Amin Source Gathered

To provide a balanced account of Amin, several historical sources with differing views were gathered. Four historical sources will be analysed to see how they portray Amin. The first source gathered was a book about Idi Amin written by Steve Dougherty in 2010. The book is from a long line of other books in a series called Wicked History, where they break down evil individuals who twisted the course of history. This automatically tells you that the book is a typical western view of Amin where he is depicted negatively. The book focuses on Amin’s brutality on his rise to power. Although this depiction of Amin is far more negative than Moghal’s depiction, they do corroborate on the basis of Amin’s cunning nature. This is seen with a quote in the book from Godfrey Lule, a former Ugandan minister of justice which

The next source gathered was an internet source written by a reputable and reliable author Ali Mazrui. Unlike most other sources on Amin that focus on his life, this source focuses on how people perceive Amin. Mazrui notes that westerners see him as entirely brutal and evil whereas, “for much of the third world, Amin … had that dialectical quality of heroic evil” (Prof Ali Mazrui, 2012). She goes on to note that Ugandans saw him as a black nationalist and that Ugandans don’t believe in most of the brutal stories about Amin as they see it as biased western media. Although Mazrui is far more positive about Amin than most sources she does mention many of the atrocities he committed which provides the source with more credibility and reliability. The third source gathered was a short YouTube clip produced by History.com on Idi Amin. Throughout the clip, they display confronting pictures of Amin’s killings and darker music to convey their message. The clip focuses on when Amin was in power and what brutalities he committed while in