State of Blood
by Henry Kyemba
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Book Summary Information
Author: Henry KyembaEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Published: 1977-09
ISBN: 0441785344
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Ace Books
Book Reviews of State of Blood
Book Review: Another sad tale in the sad history of what seems to be a hopeless continent
Summary: 5 Stars
My fiancé and I recently went to see the Academy Award winning movie, "The Last King of Scotland." In it Forest Whitaker gives a vivid and accurate portrayal of Idi Amin, the brutal former dictator of Uganda. Although some of the characters in the movie are fictitious, the general plotline is accurate. Amin was basically an uneducated thug who managed to take control of a nation and destroy it. I had read this book when it first came out and the movie prompted me to read it again.
In a continent where brutal, murderous dictators are the norm, Amin was one of the worst. He created a cadre of brutal henchmen whose only purpose was to terrorize the population into submission and grow rich in the process. They were allowed to steal anything from anybody with killing their victims largely acceptable. Under his reign, the Ugandan economy collapsed, what should have been a prosperous nation was turned into one of the poorest performing economies. His expulsion of the Asian merchant class was quite possibly the greatest single economic blunder made in the history of the continent.
Kyemba documents the rise of Amin, how at first he seemed to genuinely want to improve the lives of Ugandans. However, in the time worn tradition of tyrants, who only seem capable of becoming even more tyrannical, that soon changed. The latest estimates were that 300,000 Ugandans were killed under Amin's rule, many in as brutal a form as possible.
As Kyemba notes, eyes were gouged out, organs removed, limbs chopped off, and all for no reason other than to make sure that Amin's rule was absolute. Thousands of people were rounded up to witness executions so that there was no doubt in the mind of the people what would happen to them if they resisted.
This is a sad book about a sad state of affairs in a continent that seems forever doomed to be ruled by petty, brutal tyrants. After the movie was over, my fiancé asked me how accurate it was and she was surprised when I said it was very accurate. Amin did indeed do most of the things seen in the movie and once again, the rest of the world did nothing to stop it. That also seems to be part of the "forever doomed" scenario.
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