Lessons of 1972 not yet learnt by Ugandan Asians

Wednesday, 05 August 2009 12:35 Zohran Kwame Mamdani
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August 5th, 1972. Ugandan Asians remember the day as when their lives changed forever. Idi Amin’s announcement that all Asians were to be expelled from Uganda within ninety days shook the community to its core. Businesses were abandoned, houses deserted, and livelihoods packed into suitcases. Though around a hundred chose to remain, the other 80,000 Ugandan Asians boarded planes for pastures newer, but not greener. Although all had a right to feel aggrieved, the expulsion was not just an arbitrary act by Amin. Sudden and harsh, yes, but not unexpected. The near-domination of the marketplace by Asian shopkeepers, combined with their everyday racism towards the local people, had infuriated many black Ugandans.

Today, 37 years later, I believe the lessons of the expulsion have yet to be learned by the Asian community.

With the rise of Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s current president, Asians were invited back into Uganda with the promise of a new beginning. However, only a minority chose to return: for some others, what was once home was now indescribably foreign, while others, settled abroad, feared another upheaval. Those who came were mostly new, straight from India, fresh off the boat. Without the experience of expulsion, and with even lesser commitment to the country, the same mistakes are being made.

Although the marketplace has become less Asian, the attitude of superiority remains today. As a Ugandan Asian, I see this more than anyone else. At the supermarket I speak to the Asian owner, nice and genial, but as he turns to a black Ugandan worker, I see another side of him, a side all too familiar. Barking at the worker, he feels familiar enough with me to tell me in Hindi, smiling, “These people are just ******,” his eyes awaiting a nod of acceptance. But to say that this racism lives only in those fresh off the boat is unfair, as even the few pre-’72 Asians easily slip into prejudice, especially in the company of fellow Asians.

Though I was born in Kampala, and partly raised here, it is only in the last few years that I’ve fully grasped the meaning of being Ugandan. Following my father’s insistence on a one-year stay at a secondary school with a local syllabus and, more importantly, a local student body, my days have started to include more Luganda, more matatus (public transportation vans), and a greater awareness of average life. While I know that another expulsion is extremely unlikely given the integration of the government with the Asian business community, the public remains disgruntled. In early 2007, Kampala was the site of the Mabira Forest riots. The Ugandan Government had sold the forest to the Mehta Corporation, an Asian business, at a cut price. The anger was immediate, and the riots, although initially peaceful, left one Asian dead, and many fearful. I struggle to see how my Uganda will persevere in the face of one side’s racism and the others’ anger.

My hope lies in education. After struggling, and eventually succeeding, to get my good friend, Abdul, into the school that I attended, I saw some light. He had previously attended a school with no Asians, so he was shocked by the sea of brown and black that were his new classmates. I witnessed a change in both his attitude to me and to the society around him. Gone were the Amin jokes, the overdone Indian accents, and in their place a new awareness. He has shown me that the way forward lies in changing each group’s perception of the other, a process that, I believe, can only take place within the classroom and the playing fields, and then, perhaps, the marketplace.

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