolios were held by members of the police, army, or prison service.7 Administrative
reforms removed control of 10 reorganised provinces from centralised district councils
694 G. Roberts
and gave them to semi-autonomous provincial governors, entrenching chains of

patronage. The spoils of the Economic War were allotted to military officers and leading
politicians, who became known as mafuta mingi – literally ‘dripping in cooking oil’, a
rare and expensive commodity amid the economic chaos.8
The beneficiaries of Amin’s policies also reflected his ethnic and religious
background. The army recruited heavily from the president’s own West Nile region,
together with large numbers of Muslim southern Sudanese and Nubian troops. Shortly
after the coup, he carried out the first of several bloody purges of Acholi and Langi
soldiers, who were believed to have been favoured by Obote. According to Tony Avirgan
and Martha Honey, ‘Amin effectively turned Uganda’s predominantly Christian and
Bantu society upside-down, creating a ruling elite that had no local base and owed its
position and loyalty only to Amin himself’.9

Terror became the order of the day. Opponents ‘disappeared’ or were summarily
executed, though the regime always denied responsibility. Even government office
offered no security: six of the 56 Cabinet ministers under Amin were killed in office or
soon after dismissal.10 The number of Ugandans killed under Amin is impossible to
estimate; Amnesty International claimed it was as high as 300,000.11 While the regime
was not necessarily responsible for every death, the prevailing anarchic conditions
provided cover for ethnic massacres and the settlement of private scores.12
By 1978, political tensions in Uganda were running high. Amin had become
increasingly uncompromising towards any sign of dissent. In August 1976, up to 100
student protestors were shot dead at Makerere University. In February 1977, Amin caused
outrage around the world when the Archbishop Luwum was murdered (the regime
disguising it as a ‘car accident’), following allegations that he was plotting with Obote,
days after the Archbishop had openly criticised the regime.13 A feud began between
Amin and his vice-president, Brigadier-General Mustafa Adrisi, who had built up his own
power base within the army. In April 1978, a dispute within the government was
immediately followed by another ‘car accident’, in which Adrisi was seriously injured.
Several army generals were stripped of their positions. On 8 October, Amin narrowly
survived a coup attempt. His support base – deliberately kept narrow in order to secure
loyalty – had disintegrated in the face of an economic collapse that dried up the vital
patronage channels to the military.14
Uganda’s occupation of the Kagera Salient

The circumstances surrounding the outbreak of war are murky, complicated at the time by
the impossibility of obtaining reliable first-hand information from the front and the two
antagonists’ contradictory stories. Amin made allegations of Tanzanian incursions into
Ugandan territory in the weeks leading up to the war. The FCO gave such claims little
credence, describing them as a ‘smokescreen’ to deflect attention from Amin’s precarious
position.15 The respected Africa Confidential reported that an invasion by anti-Amin
rebels from Tanzania was intended to coincide with an army mutiny in Uganda, but this
assertion finds no substantiation in the FCO documentation.16
Amid the confusion, two corroborating accounts were given particular credence by
the FCO and shed new light on the outbreak of the fighting. On 14 December, a British
diplomat in Nairobi reported a meeting with the managing director of Shell in Uganda,
Mr Thate, whose story was considered ‘perhaps as reliable an assessment of the situation
in Uganda as anyone could provide’.17 His evidence tallies with that given to a diplomat
in Addis Ababa on 7 December by Paul Etiang, the Ugandan Assistant Secretary General
at the OAU and regarded as neither a dissenter nor ‘a subtle apologist for Amin’.18 Both
men described how the unexpected and resented arrival of fresh Sudanese recruits in
Mbarara catalysed simmering unrest among the Simba Battalion into a barracks revolt.
The new arrivals were shot. Loyalist troops were sent to put down the mutineers, who
then fled over the border on 30 October. The pursuit turned into a full-scale invasion,
though neither Etiang nor Thate could explain how this was achieved. Nonetheless, these
insights offer greater substance to the rumours that mutiny had spilled over into border
war, further calling into question the arguments found in Africa Confidential and peddled
by Ugandan propaganda.
On 1 November 1978, Amin announced that he had annexed the Kagera Salient, a
1800 km2 triangle of land straddling the area between the border and the Kagera River, in
the corridor between Rwanda and Lake Victoria. The Salient was an anomaly of Anglo-
German colonial boundary-drawing that split ethnic groups between Tanzania and
Uganda. Contrary to the FCO’s understanding, the border had been subject to long-
standing claims by Amin, especially as it had been used as a base for incursions by
Ugandan dissident fighters from Tanzania.19 Ugandan troops proceeded to murder and
rape the local population, burn property, and steal cattle. Some 40,000 civilians fled their
homes and took refuge in the bush.20 Despite reports that the Tanzanians had been
massing troops on the border in order to provoke Amin, Dar es Salaam was caught
completely off guard.
Neither state was in any condition to fight a war. Uganda’s economy was in ruins and
its army gripped by mutiny. Amin did have a significant advantage in terms of aircraft
and tanks, but this was largely cancelled out by a lack of pilots, the general
disorganisation of the army, and the American boycott, which reduced Uganda’s oil
supplies by 40%. ‘There must be an element of madness in his act’, reflected an FCO
official.21 The situation on the Tanzanian side was little better. The Tanzanian People’s
Defence Force (TPDF) was relatively small and concentrated on the southern border with
Mozambique; it took several weeks for columns of troops to traverse the entire country
before a counter-attack was possible. Moreover, the Tanzanian economy was suffering
from the negative consequences of Nyerere’s socialist policies, particularly the short-
comings of his forced villagisation campaign. To fight the war, equipment and vehicles
had to be requisitioned from the civilian population.22 On 15 November, Finance
Minister Edwin Mtei announced that the war had compelled the government to raise taxes
on consumer goods.23
Clear information about the development of the war was difficult to obtain and often
confused. British officials observed that Tanzanian officials often appeared themselves
uncertain about the situation; on at least two occasions, Nyerere’s personal assistant, Joan
Wicken (the main intermediary between the FCO and the Tanzanian Government),
directly asked British diplomats for fresh information.24 For outside observers, the
confusion was exacerbated by both countries’ propaganda and news blackouts. The FCO
lent Ugandan radio no credibility. The Tanzanian Government maintained lengthy periods
of silence about the war. The government-controlled press and radio mostly carried anti-
Ugandan propaganda. Nyerere established an ‘Information Committee’, chaired by
Minister of Information George Mhina, and including newspaper editors, the head of
Radio Tanzania, the president’s press secretary, and representatives of the armed forces
and security services.25 The movement of foreign journalists was restricted: the British
High Commission was told that no foreign reporters would be allowed to travel beyond
Dar es Salaam.26 The Reuters telex at the Kilimanjaro Hotel – an oasis of independent
information – was apparently disconnected by the Information Committee.27 ‘There was a
696 G. Roberts
war going on’, wrote Avirgan and Honey, ‘but from Dar as far as information went, it was
as though it was being fought on another continent’.28
British diplomatic reports throughout the war were therefore cautious. In the absence
of reliable information and lacking diplomatic representation in Kampala, the FCO pieced
together its picture of the conflict from a range of sources: other foreign missions
(especially the West German embassy in Uganda),29 aid workers, businessmen, journal-
ists, and a critical sifting of the Dar es Salaam and Nairobi press.
The British response and the missing Cold War dimension

London immediately recognised the benefits of providing tacit support for the Tanzanian
war effort. Although sensationalist reports that Britain directly aided Amin’s seizure of
power are unfounded, it had certainly not opposed the end of Obote’s regime, which
diplomats felt was veering dangerously to the left.30 By 1978, the FCO had long been
seeking to distance itself from Amin’s regime, its treatment of the Ugandan Asians and its
appalling human rights record. The disappearance of a British-Israeli civilian during the
Entebbe hostage crisis of 1976 had provided an excuse to sever all diplomatic ties with
Uganda. Contrary to accusations that Britain continued to actively support Amin’s regime
until its fall,31 the government explored every means of isolating it, but found barriers at
every point. The idea of imposing a US-style trade boycott floundered on Britain’s legal
obligations under European Economic Community agreements; attempts to hold Amin to
account before the UN Commission on Human Rights met solid opposition from the non-
aligned bloc.32
Although concerned about the consequences of the war for the 400-strong British
expatriate community in the country, the FCO concluded that given ‘the likely
assumption that Amin’s successor would mark an improvement, on balance a change
of régime in Uganda would be to our advantage’. The FCO, therefore, worked to ‘exploit
whatever openings may occur to contribute towards Amin’s downfall’. Support for
Tanzania had to be discreet, however. Britain did not want to leave itself ‘open to the
charge of foreign involvement in an African dispute; this would embarrass our friends in
Africa and could facilitate Amin’s efforts to gain support’.33 Although efforts to
accelerate the delivery of military hardware to Tanzania fell through on logistical
grounds,34 Britain provided low-key diplomatic support for Tanzania throughout the war.
The FCO encouraged Shell and British Petroleum to keep oil supplies to Uganda at low
levels in order to bleed dry Amin’s war effort. Pressure was also put on Total and Agip
via the French and Italian governments to prevent them making up the shortfalls in supply
left by the withdrawal of American companies under the terms of Washington’s trade
boycott, though this approach was less successful.35 Mahmood Mamdani’s assertion that
the war was shaped by the interests of Western imperialism, however, is baseless: the role
of Britain and the USA never extended beyond limited assistance to Tanzania.36
In contrast to the Ogaden War of 1977–1978 between Ethiopia and Somalia, the
Uganda–Tanzania War was devoid of Cold War dynamics, despite Western concerns
about Soviet penetration in Uganda. Between 1971 and 1975, Uganda was the largest
recipient of Soviet military aid in sub-Saharan Africa.37 The West then feared that the
country would be a base for subversion in the wider East Africa region,38 but it soon
became apparent that the circumstances of the Uganda–Tanzania War had undermined the
Soviet position. As David Owen, the Foreign and Commonwealth secretary, wrote in a
brief to senior diplomats, ‘The Russians are in an awkward predicament. They have
armed and trained Ugandan forces and will have to answer for this in African eyes, and
especially to Tanzania, who they also supply with arms. They are likely to keep a low
profile’.39
There was no public reaction from Moscow until 12 November, when Pravda
claimed that ‘imperialist forces were trying to make use of the conflict for their own
provocative ends so as to distract and disorganise forces actively participating in the
struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe’. As a British official pointed out, this accusation
smacked of a desperate attempt to mask Moscow’s embarrassment.40 The American press
reacted with glee: ‘To supply Idi Amin with the tools of modern war is like handing a
loaded pistol to a wilful child’, admonished the New York Times.41 The Washington Post
blamed Moscow – ‘prowling for pawns to move on the African chessboard’ – for
pumping Amin with arms.42 Besides rejecting Amin’s appeals for help as the war turned
against him in early 1979, the extent of the Soviet reaction to the conflict was a decision
to withdraw its military advisors from Uganda and a pair of private messages from
Brezhnev to Amin and Nyerere calling for peace.43
Further, Nyerere’s own commitment to non-alignment stripped the conflict of its Cold
War potential. Since independence in 1961, he had rejected superpower interference and
to fall back overtly on British or American or Soviet support would have been
hypocritical. From the first week of the war, British High Commissioner in Dar es
Salaam, Peter Moon, gained the impression – ‘for reasons that one can well imagine’ –
that Nyerere was determined ‘to fight his own war’.44 Two days later, Moon added that
‘the last thing Nyerere would want is for the situation to take on any kind of East/West
colouring’.45 Nyerere’s non-aligned stance thus lifted the conflict out of the Cold War
context that had fuelled the proxy struggles in the Horn of Africa and Angola, bucking
the contemporary trend that enmeshed local wars in the superpower rivalry.
The Ugandan withdrawal and OAU mediation efforts

As news about the outbreak of hostilities spread across the continent, African leaders
called for peace. On 31 October, Kenya urged both parties to end the conflict and offered
its services for ‘all efforts directed towards rapid normalisation of relations between the
two neighbourly states’.46 Kenya’s offers to mediate were turned down, however. The
task of negotiating a peace fell primarily to the OAU. On 5 November, a delegation led
by Philip Obang (Sudanese Ambassador to the OAU) and Peter Onu (a Nigerian and
OAU Assistant Secretary General), left Addis Ababa for Kampala, under the instructions
of OAU chairman, President Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan.47 Although Amin was at first
unwilling to accept any compromise – the first round of negotiations lasted a mere two
minutes – he eventually accepted to withdraw on the condition that Nyerere guaranteed
that he would neither invade Uganda nor support subversion against its government.
Flying on to Dar es Salaam, Obang and Onu found Nyerere in an even more defiant
mood. He refused to consider mediation until Amin withdrew his forces from Tanzanian
territory. Negotiations became deadlocked.48
Nyerere showed little inclination to negotiate with the OAU emissaries. On 10
November, the press reported Nyerere’s response to ‘incredible messages’ he had
received from other African leaders calling for him to use ‘his abundant wisdom’ to bring
an end to the conflict. ‘There is no such thing as brotherly aggression’, he remarked, nor
‘a brotherly armoured personnel carrier, tank or MiG’.49 When Obang and Onu arrived in
Dar es Salaam on 11 November, Nyerere’s reaction – doubtless dramatised by the
government-owned Daily News for public consumption – was to tell the delegation that
he wanted ‘to know what the OAU will do about this. I expect condemnation from the
698 G. Roberts
OAU. Only after that can people talk to me about restraint’.50 ‘How’, he asked on another
occasion, ‘do you mediate between somebody who breaks into your house and the victim
of the assault?’51 Even before negotiations began, the OAU Secretary General, the
Togolese Edem Kodjo, privately confessed to a British official that Nyerere had resolved
to fight and mediation efforts were futile.52
Yet returning from Dar es Salaam via Kampala, the OAU delegation claimed a sudden
breakthrough. On 14 November, Amin announced an unconditional withdrawal and
invited OAU observers to witness it. Tanzania immediately described the withdrawal as a
‘complete lie’; reports reaching the FCO, including from the West German Embassy in
Kampala, presented mixed verdicts.53 At a meeting of European representatives in Dar es
Salaam on 20 November, views on whether there were still Ugandan troops on Tanzanian
soil remained divided – a telling illustration of the lack of information about the war
available to diplomats there.54 The OAU naturally claimed its mediation efforts had been
successful.55
But a West German report on the negotiations, duplicated in the FCO files, reveals the
OAU’s ‘success’ was a mirage. Compiled from interviews with Ugandan officials and
Obang himself, the document suggests that Amin only accepted an unconditional
withdrawal when he realised that there was little sympathy for Uganda in Africa. An
unfounded fear that the Soviet Union would begin to supply Tanzania with fresh
deliveries of arms also apparently hastened Amin’s decision.56 These developments were
unconnected to the OAU’s intervention. Rather than being resolved, the conflict was
frozen. The matter of reparations for the damage caused by Ugandan troops in the Kagera
Salient became an issue. ‘Is Africa asking Tanzania to pay for those massacres and
destruction of property?’ Nyerere reportedly asked a Nigerian mediation team. ‘Is Africa
saying to us, once you regain your land, then that is the end?’57
Amin made claims of a Tanzanian counter-offensive on 27 November and appealed to
the UN for help. Dar es Salaam refuted the allegations, but did acknowledge that fighting
was continuing as Tanzania attempted to push Ugandan troops back over the border.58 On
29 November, Obang announced that Uganda had fully removed its troops from
Tanzanian territory; Nyerere pointed out that this was a forced retreat rather than a
voluntary withdrawal.59 The warring parties remained face-to-face on either side of the
frontier. For the following two months, there was no progress.
The OAU’s failure to broker a peace between the warring parties reflected its widely
acknowledged impotence in resolving disputes between African states. The organisation
lacked any real political teeth. Its policy-making institutions were strictly intergovern-
mental and given the regular frictions between member states that militated against
consensus, disposed to drafting vague resolutions rather than taking action. Member
states had few concrete obligations to the organisation and its General Secretariat had no
executive power.60
This view is substantiated by FCO files, which contain first-hand evidence drawn
from meetings with the mediators and both belligerents. The Sudanese Minister for
Foreign Affairs confided in the British Ambassador in Khartoum that while Nimeiry ‘was
sure enough that Uganda was in the wrong’, as a mediator ‘he had felt obliged to
maintain a position of neutrality’, to Nyerere’s frustration.61 Benjamin Mkapa, the
Tanzanian Foreign Minister, told Moon that the OAU had ‘no military capacity to enforce
any agreement and very little moral authority.’62 Etiang told the British Ambassador to
Ethiopia that when he had warned Amin that the invasion of the Kagera Salient broke the
Charter, Amin had laughed: the OAU was ‘a woman’ and could do nothing.63 Crucially,
the OAU itself declined to condemn the Ugandan invasion.
The OAU’s neutrality matched the public stance taken by the majority of African
states. Certainly, several states sided with Nyerere and condemned the Ugandan invasion:
Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Zambia.64 But these were
Tanzania’s allies as fellow left-leaning governments or Front Line states. Others,
including Guinea, Mali, and Senegal, merely called for the end to hostilities and
underlined their commitment to the Charter.65
When African leaders did condemn Uganda, they blamed external forces for the
outbreak of war, invoking a non-existent deus ex machina of imperialist or superpower
intervention. Addressing Tanzanian troops on 13 November, Colonel Mengistu of
Ethiopia declared such ‘acts of aggression against Tanzania and other Front Line states
deliberate attempts by imperialists to stifle the liberation struggle in southern Africa.’66
Similar allegations were made by the Mozambican President, Samora Machel.67 These
concerns may have represented a genuine paranoia about neoimperialism in the context of
the superpowers’ interventions in the Horn and Angola and the fight against white
minority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. But they surely also indicate a closing of
ranks to mask the embarrassment induced by a war that was caused and fought by
Africans alone, and which Africans seemed incapable of ending.
The Tanzanian counter-offensive and the fall of Amin

On the night of 21–22 January 1979, Tanzanian troops crossed into Uganda and attacked
the border town of Mutukula. According to Avirgan and Honey, Tanzanian officers had
determined that the Kagera Salient would remain under threat until Ugandan forces had
been removed from the high ground overlooking the frontier at Mutukula.68 A mass
counter-offensive began. It quickly transpired that Amin’s disorganised troops were little
match for the 30–40,000-strong TPDF, which pushed north, accompanied by groups of
anti-Amin exiles trained and armed in Tanzania.
Amin’s response to the invasion was to appeal to the UN Secretary General to ‘prevail
on Tanzania to withdraw from Uganda peacefully’.69 On 12 February, Amin spuriously
claimed that Tanzanian forces were, with the support of mercenaries, in occupation of 900
km2 of Ugandan territory and formally called for an immediate meeting of the Security
Council.70 Tanzania simply denied the presence of its troops beyond the immediate
border area. When pressed further, Tanzanian diplomats repeated Nyerere’s insistence that
‘Tanzania does not desire an inch of Ugandan territory’, while avoiding more specific
enquiries.71
Nyerere originally hoped that a combination of an invasion led by the Ugandan
dissident forces and a popular internal uprising would be enough to finish off the Amin
regime. He recognised that a Tanzanian counter-invasion would be diplomatically
unacceptable to other African states. Nyerere therefore developed a ‘two war’ thesis:
the TPDF was fighting to ensure national security, the Ugandan dissidents to liberate
Uganda.72 Prior to the counter-offensive, on 11 January he permitted Obote to break an
eight-year silence in a broadcast that called for an uprising against the Amin regime,
declaring that ‘there should be no wishful thinking that there are foreign troops who will
liberate the people of Uganda’.73 A week later, Obote told a press conference that the time
had come for collective Ugandan action ‘to overthrow the regime of death’.74 Reports of
sabotage acts in Kampala and further unrest among the Ugandan army followed,
including a rumoured attempt on Amin’s life.75
However, the dissidents were too weak to fulfil the role Nyerere had envisioned for
them. The original plan involved the exiles leading the advance on the southern towns of
700 G. Roberts
Masaka and Mbarara, but they numbered only 1000, and the assault on the two cities was
essentially the work of the TPDF, as the West Germans reported from Kampala.76
However, Nyerere apparently ordered Obote to draft a statement on behalf of the local
Ugandan Suicide Battalion, which declared that they had risen up against Amin and had
‘liberated’ Masaka themselves – a myth then circulated by the Tanzanian press.77 This
image of a Ugandan liberation front, aided by the information drought about
developments in the warzone, provided a useful (if almost transparent) public
smokescreen for Nyerere. Although few observers were fooled by it, the myth permitted
Dar es Salaam to deflect awkward questions about Tanzania’s military presence in
Uganda.
The OAU’s reaction to the resumption of hostilities was to convene an ad hoc
Mediation Committee, which met from 21 February in Nairobi, in advance of the

scheduled Council of Ministers conference due to open two days later. The meeting was
an unmitigated failure. Neither the Tanzanian nor the Ugandan delegation was prepared to
compromise on their basic principles. Tanzania demanded that the OAU condemn the
initial Ugandan invasion and order Amin to pay reparations for ‘wanton destruction’ in
the Kagera Salient.78 ‘If the OAU continued to shy away from its responsibility of
defending its own Charter’, Nyerere reiterated in a radio broadcast on 28 February,
‘Tanzania would remain with only the option of taking whatever steps she thought proper
in defending herself and punishing the criminal’.79 Yet even before the Mediation
Committee had begun, Kodjo had emphatically told the press that the OAU would not
condemn Uganda. Moreover, several African delegations present believed that it would
be ‘incongruous’ to do so, given Tanzania itself had now invaded Uganda.80 The situation
continued to be complicated by Mkapa’s continued denial of having actually invaded
Uganda, to the ‘total disbelief’ of other delegates.81
In an effort to break the deadlock, the Mediation Committee dispatched negotiation
teams to Kampala and Dar es Salaam. They returned without success. While Amin
accepted the Committee’s proposals, Tanzania remained resolute in its refusal to consider
mediation before the OAU had condemned Uganda. The nadir in Tanzanian-OAU
relations came on 1 March, when Nyerere declined to meet a delegation of mediators,
who were told the President was busy with internal government affairs. The mediators
refused to wait until the next day: Mkapa mockingly suggested that they had forgotten to
bring their pyjamas.82 A British report on the OAU meeting in Nairobi observed that
there was now ‘an evident degree of sympathy for Uganda’ among Africans and that ‘the
Tanzanians were generally castigated for what was regarded by members as their unduly
intransigent attitude’.83 Only the Front Line states explicitly supported Tanzania’s
position. On 2 March, the Mediation Committee announced the failure of their
negotiations, blaming the impasse on Tanzania. Meanwhile, Tanzanian troops continued
their advance. On 24 February, they took the city of Masaka. Mbarara fell the
following day.
The final assault on Kampala was delayed by two connected developments. First,
after he had attempted to broker a peace earlier in the war, the Tanzanian intervention
prompted Colonel Gaddafi to back Amin, as one of his few clients in sub-Saharan Africa.
On 27 March, Nyerere publicly announced that he had received an ultimatum from
Gaddafi stating that Tanzania must withdraw from Uganda within 24 hours, or Libya
would join the war (it was common knowledge that Libyan forces had been present in
Uganda for several weeks, however).84 Second, fearing that scenes of the TPDF entering
Kampala in triumph would damage Tanzania’s public image, Nyerere had hoped that the
anti-Amin exiles would be able to seize the capital themselves.85 The journalist David
Martin, who was close to the President, told a British official in Dar es Salaam that
Nyerere had originally planned to halt the Tanzanian advance at Masaka, to allow the
exile forces to push on towards Kampala.86 But this proved impossible: the exiles were
too weak, especially given the arrival of Libyan troops.
The TPDF eventually entered Kampala to little resistance on 10 April. Amin had fled
the city days beforehand. Tanzania then hurried to establish the new Ugandan
Government. At the Moshi Conference in March, exiles had formed the Uganda National
Liberation Front (UNLF), a diverse mixture of dissidents representing a spectrum of
political viewpoints and vested interests that would soon splinter once the goal of
removing Amin had been accomplished. Yusuf Lule was elected as chairman of the
UNLF’s Executive Council, essentially an interim cabinet.87 On 13 April, Lule arrived in
Kampala and was sworn in as president. The fighting, however, continued: Amin’s forces
were scattered through Uganda, and it was not until 3 June that the TPDF reached the
Sudanese border and the mopping-up task was complete.
Amin versus Nyerere: a personal struggle

A feature of the war was its representation as not so much a clash between Uganda and
Tanzania, as between their respective presidents. Many of the FCO despatches from Dar
es Salaam focused on the decisions, movements and words of Nyerere. In part, this
reflected the perception of the presidents as archetypal African ‘big men’, an image
skewed both by their own propaganda and the stereotypical assumptions of foreign
diplomats. The American ambassador to Kampala before the USA cut its ties with the
Amin regime drew comparisons between Amin’s Uganda and Hitler’s Germany, as states
dominated by leadership cults and their warped ideological visions.88 In June 1978, Peter
Hinchcliffe, the British Deputy High Commissioner in Tanzania, mentioned that several
of his colleagues among the diplomatic corps were taken in by the idea that Nyerere took
all political decisions by himself.89
Yet as the war unfolded, the prominence of Amin and particularly Nyerere as
diplomats-in-chief became obvious. The FCO files show that most of the key exchanges
between Western diplomats in Dar es Salaam were conducted with Nyerere. The OAU
mediating parties spoke directly to the presidents. While the circumstances of the fighting
meant that agency was very much in the hands of military commanders on the ground,
the diplomatic sphere appears to have been presided over by the heads of state
themselves, reflecting a general African trend.90
Moreover, Amin and Nyerere both framed the war as a continuation of their long-
running personal spat. Nyerere’s language made it clear that his enemy was Amin, not
Uganda. In a radio broadcast on 2 November 1978, he told the nation that ‘We only have
one task. It is to hit him. We have the ability to hit him. We have reason to hit him. And
we have the determination to do so’.91 In reply, Amin challenged Nyerere to a boxing
match to resolve the conflict.92 His response was typically outlandish, but encapsulated
this personalisation of the war.
At what point did Nyerere decide that Amin had to go? Tanzanian officials remained
evasive on the question. At the Mediation Committee in Nairobi, Mkapa remarked that
the war would continue until a ‘permanent solution’ was found, though declined to clarify
what this might involve.93 On 28 February, Nyerere affirmed that despite his ‘dislike for
Amin – and I really do not like him – the Government of Tanzania has no right to enter
Uganda to topple Amin’.94 Even with Tanzanian troops poised to seize Kampala, Nyerere
told Western diplomats that he did not intend to overthrow Amin; rather he ‘intended to
702 G. Roberts
teach him a lesson so that he would realise that war was a serious game’ – a claim that
‘no-one present believed’ and ‘which was purely for the record’, according to
Hinchcliffe.95
Instead, evidence in the FCO files suggests that Nyerere sought to topple Amin from
the moment hostilities broke out. Speaking to Moon on 30 October, Nyerere ‘referred
several times of the need to get rid of Amin’.96 Wicken confirmed within the first week of
the war that Tanzania wanted ‘to inflict a humiliating defeat on Amin which could lead to
his fall’.97 A combination of Nyerere’s personal vendetta against Amin and a realisation
that the shared border would not be secure until he was removed from power appears to
have resolved the Tanzanian Government on its course of action, despite the war’s
crippling economic impact. In February, Wicken frankly told Hinchcliffe that although
Tanzania could not afford the war, it ‘would not mind if mediation attempts came to
nothing’ as ‘any mediation which ended the fighting and which left Amin intact would
not be in Tanzania’s interest’.98 Aside from being a principled stance, Nyerere’s
insistence that the OAU condemn Uganda provided a stalling tactic that allowed military
operations to continue while OAU leaders pursued a political solution to which Tanzania
had no intention of committing.
It has been alleged that Nyerere’s decision to bring down the Amin regime had a more
subversive motive: Obote’s return to power. The evidence here is ambiguous. Nyerere
sought Obote’s support in forming an anti-Amin exile force after recalling him from a
holiday in Lusaka in November 1978. Obote’s public statements in January were also
conceived as a means of provoking disorder inside Uganda. Yet Nyerere advised Obote
not to attend the Moshi Conference, fearing his presence might disrupt attempts by the
assembled dissident factions to form a united front.99 He was also conscious of
international opposition to Obote. In particular, Kenya remained suspicious of Nyerere’s
relationship with Obote, despite Tanzanian assurances that were communicated through
British diplomatic channels (and which British diplomats generally believed).100 Kenyan
President Daniel arap Moi relayed to Sir Stanley Fingland, the British High Commis-
sioner in Nairobi, his concern at the potential emergence of a Tanzanian-sponsored
government in Kampala which could lead to Kenya being surrounded by left-leaning
regimes.101 Regardless of his personal relationship with Obote, Nyerere realised that both
the legitimacy of the invasion and the stability of a new government in Kampala were
dependent on maintaining a safe distance from Obote until the dust had settled.
The OAU, the UN, and the triumph of African Realpolitik

The diplomatic turbulence whipped up by the war cast a cloud over the OAU Heads of
State Summit held in Monrovia in July 1979. By then, Lule had been forced from power
and replaced as president by Godfrey Binaisa. Opening the summit in his capacity as its
chairman, Nimeiry described the conflict as a ‘regrettable dispute between two fraternal
countries’ that had set a ‘serious precedent’ in Africa. ‘I believe we are called on to abide
by our Organization’s Charter’, he said, ‘which prohibits interference in other people’s
internal affairs and invasion of their territory by armed force’. Nyerere’s reply from the
floor was bitter. ‘I want to congratulate my brother, President Nimeiry, in that he now
wants this matter to be discussed’, he said. ‘My only criticism is that he would like to see
in the dock not the aggressor but the victim’. General Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria
joined Nimeiry, suggesting that Tanzania, rather than Uganda, was actually to blame for
the outbreak of hostilities in October, either by making the first incursion or by acts of
provocation.102 Both Nimeiry and Obasanjo had been frustrated by Nyerere’s mulish
rebuttal of their personal negotiation attempts.
The complaints made about Tanzania’s violation of the OAU Charter were not simply
based on matters of principle. Many African leaders feared that an acceptance of the
Tanzanian invasion would set a dangerous precedent. Acknowledging that acquiescence
to Tanzania’s intervention among African governments rested largely on the embarrass-
ment caused by Amin’s behaviour, Moi pointed out to Fingland that Uganda was no
exception in this respect. The records of Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African
Empire or Macias Nguema in Equatorial Guinea were little better. Were they to be
attacked as well?103 Even leaders without blood on their hands might now feel at threat.
‘Security may be endangered by this act’, warned Obasanjo in Monrovia, ‘for the weaker
and smaller nations of Africa will have to look over their shoulders at their powerful
neighbours whenever they have to act’.104
There was therefore a series of staunch defences of the Charter’s integrity. The
Liberian President William Tolbert stressed the need for aggrieved parties to seek
mediation through OAU channels and reaffirmed that the ‘violation of the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of a member state, for whatever reason, violates the Charter of the
OAU’.105 The Kenyan Sunday Nation rejected the verdict that the OAU was a ‘useless
organization’ and argued that its faults lay less in the Charter than in the member states’
lack of political will to uphold its provisions.106
Others retorted that the war had demonstrated the inflexibility of the Charter and
called for its reform. According to the editor of the New African, too many member states
had simply brandished their ‘OAU handbooks to invoke the clause on non-interference in
the affairs of a neighbouring state with the careless ease with which tourists would be
expected to show off well-known information gleaned from guidebooks’. ‘How cosy it
must be’, he remarked, ‘to be able to quote international law when your own people have
not been bombed’.107 Nyerere himself described the OAU as being a ‘trade union’ for
African leaders, ring-fencing them from criticism.108 He had previously pointed out that
Amin had killed more Africans than Smith’s regime in Rhodesia or Vorster’s in South
Africa. ‘Had Amin been white’, he said in his Independence Day speech of 9 December
1978, ‘free Africa would have passed many resolutions condemning him. Being black is
now becoming a certificate to kill fellow Africans’.109 In turning the same accusations
levelled against racist white African leaders against the organisation that was supposedly
the embodiment of African unity, Nyerere – the defiant pan-Africanist – implicitly called
into question the credibility of the OAU’s authority to mediate between the belligerents.
The war was particularly embarrassing for the OAU and its members because it
threatened to display on a global stage disunity among African states and the
organisation’s impotence in resolving conflict.110 Reporting on the February 1979
Council of Ministers meeting in Nairobi, a British diplomat observed that ‘there was
obvious embarrassment at the OAU’s manifest inability to effect [sic] the course of
events’.111 One of the reasons offered by Fingland for the reluctance of African states to
condemn Uganda at the Nairobi conference was an unwillingness to publicly rebuke
another member state.112 At Monrovia, Binaisa praised Tanzanian’s intervention, made a
damning attack on Amin, and condemned the regimes of Nguema and Bokassa. In turn,
Obasanjo questioned his credentials to act as president of Uganda – an implicit reference
to the reported Tanzanian involvement in Lule’s fall from power. Both Binaisa’s and
Obasanjo’s comments were ordered to be erased from the official record: antagonistic
exchanges among African states were not to be preserved for wider circulation.113
704 G. Roberts
The failure of Amin’s attempts to bring the conflict before the UN Security Council
highlighted this unease. Following the Ugandan request for a Security Council meeting
on 15 February 1979, the British Ambassador to the UN was told by the President of the
Security Council that African states were ‘most concerned’ at the prospect.114 When
Uganda repeated its calls for a meeting in late March, it faced blanket opposition among
the so-called ‘African Group’. At informal consultations among Security Council
members on 30 March, the Gabonese representative argued that it was not the correct
moment to bring the issue before a formal meeting, since African mediation was still
ongoing, despite the OAU’s negotiations having completely stalled after the failure of the
Nairobi meeting in late February. He added that the African Group ‘did not want to wash
their dirty linen in public’.115 Nigeria, chairing the Council, demonstrated the same
feeling when it tried to delay the formal talks until 1 April, when it would pass the chair
on to Norway.116 The Nigerian representative told a British official that Amin was an
‘embarrassment to African aspirations’. Other African members of the Council felt that ‘a
debate could not but show up the disarray among the African Group.’ Uganda dropped its
request, to much relief.117
Several commentators have suggested that the Tanzania invasion of Uganda provides
an early case of a war justified by humanitarian intervention.118 Appealing though it may
be, this interpretation runs counter to the evidence. Among African leaders, Nyerere had a
strong track record of at least rhetorical support for human rights.119 But while he made
references during the war to atrocities committed by Amin’s regime, Nyerere never linked
them to the intervention: to do so would have been an admission of breaking the OAU
Charter, which he himself had invoked in his condemnation of Amin.120 When he
privately invoked humanitarian concerns to justify the invasion to the FCO, he did so
with reference to the need to protect the population of southern Uganda which had
greeted the Tanzanians as ‘liberators’, rather than in a more general manner to the
Ugandan population which had been terrorised by Amin over the previous eight years.
Nyerere feared that a Tanzanian withdrawal would lead to both violent reprisals and a
flood of refugees into Tanzania.121 But this seems an ex post facto justification for
Tanzania’s actions, designed especially to appeal to Western outrage about human rights
violations in Uganda. After all, it was the Tanzanian counter-invasion which had brought
about this situation.
Rather, respect for international law gave way to a sense among most African leaders
that the ends justified the means, illegal though they may have been. Despite divisions of
opinion at Monrovia, the overwhelming reaction was a tacit acceptance of the Tanzanian
invasion. Nyerere did not have to justify his counter-invasion in terms of the international
legal framework. The discomfort they felt at the violation of the Charter paled in
comparison with the embarrassment caused by Amin’s appalling disregard for human life.
In this light, Nyerere’s presentation of the war as a personal conflict with Amin paid
dividends. A pamphlet circulated by Tanzania at Monrovia concluded that:
Amin was an abominable murderer of the people of Uganda; a turbulent menace to the peace
and security of East Africa; a standing scandal and displace to the honour of Africa; a blatant
and bragging aggressor against Tanzania. We are not sorry to be rid of him.122
The prevailing African view was implicitly endorsed by Britain and the USA. Both states
had given low-key but significant support to Tanzania; both had condemned the Ugandan
invasion; both then remained silent over the Tanzanian counter-invasion, but quickly
recognised the Lule Government.123
Conclusion
Amin and his henchmen fled into exile. The deposed president first went to Tripoli, but
after falling out with Gaddafi took up residence in Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2003.
Precise figures of the numbers of Ugandan war casualties are impossible to ascertain:
Avirgan and Honey estimate around 1000 Ugandans died, in addition to 600 Libyans.124
The situation in Uganda scarcely improved. Kampala collapsed into a state of near
anarchy and internecine squabbling brought down Lule’s Government after just 68 days
in office. His successor, Binaisa, was deposed in May 1980 by a military coup. Obote
returned as president in the elections held in December 1980. The use of force to
overthrow Amin did nothing to reinforce the rule of law and the spiral of violence
continued throughout Obote’s five-year second term.125
Nyerere basked in the glory of victory, embarking on a public tour of Tanzania. The
official Tanzanian cost in human life was relatively small at just 373 soldiers killed, of
whom only 96 died as a result of enemy fire, the remainder being killed in accidents.126
However, the damage to a faltering economy was critical. The final bill for the
intervention and occupation of Uganda came to around £250 million, bleeding dry
Tanzania’s already depleted foreign exchange reserves. Together with the disastrous
consequences of Nyerere’s ujamaa policy, the long-term impact of the war was to render
Tanzania dependent on external aid to keep the economy afloat. By the late 1980s, the
country was surviving on a drip of World Bank and IMF support.
Shorn largely as a function of Nyerere’s non-aligned stance of superpower
involvement, the conflict’s absence of a Cold War dimension left exposed the
shortcomings of African diplomatic practice. The OAU was incapable of ending a
dispute that was fuelled by Nyerere’s bitter animosity towards his bête noir, Amin. The
organisation’s adherence to the strict principles of neutrality towards the belligerents and
the inviolability of existing borders left it open to charges from Nyerere that it was
permitting Amin’s reckless disregard for Tanzania’s state sovereignty. African states
resisted Ugandan attempts to bring the issue before the UN: they did not wish to bring the
rest of the world's attention the failure of their diplomacy and the splits within their ranks.
Ultimately, the embarrassment caused by Amin’s behaviour led to pragmatism prevailing
over international law. Despite the discontent evident at Nairobi and Monrovia with
Nyerere’s refusal to negotiate, African leaders were content to see the fall of a tyrant.
Acknowledgement
This work was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Scholarship.
Notes
1. The best existing accounts of the war are Prunier, “Tanzania’s Ambiguous Ugandan Victory”;
Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda; and Wheeler, Saving Strangers. Avirgan and Honey were
American journalists who accompanied the Tanzanian forces in the latter stages of the conflict
and who subsequently pieced together an account based on hundreds of interviews with mainly
Tanzanian soldiers and officials. In addition to their apparently personal relationship with
Nyerere himself, this approach gives their text a tendentious feel, and must be treated with
caution.
2. Branch, Kenya, 20.
3. Ellis, “Writing Histories,” 14.
4. Daily News, July 25, 1975, quoted in Africa Research Bulletin 12, no. 7 (1975): 3683.
5. Khadiagala, “Uganda’s Domestic and Regional Security,” 236–7.
6. Hansen, “Uganda in the 1970s,” 97–98; Jørgensen, Uganda, 285–303.
7. Jørgensen, Uganda, 279.
706 G. Roberts
8. Jørgensen, Uganda, 292; Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 5–6.

9. Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 8; see also Hansen, “Uganda in the 1970s,” 85–7.
11. Amnesty International Report 1979, 38.
13. Ocitti, Political Evolution, 229–32.
14. Rosling to Munro, October 30, 1978, United Kingdom National Archives, Kew (hereafter
UKNA), FCO 31/2397/6; Africa Contemporary Record, 1978–1979, B424–6; Ocitti, Political
Evolution, 235–8; Prunier, “Tanzania’s Ambiguous Ugandan Victory,” 738–9; Omara-Otunnu,
Politics and the Military, 140.
15. Rosling to Munro, October 30, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2397/6.
16. “Who Can Replace Amin?”
17. Watts to Rosling, December 14, 1978, UKNA FCO 96/789/52.
18. Carruthers to Munro, December 7, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/192.

19. “The Tanzania-Uganda Boundary,” November 1, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2398/25; Austen,
“Colonial Boundaries.”
20. Africa Contemporary Record, 1978–1979, B393–4.
21. Munro to Graham, October 31, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2397/19.
22. Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 63–4.
23. Africa Contemporary Record 1978–1979, B395.
24. Moon to FCO, October 31, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2397/16; Hinchcliffe to Rosling, February
27, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/73.
25. Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 71.
26. Moon to FCO, November 8, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2399/102.
28. Ibid., ix, 71.
29. Records held at the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin, reveal that the rate of
retention in diplomatic despatches regarding the war in the West German archives is relatively
low. The originals of West German documents sent to the FCO and duplicated in the UKNA
files are in many cases not found in the West German files.
30. Curtis, Unpeople. For rumours of British involvement in the coup, see Hutton and Bloch,
“How the West Established.”
31. Mamdani, Imperialism and Fascism, 81–2; Furley, “Britain and Uganda.”
32. Roberts, “British Government and Uganda.”
33. Munro to Graham, November 7, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2399/95.
34. Wall to Jackling, November 3, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2398/60; Munro to Moon, November 3,
1978, UKNA FCO 31/2399/73.
35. Roberts, “British Government and Uganda,” 42–6.
36. Mamdani, Imperialism and Fascism, 107.
37. CIA, “Economic and Military Aid.”
38. Hennessy to Ewans, July 2, 1974, UKNA FCO 31/1777/12; Hillenbrand to Department of
State, September 10, 1975, Foreign Relations of the United States, vol. E-6, doc. 252.
39. Owen to many, November 3, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2398/62.
40. Band to Broucher, November 15, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2400/135.
41. “Lessons of a Bush War,” New York Times, November 15, 1978, A28.
42. “Amin’s Invasion,” Washington Post, November 7, 1978, A18.
43. Africa Contemporary Record, 1978–1979, B394; Band to Broucher, November 15, 1978,
UKNA FCO 31/2400/135.
46. Fingland to FCO, November 1, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2398/27.
47. Day to FCO, November 7, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2399/104.
48. Eldon to Longrigg, November 21, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/165.
49. Quoted in Moon to FCO, November 8, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2399/108.
51. Africa Contemporary Record, 1978–1979, B394.
52. Munro to Graham, November 6, 1878, UKNA FCO 31/2399/88.
53. Eldon to Longrigg, November 21, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/165; Moon to FCO, November
15, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2400/129.
55. Munro to Mansfield, November 27, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/172.
56. Eldon to Longrigg, November 21, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/165.
58. Moon to FCO, November 28, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/171; Munro to Day, November 28,
1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/173; Moon to FCO, November 30, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/
186; Africa Contemporary Record, 1978–1979, B247.
60. van Walraven, Dreams of Power, 375–6.
61. Carden to FCO, November 21, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2400/162.
62. Moon to FCO, December 11, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/195.
63. Carruthers to FCO, December 7, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/192.

65. Powell-Jones to FCO, November 6, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2400/90.
67. Lewen to FCO, November 13, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2399/114.
68. Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 69–70.
69. Amin to Waldheim, January 26, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/30.
70. Amin to Waldheim, February 12, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/44.
73. Moon to FCO, January 12, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/12.
74. David to Gallagher, January 19, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/17.
75. Moon to FCO, January 25, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/22; Fingland to FCO, January 26,
1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/24.
76. Eldon to Longrigg, February 27, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/75.
77. Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 85; David to Gallagher, February 27, 1979, UKNA FCO
31/2681/74.
78. Hinchcliffe to FCO, February 26, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/67.
79. Quoted in Hinchcliffe to FCO, March 1, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/79.
80. Fingland to FCO, February 22, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/54; Fingland to FCO, February 23,
1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/60.
81. Le Breton to Rosling, March 1, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/89.
82. Hinchcliffe to FCO, March 5, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/90. Avirgan and Honey claim this
was a genuine excuse given by one OAU official, War in Uganda, 83–4.
83. Le Breton to Rosling, March 12, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2683/133.
84. Hinchcliffe to FCO, March 27, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2684/148; Hinchcliffe to FCO, March
28, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2684/173.
85. Hinchcliffe to FCO, February 22, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/59.
86. David to Gallagher, March 2, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/99.
87. On the Moshi Conference, see Africa Contemporary Record 1978–1979, B434–5; Africa
Contemporary Record, 1979–1980, B347–9; Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 96–119. On
the various Ugandan exile groups, see “Who Can Replace Amin?”
88. Melady and Melady, Idi Amin Dada; Peterson and Taylor, “Rethinking the State.”
89. Hinchcliffe to Rosling, June 9, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2369/31.
90. van Walraven, Dreams of Power, 58.
92. “Amin’s Invasion,” Washington Post, November 7, 1978, A18.
93. Fingland to FCO, February 22, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/60.
94. Quoted in Africa Contemporary Record, 1978–1979, B430.
95. Hinchcliffe to FCO, March 28, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2684/158.
96. Moon to FCO, October 31, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2397/16.
98. Hinchcliffe to Rosling, February 27, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/73.
99. Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 96, 99–105.
708 G. Roberts
19, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2683/126; Fingland to FCO, March 26, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/
2684/147; Hinchcliffe to FCO, March 29, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2684/165.
101. Fingland to Robson, April 4, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2685/219.
102. Africa Contemporary Record, 1979–1980, A61–2.
103. Fingland to FCO, April 3, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2685/201.
104. Quoted in Africa Contemporary Record, 1979–1980, A62.
105. Quoted in ibid.
106. Quoted in ibid., A70.
107. Quoted in ibid., A60.
108. Quoted in ibid., B395.
109. Quoted in Ivan Smith, Ghosts of Kampala, 181.
110. van Walraven, Dreams of Power, 283.
111. Le Breton to Robson, March 12, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2683/133.

112. Fingland to FCO, February 27, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2681/70.
113. Africa Contemporary Record, 1979–1980, A62.
114. Richard to FCO, February 15, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2680/46.
115. Fort to Rosling, March 30, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2685/188.
116. Rosling to Robson, March 29, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2684/162.
117. Fort to Rosling, April 3, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2685/211.
118. Acheson-Brown, “Tanzanian Invasion”; Thomas, New States. For a more balanced assess-
ment, see Wheeler, Saving Strangers.
119. Moyn, Last Utopia, 110–1.
120. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, 118.
11, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2682/108; Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 86.
122. Tanzania and the War.
123. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, 123.
125. Hansen, “Uganda in the 1970s,” 99.
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This article was downloaded by: [Gebze Yuksek Teknoloji Enstitïsu ]

On: 22 December 2014, At: 04:45

Journal of Eastern African Studies

The Uganda–Tanzania War, the fall of

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Faculty of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK

(Received 14 April 2014; accepted 14 July 2014)

The Uganda–Tanzania War of 1978–1979 was a landmark event in post-colonial East

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

The origins of the conflict

and gave them to semi-autonomous provincial governors, entrenching chains of

position and loyalty only to Amin himself’.9

Uganda’s occupation of the Kagera Salient

The British response and the missing Cold War dimension

The Ugandan withdrawal and OAU mediation efforts

The Tanzanian counter-offensive and the fall of Amin

Mediation Committee, which met from 21 February in Nairobi, in advance of the

Amin versus Nyerere: a personal struggle

The OAU, the UN, and the triumph of African Realpolitik

8. Jørgensen, Uganda, 292; Avirgan and Honey, War in Uganda, 5–6.

18. Carruthers to Munro, December 7, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/192.

63. Carruthers to FCO, December 7, 1978, UKNA FCO 31/2401/192.

111. Le Breton to Robson, March 12, 1979, UKNA FCO 31/2683/133.

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